„Correct me if I am false” – does corrected „false” feedback reduce the asymmetry in memory between „true” and „false” feedback?
Wed-Main hall - Z3-Poster 3-9113
Presented by: Daria Ford
In the research on memory for truth and falsity, an observed asymmetry often emerges: the truth of information is remembered better than the falsity of information (Ford & Nieznański, 2023; Nadarevic & Erdfelder, 2019). The mechanism underlying this asymmetry prompts inquiry. When encountering „true“ feedback for information, we can easily incorporate it into our knowledge and simply make use of it. Conversely, „false“ feedback for information is often less informative, so that less emphasis may be placed on its encoding. This begs the question: how can „false“ feedback be made more informative and therefore worth remembering? One possible solution involves providing corrected information to false statements along with the “false” feedback (e.g. statement: Muscat is the capital of Qatar; feedback: False - Muscat is the capital of Oman). Johnson and Seifert (1994) found that corrected "false" feedback, compared to a simple denial, more effectively reduced the influence of misinformation on judgments. This suggests that corrected "false" feedback may enhance memory for a statement‘s falsity, thereby reducing the memory asymmetry between "true" and "false" feedback. To test this hypothesis, we plan to compare two conditions: original condition (statement + feedback) and corrected condition (statement + feedback along with the corrected version). We anticipate that in the original condition, the asymmetry in memory for “true” and false” feedback will replicate, whereas in the corrected condition the asymmetry will be reduced or fully eliminated. Furthermore, we hypothesize that memory for "false" feedback in the corrected condition will surpass that in the original condition.
Keywords: feedback memory, truth, falsity, recognition, MPT modeling