Summary
Meta-cognitive judgments. After writing a description of each event, participants completed three metacognitive judgments about that event. The first two judgments concerned the realness of events, and were taken from Destun (2000). The first item, referred to as the happened rating, asked, "To what extent does it seem as though this event really happened to you?" The second item, called the trueness rating, asked, "To what extent does this seem true to you?" Each item was rated on a 7-point Likert scale, with 1 indicating "not at all," 4 indicating "to a moderate extent," and 7 indicating "to a great extent." The final meta-cognitive judgment concerned the typicality of each event, and was taken from Heaps and Nash (2001). Participants were asked, "How typical of your life (i.e., how much like other behaviours, conversations, etc.) is this event?" A 7-point scale was used, with 1 indicating "not at all typical," 4 indicating "moderately typical," and 7 indicating "very typical."
Dans trois études, les participants ont coté plusieurs caractéristiques distinctes associées à des événements personnels réels et des événements fictifs. Les caractéristiques comprenaient les croyances métacognitives à propos de la réalité perçue et la typicité des événements évoqués, des cotes attribués à des événements imaginaires en ce qui a trait aux détails visuels et des cotes émotionnelles de l'intensité et des sentiments. Les études 1 et 2 se penchaient sur les répercussions de la valence de l'événement (plaisant par opp. à déplaisant) sur ces caractéristiques, tandis que l'étude 3 portait sur les répercussions de l'élaboration d'un événement faisant appel au rêve éveillé dirigé et aux techniques de consignation. Les trois études examinaient les facteurs liés aux différences individuelles qui pouvaient soit améliorer ou atténuer les cotes obtenues. Les études 1 et 2 ont toutes deux révélé que les événements plaisants (qu'ils soient réels ou fictifs) étaient considérés comme plus caractéristiques et plus vraisemblables et réalistes que les événements déplaisants. Ce modèle de jugements métacognitifs venait appuyer l'hypothèse de la positivité générale, qui soutient que la plupart des individus sont plus attirés par les expériences de la vie et les événements plaisants que par les expériences de la vie et les événements déplaisants et qu'ils les remarquent davantage. En revanche, les aspects de ces événements qui sont reliés à l'imagination, comme les détails visuels, l'endroit et le moment, étaient moins sensibles aux modifications de la valence de l'événement. Cependant, on observait des effets puissants reliés à l'imagination lorsque les événements étaient élaborés au cours de l'étude finale. Par ailleurs, la modification de l'élaboration de l'événement entraînait aussi des jugements métacognitifs haussés en ce qui a trait à la typicité, la vraisemblance de la survenue de l'événement et sa survenue réelle. En dernier lieu, les trois études ont fait l'objet d'une série d'analyses corrélationnelles qui ont indiqué que les facteurs liés aux différences individuelles n'avaient pas d'effet systématique sur aucune des cotes attribuées aux caractéristiques de l'événement. Toutefois, lorsque la valence de l'événement n'était pas modifiée de manière particulière (dans l'étude 3), les participants déprimés mentionnaient deux fois plus d'événement personnels déplaisants que les participants non déprimés. Ces conclusions sont présentées sous l'angle des questions liées à la confusion d'origine concernant l'exactitude de la mémoire individuelle et des possibilités qu'offre un modèle récent s'appliquant à la mémoire autobiographique, qui incorpore les propriétés de l'événement, comme la valence et l'élaboration.See the full content of this document
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Characteristics Associated with Real and Made-Up Events: The Effects of Event Valence, Event Elaboration, and Individual Differences
Over the past decade there have been a considerable number of empirical demonstrations that individuals can view certain actions or events as real memories when, in fact, they are not (Heaps & Nash, 2001; Hyman & Billings, 1998; Loftus, 1993; Sharman, Carry, & Beuke, 2004). Although many of these memory misattribution studies have focused on childhood events, such as incorrectly believing that one had become lost in a mall, or been in a hospital overnight, other research have shown that adults can also incorrectly label current made-up or imagined events as real personal memories (Thomas, Bulevich, & Loftus, 2003).
In light of this well-documented finding, contemporary research is now focusing more extensively on the factors that may either enhance or deter memory misattributions. For example, one prominent line of research has been guided by the source-monitoring framework, which proposes that individuals use various event characteristics to determine if a given event is real or imaginary (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993; Kealy & Arbuthnott, 2003). This research has shown that memories for real events involve greater clarity and visual detail, more emotional intensity and feelings, and more sensory and contextual information, than those for imagined events (Arbuthnott, Geelen, & Kealy, 2002; Destun & Kuiper, 1999; Stern & Rotello, 2000). According to the source-monitoring framework, these types of distinctions are then used to judge whether an event is real or not. If, for example, an event has considerable visual detail and imagery associated with it, there would be an increased probability of judging that event as being real (Johnson et al., 1993). This explanation has also been used to account for the well-documented phenomenon of imagination inflation, which refers to fixe increased acceptance of a false event as real, after repeated and/or elaborate imagining of that event (Thomas et al., 2003).The types of event characteristics described above have been recently incorporated into a more comprehensive theoretical model of the factors that may impinge on the veracity of autobiographical memories (Rubin, Schrauf, & Greenberg, 2003; Rubin & Siegler, 2004). In this model, both the imaginai and emotional characteristics of events are viewed as important component processes that assist in determinations of reality. Thus, greater clarity of imagery-related components (with visual imagery of primary importance), or greater intensity of emotion-related components, would each contribute to enhanced perceptions of reality. In addition to these component processes, however, the model proposes that individuals may also use their own meta-cognitive beliefs about events to assist in making reality decisions. As one illustration, more positive responses to statements such as "I believe the event in my memory really occurred" would engender greater confidence that the event in question is real. Finally, the model proposes that a fourth category, pertaining to the reported properties of events, is also highly relevant. These properties include how personally relevant the event is, or how often the event has been previously thought about. Congruent with this important role of event properties, the imagination inflation literature has shown that increased event rehearsal leads to greater confidence that an imagined event actually occurred (Thomas et al., 2003).The major purpose of the present research is to further explore the various characteristics of personal events. This was done by having participants in all three studies generate both real and made-up autob...See the full content of this document
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