The Effect of Perceptual Elaboration and Re-study on False Memory in the Social Contagion of Memory Paradigm

The social contagion paradigm has demonstrated false memories occur for items when they are suggested to the participant during a collaborative recall phase. The current experiment examined the effect of perceptual elaboration (generation of sensory and elaborative details) and re-study (repeated encoding) on false memories in the social contagion paradigm. Participants either performed a perceptual elaboration task or completed a math filler task after viewing six slides and collaborating with the confederate. Half of the participants in each condition were given an opportunity to restudy the original slides. Perceptual elaboration increased false recall, but decreased false recognition. Re-study decreased false recall and only decreased false recognition if in conjunction with perceptual elaboration.