Establishment of false memories through the paradigm of equivalence of stimuli: the role of stability of equivalence relations

• Grant number: 17/23172-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2018
• End date: January 31, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Júlio César Coelho de Rose
• Grantee: Eliseu Henrique Zanesco
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/50909-8 - INCT 2014: Behavior, Cognition and Teaching (INCT-ECCE): relational learning and symbolic functioning, AP.TEM

Abstract

False memories are memories of situations that differ of what actually happened. Research indicates that semantic relations have an influence in this phenomenon. The Behavior Analysis has been using the stimulus equivalence paradigm to understand this phenomenon. Usually participants are submitted to tests where they should remember items of a list that was earlier presented. This list is composed of stimuli of the same esquivalence class, established experimentally. Participants tend to remember the items of list and others stimuli equivalent to them, but that were not included on the list, which are called false memories. The stability of equivalence relations was pointed out as a relevant variable in the observation of this phenomenon. This project proposes to investigate this variable. It will be a replication of a research in which the test with a list was performed one week after the phase in which the equivalence relations were established. In that research participants remembered items that were not on the list, but were equivalent to them, at the level of chance and in the same proportion as they remembered items that were not in the list and were not equivalent to those who were. This indicated that the equivalence relation was not the relevant variable in the recognition of items that were not part of the list. In this project, before perform the test with the lists, participants will retrain baseline relations learned in the first stage. It is hoped that equivalence relations will be strengthened and that the phenomenon of false memories can be observed above chance. (AU)