Theses and Dissertations

Issuing Body

Mississippi State University

Advisor

Eakin, Deborah

Committee Member

Williams, Carrick

Committee Member

Giesen, J. Martin

Date of Degree

4-30-2011

Document Type

Graduate Thesis - Open Access

Major

Psychology

Degree Name

Master of Science

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Department of Psychology

Abstract

Exposure to misleading post-event information can result in impaired memory for the original event. Two theoretical mechanisms (i.e., retrieval blocking and source misattribution) have been proposed as explanantions for the occurrence of the misinformation effect. The impact of context on the occurrence of these errors has been examined to determine if changing the context between events reduces the misinformation effect. Previous findings indicate that context plays a different role in each of these mechanisms; however, experimental differences in the paradgms used to examine retrieval blocking and source misattribution have made comparisons between these mechanisms difficult. The present study examined the role of context in eyewitness memory using the same materials, manipulations, and procedures to determine if context does, in fact, have a different impact on these mechanisms. Results indicate that changing the context between events reduces the occurrence of source misattribution but does not ameliorate the impact of retrieval blocking.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11668/20558

Comments

retrieval blocking||source misattribution||misinformation effect

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