Presence/absence of original information in the misleading information effect An investigation using recognition and priming tasks similar to original information presentation

• Published in: Shinrigaku kenkyū Vol. 72; no. 6; pp. 490 - 497
• Main Authors: Imai, Hisato, Takano, Yohtaro
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Japanese
• Published: Japan The Japanese Psychological Association 01.02.2002
• Subjects: Information Theory; misleading information effect; original information; priming
• ISSN: 0021-5236; 1884-1082
• DOI: 10.4992/jjpsy.72.490

Several previous studies on the misleading information effect employed priming tasks to examine the presence/absence of original information. Given hyperspecificity of priming, however, it is questionable whether or not their priming tasks were sensitive enough to detect original information because their stimuli were perceptually different from the slides in the study phase. In the priming task of this research, we used slides whose perceptual properties were equivalent to those of the studied ones. In addition, we also conducted a yes-no recognition task using the same slides so that the results of these two tasks could be directly compared. The misleading information effect was replicated in the recognition task. Nevertheless, participants correctly recognized the original slides, whereas no priming effect was observed for those slides. These results suggest that although the original information survives the misleading information effect, its representation is modified so that only the yes-no recognition task, not the priming task, has access to it.