Running head: EFFECT OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC ON FALSE MEMORY
Effect of Language and Music on Reliability of Human Memory
Nur Musfirah Izzati Musiran
The University of Queensland
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EFFECT OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC ON FALSE MEMORY
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Effect of Language and Music on Reliability of Human Memory
In September 2014, Jimmy Kimmel in a segment of his show, featured an interview with the visitors of the New York Fashion Week. They were first asked about any runway show they have attended and later, on designers, trends or events that are fabricated. Even though neither of these existed during the event, the respondents could still recall about it and stated the source (Kimmel, 2014). This brief social experiment suggests that we could be deceived by our own memory. Therefore, this paper will argue on the failure of human memory to recall past events accurately, in terms of details. One of the supporting evidence is gathered from Loftus and Palmer’s study (1974) which proposes that misleading questions interrupt one’s memory. Another study shows that music, particularly songs, can “lure” other songs to be recalled if presented in audio (Sherman & Kennerley, 2014).
To start with the first evidence, Loftus and Palmer (1974), in their study, investigated the phrasing in questions used to elicit false recalling in human memory. Two experiments were conducted, but Experiment Two would be the main focus in this evidence. The independent variable tested is verbs used in the question with smashed, hit and a control group as the levels. Meanwhile, the dependent variable is memory reconstruction, measured by their answer to the subsequent question. 150 students participated, divided to three groups of similar size. They were first shown a one-minute film containing an accident clip that lasted for four seconds. Following after was a questionnaire to be answered. The questionnaire comprised two parts: 1) The participants had to describe the accident in their own words and 2) They answered a series of questions, with the most critical one, “About how fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other?” The word smashed is substituted with hit for one group, and the control group is not asked about vehicular speed.
To test the subjects’ memory, one week later, they answered ten questions about the accident.
EFFECT OF LANGUAGE AND MUSIC ON FALSE MEMORY
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The question asked to measure the dependent variable is “Did you see any broken glass?”
This question is randomly positioned in the questionnaire. As Loftus and Palmer have predicted for the results, more subjects in smashed group responded “Yes” compared to others. To support the statement that human memory is unreliable in recalling details of past events accurately, this particular study displayed a few strengths. The first one would be the position of the critical question in the second questionnaire. By randomising the position, the researchers have reduced the order-effect bias in this study. This effect is vital to be controlled as primacy effect and recency effect are not taken into consideration when evaluating results. Next, the choice of verbs (smashed and hit) for manipulation of the independent variable also contributed in backing the argument. Daniel (1972) proposes in his study that a verbal label may cause a “shift” in one’s memory (as cited in Loftus and Palmer,
1974). Therefore, difference in impact between the verbs may cause reconstruction in subjects’ memory as demonstrated in the results. Nonetheless, this study is not free from any weaknesses. By taking students of a young age as subjects (Mean = 20), the experimenters were not aware of the effect of their memory efficiency. Students, particularly, would have better than average memory as they have responsibility to remember and retain many information for examination and assessments. Thus, they would outperform subjects from other groups of different age and occupation, supposedly. Apart from that, this study
