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.

Successful episodic recollection occurs when an event properly binds with its context. Source misattribution demonstrates incorrect binding of a memory with its contextual information. By contrast, false memories are memories of events that did not occur. Although theoretically they should not be bound with contextual information, often, false memories are accompanied by contextual information. This phenomenon is known as content borrowing. This thesis project examined the differences between the two contextual memory errors. The DRM paradigm was used to induce both source misattributions and content borrowing. This allowed the neural differences between the two to be directly tested. No differences were found between source misattribution and content borrowing. However, false memories with content borrowing showed different neural activations from true memory with correct source, true memory with incorrect source, and correct rejection. This suggests that false memories and source misattributions may represent similar errors in memory that rely on gist memory traces. / Master of Science

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