Effects of Preparation on Internal and External Memories

What is it about?

The aim of the present study was to examine the effect of preparation on the characteristics of imagined and perceptual memory descriptions. Following recent research (Alonso?Quecuty, 1990; Suengas & Johnson, 1988) it was hypothesized that subjects' real memories in the "preparation condition" (i.e. when they have been instructed to prepare what they are going to say before reporting) would contain more sensorial and contextual details and more internal characteristics (in terms of the Johnson & Raye, 1981, reality monitoring model) than those of subjects in the "no?preparation condition". It was also hypothesized that the descriptions of subjects asked to report their memories of a previously imagined event would contain more external characteristics when they are instructed to prepare their descriptions than when they are not.

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Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The results confirmed both hypotheses. As predicted, perceptual memory descriptions had more internal characteristics and contained more amount of sensorial and contextual details when they were prepared. In the same way, preparation yielded imagined memory descriptions with more external characteristics. It was also found that prepared memory descriptions of imagined events contained more contextual and sensorial information. These results are discussed in terms of their practical implications for the discriminability of real and imagined memories.