MEMORY SOURCE CONFUSIONS - EFFECTS OF CHARACTER ROTATION AND SENSORY MODALITY

Eighty subjects viewed and visually imagined upright or rotated alphan umeric characters and later judged whether test characters were previo usly seen or imagined (reality monitoring). Identification and test ch aracters were presented verbally or visually. When characters were ide ntified and tested verbally, source confusions (misjudging a seen char acter as ''imagined'' and vice-versa) were infrequent and were compara ble for rotated and upright characters. When characters were identifie d and tested visually, source confusions were more frequent and were i nfluenced by character rotation. Memories for imagined characters were especially susceptible to source confusion. Also source confusions fo r seen characters increased when characters were rotated. These result s are consistent with the proposal that increasing sensory similarity between perceived and imagined items increases source confusion and th at perceived rotation generates cognitive operations similar to those generated when the subject imagines a character rotated.