The messy landscape of eye movements and false memories.

Eye-Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is a common treatment for PTSD. However, skeptics like James Ost question the theoretical underpinnings, highlight inconsistency of empirical findings surrounding the efficacy of such therapy, and warn against unknown drawbacks. Little is known about the impact of the eye movements, a critical component in EMDR, on susceptibility to false memories, and the existing literature is contradictory. We review the literature and present new findings to help tell the story of the effects of eye movements on memory. Taken as a whole, this small body of work suggests that eye movements do not reliably affect susceptibility to misinformation, nor do they appear to enhance memory, but they do seem to increase spontaneous false memories.

Discrepancy detection in the retrieval-enhanced suggestibility paradigm.

Retrieval-enhanced suggestibility (RES) refers to the finding that immediately recalling the details of a witnessed event can increase susceptibility to later misinformation. In three experiments, we sought to gain a deeper understanding of the role that retrieval plays in the RES paradigm. Consistent with past research, initial testing did increase susceptibility to misinformation - but only for those who failed to detect discrepancies between the original event and the post-event misinformation. In all three experiments, subjects who retrospectively detected discrepancies in the post-event narratives were more resistant to misinformation than those who did not. In Experiments 2 and 3, having subjects concurrently assess the consistency of the misinformation narratives negated the RES effect. Interestingly, in Experiments 2 and 3, subjects who had retrieval practice and detected discrepancies were more likely to endorse misinformation than control subjects who detected discrepancies. These results call attention to limiting conditions of the RES effect and highlight the complex relationship between retrieval practice, discrepancy detection, and misinformation endorsement.