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Poster F in Poster Session F: Thursday, August 6, 1:45 – 3:30 pm, Kimmel Center, Shorin & Rosenthal Rooms

The cost of alternative actions: counterfactual false memories

Maia Juliet Armstrong¹, Kevin O'Neill², Daniel Yon¹, Silvia Seghezzi¹; ¹Birkbeck, University of London, ²University College London

Presenter: Maia Juliet Armstrong

Action planning involves representing multiple possible actions, including alternatives that are ultimately not taken. While such representations support flexible behaviour, they may also bias memory for one's own actions. Using a novel maze navigation and memory paradigm across two experiments (N = 58), we show that participants are more likely to falsely remember having taken paths that were plausible during planning but later rendered unavailable at execution, compared to the available ones. This effect was strongest for paths that were optimal at the time of planning and was absent for paths that were never plausible. These findings suggest that considering an action can leave a memory trace that is later misattributed as having been executed.

Topic Area: Memory, Learning & Knowledge Structures