Memory for Actions in Twins and Friends

Brianna DeLarge* and Elisa Krackow, Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506

Field (Broad Category): Psychology (Behavioral & Social Sciences) 

Student’s Major: Psychology 

Memory recall is used throughout daily life but is not always accurate (Mullet & Marsh, 2015). In this experiment, memory recall was tested and evaluated through a study using actions. The participants were pairs of twins, as well as pairs of friends. A researcher read each set of twins/friends a list of actions and provided one or the other twin/friend with one of four of the following directives: complete the action themselves, observe their twin/friend completing the action, imagine themselves completing the action, or imagine their twin/friend completing the action. Afterwards, they were given a 10-minute distractor task to and were then given a memory questionnaire with the four directives as answer choices. The expected results are that compared to friends, twins are more likely to make an error when differentiating whether they imagined their twin or themselves completing an action. This can be useful in understanding identity memory recall. Research in this field can be applied to other professions, such as law enforcement and court law, in the form of eyewitness testimony. 

Funding: 

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course