False Memories From Biological Motion Observation

The Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm demonstrates that false memories can be elicited by presenting semantically related words centered around a common theme. In recent years, the scope of false memory research has expanded beyond verbal materials to include visual, imaginative, and autobiographical stimuli. Given that humans rely heavily on visual perception in everyday life, examining visual false memories through perceptual paradigms is of critical importance. Biological motion—dynamic visual information depicting human movement—offers a particularly powerful tool for studying visual perception due to its social relevance and ecological validity. However, no prior research has explored false memory formation using biological motion stimuli. The present study investigated whether false memories can be induced in visual perception using biological motion displays as both targets and critical lures. Thirty-five university students (18 female, 17 male) participated in two experimental sessions. During encoding, participants viewed 35 biological motion stimuli and were later tested on recognition among 49 stimuli. Results revealed that false memories can indeed be generated through biological motion. Interestingly, participants were more accurate at correctly rejecting unseen stimuli, and detection performance improved with higher confidence ratings. Overall, the findings suggest that biological motion can reliably elicit false memories, albeit to a lesser extent in high-confidence conditions. Crucially, these results indicate that observing an action can lead to confident yet erroneous claims of having observed a different action. This study is the first to demonstrate false memory formation within the domain of biological motion perception, offering a novel direction for future research on memory and action observation.