Whose Memory Is It Anyway? The Impact of Perspective Taking on Socially-Triggered Context-Based Prediction Error

Abstract

The brain automatically creates predictions about where items should appear in a familiar context; if the items fail to appear, their memories are weakened. This effect is known as context-based prediction error. In the current study, we aimed to study the effect of socially modulated perspective taking on this cognitive phenomenon. Participants were tasked with making a series of triplet decision sequences about where they would go and what they would do in capital cities around the world. These sequences were later either completely repeated, partially repeated, or not repeated at all by a pre-recorded voice, and participants were tested on their recognition accuracy for each of the initially presented sequences. Participants were also subjected to a between-subjects manipulation, by being placed in either a low perspective taking or high perspective taking condition. The analysis revealed that the high perspective taking group showed greater prediction error and more memory suppression than low perspective taking, which we suggest may be explained by the high perspective taking participants making stronger predictions about what the speaker would say, thus experiencing greater memory suppression when their predictions were violated. I discuss the implications of these findings for group therapy and media effects. Limitations and future directions for study are also discussed.