心理学研究已经通过各种途径表明“错误记忆”是人在经历比如受到强烈的暗示或是想象力过于丰富的情况而创造出来的。最近科学家在研究想象力时发现，如果让人们观看一段视频，两周后再让人们回想视频内容，人们常常会以为视频中人物的某个简单的动作是他们自己的行为。

　　《心理科学》杂志九月刊中关于“错误记忆”论文的合著者，德国明斯特大学(University of Muenster in Germany)的心理学教授杰拉德.切特霍夫(Gerald Echterhoff)说：“这是一种全新的错误记忆形式”。

　　他说，“这种错误记忆正是从观察他人而来。”

　　哈佛大学(Harvard University, Cambridge，Mass.)心理学家丹尼尔.沙克特(Daniel Schacter)曾编撰过一本关于错误记忆的书，他说他还没有阅读那篇论文，不过听起来像是对“想象曾做过的一些事情会引起错误记忆”的这个早期研究工作的延伸。

　　沙克特说：“我认为这个理论有一部分新的提法，不过也有一部分是与早期研究相联系的。从电视上看到的一些东西，你会想象成实际发生的。这是人们提到过的记忆来源故障的另一新事例。”

　　切特霍夫说，“从参与者的记录来看，一般有这种把他们实际上没有做过的行为当成是自己作为的错误记忆的占四分之一。这次研究以及后续的一些实验表明，大部分的参与者都会记错。他们会记得那些仅仅是看到的行为是发生在自己身上。第一次的试验参与者是170人，后来在接近500名参与者身上得出了同样的调查结果。”

　　论文详细记录了三个不同的实验。试验参与者阅读或是真正完成一系列简单的动作，比如说摇晃瓶子或洗扑克牌。之后再让他们观看另外一些人做一些简单动作的录像--一些是真正有做，另一些人则只是在旁白看着。2周后再问他们，他们认为有30个左右的动作都是他们自己做过的。

　　研究人员发现，如果被试验者观察其他人的行为很可能会错误的以为这是自己的亲身经历。切特霍夫说，研究人员排出了让参与者想象自己做过的行为的普遍场景，因为被试验者可能每天都做着这些行为。

　　切特霍夫说，“并且就算是参与者在被告之可能会产生错误记忆的情况下，错误记忆还是会发生。

　　这种错误记忆很难抵消，即便已经警告过他们。”

　　论文指出，观察他人的行为有可能会触碰到隐蔽的行为模仿的开关，于是这种刺激会让人产生一种类似于自我实际执行的错误记忆。

　　原文：

　　False memories: Did you lock the door or just imagine it?

　　Psychological research has shown various ways "false memories" are created, such as through the power of suggestion or through vivid imagination. Now scientists studying imagination have found that people who watched a video of someone else doing a simple action often didn't remember and thought they had done it themselves when asked about it two weeks later.

　　"This is a completely new type of false memory," says Gerald Echterhoff, a psychology professor at the University of Muenster in Germany and co-author of the paper published in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science.

　　"This is a false memory from just observing someone," he says.

　　Psychologist Daniel Schacter of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., who has edited a book on false memories, says he hasn't read the new paper, but it "sounds like an extension of earlier work that has shown imagining you'd done something can result in false memories."

　　"I think it's partly new and partly related to earlier work," Schacter says. "You saw something on TV that you think actually happened. It's another kind of example of what people have talked about as a source memory failure."

　　Echterhoff says, on average, participants reported false memories of doing an action they really didn't do almost a quarter of the time. In this study, as well as in several follow-up experiments, the majority of participants misremembered, thinking they had done something they had merely observed. Since the first research on 170 participants, findings have been replicated with almost 500 participants, he says.

　　The paper details three different experiments in which participants read about or actually performed a series of simple actions, such as shaking a bottle or shuffling a deck of cards. Then they watched videos of someone else doing simple actions — some of which they had done and some they had only seen being done. Two weeks later, they were asked which of as many as 30 actions they had done themselves.

　　Researchers found the subjects were much more likely to falsely remember doing an action if they had watched someone else do it. Echterhoff says the research controlled for the common situation of thinking you had done something because you do it yourself every day.

　　And, he says, participants had false memories even when cautioned about the possibility.

　　"It's very hard to counteract this type of false memory, even when participants were warned it could happen," Echterhoff says.

　　The paper suggests that observation of another person's action "may trigger a covert simulation of the action and thus activate motor representations similar to those produced during self-performance."