Resumen de Falsas memórias na perspectiva da Análise do Comportamento: Uma análise da literatura

Natalia Maria Aggio, Sabrina Campos Dias Pedrosa, Júlio César Coelho de Rose

• English

  The Behavior Analysis proposes an operant perspective of the mnemonic phenomena. According to this view, remembering is a behavior that occurs in the interaction of man with his environment and therefore can be described and studied in terms of stimulus control relations. It is noted, however, that people may remember things different of the lived experience. Such a phenomenon has been termed as false memories. Through different research models, cognitive psychologists have produced a robust data body that allows affirming that this phenomenon is determined, at least in part, by semantic relations between stimuli. The two main paradigms used in those researches are the DRM Paradigm and the Misinformation Paradigm. In the first, a participant sees a list of words semantically related and later has to remember these words. Results consistently indicate participants remember words from the list and others that are also semantically related to those but were not presented in the list. In the second paradigm, a participant sees or read about an event and later answers questions about this event. In a question, a false implicit information is inserted.

  When asked to recall the previously observed event, participants usually report memories that contain elements that were not present in the original situation, but which have similar meanings to the implicit information provided by the experimenter. Considering these findings, behavioral analysts have, recently, begun to produce the first behavioral analogs of false memories. The main difference of the proposal of behavioral research is the use of the stimulus equivalence paradigm in addition to those traditionally used in cognitive psychology investigations, as a resource for the establishment and manipulation of semantic relations. The stimulus equivalence paradigm has been used with the DRM Paradigm in three investigations. In all of them the memory list is composed of stimuli from the same equivalence classes. Participants remember stimuli from the list and other stimuli from the same equivalence class as the ones in the list. One investigation was conducted using the misinformation and the stimulus equivalence paradigm. Participants first learned patterns of stimuli compound of geometric shapes. Later participants learned equivalence classes in which one of the stimuli were a shape from the pattern and the others were different shapes and a letter. When, in a recognition test, participants saw the original patterns; patterns compound of stimuli from the same equivalence classes; and patterns compound of new stimuli, they consistently recognize the originals and the ones formed of stimuli from equivalence classes as the original patterns. The results of the first behavioral researches point to the feasibility and adequacy of the use of the stimulus equivalence paradigm as a theoretical and methodological resource for the study of false memories. This gives rise to new possibilities of experimental manipulations that can originate a promising line of research.

• português

  A Análise do Comportamento propõe uma perspectiva operante dos fenômenos mnemônicos.

  Segundo esta visão, o lembrar é um comportamento que ocorre na interação do homem com o seu ambiente e, portanto, pode ser descrito e estudado em termos de relações de controle de estímulos. É observado, porém, que pessoas podem ter lembranças discrepantes da experiência vivida. Tal fenômeno foi denominado como falsas memórias. Por meio de diferentes modelos de pesquisa, psicólogos cognitivistas produziram um corpo de dados robusto que permite afirmar que o referido fenômeno é determinado, pelo menos em parte, por relações semânticas entre estímulos.

  Considerando estes achados, analistas do comportamento, recentemente, têm começado a produzir os primeiros análogos comportamentais de falsas memórias. A principal diferença da proposta de pesquisa comportamental é o emprego do paradigma da equivalência de estímulos como recurso para o estabelecimento e manipulação de relações semânticas. Os resultados das primeiras pesquisas comportamentais apontam para a viabilidade e adequação do uso do paradigma de equivalência de estímulos como um recurso teórico e metodológico para os estudo de falsas memórias. Disto decorrem novas possibilidades de manipulações experimentais que podem originar uma promissora linha de pesquisa.