The cognitive warm-up effect and susceptibility to the misinformation

The misinformation effect is defined as a distortion of an eyewitness testimony, resulting from introducing to this testimony incorrect details, stemming from sources other than the original event. In a typical experiment the participant first watches a film. Afterwards, he/she reads a description of the film, which in the experimental group contains some incorrect details, and finally answers questions concerning the film, including questions relating to the misled details. The memory performance of misled participants is usually poorer than of non-misled ones. The aim of the presented experiment was to verify whether susceptibility to the misinformation effect is influenced by cognitive overload introduced just before presentation of the misinformation, resulting in cognitive warm-up. Warmed-up subjects were more resistant to misinformation, compared to non-warmed ones. Warmed-up subjects were also better than non-warmed in remembering non-misinformed material peerReviewed publishedVersion