{"pk":26104,"title":"On the adaptive nature of memory-based false belief","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Previous studies have shown that people’s memories are\nchangeable, and systematic incorrect memories (e.g., false\nmemory) can be created. We hypothesize that people’s beliefs\nabout the real world can be changed similarly to the way\nsystematic incorrect memories and systematic incorrect\nbeliefs (which we call memory-based false belief) are\ngenerated. We also predict that since memory-based false\nbeliefs are consistent with abstract knowledge that is\nconsisted with prototypical patterns and organization found in\nthe real world, false beliefs work adaptively in making\ninferences about environmental information in the real world.\nWe conducted behavioral and simulation studies in order to\nexamine our hypotheses on people’s beliefs and inferences\nabout the real world. The results showed that participants had\nsystematic false beliefs about cities’ attributes (e.g., whether\nthey have a professional baseball team), and that such false\nbeliefs worked adaptively in making inferences about\npopulation size.","language":"eng","license":{"name":"","short_name":"","text":null,"url":""},"keywords":[{"word":"memory-based false belief; inference about real\nworld; ecological rationality"}],"section":"Papers","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9q85s2n1","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Hidehito","middle_name":"","last_name":"Honda","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Tokyo","department":""},{"first_name":"Toshihiko","middle_name":"","last_name":"Matsuka","name_suffix":"","institution":"Chiba University","department":""},{"first_name":"Kazuhiro","middle_name":"","last_name":"Ueda","name_suffix":"","institution":"The University of Tokyo","department":""}],"date_submitted":null,"date_accepted":null,"date_published":"2016-01-01T18:00:00Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"PDF","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/cognitivesciencesociety/article/26104/galley/15740/download/"}]}