ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a number of factors related to how memory and reality square up. It looks at how the normal use of information in memory can change our memories, as with verbal overshadowing, the revelation effect, and memory blending. Source monitoring requires people to take source and content information and integrate them into a common memory trace. Different types of information are used to evaluate the source of a memory. The separation of memory and reality is most salient when people have false memories for events that never happened. There are three types of source monitoring: internal source monitoring, external source monitoring, and reality monitoring. A source monitoring error that is familiarity-based is the false fame effect. To study the false fame effect, a researcher might give people a list of names. A phenomenon in social psychology that involves source monitoring is the sleeper effect.
