Assessing the effects of misleading postevent information using multinomial processing tree models

Misleading postevent information can alter an individual's memory. Three hypotheses (no conflict, coexistence, destructive updating) have been proposed to explain the fate of the original memory trace and have subsequently been mathematically formalized to enhance understanding of the predictions regarding false memory formation (Wagenaar & Boer, 1987). We utilized multinomial processing tree models to test these hypotheses concurrently. In two experiments, we implement the Loftus et al. (1978) misinformation paradigm. We found support for both the no-conflict and coexistence models but defaulted to the no-conflict model because it was the most parsimonious. However, when only the top-performing participants were examined, we found strong evidence for the coexistence model. In Experiment 2, we categorized participants based on their perceptions of what happened to their original memory and found some correspondence between participants' perceptions and model fits. Surprisingly, we did not replicate the overall misinformation effect but did find the effect for those participants classified as coexistence and destructive updating, suggesting that participants who acknowledged a conflict were affected by the conflicting information. Future research should continue to apply these models to identify subsets of participants that handle misinformation in different ways, reflecting the varied ways memory can be deployed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).