Working memory capacity, removal efficiency and event specific memory as predictors of misinformation reliance

Event-related misinformation that has been retracted often continues to influence later reasoning regarding the event; this is known as the continued influence effect. To explain this effect, most research has focused on factors governing retrieval of the misinformation and its retraction from long-term memory. However, recent research has begun to investigate working memory (WM) capacity as a predictor of continued influence, based on WM’s assumed role in information integration and updating following retraction encoding. The present study explored (1) whether memory for the materials more generally predicts continued influence, based on the notion that high-fidelity event representations may be easier to update, and (2) investigated the specific WM updating process of removal, testing whether participants’ ability to remove information from WM would predict their susceptibility to continued influence. Latent-variable modelling suggested that memory for the materials but not WM capacity and removal efficiency were significant predictors of continued influence.