Art Museum Observation

Researchers Peggy L. St. Jaques and Daniel L. Schacter (2013) were interested a phenomenon that showed that personal memories for naturalistic events can be modified using reactivation techniques and that the quality of the reactivation has a significant impact on the degree of modification. In their 2013 study St. Jaques and Schacter tried to further prove this theory by having participants take a self-guided tour through an art museum. Their group had 41 participants who have never been the museum before. There were two different versions of the tour both with 53 events and 4 stops. The participants went through the tour individually and wore a ViconRevue camera around their neck which took pictures every 15 seconds. A single photograph

This may be due to a lack of interest in the art museum the participants had. It may be possible that if the participants were subjected to tours around different types of museum, such as art, science, sports, or history museums, that we as researchers may be able to better modify a participant’s memory depending on their level of interest. In order to alter the quality of reactivation we would send the participants through the 4 different types of museums in one day with the cameras taking pictures every 15 seconds and after they would complete a survey rating which museum was their favorite, second favorite, and so on. Then we would subject them to the same match vs. mismatch conditions in a similar reactivation session to that of St. Jaques and Schacter, and then see how their level of correct responses varied depending on which set of photographs they were shown. It would be expected that in the museums that they liked more they would have an increased number of correct responses because they had a higher level of interest and paid attention to the exhibit more closely and that we would have a harder time modifying their memories for the exhibits they were most interested