Аннотация:Abstract: Participants in Experiment 1 completed a 36-item life events inventory (LEI) in their native language (Russian) two separate times, over a 1-week period. Between the two LEIs, participants got 12 items translated from Russian into English and 12 items in Russian. They performed a series of English-language exercises on translated items and Russian-language exercises on non-translated items. After performing exercises on items translated from Russian into English participants increased their confidence that these life events had occurred in their personal past. There was no similar effect for nontranslated items and for control items. Experiment 2 was run to examine if two factors - a change in linguistic context and a change in level of abstraction taken together boosted the effect. Participants completed a 24-item LEI in Russian two separate times, over a 1 -week period. Between the two LEIs, participants got 12 of these life events at the higher level of abstraction (e.g., "Got lost in a shopping mall" or "found yourself at an unfamiliar public place") translated from Russian into English. Participants translated the event from English into Russian and wrote a sentence using the gist of the item. After performing language exercises on items at the higher level of abstraction participants increased their confidence that these life events had occurred in their personal past. The magnitude of effect was almost twice bigger than in Experiment 1. These results indicate that a change in linguistic context can produce imagination inflation. We discuss our findings in terms of familiarity misattribution, whereby processing fluency is experienced as familiarity and misattributed to autobiogra
Keywords: cognitive studies, autobiographical memory.