Read the scenario below and answer the question that follows. Randy was in an earthquake. Afterwards she talked to her neighbors, who explained the earthquake as “destructive” and “scary.” When asked by another person if anything had fallen during the earthquake, Randy said something did fall when, in fact, nothing had fallen. Her factual error is most likely due to which of the following? A. reality monitoring B. schemas C. misinformation effect D. source-monitoring error

The term misinformation effect refers to the way some memory can become less accurate or can have a factual error due to post-event information. This means, the misinformation effect is about the effect information about certain events has on the way people remember they experienced the same event and that usually leads to a distortion in the memories. This occurs as the process of remembering the first event is disrupted by new information about the event which makes some people unable to determine which part of the information belongs to the experience itself and which part of it was obtained after the event or experience ended. Considering Randy experiences during the earthquake was modified by a piece of information from her neighbors she received shortly after the personal experience ended and that made Randy confused avoid the real experiences and her neighbors words it can be concluded the factual error of Randy emerged as a result of misinformation effect.