The role of commitment during action planning and false memories for counterfactual actions

This study aims to investigate the planning-specific cognitive mechanisms underlying false memory formation of counterfactual actions. Counterfactual actions are actions we could have plausibly taken, but didn't. We completed a previous study (N=34) in which participants had to navigate simple mazes on a computer using the shortest available route, with 10 seconds to plan before execution. On some trials, one of the routes will be blocked after planning - this could be one of the alternative, viable routes from start to goal, or a dead-end path. Participants completed blocks of 4 different mazes to navigate, and they then completed a series of memory tests on the the routes they did, or didn't take in those 4 mazes. Upon running a binomial linear mixed model we found a significant interaction between navigation type (no paths blocked, valid path blocked, dead-end path blocked) and memory test type (taken, not taken, dead end) (X²(4)=34.33, p