Theoretical commentary: The role of criterion shift in false memory.

H. L. Roediger and K. B. McDermott (1995) reintroduced a paradigm originally developed by Deese (1959). According to the authors, the paradigm provides a technique for the creation of false memories. The paradigm is reliable and easy to implement. Because of these characteristics and the current interest in false memories, the paradigm has been used in many recent studies. The authors replicated Roediger and McDermott's results in two experiments. When conditions were included that allowed the computation of signal-detection parameters, it was found that most of the false memories could be ascribed to criterion shifts. The authors discuss the possible role of criteria in defining and understanding false memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False Memories: Young and Older Adults Think of Semantic Associates at the Same Rate, but Young Adults Are More Successful at Source Monitoring.

Two experiments explored whether the higher vulnerability to false memories in the DRM (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) paradigm in older compared to young adults reflects a deficit in source monitoring. In both experiments, adding together the number of falsely recalled critical lures and the number of critical lures produced on a post-recall test asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall, indicated that the critical lures were activated during the experiment equally often in young and older adults. However, older adults were more likely than young adults to say that they had actually heard the lures. When strongly encouraged to examine the origin of memories (Experiment 2), the warning substantially reduced false recall in young but not older adults. These results are consistent with the idea that older adults have more difficulty later identifying the source of information that was activated as a consequence of intact semantic activation processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why Distinctive Information Reduces False Memories: Evidence for Both Impoverished Relational-Encoding and Distinctiveness Heuristic Accounts.

Two accounts explain why studying pictures reduces false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995). The impoverished relational-encoding account suggests that studying pictures interferes with the encoding of relational information, which is the primary basis for false memories in this paradigm. Alternatively, the distinctiveness heuristic assumes that critical lures are actively withheld by the use of a retrieval strategy. When participants were given inclusion recall instructions to report studied items as well as related items, they still reported critical lures less often after picture encoding than they did after word encoding. As the impoverished relational-encoding account suggests, critical lures appear less likely to come to mind after picture encoding than they do after word encoding. However, the results from a postrecall recognition test provide evidence in favor of the distinctiveness heuristic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The case against a criterion-shift account of false memory.

M. B. Miller and G. L. Wolford (see record 1999-13930-007) argued that the high false-alarm rate associated with critical lures in the Roediger-McDermott (H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, see record 1995-42833-001) paradigm results from a criterion shift and therefore does not reflect false memory. This conclusion, which is based on new data reported by Miller and Wolford, overlooks the fact that Ruediger and McDermott's false-memory account is as compatible with the new findings as the criterion-shift account is. Furthermore, a consideration of prior work concerned with investigating the conditions under which participants are and are not inclined to adjust the decision criterion suggests that the criterion-shift account of false memory is unlikely to be correct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False recognition occurs more frequently during source identification than during old–new recognition.

A number of recent reports have investigated false memories using variants of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Because these false memories have been difficult to eliminate, this study investigated whether false recognition could be reduced by incorporating source-monitoring criteria into decision processes. Making claims about the manner in which items were learned should require more careful scrutiny of memories, and therefore false recognition should be minimized with source instructions as compared with old–new recognition instructions. In 3 experiments that varied the combination of sources, false recognition was increased rather than reduced by applying source-monitoring processes. The theoretical implications of these counterintuitive results are discussed in terms of the old–new detection component of source judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memory propensity in people reporting recovered memories of past lives.

Are elevated rates of false recall and recognition in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm associated with false autobiographical memories in everyday life? To investigate this issue, the authors recruited participants who reported improbable memories of past lives and compared their DRM performance with that of control participants who reported having lived only one life (i.e., their current one). Relative to control participants, those reporting memories of past lives exhibited significantly higher false recall and recognition rates in the DRM paradigm, and they scored higher on measures of magical ideation and absorption as well. The groups did not differ on correct recall, recognition, or intelligence. False memory propensity in the DRM paradigm may tap proneness for developing false memories outside the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjoint recognition and phantom recollection.

A new methodology for measuring illusory conscious experience of the "presentation" of unstudied material (phantom recollection) is evaluated that extracts measurements directly from recognition responses, rather than indirectly from introspective reports. Application of this methodology in the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a more conventional paradigm Experiment 3) showed that 2 processes (phantom recollection and familiarity) contribute to false recognition of semantically related distractors. Phantom recollection was the larger contributor to false recognition of critical distractors in the DRM paradigm, but surprisingly, it was also the larger contributor to false recognition of other types of distractors. Variability in false recognition was tied to variability in phantom recollection. Experimental control of phantom recollection was achieved with manipulations that were motivated by fuzzy-trace theory's hypothesis that the phenomenon is gist-based. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Test-induced priming impairs source monitoring accuracy in the DRM procedure.

Three experiments investigated the effects of test-induced priming (TIP) on false recognition in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott procedure (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, TIP significantly increased false recognition for participants who made old/new decisions at test but not for participants who made remember/know judgments or were given diagnostic information to help them avoid false recognition. In Experiment 2, a TIP effect was observed with old/new recognition but not when participants were required to remember whether study items were spoken by a male or a female speaker. In Experiment 3, false recognition increased when critical lures were preceded by 10 studied items but not when preceded by 5 studied and 5 unstudied items from the same list. These findings suggest that TIP increases false recognition by disrupting source monitoring processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining differences in the levels of false memories in children and adults using child-normed lists.

Several previous studies have demonstrated that children, when compared with adults, exhibit both lower levels of veridical memory and fewer intrusions when given semantically associated lists. However, researchers have drawn these conclusions using semantically associated word lists that were normed with adults, which may not lead to the same level of activation or gist generation in children. In the current study, the authors used similar associative word lists normed with children and then evaluated the memory of children and adults using these newly normed lists as well as the typical adult-normed lists. Results indicate that children showed lower true and false memories with both the child-normed and adult-normed lists. Thus, these data suggest that the negative relationship between age and false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM; J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) paradigm is not an artifact of the age group used to construct the lists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of memory activation in creating false memories of encoding context.

Using 3 experiments, I examined false memory for encoding context by presenting Deese–Roediger–McDermott themes (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) in usual-looking fonts and by testing related, but unstudied, lure items in a font that was shown during encoding. In 2 of the experiments, testing lure items in the font used to study their associated themes increased false recognition relative to testing lure items in a font that was used to study a different lure’s theme. Further, studying a larger number of associates exacerbated the influence of testing lure items in a font used to study their associated themes. Finally, testing lures in a font that was encoded many times, but was not used to present the lures’ studied associates, increased lure errors more than testing lures in a font that was encoded relatively fewer times. These results favor the explanation of false recognition offered by global-matching models of recognition memory over the explanations of activation-monitoring theory and fuzzy-trace theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Latent variable modeling of cognitive processes in true and false recognition of words: A developmental perspective.

The present study aimed at testing theoretical predictions of the fuzzy-trace theory about true and false recognition. The effects of semantic relatedness and study opportunity on true and false recognition of words from Deese, Roediger, McDermott lists (J. Deese, 1959; D. R. Read, 1996; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) were evaluated in 7- to 12-year-old children (N = 151). Instead of a traditional analysis of variance, the authors used a relatively novel statistical analysis technique, latent class factor analysis, to test the hypotheses pertaining to the effect of semantic relatedness and study opportunity on children's true and false recognition given their low or high verbatim-trace and gist-trace level. The results showed that variation in true recognition of target words from semantically related and unrelated word lists that were either studied once or repeated could be explained well by variation in verbatim-trace and gist-trace level. Variation in false recognition of semantically related distractors also could be explained by variation in gist-trace level, but the recollection-rejection hypothesis was not confirmed. The variable age was positively but weakly related to gist-trace level, but no significant relationship was found between age and verbatim-trace level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective valence influences participant's susceptibility to false memories and illusory recollection.

This study examined the influence of emotional valence on the production of DRM false memories (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants were presented with neutral, positive, or negative DRM lists for a later recognition (Experiment 1) or recall (Experiment 2) test. In both experiments, confidence and recollective experience (i.e., “Remember-Know” judgments; Tulving, 1985) were also assessed. Results consistently showed that, compared with neutral lists, affective lists induced more false recognition and recall of nonpresented critical lures. Moreover, although confidence ratings did not differ between the false remembering from the different kinds of lists, “Remember” responses were more often associated with negative than positive and neutral false remembering of the critical lures. In contrast, positive false remembering of the critical lures was more often associated with “Know” responses. These results are discussed in light of the Paradoxical Negative Emotion (PNE) hypothesis (Porter, Taylor, & ten Bricke, 2008). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memories and statistical design theory: Comment on Miller and Wolford (1999) and Roediger and McDermott (1999).

In an analysis of H. L. Roediger and K. B. McDermott's (see record 1995-42833-001) false-memory paradigm, M. B. Miller and G. L. Wolford (see record 1999-13930-007) argued that falsely recognized items occur because a bias toward calling such items "old" is created by their membership in a studied category. This interpretation was contested by Roediger and McDermott (see record 2000-15248-006). The authors of this article approach this issue as a statistical decision problem and observe that an explanation of false memory based on stored strengths and one based on decision process can have identical implications for data. Problems with equivalent formal models of this type can frequently be resolved by looking at the effects of other variables on the fitted estimates. The authors illustrate this analysis by examining the effects of presentation duration on the parameter estimates produced by models that instantiate the 2 explanations. Although the question remains open, the storage-based interpretation was found to be somewhat more plausible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit false memory in the DRM paradigm: Effects of amnesia, encoding instructions, and encoding duration.

Recent studies with the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (Deese 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm have revealed that amnesic patients do not only show impaired veridical memory, but also diminished false memory for semantically related lure words. Due to the typically used explicit retrieval instructions, however, this finding may reflect problems at encoding, at recollection, or both. Therefore, the present experiments examined implicit as well as explicit false memory in patients suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome and controls. In Experiment 1, encoding instructions either focused on remembering individual list words, or on discovering semantic relationships among the words. In Experiment 2, different presentation durations were used. Results emphasize the distinction between automatic and intentional retrieval: Korsakoff patients’ veridical and false memory scores were diminished when explicit recollection was required, but not when memory was tested implicitly. Encoding manipulations only significantly affected veridical memory: Priming was reduced with thematic encoding, and explicit retrieval was facilitated when given more study time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory distortion in people reporting abduction by aliens.

False memory creation was examined in people who reported having recovered memories of traumatic events that are unlikely to have occurred: abduction by space aliens. A variant of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger III & K. B. McDermott, 1995) was used to examine false recall and false recognition in 3 groups: people reporting recovered memories of alien abduction, people who believe they were abducted by aliens but have no memories, and people who deny having been abducted by aliens. Those reporting recovered and repressed memories of alien abduction were more prone than control participants to exhibit false recall and recognition. The groups did not differ in correct recall or recognition. Hypnotic suggestibility, depressive symptoms, and schizotypic features were significant predictors of false recall and false recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is the connection between true and false memories? The differential roles of interitem associations in recall and recognition.

Veridical memory for presented list words and false memory for nonpresented but related items were tested using the Deese/Roediger and McDermott paradigm. The strength and density of preexisting connections among the list words, and from the list words to the critical items, were manipulated. The likelihood of producing false memories in free recall varied with the strength of connections from the list words to the critical items but was inversely related to the density of the interconnections among the list words. In contrast, veridical recall of list words was positively related to the density of the interconnections. A final recognition test showed that both false and veridical memories were more likely when the list words were more densely interconnected. The results are discussed in terms of an associative model of memory, Processing Implicit and Explicit Representations (PIER 2) that describes the influence of implicitly activated preexisting information on memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effective warnings in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false-memory paradigm: The role of identifiability.

These experiments document that warnings can substantially reduce false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm when the critical items are easily identifiable. Participants in a norming study identified the critical item after hearing a list of words. The lists with critical items that could be identified by the largest proportion of participants (high identifiable [HI] lists) and the smallest proportion of participants (low identifiable [LI] lists) were used in the experiment. Participants heard lists of words (e.g., bed, rest, doze) related to a critical item (e.g., sleep) and were warned about the nature of the lists before the study phase. The results indicated that warnings reduced false recognition of critical items for HI lists but not LI lists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult Age Differences in Distinctive Processing: The Modality Effect on False Recall.

Age differences in distinctive processing were investigated by examining the effects of study presentation modality on false recall in younger and older adults using the Deese/Roediger and McDermott paradigm. Participants were presented with study words either visually or auditorily. Older adults did not show the typical reduction in false recall after visual, compared to auditory, study presentation (R.E. Smith & R.R. Hunt, 1998). The authors interpret these results as evidence of reduced distinctive processing on the part of older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

P300 latency, but not amplitude or topography, distinguishes between true and false recognition.

Two experiments are described in which the P300 component of the event-related potential was recorded during a modification of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false-memory paradigm. P300 amplitudes and topographies were evaluated in both true recognition of previously presented (studied) words and in false recognition of associatively related, never presented (critical lure) words. P300 topography and amplitude did not appear to differ between true and false recognition. However, false recognition of critical lures produced substantially shorter P300 latencies than did the true recognition of studied words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synesthesia and memory: Color congruency, von Restorff, and false memory effects.

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that, although their memory for word lists was superior overall, synesthetes did not exhibit typical color- or semantic-defined von Restorff isolation effects (von Restorff, 1933) compared with control participants. Moreover, our synesthetes exhibited a reduced Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory effect (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Taken as a whole, these findings are consistent with the idea that color-grapheme synesthesia can lead people to place a greater emphasis on item-specific processing and surface form characteristics of words in a list (e.g., the letters that make them up) relative to relational processing and more meaning-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)