The elusive search for the truth: A review of Pezdek, K. and Banks, W. P. (1996). The recovered memory/false memory debate.

Reviews the book, The recovered memory/false memory debate by K. Pezdek and W. P. Banks (see record 1996-98519-000). This book presents a series of articles, some of which are sympathetic to the "recovered" memory approach and others to the "false" memory approach. In the preface, the authors write: "We tried to hew a middle course, looking for value in all sides." Many of the articles in the book originally appeared in a special issue of Consciousness & Cognition, Volume 3, 1994, the journal which is edited by William Banks, one of the editors of this volume. A major strength of the book is that all the included articles argue their respective positions based on actual experimental data rather than on philosophical biases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

True memory, false memory, and subjective recollection deficits after focal parietal lobe lesions.

Objective: There is mounting evidence that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in episodic memory. We previously found that patients with PPC damage exhibit retrieval-related episodic memory deficits. Here we assess whether parietal lobe damage affects episodic memory on a different task: the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false-memory paradigm. Methods: Two patients with bilateral PPC damage and a group of matched controls were tested. In Experiment 1, the task was to remember words; in Experiment 2 the task was to remember pictures of common objects. Prior studies have shown that normal participants have high levels of false memory to words, low levels to pictures. Results: The patients exhibited significantly lower levels of false memory to words. One patient showed significantly elevated levels of false memory to pictures. The patients' false memories were accompanied by reduced levels of recollection, as tested by a Remember/Know procedure. Conclusions: PPC damage causes decreased levels of false memories and an abnormal Remember/Know profile. Their false memory rate is similar to the rate exhibited by patients with medial temporal lobe damage. These results support the view that portions of the PPC play a critical role in objective and subjective aspects of recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The task rule congruency effect in task switching reflects activated long-term memory.

Reaction time task rule congruency effects (RT-TRCEs) reflect faster responses to stimuli for which the competing task rules indicate the same correct response than to stimuli indicating conflicting responses. The authors tested the hypothesis that RT-TRCE reflects activated overlearned response category codes in long-term memory (such as up or left). The results support the hypothesis by showing that (a) RT-TRCE was absent for tasks for which there were no response codes ready beforehand, (b) RT-TRCE was present after these tasks were practiced, and (c) these practice effects were found only if the tasks permitted forming abstract response category codes. The increase in the RT-TRCE with response slowness, found only for familiar tasks, suggests that the abstract response category codes may be verbal or linguistic in these cases. The results are discussed in relation to task-switching theories and prefrontal functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive memory: Survival processing increases both true and false memory in adults and children.

Research has shown that processing information in a survival context can enhance the information's memorability. The current study examined whether survival processing can also decrease the susceptibility to false memories and whether the survival advantage can be found in children. In Experiment 1, adults rated semantically related words in a survival, moving, or pleasantness scenario. Even though the survival advantage was demonstrated for true recall, there also was an unexpected increase in false memories in the survival condition. Similarly, younger and older children in Experiment 2 displayed superior true recall but also higher rates of false memories in a survival condition. Experiment 3 showed that in adults false memories were also more likely to occur in the survival condition when categorized lists instead of Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM)-like word lists were used. In all three experiments, no survival recall advantage was found when net accuracy scores that take the total output into account were used. These findings question whether survival processing is an adaptive memory strategy per se, as such processing not only enriches true recall but simultaneously amplifies the vulnerability to false memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Absence of size congruency effects in amnesic patients' recognition: A failure of perceptually based recollection.

This study examined the status of recollection in amnesia when recollection is supported by perceptual rather than conceptual processes. Two experiments investigated the size congruency effect--the advantage in recognition of patterns presented in the same size, rather than in different sizes--at study and test. In Experiment 1, the authors used a remember-know paradigm in nonamnesic individuals and demonstrated that the size congruency effect was due to enhanced recollection. In Experiment 2, the authors examined whether amnesic patients would show a size congruency effect when their overall level of performance was matched to that of controls. Amnesic patients failed to show a size congruency effect. These findings provide evidence for a disproportionate disruption in recollection compared with familiarity in amnesia, even when recollection is supported by perceptual processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The congruency effect: Just what is being learned?

G. H. Bower, S. Thompson-Schill, and E. Tulving (1994) found that when stimulus-response sets in A–B, A–C learning belong to unique categories (congruent-triads), learning appropriate responses appear rapid and memory performance on a modified modified free recall (MMFR) test is enhanced. Bower et al. assumed that category cues protect associations from interpair interference, allowing more rapid learning. However, unlike arbitrary pairs, congruent pairs also allow a reliance on preexperimental associations. As a result, MMFR test performance may not be an unbiased test of what was learned. In the present experiment, free recall (FR) demonstrated that responses were learned approximately equally in all conditions and that the pattern of clustering was compatible with the hypothesis that preexperimental associations continue to play a major role in FR test performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental reversals in false memory: Now you see them, now you don't!

A developmental reversal in false memory is the counterintuitive phenomenon of higher levels of false memory in older children, adolescents, and adults than in younger children. The ability of verbatim memory to suppress this age trend in false memory was evaluated using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Seven and 11-year-old children studied DRM lists either in a standard condition (whole words) that normally produces high levels of false memory or in an alternative condition that should enhance verbatim memory (word fragments). Half the children took 1 recognition test, and the other half took 3 recognition tests. In the single-test condition, the typical age difference in false memory was found for the word condition (higher false memory for 11-year-olds than for 7-year-olds), but in the word fragment condition false memory was lower in the older children. In the word condition, false memory increased over successive recognition tests. Our findings are consistent with 2 principles of fuzzy-trace theory's explanation of false memories: (a) reliance on verbatim rather than gist memory causes such errors to decline with age, and (b) repeated testing increases reliance on gist memory in older children and adults who spontaneously connect meaning across events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

von Restorff revisited: Isolation, generation, and memory for order.

The effects of isolation and generation on memory for order were investigated in 4 experiments. Exp 1 and 2 examined the effect of isolation on order retention. Previous investigations in this area have yielded equivocal results. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that isolation enhances memory for order: Isolated items were repositioned more accurately than comparable items in control lists. Experiments 3 and 4 investigated the effect of generation on order retention. These experiments revealed that generation can enhance, disrupt, or have no effect on memory for order, depending on the relative number of generated items appearing within a list. Implications of these results for general theoretical accounts of isolation effects in memory are discussed. A simplified feature model (J. S. Nairne, see record 1990-27505-001) is shown to provide a general account of isolation effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental reversals in false memory: A review of data and theory.

Can susceptibility to false memory and suggestion increase dramatically with age? The authors review the theoretical and empirical literatures on this counterintuitive possibility. Until recently, the well-documented pattern was that susceptibility to memory distortion had been found to decline between early childhood and young adulthood. That pattern is the centerpiece of much expert testimony in legal cases involving child witnesses and victims. During the past 5 years, however, several experiments have been published that test fuzzy-trace theory's prediction that some of the most powerful forms of false memory in adults will be greatly attenuated in children. Those experiments show that in some common domains of experience, in which false memories are rooted in meaning connections among events, age increases in false memory are the rule and are sometimes accompanied by net declines in the accuracy of memory. As these experiments are strongly theory-driven, they have established that developmental improvements in the formation of meaning connections are necessary and sufficient to produce age increases in false memory. (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)     

Adults' memories of childhood: True and false reports.

In 3 experiments, the authors examined factors that, according to the source-monitoring framework, might influence false memory formation and true/false memory discernment. In Experiment 1, combined effects of warning and visualization on false childhood memory formation were examined, as were individual differences in true and false childhood memories. Combining warnings and visualization led to the lowest false memory and highest true memory. Several individual difference factors (e.g., parental fearful attachment style) predicted false recall. In addition, true and false childhood memories differed (e.g., in amount of information). Experiment 2 examined relations between Deese/Roediger-McDermott task performance and false childhood memories. Deese/Roediger-McDermott performance (e.g., intrusion of unrelated words in free recall) was associated with false childhood memory, suggesting liberal response criteria in source decisions as a common underlying mechanism. Experiment 3 investigated adults' abilities to discern true and false childhood memory reports (e.g., by detecting differences in amount of information as identified in Experiment 1). Adults who were particularly successful in discerning such reports indicated reliance on event plausibility. Overall, the source-monitoring framework provided a viable explanatory framework. Implications for theory and clinical and forensic interviews are discussed. (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)     

Aging, source memory, and misrecollections.

The authors propose an illusory recollection account of why cognitive aging is associated with episodic memory deficits. After listening to statements presented by either a female or a male speaker, older adults were prone to misrecollecting past events. The authors' illusory recollection account is instantiated in a new illusory recollection signal detection model that provides a better fit of older adults' data than does the standard signal detection model. They observed that age-related differences in source memory (as measured by source d′ scores) virtually disappear after accounting for the occurrence of illusory recollections. These data suggest that age-related source memory impairments are not due to older adults' remembering less diagnostic source information and having to guess more. Instead, older adults appear to misremember past events more often than younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Less-than-expected variability in evidence for primacy and von Restorff effects in rats' nonspatial memory.

P. Reed et al (see record 1991-11847-001) reported primacy and other effects in rats' nonspatial memory for lists. The validity of their findings is questionable, because the unexpectedly low variance of the data indicates that the trials in the experiment were not mutually independent events. (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)     

Encoding processes and memory organization: A model of the von Restorff effect.

The mechanisms underlying the improved recall of isolated events (von Restorff effect) were investigated. Participants studied lists of stimuli containing a physical and a semantic isolate while performing a physical task or a lexical decision task. The physical-task group showed a physical but not a semantic isolation effect (IE) in free recall, whereas the lexical-decision group displayed both types of IEs. The recall of the isolates was independent of that of the other words, and isolates were usually reported separately from other words in the list. Event-related potentials recorded at encoding predicted the recall of both types of isolates. In recognition tests, the IE was obtained only when the encoding context was reinstated. These results are consistent with a model of the IE that stresses the role of the encoding processes immediately following the presentation of distinctive events, and that postulates interactions between these processes and subsequent elaboration of the stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental differences in the effects of repeated interviews and interviewer bias on young children's event memory and false reports.

The present study investigated developmental differences in the effects of repeated interviews and interviewer bias on children's memory and suggestibility. Three- and 5-year-olds were singly or repeatedly interviewed about a play event by a highly biased or control interviewer. Children interviewed once by the biased interviewer after a long delay made the most errors. Children interviewed repeatedly, regardless of interviewer bias, were more accurate and less likely to falsely claim that they played with a man. In free recall, among children questioned once after a long delay by the biased interviewer, 5-year-olds were more likely than were 3-year-olds to claim falsely that they played with a man. However, in response to direct questions, 3-year-olds were more easily manipulated into implying that they played with him. Findings suggest that interviewer bias is particularly problematic when children's memory has weakened. In contrast, repeated interviews that occur a short time after a to-be-remembered event do not necessarily increase children's errors, even when interviews include misleading questions and interviewer bias. Implications for developmental differences in memory and suggestibility are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sensitivity reductions in false recognition: A measure of false memories with stronger theoretical implications.

Signal detection analyses of recognition memory indicate that a bias to respond "old" is large for critical words that are centrally related with previously encoded word lists, is small for words that are less related, and is not observed for unrelated words. Also, recognition sensitivity has not been previously shown to differ between those conditions, which has focused debate over how to explain false recognition on the bias differences. In 3 experiments, critical-word sensitivity was lower than sensitivity for other word types, but related-word sensitivity was not lower than sensitivity for unrelated words. Extant models that predict reduced critical-word sensitivity also predict lower sensitivity for related words than for unrelated words. These results provide crucial new constraints on theoretical explanations of false memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding developmental reversals in false memory: Reply to Ghetti (2008) and Howe (2008).

Replies to comments on the current authors' original article (see record 2008-04614-001). S. Ghetti (2008; see record 2008-11487-008) and M. L. Howe (2008; see record 2008-11487-009) presented probative ideas for future research that will deepen scientific understanding of developmental reversals on false memory and establish boundary conditions for these counterintuitive patterns. Ghetti extended the purview of current theoretical principles by formulating hypotheses about how developmental reversals are controlled by the growth of phantom recollection and by the growth of false-memory editing. Some data are available on her hypotheses about phantom recollection, which distinguish phenomenology (vague or vivid) from memory representation (verbatim or gist). Howe introduced alternative theoretical principles that can be traced to the early work of Deese and Underwood. He argued that fuzzy-trace theory is subject to 3 limitations and that his alternative conception makes 3 predictions that contrast with fuzzy-trace theory's predictions. In the current reply, it is shown that the stated limitations do not apply to fuzzy-trace theory, that previously published research runs counter to the 3 predictions, and that the core difference between the 2 approaches is that fuzzy-trace theory is an opponent-processes model whereas the alternative conception is a 1-process model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Collaboration reduces the frequency of false memories in older and younger adults.

Older (mean age = 74.23) and younger (mean age = 33.50) participants recalled items from 6 briefly exposed household scenes either alone or with their spouses. Collaborative recall was compared with the pooled, nonredundant recall of spouses remembering alone (nominal groups). The authors examined hits, self-generated false memories, and false memories produced by another person's (actually a computer program's) misleading recollections. Older adults reported fewer hits and more self-generated false memories than younger adults. Relative to nominal groups, older and younger collaborating groups reported fewer hits and fewer self-generated false memories. Collaboration also reduced older people's computer-initiated false memories. The memory conversations in the collaborative groups were analyzed for evidence that collaboration inhibits the production of errors and/or promotes quality control processes that detect and eliminate errors. Only older adults inhibited the production of wrong answers, but both age groups eliminated errors during their discussions. The partners played an important role in helping rememberers discard false memories in older and younger couples. The results support the use of collaboration to reduce false recall in both younger and older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)