Are emotionally charged lures immune to false memory?

Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott task and E. Tulving's (1985) remember-know judgments for recognition memory, the authors explored whether emotional words can show the false memory effect. Participants studied lists containing nonemotional, orthographic associates (e.g., cape, tape, ripe; part, perk, dark) of either emotional (e.g., rape) or nonemotional (e.g., park) critical lures. This setup produced significant false "remembering" of emotional lures, even though initially no emotional words appeared at study. When 3 emotional nonlure words appeared at study, emotional-lure false recognition more than doubled. However, when these 3 study words also appeared on the recognition test, false memory for the emotional lures was reduced. Across experiments, participants misremembered nonemotional lures more often than they did emotional lures, but they were more likely to rate emotional lures as "remembered," once they had been recognized as "old." The authors discuss findings in light of J. J. Freyd and D. H. Gleave's (1996) criticisms of this task.     

关联效应中对情绪诱词的错误再认的实验研究

采用DRM范式,考察了在汉字单字词语音关联和形声关联条件下对具有情绪色彩的关键诱词的错误再认情况,结果表明:(1)汉字中存在着语音和字形关联,但是语音关联下的对诱词的错误再认率很低。(2)语音关联、形声关联条件下,尽管学习阶段没有出现带有情绪色彩的词,被试仍然对情绪诱词都产生了显著的错误再认。(3)形声关联下对关键诱词的错误再认近于语音关联的两倍,可见概括性的强度影响错误记忆的大小。     

The effects of emotional content and aging on false memories

After studying a list of words related to a nonpresented lure word, people often falsely recall or recognize the nonpresented lure. Older adults are particularly susceptible to these forms of false memories. The age-related false memory enhancement likely occurs because older adults do not encode, or later retrieve, items in enough detail to allow them to discriminate between presented words and other associated but nonpresented items. Pesta, Murphy, and Sanders (2001) suggested that the emotional salience of the lures may provide distinctiveness, so that individuals would be less likely to endorse an emotional lure as a studied item than to endorse a neutral lure. In the present investigation, young and older adults were less likely to falsely recall or recognize emotional, as compared with neutral, lures. Both age groups appeared capable of using the distinctiveness of the emotional lures to reduce, although not to eliminate, false recall and recognition.     

An item gains and losses analysis of false memories suggests critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items

In a repeated testing paradigm, list items receiving item-specific processing are more likely to be recovered across successive tests (item gains), whereas items receiving relational processing are likely to be forgotten progressively less on successive tests. Moreover, analysis of cumulative-recall curves has shown that item-specific processing produces a slower, but steadier rate of recall than relational processing. The authors relied on these findings to determine the type of processing that both list items and critical lures receive in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory procedure. The first 2 experiments revealed that critical lures produced more item gains, but only the list items resulted in a decrease in item losses across successive tests. The critical lures also produced slower but steadier cumulative recall. In Experiments 3 and 4, the critical items were physically presented during study, which resulted in the lures producing progressively fewer losses across successive tests. The authors concluded that critical items receive more item-specific processing than list items but that unless they are presented in the list, they do not become part of participants' organized retrieval scheme.     

The role of attention at retrieval on the false recognition of negative emotional DRM lists

This study examined the role of attention at retrieval on the false recognition of emotional items using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Previous research has shown that divided attention at test increases false remember judgements for neutral critical lures. However, no research has yet directly assessed emotional false memories when attention is manipulated at retrieval. To examine this, participants studied negative (low in valence and high in arousal) and neutral DRM lists and completed recognition tests under conditions of full and divided attention. Results revealed that divided attention at retrieval increased false remember judgements for all critical lures compared to retrieval under full attention, but in both retrieval conditions, false memories were greater for negative compared to neutral stimuli. We believe that this is due to reliance on a more easily accessible (meaning of the word) but less diagnostic form of source monitoring, amplified under conditions of divided attention.     

强大的错误记忆效应:词表呈现时间与呈现方式的影响

本研究采用DRM范式(Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm),考察了词表项目的呈现时间与呈现方式对错误记忆效应的影响。结果发现,被试对关键诱饵的错误再认受到学习阶段词表项目的呈现方式的影响,表现为所有项目随机呈现条件下的错误再认明显低于分组呈现条件,尤其是在20ms的随机呈现条件下,观察到了对关键诱饵的最低错误再认率。说明在对词表项目的编码阶段产生了对关键诱饵的连续激活,而对关键诱饵的错误记忆则是基于连续激活的不断累积的结果,当词表项目的随机呈现阻断了连续激活过程时,便会有效降低错误记忆效应。而且,在所有实验条件下均发现了错误记忆效应产生中所伴随的强烈主观体验,证实了错误记忆是一种强大的效应。     

DRM范式下心境一致性错误记忆的认知机制

本研究以自编情绪DRM词表为实验材料, 用音乐诱发正常大学生被试正性、负性和中性心境, 探讨在被试处于某种心境下时是否产生心境一致性错误记忆现象、预警能否减少心境一致性错误记忆的发生。结果表明, 正性关键诱饵在正性心境下的错误再认率显著高于中性和负性心境, 负性关键诱饵在负性心境下的错误再认率显著高于中性和正性心境, 说明正常被试也会产生心境一致性错误记忆; 预警和无预警条件下被试对关键诱饵和心境一致性关键诱饵的错误再认率无显著差异, 说明外显的预警提示并不能消除部分由无意识产生的错误记忆和心境一致性错误记忆。研究结果支持记忆的扩散激活理论和情感的联想网络理论。     

The effect of limited attention and delay on negative arousing false memories

ABSTRACT

Previous research has shown that, in comparison to neutral stimuli, false memories for high arousing negative stimuli are greater after very fast presentation and limited attention at study. However, full compared to limited attention conditions still produce comparably more false memories for all stimuli types. Research has also shown that emotional stimuli benefit from a period of consolidation. What effect would such consolidation have on false memory formation even when attention is limited at study? The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of fast presentation on false memory production for negatively-arousing and neutral items over time using the DRM paradigm. Sixty-eight participants studied Negative and neutral DRM lists with fast or slow presentation conditions. Half completed a recognition test immediately and half completed a recognition test after one-week. Results revealed that, for fast presentation, negative critical lures increased after one week and were comparable to negative critical lures in the slow presentation encoding conditions. Neutral critical lures in the fast presentation condition did not change and remained lower compared to the slow presentation condition. These findings are the first demonstration that arousing negative false memories can increase over time when attention at encoding is limited.     

False memory in a short-term memory task

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.     

Memory errors on emotional lures: Is it possible to mistake a positive stimulus for a negative one?

This study examined whether it is possible for people to mistakenly recognise a stimulus of one emotional valence through exposure to stimuli with another emotional valence that share orthographical relatedness. Across three experiments, the recognition error rates for emotionally distinctive lures were lower than for nondistinctive ones. The reduction in memory errors generalises to different types of emotional distinctiveness: emotional lures from neutral words, neutral lures from emotional words, and lures that have opposite valence from the studied ones. However, emotionally distinctive lures were still prone to memory errors. Repeated exposure to orthographically related items resulted in higher recognition error rates than lures without such exposure. Implications for everyday memory are discussed.     

不同情绪效价的DRM词表对错误记忆的影响

请49名在校大学生对自编的36个具有不同情绪效价的DRM词表进行评定,再以60名在校大学生为实验对象考察不同情绪效价的DRM词表对错误记忆的影响。结果发现,(1) 负性和中性DRM词表产生的错误记忆量显著高于正性DRM词表;(2) 被试在“记得/知道/猜测”判断上对负性和中性词表的关键诱饵倾向于“知道”,而对正性词表的关键诱饵更倾向于“记得”。结果表明,DRM词表本身所具有的情绪与人为诱发的情绪,对错误记忆的影响具有不同的性质和特点。     

Measuring the activation level of critical lures in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm

In four experiments, the activation level in memory of critical lures was assessed after encoding Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists. The results demonstrated that studying longer, 14-item lists resulted in superadditive priming of the lures because they were more available in memory than truly studied items. Studying shorter DRM lists resulted in activation levels of the lures that was similar to studied items. Collectively, the results suggest that a first stage in creating false memories with the DRM paradigm is making the critical lures highly available in memory during list encoding. Moreover, the results suggest that false memories are likely to have occurred at the time a list is studied by a mechanism such as an implicit associative response, but a monitoring phase at retrieval is acknowledged that could be used to avoid them. Other theoretical accounts are also considered.     

Examining the basis for illusory recollection: The role of remember/know instructions

Curiously, studies using the remember/know paradigm to measure recollective experience show that people often vividly remember events that never occurred, a phenomenon referred to asillusory recollection. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that false remember responses in the converging associates, or Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, reflect accurate memory for the study episode, rather than false recollection of critical lures. To test this hypothesis, we used standard remember instructions that emphasized recollection of the study context by allowing participants to use memory of surrounding list items as evidence for recollection, or we used modified instructions that did not include memory for surrounding list items as a basis for recollection. Results showed that, as compared with the standard instruction condition, the modified instructions selectively reduced reports of false remember responses to critical lures, but did not affect remember responses to studied items. By contrast, remember responses to critical lures were unaffected by an instruction condition that excluded the use of voice information as evidence for remembering. These results suggest that remember responses to falsely recognized items are driven partly by retrieval of studied items, rather than illusory recollection of the critical lures themselves. They further point to the importance of instructions in influencing subjective reports.     

Categorical <Emphasis Type="Italic">and</Emphasis> associative relations increase false memory relative to purely associative relations

The goal of the present study was to examine the contributions of associative strength and similarity in terms of shared features to the production of false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott list-learning paradigm. Whereas the activation/monitoring account suggests that false memories are driven by automatic associative activation from list items to nonpresented lures, combined with errors in source monitoring, other accounts (e.g., fuzzy trace theory, global-matching models) emphasize the importance of semantic-level similarity, and thus predict that shared features between list and lure items will increase false memory. Participants studied lists of nine items related to a nonpresented lure. Half of the lists consisted of items that were associated but did not share features with the lure, and the other half included items that were equally associated but also shared features with the lure (in many cases, these were taxonomically related items). The two types of lists were carefully matched in terms of a variety of lexical and semantic factors, and the same lures were used across list types. In two experiments, false recognition of the critical lures was greater following the study of lists that shared features with the critical lure, suggesting that similarity at a categorical or taxonomic level contributes to false memory above and beyond associative strength. We refer to this phenomenon as a “feature boost” that reflects additive effects of shared meaning and association strength and is generally consistent with accounts of false memory that have emphasized thematic or feature-level similarity among studied and nonstudied representations.     

Normative data for semantically associated Spanish word lists that create false memories

The present study provides norms for Spanish word lists that have been used to create false memories in native speakers of Spanish. The word lists reported are based on the Roediger and McDermott (1995) lists that have been used extensively to examine illusory memories. We employed Roediger and McDermott’s critical lures, translated them into Spanish, and created semantically associated Spanish word lists by testing native Spanish speakers. The resulting lists were then normed with additional native Spanish speakers. Overall, the participants recalled 53% of the list items and 32% of the critical lures with the word lists developed. In addition, 74% of the list items and 69% of the critical lures were recognized by the participants. The present study adds to the literature by providing a set of Spanish lists that can be used by researchers interested in evaluating false memories in individuals who speak Spanish. These norms may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.     

汉字字形关联对错误记忆的影响

采用DRM范式,研究汉字字形关联对错误记忆的影响。实验以占汉字主体的形声字为材料。学习阶段使用了两类字表:在一半字表中,各字表内汉字及相应的关键诱饵具有相同形旁;另一半字表中,各字表内汉字及相应关键诱饵具有相同声旁。再认测试中,被试对两类关键诱饵均表现出了明显的错误记忆,并且其效应大小与字表汉字相似度成正比。这些结果说明,汉字的字形关联可以诱发错误记忆现象,并且这种错误记忆效应由汉字间字形相似度决定。     

Effects of Presentation Format and List Length on Children's False Memories

The effect of list length on children's false memories was investigated using list and story versions of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott procedure. Short (7 items) and long (14 items) sequences of semantic associates were presented to children aged 6, 8, and 10 years old either in lists or embedded within a story that emphasized the list theme. Subsequent tests of recognition memory revealed different effects of length for lists and stories across development. Longer lists produced more false alarms to critical lures for 8- and 10-year-olds only, and longer stories produced more false alarms to critical lures for 6-year-olds only. These results demonstrate that increasing the number of items presented at study increases false recognition for younger as well as older children when the theme of the items is made salient.     

False recognition across meaning,language, and stimulus format: Conceptual relatedness and the feeling of familiarity

Four experiments examined contributions of conceptual relatedness and feelings of familiarity to false recognition. Participants first studied lists of unrelated items (e.g., table, lock) followed by a recognition test with three types of items: (1) studied items (e.g., table), (2) semantically related lures (e.g., key), and (3) unrelated lures (e.g., cup). Participants falsely recognized more related than unrelated lures when the stimuli were words (Experiment 1A) and pictures (Experiment 1B), when the studied items and related lures differed in language (Experiment 2), and when they differed in perceptual format (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, an attribution manipulation, designed to make feelings of familiarity nondiagnostic for memory judgments, eliminated the false-recognition effect obtained in Experiment 3. Overall, the study suggests that conceptual relatedness produces false recognition even in the absence of shared perceptual surface features between study and test items, and it does so by generating feelings of familiarity.     

Effects of repetition and response deadline on item recognition in young and older adults

In the present study, we examined the joint effects of aging, repetition, and response deadline in a plurality discrimination task. Young and older adults studied lists of unrelated singular and plural nouns, with half presented once (weak items) and half presented five times (strong items). Test lists contained old (same) nouns, plurality-reversed nouns (changed lures), and unstudied nouns (new lures), and the participants were asked to respond old only to same items. In Experiment 1, the participants were tested with both short and long deadlines. In Experiment 2, the tests were unpaced. In both experiments, repetition increased hit rates for young and older adults. Young adults tested with a long deadline or no deadline showed invariant (Experiment 1) or reduced (Experiment 2) false alarms to changed lures when the nouns were studied more often. Young adults tested with a short deadline and older adults tested with both long and short deadlines had increased false alarm rates for strong changed lures; without time pressure to respond, older adults did not have a significant increase in false alarms for changed lures. Implications of these results for theories of cognitive aging are explored.     

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.