False memories are hard to inhibit: differential effects of directed forgetting on accurate and false recall in the DRM procedure

Directed forgetting research shows that people can inhibit the retrieval of words that they were previously instructed to forget. The present research applied the directed forgetting procedure to the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) recall task to determine if directed forgetting instructions have similar or different effects on accurate and false memory. After studying lists of semantically related words, some participants were told to forget those lists, whereas other participants were not. All participants were then shown additional lists to remember. Following study, all participants were asked to free recall as many of the studied words as possible, including those they were previously instructed to forget. Directed forgetting instructions inhibited the accurate recall of studied words, but not the false recall of nonstudied critical words, whether measured by a within-participant or between-participants design. Contrary to an implicit activation hypothesis, false memories survived instructions to forget. These findings were reviewed in terms of fuzzy trace theory and the activation/monitoring approach to false memory.