Conjunction errors and semantic transparency

Memory conjunction errors occur when aspects of two different events are falsely recognized or recalled as having occurred as parts of the same event. One theoretical account of conjunction errors is rooted in traditional dual-process models of recognition judgments, in which responses are based on an item’s familiarity or the retrieval of recollected details associated with the encoding of that item. We manipulated the familiarity of test probes by varying their semantic overlap with studied items, taking advantage of the inherent semantic transparency of compound words. Transparent compounds are those whose component parts (lexemes) are semantically related to the meaning of the entire word. In contrast, opaque compounds’ lexemes do not contribute directly to the meaning of the compound. We showed that the familiarity of semantically transparent assembly lures created from their lexemes (study dog and house, test on doghouse) is greater than the familiarity of opaque assembly lures (study back and draw, test on drawback). A response-signal experiment revealed no evidence for the use of a recall-to-reject process for either semantically transparent or opaque lures.