Creating false memories for brand names

Abstract

Using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants are presented with lists of associated words (e.g., bed, awake, night etc). Subsequently, they reliably have false memories for related but non-presented words (e.g. SLEEP). The present study investigated whether false memories could be created for brand names (e.g. Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and TESCO) using the DRM paradigm and whether the effect was reduced if stimuli were presented in brand appropriate fonts compared with a plain font. Participants were presented with lists of brand names in plain or brand appropriate fonts, followed by a distractor task or free recall. Finally, they had a recognition task. Both false recall and false recognition of non-presented brand names occurred. Brand specific fonts at study had no effect on recall but increased overall recognition. There was considerable variability in levels of false recall and false recognition amongst lists and across participants and reasons for this are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.