Influences of intentional and unintentional forgetting on false memories.

Abstract

In 2 experiments, we examined the interplay of 2 types of memory errors: forgetting and false memory--errors of omission and commission, respectively. We examined the effects of 2 manipulations known to inhibit retrieval of studied words--directed forgetting and part-list cuing--on the false recall of an unstudied "critical" word following study of its 15 strongest associates. Participants cued to forget the 1st of 2 studied lists before studying the 2nd recalled fewer List 1 words but intruded the missing critical word more often than did participants cued to remember both lists. By contrast, providing some studied words as cues during recall reduced both recall of the remaining studied words and intrusions of the critical word. The results suggest that forgetting can increase or decrease false memories, depending on whether such forgetting reflects impaired access to an entire episode or retrieval competition among elements of an episode.