False Recall Research Articles

True Lies: Delusions and Lie-Detection Technology

Legally relevant lying is an intentional attempt to convince another of the truth of a proposition the liar believes to be false. Delusion is an unintentional product of impaired reality testing that occurs in a range of psychiatric conditions and psychological states, some of which could be clinically subtle. Since deception, truth and delusion differ in the intent rather than reality testing criterion. Deception and delusion are influenced by the degree of congruence between subjective and objective reality and are probably mutually exclusive. Thus, a delusion could lead to an objectively false statement, that could nevertheless be subjectively true and indistinguishable from truth by its psychophysiological (i.e., the polygraph) signature. This article presents a relevant case as a starting point of an examination of the current and future role of neurophysiological (i.e., functional brain imaging) measurements in the detection of deception. The authors incorporate the recent data on functional brain imaging to the neuroanatomical mechanisms of true and false recall, behavioral regulation and deception into a testable model that could redefine deception and separate it from delusions on the basis of objective functional brain imaging measures.

The distinctiveness heuristic in false recognition and false recall

The effects of generative processing on false recognition and recall were examined in four experiments using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott false memory paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In each experiment, a Generate condition in which subjects generated studied words from audio anagrams was compared to a Control condition in which subjects simply listened to studied words presented normally. Rates of false recognition and false recall were lower for critical lures associated with generated lists, than for critical lures associated with control lists, but only in between-subjects designs. False recall and recognition did not differ when generate and control conditions were manipulated within-subjects. This pattern of results is consistent with the distinctiveness heuristic (Schacter, Israel, & Racine, 1999), a metamemorial decision-based strategy whereby global changes in decision criteria lead to reductions of false memories. This retrieval-based monitoring mechanism appears to operate in a similar fashion in reducing false recognition and false recall.

False memories produced by children and adults in the DRM paradigm

AbstractIn the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, participants study a list of words (e.g., bed, rest, awake, dream) that are related to a critical target (i.e., sleep). When tested, participants often falsely report the critical target even though it was not on the original study list. Although this procedure has been used extensively with adults, few researchers have employed the DRM task with children. The present experiment explored how children and adults perform in the DRM paradigm when the length of the study list is manipulated. Children and adults studied eight DRM lists comprising either seven words (short‐list condition) or 14 words (long‐list condition). Adults recalled a larger proportion of studied words in both list length conditions. In the long‐list condition, adults falsely recalled significantly more critical targets than children. In the short‐list condition, rates of false recall did not differ. A similar pattern emerged in the recognition data, with adults obtaining a higher rate of false recognition than children in the long‐list condition, but not in the short list condition. Overall, long lists produced more false memories than short lists. We conclude that studying longer lists led to greater activation of the critical target in adults, whereas children received little additional activation from longer lists. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias

The status of mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals was evaluated following incidental encoding of target words. Individuals with high and low levels of trait anxiety completed a modified Stroop task, which revealed an attentional bias for threat-related stimuli in anxious individuals. This group was significantly slower in naming the colour in which threat-related words were displayed compared to neutral words. In a subsequent free recall test for the words used in the modified Stroop task, anxious individuals recalled more threat-related words compared to low-anxious people. This difference was significant even when controlling for the false recall of items that had not been presented during study. These results support the view put forward by Russo, Fox, Bellinger, and Nguyen-Van-Tam (2001) that mood-congruent free recall bias in anxious individuals can be observed if the target material is encoded at a relatively shallow level. Moreover, contrary to Dowens and Calvo (2003), the current results show that the memory advantage for threat-related information in anxious individuals is not a consequence of response bias.

Paradoxical effects of testing: Repeated retrieval attempts enhance the likelihood of later accurate and false recall

The testing effect is the finding that taking an initial test enhances the likelihood of later recall. The present report examines the extent to which this benefit of testing comes with a cost: an enhanced likelihood of erroneously recalling incorrect information. Subjects were given short lists of semantic associates (e.g., hill, valley, climb); each list converged upon a related nonpresented word (e.g., mountain). After presentation of some lists, the subjects received no initial test; after others, one initial free recall test; and after others, three successive free recall tests. The probabilities of final free recall (and the probability of reporting vivid recollection of the moment of encoding) of both studied and related, nonstudied words (e.g., mountain) were highest when three initial tests had been taken, intermediate following one initial test, and lowest when no initial test had occurred. The beneficial effects of testing carry the cost of increases in erroneous memory for related information.

When true memory availability promotes false memory: Evidence from confabulating patients

We explored the extent to which confabulators are susceptible to false recall and false recognition, and whether false recognition is reduced when memory for studied items is experimentally enhanced. Five confabulating patients, nine non-confabulating amnesics – including patients with (F amnesics) and without frontal-lobe dysfunction (NF amnesics) – and 14 control subjects underwent the DRM paradigm [Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 21, 803–814.] in two experimental conditions. In both conditions participants studied eight lists of semantic associates, and free recall was tested after the presentation of each list. In the Standard condition recognition was tested after the presentation of all the lists, whereas in the Proximal condition patients were administered a six-item recognition task after the presentation of each list. Participants also provided remember or know judgements, and described the content of their recollections. All groups of patients recalled a lower proportion of targets and critical lures than did control subjects, but confabulators recalled more words unrelated to the studied lists than did NF amnesics and controls. All groups of participants improved true recognition across conditions. However, whereas normal controls suppressed false recognition to critical lures in the Proximal compared to the Standard condition, and non-confabulating amnesics showed comparable gist-based false recognition, confabulators showed increased levels of false recognition to critical lures across conditions. Furthermore, NF amnesics significantly reduced false recognition to unrelated lures in the Proximal compared to the Standard condition, whereas confabulators were unable to suppress false recognition to unrelated lures across conditions. Analysis of the phenomenological experience showed that, unlike non-confabulating amnesics, confabulators characterized true and false memories with irrelevant information related to test items. Results are interpreted in light of confabulators’ monitoring deficits.

MILD EXECUTIVE DYSFUNCTIONS IN UNDERGRADUATES ARE RELATED TO RECOLLECTING WORDS NEVER PRESENTED

The aim of this study was to explore whether individual differences in executive function in undergraduate students (n = 72) contribute to false recall and recognition as obtained with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Participants were subjected to the DRM paradigm and also were given a test designed to assess executive function-–the Random Number Generation task (RNG). A relationship was found between heightened seriation on the RNG (indicating a deficiency in the ability to inhibit cognitive schemes) and false recognition of non-presented, critical lure words in the DRM paradigm. This suggests that individual differences in executive function do occur in a healthy population and that the reconstructive activity inherent in memory depends in part on executive functioning.

Heightened false memory: A long-term sequela of severe closed head injury

Declarative memory impairment is a common long-term sequela of severe closed head injury (CHI). Although veridical memory performance following severe CHI has received attention in the literature, little is known about false memory production in this population. Within the present study, both long-term survivors of severe CHI and matched control participants studied and were tested on six 12-items word lists from the Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Word lists from the DRM are composed of words that are strongly semantically associated to a non-presented word (i.e., the critical lure). Prior studies have shown that healthy young adults show a high level of false recall and recognition memory for the critical lures, and it was hypothesized individuals with severe CHI would show heightened susceptibility to false memory compared to control participants due to difficulty with monitoring of memory. It was further hypothesized that severe CHI participants would show high confidence in their false memories. Consistent with hypotheses, results indicated that although severe CHI participants remembered fewer actual list items, they made more semantically related intrusion errors (recall) and false-positive responses (recognition) than the control participants. Severe CHI participants also showed greater confidence in their false memories than did control participants. The results are interpreted in the context of theoretical accounts of false memory, and possible structural and functional brain changes that might account for the Severe CHI group's memory performance are discussed.

Stress-induced cortisol responses, sex differences, and false recollections in a DRM paradigm

The current studies investigated whether acute stress potentiates false recollections (so-called “false memories”) in a Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm, and whether sex differences modulate these effects. Participants were assigned to either a stress (trier social stress test) or a control group. Subsequently, they were subjected to DRM word lists and probed for recall and recognition. Results showed no differences between the stress and control group on measures of false recollections (Study 1; N = 60). Even though correct recall was impaired by acute stress, there were no differences between high or low cortisol responders and controls on false recall or recognitions rates (Study 2; N = 92). These results suggest that cortisol responses do not directly potentiate false recollections. Neither in Study 1 nor in Study 2 did we find any evidence that the effects of cortisol on false recollections are different in men and women, although there was an indication that independent of stress men produced more commission errors.

Awareness of the False Memory Manipulation and False Recall for People's Names as Critical Lures in the Deese-Roediger-Mcdermott Paradigm

In the present study, people's names were used as Critical Lures (central concept not on the lists) in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm for studying false recall. Following Mukai, the transparency of false memory manipulation in the paradigm was manipulated to explore its influence on false recall. 80 volunteers (age range 17-30 years, M age = 20.9 yr., SD = 1.6) took part. Analyses showed that making the critical lure inconspicuous did not significantly increase false recall. However, the proportion of falsely recalled Critical Lures was significantly lower and the proportion of critical lures produced on a postrecall test (asking participants to report items that they had thought of but did not recall) was significantly higher when they spontaneously realized the nature of false memory manipulation. However, there was no effect on veridical recall of study items. These results suggest that participants strategically avoided reporting false recall for people's names as Critical Lures even without forewarning about false memory.

The importance of material-processing interactions in inducing false memories

Deep encoding, relative to shallow encoding, has been shown to increase the probability of false memories in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Thapar & McDermott, 2001; Toglia, Neuschatz, & Goodwin, 1999). In two experiments, we showed important limitations on the generalizability of this phenomenon; these limitations are clearly predicted by existing theories regarding the mechanisms underlying such false memories (e.g., Roediger, Watson, McDermott, & Gallo, 2001). Specifically, asking subjects to attend to phonological relations among lists of phonologically associated words (e.g., weep, steep, etc.) increased the likelihood of false recall (Experiment 1) and false recognition (Experiment 2) of a related, nonpresented associate (e.g., sleep), relative to a condition in which subjects attended to meaningful relations among the words. These findings occurred along with a replication of prior findings (i.e., a semantic encoding task, relative to a phonological encoding task, enhanced the likelihood of false memory arising from a list of semantically associated words), and they place important constraints on theoretical explanations of false memory.

Fantasy proneness, but not self-reported trauma is related to DRM performance of women reporting recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse

Extending a strategy previously used by Clancy, Schacter, McNally, and Pitman (2000), we administered a neutral and a trauma-related version of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm to a sample of women reporting recovered ( n = 23) or repressed memories ( n = 16) of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), women reporting having always remembered their abuse ( n = 55), and women reporting no history of abuse ( n = 20). We found that individuals reporting recovered memories of CSA are more prone than other participants to falsely recalling and recognizing neutral words that were never presented. Moreover, our study is the first to show that this finding even held when trauma-related material was involved. Correlational analyses revealed that fantasy proneness, but not self-reported traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms were related to false recall and false recognition.

Adult Age Differences in Distinctive Processing: The Modality Effect on False Recall.

Age differences in distinctive processing were investigated by examining the effects of study presentation modality on false recall in younger and older adults using the Deese/Roediger and McDermott paradigm. Participants were presented with study words either visually or auditorily. Older adults did not show the typical reduction in false recall after visual, compared to auditory, study presentation (R.E. Smith & R.R. Hunt, 1998). The authors interpret these results as evidence of reduced distinctive processing on the part of older adults.

スキーマの個別性が虚再生に及ぼす影響―目撃証言の観点から―

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two levels of specificity of schema on generation of false recall. One level is widely applied to things and is shared by the general public (less specific schema) and the other is specifically applied to individual things (more specific schema). Sixty female undergraduates watched a video. After two days, they were required to recall the contents of the story. Students were divided into two groups according to whether they have the more specific schema or not. In each group, they were assigned to either free recall task or reality monitoring task. The results showed that (1) the amounts of false recall by the group having the less specific schema only decreased by reality monitoring. (2) The group having the more specific schema had no differential effects on false recall for both tasks. (3) The effect of specificity of schema on false recall was not observed for the scene which did not activate the more specific schema. These results were discussed in terms of the levels of specificity of schema and effectiveness of reality monitoring for eyewitness memory.

False Recall for People's Names in the Deese-Roediger-Mcdermott Paradigm: Conspicuousness and Semantic Encoding of the Critical Lure

The Deese-Roediger-McDennott (DRM) paradigm for studying false recall uses people's names as critical lures. In this study the contextual organization of list structure was manipulated in an effort to make the critical lure's absence inconspicuous and consequently increase the likelihood of false recall of the critical lures. Following Brédart's 2000 work, a list structure that appears to make the critical lure inconspicuous was constructed (Inconspicuous lure structure), according to the characteristics of two lists that previously induced a number of false memories. The rate of false recall for this structure was compared with Conspicuous lure structure, which was similar to his other lists that rarely induced false recall. 80 participants (age range 18-28 years, M age=21.5 yr.) were presented eight 10-item lists, composed of four lists from each list structure. Contrary to expectations, the Inconspicuous lure structure produced less false recall than the Conspicuous lure structure. Moreover, better recall of list items was found in the Inconspicuous lure structure. These results were discussed in terms of semantic encoding related to contextual organization of the lists' structure.

Age differences in veridical and false recall are not inevitable: The role of frontal lobe function

The relationship of neuropsychological measures of frontal lobe function to age differences in false recall was assessed using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott associative false memory paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). As other studies have found, older adults were less likely to correctly recall studied items and more likely to falsely recall highly related but nonpresented items than were younger adults. When older adults were divided based on a composite measure of frontal lobe functioning, this age difference was found only for low frontal lobe functioning individuals. High frontal lobe functioning older adults and young adults had equivalent levels of false recall, as well as equivalent levels of veridical recall. These results suggest that age differences in memory may be due to declines in frontal lobe function. More important, our findings indicate that declines in veridical recall and increases in false recall are not an inevitable consequence of aging.

Attention to item-specific processing eliminates age effects in false memories

One possible reason for age differences in false memory susceptibility is that older adults may not encode contextual information that allows them to distinguish between presented and non-presented but internally activated items. The present research examines whether older adults can reduce false memories when given external contextual support. In the first two experiments, semantically related lists were presented in the context of sentences that either elicited or did not elicit meanings of items that converged on a non-presented theme word. Semantically related lists were presented as the second word of cue-target pairs in Experiment 3. Results demonstrated that when gist-based processing of list items was made less accessible, older and younger adults showed similar reductions in false recall and recognition. Finally, although both groups showed reductions, measures of response latencies indicated that non-presented critical theme words were internally activated. These results have implications for encoding deficit and strategy selection as they relate to accounts of age-related deficits in memory.

Determinants of false positive recall rates in an Australian mammographic screening programme

We assessed the clinical and service related determinants of false positive recall using a case–control study of women who attended BreastScreen Victoria between 1994 and 1999. Cases were randomly selected from all women who were recalled for assessment but did not have cancer (false positives), and controls were selected from women who had a negative assessment and did not have cancer. Separate analyses were conducted for first (n = 12,667) and subsequent rounds (n = 17,461). To identify reader characteristics associated with false positive recall we conducted generalised linear modeling of all women who attended between 1994 and 1999. In the case–control study year of screen, strong family history and age at screening were important predictors of false positive recall at first round. At subsequent rounds, age, time since introduction of Kodak MIN-R-2000 film, strong family history of breast cancer, hormone replacement therapy use, recall at previous screen, previous screen at more than 27 months and screening round were significant predictors. In the analysis of reader characteristics, false positive recall rates were found to increase with increasing number of screening reads per reader over the preceding 12-month period, but the number of assessment clinics each reader had attended heavily modified this finding.

Inviting witnesses to speculate: Effects of age and interaction on children’s recall

Inviting speculation has been found to increase children’s false recall. In this study, kindergartners and third graders saw a clown perform actions alone or in interaction with a child. Two weeks later, the speculation group recalled all actions and was asked to speculate on half the actions. The control group recalled all actions without speculating. Four weeks after the show, all children recalled all actions again. The speculation group gave more false answers to the speculated items than the control group. Surprisingly, older children tended to report as many if not more false responses than younger children, regardless of speculation. In the speculation group, there were fewer false answers for interactions than actions, but false answers did not differ across observation types in the control group. Finally, speculation did not affect free and cued recall differentially.

Going shopping and identifying landmarks: does collaboration improve older people's memory?

AbstractOlder participants (mean age = 72.82 years) attempted to recall items from shopping lists while shopping in a supermarket and subsequently in their homes on recognition tests. They also attempted to identify local landmarks on a map. The recall occurred either together with their spouses or independently. Collaborative recall was compared to the pooled, nonredundant recall of spouses who completed the memory tasks alone (nominal groups). Nominal groups produced more hits on most measures and never fewer hits than did collaborative groups. However, collaborative groups consistently generated fewer memory errors than did nominal groups. In many everyday contexts, a tendency for collaboration to reduce false recall could be advantageous to older people. Signal detection analyses revealed that collaboration leads couples to require a higher level of certainty before they are willing to claim that they recognize an item. Finally, we examined the relation between expertise and recall in the shopping and landmark tasks. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.