Previous research using the Deese-RoedigerMcDermott (DRM) paradigm has shown that lists of associates in which the critical words were easily identified as the themes of the lists produce lower levels of false memories in adults. In an attempt to analyze whether this effect is due to the application of a specific memory-editing process (the identify-to-reject strategy), two experiments manipulated variables that are likely to disrupt this strategy either at encoding or at retrieval. In Experiment 1, lists were presented at a very fast presentation rate to reduce the possibility of identifying the missing critical word as the theme of the list, and in Experiment 2, participants were pressed to give yes/no recognition answers within a very short time. The results showed that both of these manipulations disrupted the identifiability effect, indicating that the identifyto-reject strategy and theme identifiability play a major role in the rejection of false memories in the DRM paradigm.

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Resumo O paradigma DRM tem sido frequentemente usado no estudo das memórias falsas e baseia-se na Laboratório de Psicologia, 9(1): 23-34 (2011) © 2011 Pedro Albuquerque Escola de Psicologia da Universidade do MinhoA correspondência relativa a este artigo deverá ser enviada para:

Pragmatic inferences are one way to study false memories in real-world situations. We aimed to investigate variances in responses to pragmatic implication sentences between Portuguese and American data, presenting, for the first time, normative data of cued recall and recognition for pragmatic implication sentences in Portuguese. In Study 1 we analyzed cued-recall data for Portuguese pragmatic sentences. The proportions of cued- recall for correct and inference responses of each sentence did not significantly correlate with the values of American normative data. In Studies 2a and 2b we analysed forced-recognition data for pragmatic sentences, one with American participants and English sentences (Study 2a) and the other with Portuguese participants and Portuguese sentences (Study 2b). Moreover, two conditions of sentences presentations were applied to eventually detect an influence of the sentences’ format, which was not find in both studies. The levels of recognition for correct and inferences were very similar between those two studies but the correlation, sentence by sentence, was low. Together, these results suggest an important recommendation for further studies - normed material for a specific language/culture is a crucial factor to be considered when conducting research on pragmatic inferences.