Are false memories more difficult to forget than accurate memories? The effect of retention interval on recall and recognition

Seamon, John G.; Luo, Chun R.; Kopecky, Jonathan J.; Price, Catherine A.; Rothschild, Leeatt; Fung, Nicholas S.; Schwartz, Michael

doi:10.3758/bf03194323

Cited by 128 publications

(115 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…That false memories persist over time while true memories decline is a quite robust phenomenon, having been obtained for both recall and recognition measures (e.g., Seamon et al, 2002). More generally, false memories are more persistent than true memories, showing lower rates of decline between immediate and delayed tests, than correct recollection (McDermott, 1996;Seamon et al, 2002;Thapar & McDermott, 2001;Toglia, Neuschatz, & Goodwin, 1999). These same false memory persistence effects have also been obtained with children using neutral material (Brainerd et al, 1995).…”

Section: Recallsupporting

confidence: 57%

“…For example, McDermott (1996) found that over a two-day delay, false recall rates exceeded true recall. That false memories persist over time while true memories decline is a quite robust phenomenon, having been obtained for both recall and recognition measures (e.g., Seamon et al, 2002). More generally, false memories are more persistent than true memories, showing lower rates of decline between immediate and delayed tests, than correct recollection (McDermott, 1996;Seamon et al, 2002;Thapar & McDermott, 2001;Toglia, Neuschatz, & Goodwin, 1999).…”

Section: Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Howe

Candel

Otgaar

et al. 2010

Memory

126

151

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. and children's (Experiment 2) true recall and recognition was better for neutral than negative items and although false recall was also higher for neutral items, false recognition was higher for negative items. The last three experiments examined adults' (Experiment 3) and children's (Experiments 4 and 5) one-week long-term recognition of neutral and negative-emotional information. The results replicated the immediate recall and recognition findings from the first two experiments. More important, these experiments showed that although true recognition decreased over the one-week interval, false recognition of neutral items remained unchanged whereas false recognition of negative-emotional items increased. These findings are discussed in terms of theories of emotion and memory as well as their forensic implications. Permanent repository linkKeywords: Valence and memory; False memory development; DRM paradigmValence and the Development of Immediate and Long-Term False Memory Illusions Our memory is a reconstructive process in which errors often occur (for an overview see Koriat, Goldsmith, & Pansky, 2000). That means that we might falsely remember details that we in fact did not encounter. In recent years, the development of false memories has been extensively studied with the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959;Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Using this paradigm, participants are presented with word lists that consist of close semantic associates of a non-presented critical lure. For example, a list might consist of the words door, glass, pane, shade, ledge, sill, house, open, curtain, frame, view, breeze, sash, screen, and shutter which are all related to the non-presented word window. Studies have shown that participants have the tendency to falsely recall and recognize the critical lures during subsequent memory tests (for an overview see Gallo, 2006). Another robust finding obtained with the DRM paradigm is a reverse age effect. Specifically, studies have shown that the development of spontaneous false memories increases as a function of age (e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Brandse, 1995;Howe, 2005Howe, , 2006Howe, , 2008Sugrue & Hayne, 2006). The low levels of spontaneous false memories found in young children may be due to a failure to automatically access associative relations between list items and the critical lure (associative-activation theory, or AAT, e.g., Howe, 2005Howe, , 2008Howe, Gagnon, & Thouas, 2008;Howe, Wimmer, & Blease, 2009a;Howe, Wimmer, Gagnon, & Plumpton, 2009b) or to extract gist memories across words on DRM lists (fuzzy-trace theory, or FTT, e.g., Brainerd & Reyna, 2005).Despite the robust findings produced by the DRM paradigm, researchers have questioned the ecological validity of this paradigm (Freyd & Gleaves, 1996). One concern raised by Freyd and Gleaves is that in real world scenarios false memories often involve emotional events. To address this concer...

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Section: Recallsupporting

confidence: 57%

Section: Recallmentioning

confidence: 99%

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Howe

Candel

Otgaar

et al. 2010

Memory

126

151

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“…In contrast to conditions where information is already on the list, or other-generated information, this self-generated information tends to be stronger and more durable in memory. Indeed, there is a considerable literature demonstrating the strength and persistence of false (self-generated) memories over time (ranging from 1-2 days to 1-2 weeks) as well as the rapid decline of true (other-generated) memories over that same delay (e.g., Brainerd, Reyna, & Brandse, 1995;Howe, Candel, Otgaar, Malone, Priming Analogical Problem Solutions 14 & Wimmer, 2010b;Payne, Elie, Blackwell, & Neuschatz, 1996;Seamon et al, 2002;Thapar & McDermott, 2001). In fact, we have recently demonstrated that not only do false memories make better primes than true memories for CRAT problem solving over a 1-week retention interval (Howe et al, 2012) but that self-generated information is better at priming these same CRAT problems than experimentergenerated information and these effects are also developmentally invariant (Wilkinson & Howe, 2013).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Priming children’s and adults’ analogical problem solutions with true and false memories

Howe

Threadgold

Norbury

et al. 2013

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. lists where the critical lure (and problem solution) was presented as the initial word in the list (true memory priming), three of which were primed by DRM lists whose critical lures were the solution to the verbal proportional analogies (false memory priming), and three that were unprimed. We controlled for age differences in solution rates (knowledge base) in order to examine developmental differences in speed-ofprocessing. As anticipated, the results showed that adults completed the problems significantly faster than children. Furthermore, both children and adults solved problems primed with false memories significantly faster than either those primed with true memories or unprimed problems. For both age groups there was no significant difference between solution times for unprimed and true primed problems. Permanent repository linkThese findings demonstrate that (a) priming of problem solutions extends to verbal proportional analogies, (b) false memories are more effective at priming problem solutions than true memories, and (c) there are clear positive consequences to the production of false memories.

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“…This result is expected because longer lists generate more of the output interference that interferes with direct access, which shifts recall in the direction of (error-prone) reconstruction. Fourth, when subjects study lists of items that share meaning but recall is delayed for a few hours or days, the true recall probability declines steeply, the false recall probability remains relatively constant, and consequently, false recall increases substantially as a proportion of total recall (e. g., Brainerd et al, 2008;Gallo, 2006;Seamon et al, 2002a;Toglia, Neuschatz, & Goodwin, 1999). This pattern is expected on the ground that the representations that are processed by direct access versus reconstruction are forgotten at different rates, with those that support reconstruction being more likely to remain accessible as time passes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Generally speaking, the list conditions that ought to help targets escape state U by becoming directly accessible are ones that make their surface forms more distinctive, whereas the list conditions that should help targets escape state U by becoming reconstructable are ones that make it easier to extract certain meanings. Such manipulations have been studied in the contemporary false-memory literature (for a review, see Brainerd & Reyna, 2005), and a common finding has been that making targets' surface forms more distinctive reduces semantic processing and making particular meanings more accessible reduces surface processing (e.g., Arndt & Gould, 2006;Hege & Dodson, 2004;Koutstaal, 2003;Reyna & Kiernan, 1995;Schacter, Israel & Racine, 1999;Seamon et al, 2002aSeamon et al, , 2002b. The implication for our data sets is that conditions that enable direct access will be apt to interfere with reconstruction and vice versa, so that correlations between (D 1 , D 2 ) and (R 1 , R 2 ) should be negative.…”

Section: Parameter Correlations In Children and Adolescentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trichotomous processes in early memory development, aging, and neurocognitive impairment: A unified theory.

Brainerd¹,

Reyna²,

Howe³

2009

Psychological Review

182

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link IN PRESS: Psychological Review AbstractOne of the most extensively investigated topics in the adult memory literature, dual memory processes, has had virtually no impact on the study of early memory development. We remove the key obstacles to such research by formulating a trichotomous theory of recall that combines the traditional dual processes of recollection and familiarity with a reconstruction process. The theory is then embedded in a hidden Markov model that measures all three processes with low-burden tasks that are appropriate for even young children. These techniques are applied to a large corpus of developmental studies of recall, yielding stable findings about the emergence of dual memory processes between childhood and young adulthood and generating tests of many theoretical predictions. The techniques are extended to the study of healthy aging and to the memory sequelae of common forms of cognitive impairment, resulting in a theoretical framework that is unified over four major domains of memory research: early development, mainstream adult research, aging, and cognitive impairment. The techniques are also extended to recognition, creating a unified dual-process framework for recall and recognition.Keywords: memory development, dual memory processes, aging, cognitive impairment, hidden Markov models Trichotomous Processes in Early Memory Development, Aging, and Cognitive Impairment:A Unified Theory This paper has three objectives. The first is to resolve a fundamental problem in memory development research; the second is to apply that solution to a large corpus of developmental studies of recall; and the third is to extend the solution to memory changes that occur during healthy aging and in certain forms of cognitive impairment. The problem in question is the scant impact that dual-process distinctions have had on the study of early (child-to-young-adult) memory development. The result is a dramatic disparity in knowledge about dual memory processes in adults, which is vast, versus knowledge about how those processes first evolve, which is thin and inconsistent. Our solution, as will be seen, is (a) to propose a trichotomous theory of recall that subsumes traditional dual-process distinctions, (b) to implement that theory in a low-burden family of tasks that are appropriate for even very young children, and (c) to show that a new mathematical model of those tasks can be used to measure the development of trichotomous memory processes and to test theoretical predictions about them. Concerning the second objective, we show that an attractive feature of this solution is that a developmental data base exists that can be analyzed with the model, thereby closing the gap in knowledge about early memory development. With respect to the third objective, unlike early development, the study of memory changes during aging and in cognitive impairment have been strong...

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Are false memories more difficult to forget than accurate memories? The effect of retention interval on recall and recognition

Cited by 128 publications

References 33 publications

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Valence and the development of immediate and long-term false memory illusions

Priming children’s and adults’ analogical problem solutions with true and false memories

Trichotomous processes in early memory development, aging, and neurocognitive impairment: A unified theory.

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