False memories are hard to inhibit: Differential effects of directed forgetting on accurate and false recall in the DRM procedure

Abstract

Directed forgetting research shows that people can inhibit the retrieval of words that they were previously instructed to forget. The present research applied the directed forgetting procedure to the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) recall task to determine if directed forgetting instructions have similar or different effects on accurate and false memory. After studying lists of semantically related words, some participants were told to forget those lists, whereas other participants were not. All participants were then shown additional lists to remember. Following study, all participants were asked to free recall as many of the studied words as possible, including those they were previously instructed to forget. Directed forgetting instructions inhibited the accurate recall of studied words, but not the false recall of nonstudied critical words, whether measured by a within-participant or between-participants design. Contrary to an implicit activation hypothesis, false memories survived instructions to forget. These findings were reviewed in terms of fuzzy trace theory and the activation/monitoring approach to false memory.

The development of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false recall

“…That is, the directed-forgetting effect should lower true recall that relies on episodic access, but have no effect on false recall that relies on semantic activation (see Kimball & Bjork, 2002). For adults, previous findings (Kimball & Bjork, 2002;Seamon et al, 2002) along with the results from Experiment 1 support this assumption. True but not false memory rates are significantly reduced after the forget cue.…”

“…After studying a DRM list, some participants are instructed to "forget" that list, while others are instructed to "remember" the list. Directed forgetting instructions are shown to inhibit true recall for studied words, but not false recall of critical lures (Kimball & Bjork, 2002;Seamon, Luo, Shulman, Toner, & Caglar, 2002, although see Lee, 2008;Marche, Brainerd, Lane & Loehr, 2005, for reduced false recall with an item-based directed forgetting task).…”

Are children’s memory illusions created differently from those of adults? Evidence from levels-of-processing and divided attention paradigms

“…Other research has shown that there are developmental differences in automatic processing after false memories have been generated. Specifically, research on directed forgetting shows that adults' true memory rates are significantly reduced under directed forgetting instructions whereas false memory rates are not (Kimball & Bjork, 2002;Seamon et al, 2002). In contrast, both children's true and false memory rates are reduced given a directed forgetting instruction (Howe, 2005;Howe, Toth, & Cicchetti, in press).…”

“…For adults, the general consensus is that false memories occur automatically, outside of conscious awareness (e.g., Dodd & MacLeod, 2004;Kimball & Bjork, 2002;Seamon, Luo, Shulman, Toner, & Caglar, 2002) but can reach conscious awareness in some circumstances (e.g., McDermott, 1997). For example, false memories occur even when information has been encoded incidentally (Dodd & MacLeod, 2004), or even after adults are forewarned about the false memory phenomenon (Gallo, Roberts, & Seamon, 1997;McDermott & Roediger, 1998).…”

“…For example, false memories occur even when information has been encoded incidentally (Dodd & MacLeod, 2004), or even after adults are forewarned about the false memory phenomenon (Gallo, Roberts, & Seamon, 1997;McDermott & Roediger, 1998). Similarly, when adults are instructed to "forget" a just studied word list then only true recall but not false recall is reduced (Kimball & Bjork, 2002;Seamon, et al, 2002; but see Marche, Brainerd, Lane, & Loehr, 2005 for a different finding using a different method). Thus, at least for adults, false memories appear to occur relatively automatically, both at the generation or encoding stage (i.e., evidence from incidental memory studies and forewarning procedures) and at the output or retrieval phase (i.e., evidence from directed forgetting studies).…”