Repetition and Spacing Effects on True and False Recognition in the DRM Paradigm

Abstract

With the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, the repetition effect on false memory had never been clarified. More importantly, the spacing effect on false memory was never directly investigated. So, we carried out two experiments to examine these effects on true and false recognition. In experiment 1, participants studied DRM lists which were presented one, three or five times. In experiment 2, we manipulated the repetition mode (massed vs. spaced with a short interval or a long interval) to explore the spacing effect. The results showed that true recognition increased monotonically with list repetition (experiment 1) and repetition spacing (experiment 2). The most striking finding was a similar spacing effect but no repetition effect on false recognition. Thus, these results were principally discussed in the light of the activation-monitoring framework.

Effects of Stimuli Repetition and Age in False Recognition

“…In general terms, repetitions seem to lead to a decrease in false memories in healthy people when available time is enough during the study phase to explicitly process the stimuli, but tend to increase false memories as study times become faster (e.g. below 250 ms) due to an implicit processing of stimuli (Dubuisson et al., 2012; Watson et al., 2004). A second reason could be that the procedures used to manipulate repetitions were quite dissimilar, from massed to spaced repetitions, and with various intervals between them (Dubuisson et al., 2012).…”

“…Stimuli repetition is well known to increase true memories both in young and healthy older adults (Tussing & Greene, 1999; Watson et al., 2004), because practice improves both the items encoding and their retrieval process (either based on recollection or familiarity). However, experimental results about its effect on false memories in young people are inconsistent (Dubuisson, Fiori, & Nicolas, 2012; Seamon et al., 2002; Tussing & Greene, 1999), most studies showing that repetition decreases false memories (Benjamin, 2001; Budson, Daffner, Desikan, & Schacter, 2000; Kensinger & Schacter, 1999; Tussing & Greene, 1999, experiment 5; Watson et al., 2004), but others showing that repetition has no effect on false memories (Dubuisson et al., 2012; Tussing & Greene, 1997, 1999, experiments 1–4), or has an inverted-U-shaped effect (Seamon et al., 2002). And the same pattern of inconsistent results is found in healthy older people: most studies showing that repetition decreases false memories in healthy older people (Budson et al., 2000, 2002; Kensinger & Schacter, 1999; Schacter, Verfaellie, Anes, & Racine, 1998), but others showing that repetition increases false memories (Benjamin, 2001) or has no effect on them (Abe et al., 2011; Watson et al., 2004).…”

“…below 250 ms) due to an implicit processing of stimuli (Dubuisson et al., 2012; Watson et al., 2004). A second reason could be that the procedures used to manipulate repetitions were quite dissimilar, from massed to spaced repetitions, and with various intervals between them (Dubuisson et al., 2012). For example, Tussing and Green (1999) found no effect of repetitions on false recognition when repeated stimuli were studied in a random order within lists (experiments 1–4), but found a decrease on false recognition when repeated stimuli were studied following always the same order within lists ( blocked repetitions; experiment 5).…”

“…It is known that older people (and especially those with cognitive impairment) tend to show a more liberal response than young people, which makes them increase their rates of both hits and false alarms (Budson, Wolk, Chong, & Waring, 2006). Thus, the recommendation would be to estimate both true and false recognition by subtracting the rates of false alarms on unrelated distractors (or words not related to the critical word, FAN) from the individual rates of hits (H) and false alarms on critical (FAC) words, respectively (Budson et al., 2006; Cadavid & Beato, 2017; Dubuisson et al., 2012; Seamon et al., 2002). So, we also intend to use this adjustment in our experiment to estimate both true and false recognition to shed light on the discrepant experimental results found in literature.…”

“…To sum up, as the effects of repetition and age on false memory are unclear and the experimental data are relatively inconsistent (Dubuisson et al, 2012; Seamon et al., 2002; Tussing & Green, 1999), we decided to carry out an experiment using the DRM experimental paradigm. Participants (32 young and 32 healthy older people) studied 10 lists each containing 6 words associated with 3 non-presented critical words (Beato & Díez, 2011; Cadavid & Beato, 2017).…”