Bredart, S. (2000). When false memories do not occur: Not thinking of the lure or remembering that it was not heard? Memory, 8, 123-128.
Background
This paper looks at factors that may limit false memory production in the DRM paradigm.  So unlike many papers which ask, "Why do false memories occur?" this one asks "Why do false memories sometimes not occur?"

As a reminder, the DRM paradigm is a word learning paradigm originally developed by Deese (1959) and then extend by Roeidger and McDermott (1995) in which participants are presented with lists of words (e.g. bed, rest, nap...) that are all associated with a non-presented critical lure (e.g. sleep).

Paper considers two reasons why false memories may not occur.  One possibility is that sometimes the critical lure is simply not cued either at study or at test.  While listening to the lists it simply never pops into your mind.  The other account is that the word does pop into your mind at study but you accurately remember that it was internally generated (i.e. you thought of it) not externally presented (i.e. the speaker said it).

Bredart looks at these issues in a straightforward way.  After asking people to recall the list and provide their confidence that the item was stated, participants are also asked to indicate any words that, while they know weren't presented, that they do remember thinking about while listening to or recalling the list.

Method
Bredart created eight interesting lists that contained items related to a common prototype (e.g. Claudia Schiffer).

Participants listened to the each list presented at a 1.5 second rate and then took an immediate recall test on that list.

After recalling each list, participants provided confidence that they had heard the item.

Finally participants were asked to indicate any words that they had thought about at study or test but that they hadn't written down because they didn't believe it was stated.

Results

First off, the Claudia Schiffer list produced a lot of false recall!  Twice as much as any other list.

People gave higher confidence ratings to targets than they did to critical lures.

For those critical lures not recalled on the test, more than half of the times subjects said they had thought of the items but rejected them, supporting the view that not recalling critical lures occurs out of a source monitoring process.

Points of Discussion
This article replicates the DRM paradigm with an interesting set of materials and provides further evidence of average phenomenological differences between true and false memories.

Bredarts suggests that some lists produce more false memories than others because of similarities between items on the study list and the critical lure.

Bredart acknowledges that both explanations may be correct for why false memories aren't produced but argues that his data supports the source monitoring view.
 


 
University of Arkansas
Department of Psychology
Lampinen Lab
False Memory Reading Group
False Memory Reading Group Fall 2000