Psychology Report on False Memories

This report delves into the research conducted by Roediger and McDermott on false memories, detailing their experiments, findings, and implications for understanding memory recall and recognition. It discusses the methodology, results, and significance of false memories in psychological research, highlighting the impact of associative processes on memory accuracy.

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology
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Author’s Note:

PSYCHOLOGY 1
Answer 1
a) The name of the article is “Creating false memories: Remembering words not
presented in Lists”
b) The authors of the article are Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen B. McDermott
c) Name of the Journal is “Journal of Experimental psychology; year of publication is
1995, volume 21, page no. 803- 814.
Answer 2
a) Aim of the research was to investigate false recall in a standard list learning
paradigm. The aim of Experiment 1 was to replicate Deese's (1959) observations of false
recall by using six lists that produced among the highest levels of erroneous recall in his
experiments, along with in-depth purpose in experiment 2.
b) Bartlett (1932) conducted primary experimental investigations of false memories,
where he showed distortions in subject’s memories to recall the memory, but no aggregate
data have been reported. On the other hand, Wheeler and Roediger (1992) revealed that over
repeated tests in short delay, false memory can be improved. Underwood (1965) provided a
method to study false recognition of words in lists. Gillund and Shiffrin (1984) did not find a
false recognition result for semantically related lures in similar paradigm. A potential
exception was found in the study of Deese (1959), revealing false recall in a standard list
learning paradigm.
Answer 3
a) In experiment 1, participants were 36 and in experiment 2 30 participants were
included in the study.

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b) The six lists from the materials used in the study were included from Deese’s
(1959) article. Authors selected 6 targets, which gave highest intrusion rates in Deese’s test,
with one exception; these are “needle, chair, rough, sleep, mountain, and sweet”. For every
critical word, the corresponding list has been conducted by getting the initial associates
according to Russell and Jenkins's (1954) word association norms.
On the other hand, for the 42 item recognition test, 12 studied and 30 non-studied
items. Three types of non-studied items were the “6 critical target words, 12 words unrelated
to the six list items and 12 words weakly related to the lists”. Next, weekly related words
from 13th position have been drawn along with the association norms. The test sequence was
constructed in blocks, i.e. 7 items per block, where every block is related t the study list and
the block’s order represented the order of studying the lists.
c) During regular class meeting, test subjects were tested in a group. Instruction was
given that they have to listen to some list of words and have to write those based on memory,
in examination booklets. They had to follow the order of writing words, last to first ones.
They were told not to guess and write only those words, upon which they had confidence. In
this context, authors read aloud with 1 word per 1.5 seconds rate and instructed to ‘recall’
after completion of every list. Participants got 2.5 min to recall the list. Prior instructing for
recognition list and after completing the 6th list, a brief conversation for 2-3 mins were done,
followed by instructed about another test, where they have to point words in a sheet that these
were surely in the list. Finally, participants were asked to elevate their hand, if they
recognized critical lures and six target items in the test (Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
d) There were four reasons provided for conducting experiment 2 in the current
research. First, authors wanted to duplicate and make bigger the recall and recognition results
of experiment 1 in a wider context; second they wished to test the effect of recall on the

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recognition test. Third, it was critical to reveal the false alarm rates for critical non-presented
items, in case the relevant list is not presented previously. The fourth and the most important
reason for conducting experiment 2 that has been highlighted by the authors was to gain the
view of judgment of subjects regarding their phenomenological experience, associated with
recognition of non-presented items (Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
c) In experiment 2, authors aimed to make a further judgement for each item judged
by the subjects; i.e. whether they can remember or they know these items in the study list.
“Remember” was defined as the experience, where the participant is able to relive the
experience. On the other hand, “know” judgement was developed in case, where participants
have enough confidence regarding the presence of the subjects in the previous study list, but
are unable to re-experience the occurrence. Therefore, it can be said that the remember
judgements include a mental reliving of memory, whereas know judgement do not include
such phenomenon (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In experiment 2, remember-know
judgements had been used for observing whether participants, recognizing the critical
nonpresented words might report the remember experience, indicating these as the mentally
re-experiencing events, which never appeared.
Answer 4
a) The results in experiment 1 revealed that in high confidence response, subjects
were sure about critical non-studied items had been studied more than half time, when the
rate of unrelated as well as weakly related critical lures were falling into the category
approaching zero. In this context, the hit rate was still high, which was higher than the false-
alarm rate for each critical lures. The results also showed that the judgements provided by
subjects for the critical lures were similar to the studied items compared to the other types of
lures. These results confirmed the Deese (1959) results.

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b) Overall, two experiments were done, which gained significant level of false recall
as well as false recognition in a list learning paradigm. In experiment 1, on immediate free
recall tests, 40 % recall of time was reported in non-presented associates and was later
recognized with high confidence. On the other hand, experiment 2 revealed false recall rate of
55 % was obtained on a recognition test and expanded set of lists. Participants produced false
alarms to these items at a comparable rate with hit rate. Overall, the study revealed a critical
illusion of memory has been found (Roediger & McDermott, 1995).
Answer 5
a) From the prior research, the author stated that the false reorganization affect the
participants where as the prior research stated that it does not affect the participants. The five
category people were listed in the experiment, whereas false reorganization is about 8% and
non category members are 35%. From the associative processes, error can occur on the recall
as well as reorganization in the memory. To increase the tendency of producing the false
alarms different models like SAM model was used that helped in the prior research (Roediger
& McDermott, 1995).
b) The author has shown that the false recognition is related to the indirect implication
of the issues in real life. However, from the introduction, it is seen that the effects can be
small in the magnitude. From the experiment it is found that the results are similar with the
previous work of 1960s and 1970s. The experiments showed the false recall in the paradigm,
which w2as predicted by probability in the free association tests. The false memories may
await the systematic experimental study (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). However, some of
the experiments showed that some of the false recall did not elicit individuals.
c) Long term memory refers to the phase and the types of memory that is responsible
to store the information for the comprehensive period of time. In the long term memory,

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memories are stored for the long period of time and people can recognize the old things
(Cermak, 2014). As the memory stored in the long term memory sector, people can recognize
the incident for the several period of time. Long term memory is of two types that are
semantic memory and the episodic memory. The systematic memory is the idea and the
concept, which is not related to the personal memory. Episodic memory is related to the
personal memory, in which people can recognize the particular incidence of the personal
things (Hasson, Chen & Honey, 2015). Example of episodic memory is remembering the
name of people and the last interaction with that person. On the other hand, semantic memory
is reorganization of the meaning of some words or remembering the fractions and
mathematical solutions. Particular incidences like any type of accidents can be stored in the
memories of people, which are known as the long term memory. The semantic memory does
not depend on the context memory.
Answer 6
The abstract of the article does not concise the aim and the purpose of the study.
Moreover, the abstract does not state the research hypothesis, research design, research result
and the implication of the result. However, the abstract provided the idea of the discussion as
it stated about two experiments. The rates of the false recalls are stated in the abstract. The
abstract does not have the key word list that used while search. On the 5- point rating scale
that is ranged from 1 to 5, it can be said that the abstract is poor and can be rated 1. The
reason of such rating is that the abstract did not state the aim of the study as well as the
research hypothesis and research design.

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Reference List
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press
Cermak, L. S. (Ed.). (2014). Human memory and amnesia (PLE: Memory)(Vol. 4).
Psychology Press.
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate
recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17-22
Gillund, G., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1984). A retrieval model for both recognition and recall.
Psychological Review, 91, 1-67.
Hasson, U., Chen, J., & Honey, C. J. (2015). Hierarchical process memory: memory as an
integral component of information processing. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(6),
304-313.
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words
not presented in lists. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 21(4), 803.
Russell, W. A., & Jenkins, J. J. (1954). The complete Minnesota norms for responses to 100
words from the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association Test. (Tech. Rep. No. 11, Contract
N8 ONR 66216, Office of Naval Research). University of Minnesota
Underwood, B. J. (1965). False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 70, 122-129.

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Wheeler, M. A., & Roediger, H. L., III. (1992). Disparate effects of repeated testing:
Reconciling Ballard's (1913) and Bartlett's (1932) results. Psychological Science, 3,
240-245