Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Friday Evening Posters 3036–3043
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Retellings of Autobiographical Memories. MICHAEL B. HUTSON &
ELIZABETH J. MARSH, Duke University (sponsored by Ian Dobbins)—
People tell their autobiographical memories to different people and for
different reasons. In lab studies, retelling a story to a different audience
or for a different purpose changes what (and how much) information
is included (Hyman, 1994; Marsh, Tversky, & Hutson, in
press). The present research examines whether retellings of personal
memories also show evidence of shifting for different goals. Study 1
involved collection of scripts for typical events and application of the
scripts to retellings told to entertain. Stories contained fewer actions,
but what actions were mentioned conformed to script predictions.
Study 2 involved collection of typical instances of events (to provide
converging evidence for the scripts collected in Study 1) and retellings
of personal memories to inform versus to entertain. Informative and
entertaining retellings differed in proportion of script events included,
as well as the language used.
• FALSE MEMORY •
(3037)
Effects of Bilingual Processing on Veridical and False Memory.
YVONNE WAKEFORD, Tufts University, MICHAEL T. CARLIN, University
of Massachusetts, Worcester, & MICHAEL P. TOGLIA, SUNY,
Cortland—The Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm was utilized
to assess the effect of bilingual processing on veridical and false
memory. Thirty-two English–Spanish bilingual participants were tested
in two within-language conditions, with acquisition and test in the same
language (English–English and Spanish–Spanish), and two crosslanguage
conditions, with acquisition and test in a different language
(English–Spanish and Spanish–English). In each condition, participants
were presented with 48 words (four lists of 12 associated words). A free
recall test was followed by a recognition test. Results indicated a significant
interaction; veridical recall and recognition rates were lower in the
cross-language conditions, and false recall and recognition rates were
higher in the cross-language conditions. This pattern of results indicates
that bilingual processing has an adverse effect on memory accuracy and
is consistent with spreading-activation theory and gist processing.
(3038)
The (Un)Reliability of False Memories. MANILA VANNUCCI,
University of Florence, & GIULIANA MAZZONI, University of Plymouth
(sponsored by Giuliana Mazzoni)—False memories are usually
displayed only in a subset of participants. This has led to a search for
the correlates of false memory development. Underlying this search
is the tacit assumption that individual differences in false memories
are reliable. Blair et al. (2002) reported adequate test–retest reliability
of false memories for semantically related words (DRM). In a
follow-up study, we found significant test–retest reliability only when
the same set of DRM lists was presented in the same order. These data
suggest that the apparent reliability of DRM false memories may be
a contextually mediated artifact.
(3039)
The Role of Sublexical Activation in Phonological False Memories for
Nonwords. MCKENZIE R. BALLOU & MITCHELL S. SOMMERS,
Washington University (sponsored by David A. Balota)—Many accounts
of false memories in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm
include the assumption that activation accrues on lexical representations
of the critical item (CI). However, recent findings that false
memories can be produced using lists of nonwords phonologically related
to a nonword CI suggest that activation on sublexical, rather than
lexical, representations may also contribute to false remembering in
the DRM paradigm. To test this hypothesis, two experiments were
conducted in which participants’ memory for lists of aurally presented
nonwords differing in phonotactic probability (PP) was tested. The facilitative
effects of PP (faster and more accurate responding for high
than for low PP) for nonword processing are thought to reflect sub-
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lexical activation, because the unit of analysis in computing PP is either
positional or biphone frequency. Results suggest that false memories
for nonwords vary as a function of PP, with higher PP producing
increased rates of false memory.
(3040)
Effects of Associative Processes on False Memory: Evidence From
DRM and Category Lists. MINE MISIRLISOY, Florida State University,
& HASAN G. TEKMAN, Middle East Technical University—The
study investigated the effects of test-induced priming on false memories
evoked by converging associates (DRM lists) and category associates
(category lists) procedures. Participants (mean age = 19.65)
were given 18 lists of 12 items to study. This was followed by a recognition
test of 297 items, composed of 216 list items, 36 critical items,
and 45 filler items. The experiment involved the manipulation of the
test order of the critical items in relation to the list items from their
corresponding lists. The subjective experience accompanying the
memory was also measured by remember/know judgments. The results
demonstrated a significant effect of list type (category vs.
DRM) in false memories. Critical lures from DRM lists had higher
proportions of false memory than did those from category lists, and
they received more remember judgments. Results are discussed with
respect to the differential effects of encoding and retrieval processes
on DRM and category lists.
(3041)
Heuristic Influences on the False Recollection of Imagined Events.
HEATHER M. KLEIDER, Georgia State University, & STEPHEN D.
GOLDINGER, Arizona State University—When recollection is difficult,
people rely on heuristic processing, rather than on effortful processing.
Heuristics increases reliance on perceptual cues when the source of
retrieved information is determined. As such, perceptual elaboration
of suggested event details is likely to increase false memories (Drivdahl
& Zaragoza, 2001). Extending these findings to person memory,
this study investigated whether heuristic processing increases
false alarms to imagined events by manipulating the delay between
witnessing and recalling an event and the stereotype-consistency of a
person’s role in the event. In two experiments, participants watched
slide shows and imagined people performing stereotype-consistent
and -inconsistent actions, followed by immediate or delayed memory
tests. Results showed that after a delay, people more often remembered
seeing imagined actions and misremembered the stereotypeconsistent
person as the actor. In addition, falsely remembering the
stereotype-consistent actor was more often attributed to actual memory
in a remember/know test.
(3042)
Lexical Association and False Memory in Two Cultures. YUH-
SHIOW LEE & HSU-CHING HUNG, National Chung Cheng University—This
study examined the relationship between language experience
and false memory produced by the DRM paradigm. The word
lists used in Stadler et al. (1999) were first translated into Chinese. False
recall and false recognition for critical nonpresented targets were
tested on a group of Chinese users. The average co-occurrence rate of
the list word and the critical word was calculated on the basis of a
large Chinese corpus. List-level analyses revealed that the correlation
between the American and the Taiwanese participants was significant
only in false recognition. The co-occurrence rate was significantly
correlated with false recall and recognition of Taiwanese participants,
and not of American participants. On the other hand, the BAS based
on Nelson et al. (1999) was significantly correlated with false recall
of American participants, and not of Taiwanese participants. Results
are discussed in terms of the relationship between language experiences
and lexical association in creating false memory.
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Memory Monitoring Reduces, but Does Not Eliminate, False Memories.
JEFFREY S. ANASTASI, Arizona State University, West Cam-