Creating False Memories: An Experimental Study

Experiment Details

Ans 1.

1. a)  Title of the article: ‘Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists’
2. b)  Name of the authors: Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen B. McDermott.
3. c)  Name of the journal: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition   The year of publication: 1995.  Volume number: 21.   Page numbers: 12

Ans 2.

1. a) The main aim of this research is to find out if subjects can create false memories by remembering words that were not present in the lists.
2. b) Researchers have been studying the false memories and its effects on human mind for decades. Recently the trend has gained more popularity because more number of cases has been occurring in psychological therapies (Singer et al., (2013)

Some have discussed that sometimes the therapeutic practices of certain kind contribute in the creation of false memory. Bartlett’s experiment (1933) with subjects reading Indian folklore resulted in creating different distorted versions of memories in different times. On the contrary, similar experiment by Wheeler and Roediger showed that the subjects’ memory got better with time. However the dominating research on false memory followed the guidance of Bartlett’s difference between reconstructive and reproductive memory.

Ans.3

a) There were 36 participants in Experiment1 and 30 participants in Experiment 2.

b) Roediger and McDermott developed material from Deese’s six lists and from Russell and Jenkins’s norm of word association they constructed a list of 12 associates. The test was constructed in a block of 7 items. In each block there were 2 related, 2 unrelated, 2 studies and one nonstudied items. So test includes 42 items recognition and items were divided into 12 studied and 30 nonstudied words. The nonstudied words can be divided in three categories. The number of critical words is 6. Critical words are those original words, like chair or sweet, from which the other lists are developed. 12 other nonstudied items are basically 12 words, which are not at all related with any of the 6 item lists. Another 12 items would be 12 loosely related words.  The loosely related items were chosen from the Russell’s association norm’s 13^th

c) The group of subjects heard the words and replied to them following the instructions. The speaker read each list then he stopped and the subjects wrote down the words they remembered immediately after the reading on the examination booklet. They were instructed to write the last words first and then the rest. The speaker would read each word for 1.5 seconds and after reading each word he would give them 2.5 minutes to recall the items. Then the students were provided with a list of words which they would recognize. The process of recognition is based on their recognition power and perception (Fleming, 2014). The subjects raised their hand at last because they believed that they recognized the specific items and finally they read aloud the critical lures.

d) Firstly, the authors wanted to expand the results from the experiment 1. The experiment 1 dealt with a limited number of items which they wanted to extend in a wider range of materials to replicate experiment 1’s outcomes related to memory. Secondly, the authors experimented with a list which has not been recalled earlier and they wanted to analyze recall’s effect on this particular test. Thirdly they wanted to determine the false alarm rate especially in cases where the list is not presented earlier. They believed that nonpresented words are capable of generating high number of false memory. Phenomenological power is relating to inner voice and inner ear (Buchsbaum, 2013). They wanted to acquire information about the subjects’ judgmental power over phenomenological experience through a second experiment. 

Findings

e) The ‘remember-know’ task is subjects power to distinguish between ‘knowing’ and ‘remembering’. Dr. Endel Tulving developed this procedure based on those two past awareness states (Fiacconi et al., 2016). In this procedure the subjects judge the studies or nonstudied items as old or new. In the secondary step after identifying the old items they are instructed to recall if the items were present in the list. Remember is the process of mentally reliving one’s experience where know is confident judgment over item’s past occurrence (Laub & Auerhahn, 2017).  The authors used the ‘remember-know’ task in the second experiment in order to analyze the subject’s experience of false memory. More specifically they wanted to determine whether the subjects are remembering events or items which in reality never occurred.

Ans 4. 

a) The probability of studies word resulted as .65 and result on critical nonpresent word was .40. They found out that the rate of recalling for the present items and non present words were almost equal. Out of 8.6 written words, the outcome for the nonpresent items was 6.9. In experiment 1, the subjects were instructed to recall first the items, which were read last. So it cannot be assumed that the results were based on the subjects’ wild guess. 

b) In the experiment 1, the experiments result is counted in mean ratings. The mean rating for subjects’ recall power on studied items was 3.6 and critical lure is 3.3. Other nonstudied mean ratings were 1.2 and 1.8 in unrelated and weakly related item respectively. Clearly the critical lure or the false memory of the items appeared similar to those of studied items. In the experiment 2, the mean rating for the produced studied items is .98, based on their remembering rating of .79 and knowing rating of .19. The ratings for non produced studied items is .50 where remember recognition scored .26 and knowing .24. The produced critical lure scored .93 and nonproduced scored .65.

Ans.5

1. The experiment 2 was an extension of experiment 1; however in the result second time the result differed from the first one. In the first experiment of 12 item list, the false recall resulted in 40%, but in the second experiment it increased to 55%. Second time tendency to falsely recognize critical words have increased as well. The procedure was also different from the previous one, as another criteria added in the second experiment which are ‘knowing and remembering’ judgment. In the previous experiment the subjects were more confident while recall the critical words but in the later one they depended more on their remembering judgment. For the nonstudied critical words, false recognition was of highest level, thus it proved Underwood’s theory (1965) wrong who believed that false recognition is more related to studies items . The result was more similar to those of Bransford and Frnaks (1972), who presented the words along with some sentences. Posner and Keel’s experiment (1970) with dots presented similar result where subjects recognized prototypes which were not present.
2. There has been a trend of experiencing false memory in the psychological therapies (Conway & Loveday, 2015). The authors are claiming that their result of the experiments have indirect effects on this controversy. As the result shows that people are prone to make false memories. In the experiment university students were well aware of the experiment, even after that they recalled false memories confidently. The experiment happened in organize set up with conscious subjects, so chances occurring such incidents of constructing false memories in real life are higher, which may even lead to crime (Shaw & Porter, 2015).
3. Long term memory is the memory which is capable of storing certain information for a long period of time. Long term memory as the process which happens during retrieval (Lachman & Lachman, 2014). While searching certain memory codes are examined which results in a decision making. Some information recovered and through the decision making it can be accepted or rejected. In real life a person tends to recall long term memory more easily if the item was presented to him followed by other items which are known or popular (Shiffrin & Atkinson, 1969). Like in a library a certain book is reserved in a certain section alongside other similar books.

Ans. 6

In my opinion the abstract of the article deserves a rating of 5, which is excellent. The abstract is supposed give the whole idea, result and direction of the following text in brief, which the mentioned abstract did perfectly. They presented whatever they in few simple lines and finally concluded what are the reason and implications of the analysis. Even without reading the whole of article, one can easily understands what the article is about, what it aimed for and through the experiments what it achieved.

Ans. 7

Reference and Bibliography 

Buchsbaum, B. R. (2013). The role of consciousness in the phonological loop: Hidden in plain sight. Frontiers in Psychology, 4.

Conway, M. A., & Loveday, C. (2015). Remembering, imagining, false memories & personal meanings. Consciousness and cognition, 33, 574-581.

Fiacconi, C. M., Peter, E. L., Owais, S., & Köhler, S. (2016). Knowing by heart: Visceral feedback shapes recognition memory judgments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(5), 559.

Fleming, R. W. (2014). Visual perception of materials and their properties. Vision research, 94, 62-75.

Lachman, R., & Lachman, J. L. (2014, May). Picture naming: Retrieval and activation of long-term memory. In New Directions in Memory and Aging (PLE: Memory): Proceedings of the George A. Talland Memorial Conference (Vol. 22, p. 313). Psychology Press.

Laub, D., & Auerhahn, N. (2017). Knowing and not knowing. Psychoanalysis and Holocaust Testimony: Unwanted Memories of Social Trauma, 32.

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.

Shaw, J., & Porter, S. (2015). Constructing rich false memories of committing crime. Psychological science, 26(3), 291-301.

Shiffrin, R. M., & Atkinson, R. C. (1969). Storage and retrieval processes in long-term memory. Psychological Review, 76(2), 179.

Singer, J. A., Blagov, P., Berry, M., & Oost, K. M. (2013). Self?defining memories, scripts, and the life story: Narrative identity in personality and psychotherapy. Journal of personality, 81(6), 569-582.