The Effects of Restriction of Recognition on False Memory Annamarie Elmer, Holly Heindselman, Rachel Robertson Hanover College

2 Introduction Prior experience, environmental and personal factors influence memory recall False memories created by leading questions, hypnosis, guided imagery, and encouragement Warnings affect what people remember –When explicitly told what to remember, false memory recall and recognition is reduced May be a level of processing that happens when storing information –Tend to remember things better if stored in a meaningful way (Neuschatz, Benoit, & Payne, 2003; Solso et al., 2008)

3 Introduction Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (1995) Participants study list of words that fit theme List of words to recall original themed words –Original, one special distracter, and regular distracter words Participants just as likely to choose the special distracter as the original words Suggests participants not storing presented words in isolation but in groups –Words abstracted when stored in memory –Are connected to each other Words that fit the theme of previously learned words activated  leads to false memories (Solso, MacLin, & MacLin, 2008)

4 Introduction Theories of false memories (Arndt & Gould, 2006) –Error-inflating process –Error editing process Manipulated variables of how many associations were studied, how many times that item was presented, how much time participants were able to study the words, and how strongly those associations between the words were Found more words participants were presented caused higher false memory Stronger the strength between the associations the higher false memory was Suggests mechanism in the cognitive system that causes one to make either more mistakes in memory or fewer mistakes in memory

5 Hypothesis The more restricted a participant’s word choice, the greater the likelihood that the participant will correctly choose words presented in the original list. When participants are more restricted in the number of words they are allowed to choose, the special distracter would be chosen less often.

6 Participants Small Midwestern college N = with visual correction Age (M = 20.9 yrs.) 18 females, 12 males All Caucasian

7 Equipment Gateway E4300 computers with a Pentium 4 Processor using LCD monitors, model number FDP1565, that were 306 mm in width with resolutions set at 1024 x 780 Cog lab False memory experiment Cognition Laboratory website (Krantz, 2008) Program run using Java

8 Stimuli IV: # of words allowed to choose –4 words –7 words –15 words Size 14 font 15 words displayed for 1.5 sec All other settings were default of the program

9 Procedure Informed consent Demographics then read instructions Words presented in the middle of the screen Gray box appears with 16 words in all –7 from original list –1 special distracter –8 regular distracters Completed 6 trials

10 Results One-way ANOVA PWR, PDR, PSDR PWR differed significantly over 3 conditions (2,29) = 21.37, p <.001 Post-hoc t-test between 7 and 15 not sig., p <.05

11 Results Proportion of special distracter recognition also differed significantly across the three amounts F (2,27) = 10.5, p <.001 Comparisons for the proportion of special distracter recognition was significant between condition four and condition seven t (19) = 4.49, p <.001

12 Discussion Word recognition  Hypothesis not supported –Opposite direction then expected –No sig. difference b/w 7 and 15 Spreading activation theory –More restricted one is in recognition, the worse the ability to extract single words from the overall chunk After a certain point, the extraction from chunking is no longer affected –Supports the abstraction theory of long term memory

13 Discussion Special distracter recognition  Hypothesis supported –Less SD were chosen as participants were more restricted in their choice of words. –No significance difference between 7 and 15 words –Further support for abstraction theory of LTM

14 Future Research More diverse population –Age, race, gender Different program than Java Finding that cutoff point of ability of extraction from chunking See if there were any recency effects by adding a prolonged delay Keeping track of which words were chosen