1 The False Recognition Effect and its Implications on False Memories in College Students Mackenzee L. Ashcroft Department of Psychology, Iowa State University 2 Abstract The false recognition effect (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) suggests evidence for false memories and their consequences. False memories account for wrongful convictions of innocent peoples in the court of law. The false recognition effect (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) also indicated that the stronger a connection to previously witnessed information, the more likely it is that new information is to be accepted as true. To test the credibility of the false recognition effect (Roediger & McDermott, 1995), I conducted a replication of the first experiment performed in the Roediger and McDermott (1995) paper, using recall of word lists to test false recognition. Using six-word lists and 30-word list of words to test recall, it was found that when words had a stronger connection to the previously presented word (‘critical lure’) that subjects were more likely to accept the word as being presented on one of the original lists, even when it was not. The results from this replication suggest that the false recognition effect (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) has serious implications of the suggestibility of information on memory, especially if that information makes enough sense to fit into what originally occurred. Keywords: false memory, false recall, recall, word recall, college students, list recall, false recognition effect 3 The False Recognition Effect and its Implications on False Memories in College Students The notion that an individual can recall an event of abuse that never happened in therapeutic practices began the spiking interest in false memories (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). False memories have a large effect on the criminal justice system, from false accusations all the way to wrongful convictions of innocent people. Considerable attention has been directed towards the recall and implantation of false memories, testable by having subjects recall lists of words presented to them (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). There has been debate on whether or not the methods used in the laboratory setting are generalizable to the public (Roediger & McDermott, 1995), but through replication of Roediger & McDermott’s (1995) study there is evidence that false recall (effecting memory) is a real phenomenon that is easily achieved. The replication of the Roediger and McDermott (1995) word list experiment was conducted with college students in a psychology class (N = 23). The students were presented with six different lists of words, then asked to recall whether or not those words (‘old words’) were on the list. The students were also asked to recall if 12 words that had a weaker connection to ‘old words’ (‘new words’), and if 6 new words that had a strong connection to ‘old words’ (‘critical lures’) were presented on one of the six lists. If a new word presented has a strong connection to the ‘old words’ (‘critical lures’), then the participants would recall that word as being on the list when it was not, resulting in false recognition effect, indicating a false memory. Method Subjects Subjects were 23 undergraduate students from an Iowa State University psychology class; Psychology 302: Research Methods in Psychology. The subjects who completed this experiment received attendance points. Majority of the participants were female. 4 Materials Six lists of words that were used in Roediger’s and McDermott’s (1995) study were used in this replication of their experiment. Each of the six lists had 15 words on them. There was also a list of 30 words for subjects to recall; this included four types of words: 12 ‘old words’ (presented on one of the six lists), 12 ‘new words’ (weak connection to ‘old words’; not presented on lists), and 6 ‘critical lures’ (strong connection to ‘old words’; not presented on lists). Design This replication study used college undergraduates to test the hypothesis that the false recognition effect would occur when the connection to a presented word was strong (‘critical lure’). The dependent variable in this experiment was the recall of ‘critical lures’ or ‘new words’. After all six lists of words were presented to the subjects, they were shown 30 words and were asked to write “y” (yes, the word was on one of the six lists), or “n” (no, the word was not on one of the six lists). The analysis of the means for each of the four items was calculated by subjects summing up the words they marked “y” next to and dividing them by: 12 for the ‘old words,12 for the ‘new words’, and 6 for the ‘critical lures’. The manipulated variable in this study were the lures, having two levels: 12 words with weak connection and 6 words with strong connection/critical lure. The study was a within-subjects design; all subjects were asked to view and recall the same lists of words. All subjects were asked if 30 of the words were on one of the previous six lists or not. There was no random assignment in this study. Procedure When participants first entered the classroom, they were handed a sheet of paper with two sides: one side for them to write down all the words they could recall from the six lists that would be 5 presented to them, and the other side for the second part of the experiment where they would be asked whether or not 30 words were presented on one of the six list. Subjects were presented with the six lists of words through PowerPoint. Each of the lists had 15 words and were shown one at a time for 10 seconds each. Once a list was presented, participants had 2.5 minutes to write down all of the words they could recall from the list (i.e. recall task). This was repeated for lists 1-6. After the six lists were presented and all recall tasks had been completed, the instructor of the course had a light conversation for around two minutes with the subjects, asking how they felt their recall was. After two minutes, the instructor told subjects to turn the paper over for the next part of the experiment. With the same format as the first part of the experiment, 30 words shown one at a time for about 10 seconds each. However, this time subjects were asked to recall whether or not the word presented on the screen had been on one of the six lists from the first part of the study. Subjects were asked to put either “y” = yes or “n” = no. When this task was finished, subjects were asked to sum how many times they marked “y” for the ‘old words’ (i.e. sit, hill, thread, smooth, bed, sugar), ‘new words’(i.e. thorn, insect), and ‘critical lures’ (i.e. sleep, rough, mountain, sweet). The sums of these responses were divided by 12 for ‘old words’, 12 for ‘new words’, and 6 for ‘critical lures’. Results Recall of Old Words A one-way within-subjects ANOVA test was conducted to determine the probability that subjects could recall the list of words immediately after the list was shown. The results from the analysis suggested that subjects were mostly able to recall the studied words from the six lists (M 6 = 0.80, SD = .20). The probability that subjects could recall the words from the presented lists was significant, p < 0.05. Subjects were likely able to recall most of the words shown to them on each of the six lists presented. Recall of New Words vs. Recall of Critical Lures Through the one-way within-subjects ANOVA analysis it was found that the probability that a subject would recall a new word as appearing on the list was low (M = 0.12, SD = 0.11), while the probability that a subject would recall a critical lure as appearing on the list was higher (M = 0.56, SD = 0.32). With these results, it can be concluded that subjects were more likely to accept a critical lure as being on the presented lists rather than a new word. This suggests that individuals will accept something as true if what is presented to them after-the-fact is similar enough fit in or make sense. Summation The results of a one-way within-subjects ANOVA indicated that subjects were likely to recall a critical lure as appearing on the lists of words F(2, 21) = 54.51, p < .001. Pairwise comparisons revealed that subjects were more likely to recall a critical lure than a new word (Mdifference = 0.44, SD = 0.35), t(22) = 6.04, p < .001, d = 1.26. With these results, it can be concluded that, if there is a strong connection to what was originally seen, individuals are apt to accept the new information to be true. Discussion The results in this replication supported the findings of Roediger and McDermott (1995). The findings related to recall of the “new words” were low, similar to Roediger and McDermott (1995). Although the results of this replication indicate that a subject is likely to believe they saw a critical lure word appear on the list, this does not directly indicate that false memory 7 implantation occurred. There is one certain limitation: some of the psychology students had done this experiment before, but with only one or two of the word lists. With this limitation in mind, it is fair to assume that some of the subjects were aware of the “critical lures” and the “new words”, effecting averages and probability. Further research could be conducted with subjects who are completely unaware of the false recognition effect, resulting in an unbiased sample. It is important to understand the effects of false memory and false recognition, as it applies to real-world circumstances. There is especially need for false memory research within the criminal justice community, as false convictions occur at a high rate. The continuation and replication of false memory research is important to understand not only the tendencies of the average population, but to understand how simply false recognition can occur. 8 References 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), 803–814. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.21.4.803
