Why Do False Memories Occur

False memory has become a very popular topic in the psychological community. False memories occur when you recall an event that did not actually happen. Scientists have been conducting studies to determine whether false memories actually occur and how they occur. In 1995, Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen McDermott constructed the now widely used Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm based on the procedure pioneered psychologist James Deese in 1959. They performed two experiments on 36 Rice University undergraduate students to determine whether false memories actually occur. They tested for false memories through false recall and false recognition experiments. In the first study they presented the students with six lists of twelve words. Each list had a general theme, a critical word that it was associated with, but that critical word was not on the list. For instance, one list contained the words table, sit, seat, legs, desk, arm, rest, stool, cushion, for the critical
word “chair”, but the word chair itself was not on the list. They read each list to the students, and immediately after asked them to write down all the words that they remembered. Afterwards, they presented the students with a list of words and asked them to mark all the words that they believed they heard earlier. The results were quite interesting, the critical word was found on 40% of the lists. Similarly, a high number of students marked that they previously heard the lure words on the recognition test. In the second experiment the researchers created 24 lists of 15 words each. However, they only presented 16 to the students. Again they had the students listen to the lists, and then either write down the words that they remembered, or do math problems. Afterwards they gave the students the new recognition test. This time the researchers found the non-represented words on 55% of the recall lists, and they also found a very high number of false recognition on the tests (Roediger and McDermott). This week we attempted to repeat this experiment in PSYC 112.
Students were presented with 6 lists of 15 words each. After listening to each list we were asked to write down all the words that we remembered. Subsequently, we were given a 36 word recognition test. This test was comprised of 12 correct words, 12 critical non-represented words, and 12 completely unrelated words. Based on the research by Roediger and McDermott I hypothesized that I would find a similarly high percentage of false recall and false recognition items. I expected that at least 30 – 40 percent of my answers would be critical words. However the results were surprising; out of the 15 words on each list, on average I remembered 6.5 correctly, with a high of 10 and a low of 4. However, I did not have any incorrect responses, bringing the percentage of falsely recalled words to 0%. On the false recognition test I had 9/12 correct words, 1/12 critical non-represented words, and 0/12 unrelated words. The full results are shown
below.
False Recall Correctly Remembered Incorrectly Remembered
List 1 8 0
List 2 4 0
List 3 4 0
List 4 10 0
List 5 7 0
List 6 6 0
Average 6.5 0
Standard Deviation 2.34520788 0

False Recognition
Correct Words Incorrect Words Unrelated
Words
9/12 1/12 0/12

These results are in sharp contrast with my hypothesis, and with Roediger and McDemontt’s findings. They strongly contradict the expected outcome and they don’t fit the hypothesis at all. However, perhaps I can explain these unexpected results. When I took the test, I knew that its purpose was to check for false recall and false recognition. Moreover, I immediately noticed that each list had a theme, and was leading towards a specific word. Therefore, perhaps I was especially careful not to write down anything that could be the leading word for the list. Additionally, I was also avoided guessing, and only put down a word if I was 100 percent sure that I heard it. In fact, in Roediger and Mcdomentt’s study, one student also noticed that the lists had a general theme, and made her think of a particular non represented word. She was the only subject who had no false recalls of the critical words (808). Perhaps realizing what the study is doing prevents it from being effective. While my experiment failed to show false recall and false recognition, they are still fascinating to think about. We rely on memory a great deal every day, and we use it exclusively for validation of events. However, human memory does not work like machine memory. You do not simply enter a value in a slot and then recall it when you want to. Instead, we reconstruct events based on the available details. This method is extremely susceptible to manipulation and may lead to false recall and false recollection.

Works Cited:
Roediger, Henry L. III and Kathleen B. McDermott. "Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 21.24 (1995): 803-814.