Phantom recall

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Abstract

Phantom recollection (illusory vivid experience of the “presentation” of unpresented items) occurs at high levels in certain types of false recognition, but it is not yet known whether it occurs at high levels in false recall. A nonintrospective methodology based on fuzzy-trace theory’s dual-retrieval model of recall was used to estimate this hallucinatory phenomenology directly from free-recall data. To generate convergent evidence, the methodology was implemented in two distinct paradigms (repeated recall and conjoint recall) using Deese/Roediger/McDermott lists. With both paradigms, levels of phantom recollection were high and were usually equal to or greater than corresponding levels of true recollection (for presented material). Measurements of phantom recollection and true recollection were singly and doubly dissociated by a series of theory-driven manipulations (list blocking, strength of false-memory illusions, repetition, and study-test delay), suggesting that the two phenomenologies are by-products of different retrieval processes.

Section snippets

Phantom recollection in recognition

In recognition designs, Tulving’s (1985) remember/know procedure has been extensively used to measure the retrieval phenomenologies that accompany hits and false alarms. Although other introspective techniques have also been used, such as ratings of specific experiential components of retrieval phenomenology (e.g., Heaps & Nash, 2001; Mather, Henkel, & Johnson, 1997), remember/know has been the overwhelming methodology of choice. Participants are told to make a “remember” judgment for a

Measuring phantom recollection in recall

Our approach uses behavioral data—specifically free-recall responses themselves—to evaluate retrieval phenomenologies, rather than introspective reports. This approach responds to recent measurement criticisms of remember/know judgments (Brainerd et al., 2001; Hintzman, 2001; but see Jacoby, Debner, & Hay, 2001, and Yonelinas, Kroll, Dobbins, Lazzara, & Knight, 1998, for contradictory data). Approaches of this sort are also needed to study retrieval phenomenologies in populations that are

Experiment 1

Participants studied a series of DRM lists in either a blocked or random presentation format, followed by repeated recall. The words comprising each DRM list were grouped together during blocked presentation, whereas there was no systematic grouping during random presentation. This manipulation was included because blocked presentation, which is known to produce higher levels of false recall than random presentation (McDermott, 1996), should create stronger gist memories of lists’ core themes

Experiment 2

The second experiment resembled the first in that participants studied a series of DRM lists, followed by three buffered free-recall tests. However, blocked vs random presentation was replaced by two manipulations that provide further information about the memorial basis of phantom recollection. The first was repetition. Half the lists were presented once, and half were presented thrice. McDermott (1996) found that repetition of DRM lists decreased false recall while increasing true recall, and

Experiment 3

The purpose of Experiment 3 was to seek converging evidence using a different methodology, the conjoint-recall paradigm that was described earlier. The design of the experiment involved an instructional manipulation and a list manipulation. Concerning the instructional manipulation, participants recalled DRM lists under one of three types of instructions: verbatim (V: recall only presented words); meaning (M: recall only unpresented words that share meaning with presented words); verbatim + 

General discussion

The present experiments generated a reasonably consistent picture of phantom recollective experience in DRM recall, using different paradigms and different experimental manipulations. In most conditions of these experiments, high levels of phantom recollection accompanied false recall. Levels of phantom recollection did not differ reliably from levels of true recollection on the first recall test in Experiment 1 (for both blocked and random presentation), on the first delayed test in Experiment

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a National Science Foundation Grant (SBR-9730143), by National Institute of Health Grants (NIH31620 and P50AT00008), and by a Schering Plough/Integrated Therapeutics Group grant. We thank Vanessa Calabrese, H. L. Roediger, and D. Riefer for many helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We thank Humberto Valesquez for assistance with data scoring and analysis.

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