Abstract
To determine whether false memories cross language boundaries, we presented English—Spanish bilinguals with conceptually related word lists for five study—test trials. Some lists were heard in English, some in Spanish, and they were then followed by a recognition memory test composed of studied words, conceptually related nonstudied critical words, and unrelated words presented in the same language used at study or in a different language. Even though participants were instructed to recognize only previously heard words, they falsely recognized both same-language and differentlanguage critical words. With practice, participants increased their accurate recognition of list words and decreased their false recognition of critical words when the study—test language was the same, and they decreased their false recognition of list words and critical words when the language differed. False memories can cross language boundaries when participants rely on conceptual representations from the word lists, but these errors decrease over trials as participants increasingly rely on languagespecific lexical representations.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Brainerd, C. J., &Reyna, V. F. (2002). Recollection rejection: How children edit their false memories.Developmental Psychology,38, 156–172.
Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., &Forrest, T. J. (2002). Are young children susceptible to the false-memory illusion?Child Development,73, 1363–1377.
Chen, H.-C., &Ng, M.-L. (1989). Semantic facilitation and translation priming effects in Chinese—English bilinguals.Memory & Cognition,17, 454–462.
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall.Journal of Experimental Psychology,58, 17–22.
de Groot, A. M. [B.] (1992). Determinants of word translation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,18, 1001–1018.
Durgunoğlu, A. Y., &Roediger, H. L. (1987). Test differences in accessing bilingual memory. Journal of Memory & Language,26, 377–391.
Fox, E. (1996). Cross-language priming from ignored words: Evidence for a common representational system in bilinguals.Journal of Memory & Language,35, 353–370.
French, R. M., &Jacquet, M. (2004). Understanding bilingual memory: Models and data.Trends in Cognitive Sciences,8, 87–93.
García-Bajos, E., &Migueles, M. (1997). Falsas memorias en el recuerdo y reconocimiento de palabras [False memory in the recall and recognition of words].Estudios de Psicología,58, 3–14.
Gerard, L. D., &Scarborough, D. L. (1989). Language-specific lexical access of homographs by bilinguals.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 305–315.
Gollan, T. H., &Kroll, J. F. (2001). Bilingual lexical access. In B. Rapp (Ed.),The handbook of cognitive neuropsychology: What deficits reveal about the human mind (pp. 321–345). Philadelphia: Psychology Press.
Kawasaki-Miyaji, Y., Inoue, T., &Yama, H. (2003). Cross-linguistic false recognition: How do Japanese-dominant bilinguals process two languages, Japanese and English?Psychologia,46, 255–267.
Keatley, C. W., Spinks, J. A., &de Gelder, B. (1994). Asymmetrical cross-language priming effects.Memory & Cognition,22, 70–84.
Kensinger, E. A., &Schacter, D. L. (1999). When true memories suppress false memories: Effects of ageing.Cognitive Neuropsychology,16, 399–415.
Kroll, J. F., &de Groot, A. M. B. (1997). Lexical and conceptual memory in the bilingual: Mapping form to meaning in two languages. In A. de Groot and J. Kroll (Eds.),Tutorials in bilingualism (pp. 169–199). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Loftus, E. F., Donders, K., Hoffman, H. G., &Schooler, J. W. (1989). Creating new memories that are quickly accessed and confidently held.Memory & Cognition,17, 607–616.
MacLeod, C. M. (1976). Bilingual episodic memory: Acquisition and forgetting.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,15, 347–364.
Marian, V., &Neisser, U. (2000). Language-dependent recall of autobiographical memories.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,129, 361–368.
Pérez-Mata, M. N., Read, J. D., &Diges, M. (2002). Effects of divided attention and word concreteness on correct recall and false memory reports.Memory,10, 161–177.
Roediger, H. L., III, &Gallo, D. A. (2002). Processes affecting accuracy and distortion in memory: An overview. In M. L. Eisen (Ed.),Memory and suggestibility in the forensic interview (pp. 3–28). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Roediger, H. L., III, &McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,21, 803–814.
Seamon, J. G., Berko, J. R., Sahlin, B. H., Yu, Y., Colker, J. M., & Gottfried, D. H. (in press). Can false memories spontaneously recover?Memory.
Seamon, J. G., Goodkind, M. S., Dumey, A. D., Dick, E., Aufseeser, M. S., Strickland, S. E., et al. (2003). “If I didn’t write it, why would I remember it?” Effects of encoding, attention, and practice on accurate and false memory.Memory & Cognition,31, 445–457.
Seamon, J. G., Lee, I. A., Toner, S. K., Wheeler, R. H., Goodkind, M. S., &Birch, A. D. (2002). Thinking of critical words during study is unnecessary for false memory in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott procedure.Psychological Science,13, 526–531.
Seamon, J. G., Luo, C. R., Kopecky, J. J., Price, C. A., Rothschild, L., Fung, N. S., &Schwartz, M. A. (2002). Are false memories more difficult to forget than accurate memories? The effect of retention interval on recall and recognition.Memory & Cognition,30, 1054–1064.
Shaw, J. S., III,Garcia, L. A., &Robles, B. E. (1997). Cross-language postevent misinformation effects in Spanish—English bilingual witnesses.Journal of Applied Psychology,82, 889–899.
Smith, M. C. (1997). How do bilinguals access lexical information? In A. de Groot and J. Kroll (Eds.),Tutorials in bilingualism (pp. 145–168). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Snodgrass, J. G., &Corwin, J. (1988). Pragmatics of measuring recognition memory: Applications to dementia and amnesia.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,117, 34–50.
Stadler, M. A., Roediger, H. L., III, &McDermott, K. B. (1999). Norms for word lists that create false memories.Memory & Cognition,27, 494–500.
Stein, L. M., &Pergher, G. K. (2001). Criando falsas memorias em adultos por meio de palavras associadas [Creating false memories in adults using associated word lists].Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica,14, 353–366.
Tulving, E., &Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory.Psychological Review,80, 352–373.
Watkins, M. J., &Peynircioğlu, Z. F. (1983). The bilingual lexicon: Language specific units in an integrated network.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,23, 519–539.
Zeelenberg, R., &Pecher, D. (2003). Evidence for long-term crosslanguage repetition priming in conceptual implicit memory tasks.Journal of Memory & Language,49, 80–94.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The authors express their appreciation to Catherine Best for use of her audio recording equipment and sound-controlled test rooms.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Sahlin, B.H., Harding, M.G. & Seamon, J.G. When do false memories cross language boundaries in English—Spanish bilinguals?. Memory & Cognition 33, 1414–1421 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193374
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193374