Abstract
When lists of related words are presented to subjects, they sometimes recall or recognize nonpresented words related to those lists (critical lures). In fact, subjects sometimes claim to remember which of two speakers said the critical lures. We examined whether this finding could be accounted for by demand characteristics. If subjects’ willingness to make source attributions to critical lures reflects experimental demand, one would predict that subjects should be willing to change and should have little confidence in these attributions. Subjects made more attributions, were less likely to change their attributions, and were more confident in their attributions for critical lures than for unrelated distractors. Subjects had even more confidence in the attributions that they made for words that had actually been presented, and they were even less likely to change these attributions. These findings suggest that false memories are quite compelling but that they are also subtly different from true memories.
Article PDF
References
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall.Journal of Experimental Psychology,58, 17–22.
Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., &Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source monitoring.Psychological Bulletin,114, 3–28.
Lampinen, J. M. (1996).Recollections of things schematic: The influence of schemas on recollective experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Northwestern University.
Lampinen, J. M., Neuschatz, J. S., &Payne, D. G. (1997). Memory illusions and consciousness: Exploring the phenomenology of true and false memories.Current Psychology,16, 181–224.
Mather, M., Henkel, L. A., &Johnson, M. K. (1997). Evaluating characteristics of false memories: Remember/know judgments and memory characteristics questionnaire compared.Memory & Cognition,25, 826–837.
Norman, K. A., &Schacter, D. L. (1997). False recognition in younger and older adults: Exploring the characteristics of illusory memories.Memory & Cognition,25, 838–848.
Payne, D. G., Elie, C. J., Blackwell, J. M., &Neuschatz, J. S. (1996). Memory illusions: Recalling, recognizing, and recollecting events that never occurred.Journal of Memory & Language,35, 261–285.
Reyna, V. H., &Titcomb, A. (1996). The constraints on the suggestibility of eyewitness testimony: A fuzzy trace theory analysis. In D. G. Payne & F. C. Conrad (Eds.),Intersections in basic and applied research (pp. 27–55). Hillsdale, NJ: Elrbaum.
Robinson, K., &Roediger, H. L., III (1997). Associative processes in false recall and false recognition.Psychological Science,8, 231–237.
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.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lampinen, J.M., Neuschatz, J.S. & Payne, D.G. Source attributions and false memories: A test of the demand characteristics account. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 6, 130–135 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210820
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210820