The present investigation is an initial simultaneous examination of the influence of three stimulus formats on false memories. Several pilot tests were conducted to develop new category associate stimulus lists. 73 women and 26 men (M age = 21.1 yr.) were in one of three conditions: they either heard words, were shown words, or were shown pictures highly related to critical nonpresented items. As expected, recall of critical nonpresented stimuli was significantly greater for aural lists than for visually presented words and pictorial images. These findings demonstrate that the accuracy of memory is influenced by the format of the information encoded.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
ClearyA. M.GreeneR. L. (2002) Paradoxical effects of presentation modality on false memory. Memory, 10, 55–61.
2.
GalloD. A.McDermottK. B.PercerJ. M.RoedigerH. L.III (2001) Modality effects in false recall and false recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 339–353.
3.
HirshmanE.ArndtJ. (1997) Discriminating alternative conceptions of false recognition: the case of word concreteness and word frequency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 23, 1306–1323.
4.
HuntR. R.EllisH. C. (1999) Fundamentals of cognitive psychology. (6th ed.) Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
5.
IsraelL.SchacterD. L. (1997) Pictorial encoding reduces false recognition of semantic associates. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 4, 577–581.
6.
KelloggR. T. (2001) Presentation modality and mode of recall in verbal false memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 913–919.
7.
McDermottK. B. (1996) The persistence of false memories in list recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 212–230.
8.
NelsonD. L.ReedV. S.WallingJ. R. (1976) Pictorial superiority effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2, 523–528.
9.
SchacterD. L.IsraelL.RacineC. (1999) Suppressing false recognition in younger and older adults: the distinctiveness heuristic. Journal of Memory and Language, 40, 1–24.
10.
SeamonJ. G.LuoC. R.SchlegelS. E.GreeneS. E.GoldenbergA. B. (2000) False memory for categorized pictures and words: the category associates procedure for studying memory errors in children and adults. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 120–146.
SnodgrassJ. G.VanderwartM. (1980) A standardization of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Learning and Memory, 6, 174–215.
13.
TogliaM. P.NeuschatzJ. S.GoodwinK. A. (1999) Recall accuracy and illusory memories: when more is less. Memory, 7, 233–256.
