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Introduction Section

False memory is the phenomenon when people remember events differently than what

happened, or they even recall events that never occurred at all. For example, say you are accused

of a crime you haven't committed, and there is an eyewitness who confidently and mistakenly

identifies you as the perpetrator. Researchers in a 1995 study were able to convince 29% of

volunteers that they once got lost in a shopping mall as a child; an incident that never took place.

This highlights how capricious and pliable human memory can be. This phenomenon has been

termed a "False Memory".

The "Lost in the Mall" study, which was the groundwork of Loftus and Pickrell (1995),

showed that people could indeed be induced to believe entirely made-up childhood events. This

initiated much interest into memory malleability and its vulnerability to external suggestion.

False memories are significant in psychology, law, and everyday happenings; hence making it a

vital field of study.

The study by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) examined the possibility of implanting false

memories regarding being lost in a busy shopping mall as a child. Participants received

descriptions of four events that happened in their childhood, three of which were real and one

fictive (being lost in a mall). They were asked to remember details over the next several
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interviews. Approximately 29% of the participants gave partial or full false memories for the

event, providing unique details about who helped them or how they felt. Since then, there have

been advances made in how to study false memories and many variables associated with it have

been investigated. Perhaps one of the most important is why and how false memories are

created. The current research is an attempt to investigate how and why false memories are

created by replicating Rhodes and Anastasi (2000), a previous study that investigated the theory

underlying false memories.

Literature Review

Building on memory distortions, Roediger and McDermott (1995) examine how one may

systematically study false memories in a controlled setting. Their work was built on Deese's

(1959) finding that individuals often recall or recognize words that had never been presented

simply because they are semantically related to studied words. This Deese-Roediger-McDermott

(DRM) paradigm is an experimental method used to study the mechanisms through which false

memory is created.

Roediger and McDermott (1995) introduced a method for deceptively implanting false

memories; the DRM paradigm. A group of words semantically related to the word that was not

presented called the critical lure, was presented to the participants. An instance is a case of a list

comprising bed, rest, awake, tired, and dream where the participants were lured to see whether

they were likely to falsely remember or recognize the word sleep as a word that had been

presented to them, even though it was never actually presented. The results bolster the

conclusion that these lists can induce false memories reliably, with the critical non-presented

words being recalled at 40% and the recognition rates being quantified at high confidence, rated

similarly to words studied (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). These observations allow for a very
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well-controlled methodology for inducing false memories in the lab so that many of the variables

around false memories can be manipulated and studied deeply.

Other Studies

The DRM paradigm adopts a false-memory-inducing method and has been incorporated

into several research studies investigating variables such as age, color, and cognitive processing.

For example, participants might study lists of highly related items and afterward, test their recall

or recognition. Researchers find that people will recall falsely related "critical lure" words that

were not presented (Pardilla-Delgado & Payne, 2017).

Coburn et al. (2021) investigated the extent to which age influences false memories

where younger and older adults underwent the DRM word-list procedure, with recall tested at

different intervals. There were greater false memory endorsements in older adults. The authors

justified this by indicating that with age, source monitoring may become more difficult, leading

to greater reliance on gist-based memory processes. This is extremely significant as it points to

the susceptibility of older adults to memory distortion that may apply to scenarios such as

eyewitness testimony (Coburn et al., 2021).

Another experiment investigated the influence of color in word presentation on false

memory formation. The DRM lists were colored either in a completely uniform way for a list or

were eclectic in color. Findings indicate that mixed color presentations reduce false memory,

presumably because the extra visual detail becomes salient in distinguishing studied from non-

studied words. The results support that small manipulations of how information is presented can

lead to substantial differences in memory accuracy (Coburn et al. 2021).

In a different research, personal variables were studied with respect to their relationship

to working memory capacity and susceptibility to false memories. Watson et al. (2005) found

that information was recalled less by high WMC participants than by others with lower WMC.

However, the difference was particularly strong for those subjects who were not forewarned

about the memory distortions introduced by the associative lists. These findings indicate that

subjects with relatively improved cognitive control might maintain task goals and inhibit

memory errors more effectively highlighting how attention control is in false memory.

Research Done Investigating the Underlying Mechanisms of False Memory Using DRM

The work of Rhodes and Anastasi (2000) explored the impact levels of processing (LoP)

have on false memory creation utilizing the DRM paradigm. According to the levels of

processing theory, there is deeper cognitive processing at the time of encoding, for example,

focusing on the meaning of a word, and therefore better retention. Shallow processing, such as

merely counting the vowels, causes poor retention. In the context of false memory, this theory

suggests that the more deeply processed, the better participants may distinguish target words

from related "critical lures" that were never presented, therefore lessening false memories. In

contrast, activation-based theories predict that this deeper processing would strengthen

associative networks between presented words and unpresented critical lures, thus increasing

false memory rates.

Two experiments were conducted by Rhodes and Anastasi (2000) to put these competing

theories to the test. In Experiment 1, participants either counted the vowels in each word

(shallow processing) or judged whether a given word was concrete or abstract (deep processing).

Experiment 2 used a deep processing task of grouping the words into meaningful categories. The

findings indicated that deeper processing enhanced the recall of list items in line with the LoP
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theory. However, contrary to predictions from LoP, deep processing also enhances the recall of

critical lures-foundational to activation-based theories. This means deeper processing improves

the chances of recalling both true and false memories, as false memories arise primarily due to

greater activation of competing traces. This finding reveals an additional twist to the complex

nature of memory formation by suggesting that engaging material deeply may not inhibit

memory illusion formation but could, rather, enhance it.

Our Study

This research aims to replicate and extend Rhodes and Anastasi's (2000) study to further

expose the mechanisms that create false memories. Their research study findings led to the

contestation of the established level of processing (LoP) theory inferring that the deeper the

levels of processing the more accurate was memory. However, it put forth that true memory was

enhanced with deep processing but also fostered greater rates of false memory, indicating that

association networks strengthen through deeper engagement with the material, yielding a better

likelihood of memory illusions. This study aims to replicate their findings under slightly different

conditions to see whether the original surprising results remain and to try to get at the

mechanisms of memory further.

Our research differs from Rhodes and Anastasi (2000) in several ways. We used different

word lists to ensure that our results were not list-specific and generalized across stimuli. They

investigated through various format settings auditing presentation in real-life settings mixed

design while this study was done online and visual presentation employed fully within-subjects

design: the advantage of within-subject design is reducing variance among subjects creating high

statistical power in detecting minor experimental effects. Additionally, we have used a

recognition task rather than free recall which enables us to determine whether or what effect the

task may have on false memory formation.

We hypothesized that deeper processing would boost true memory such that participants

in the deep condition would report remembering more list items than participants in the shallow

condition. We also hypothesized that deeper processing would lead to an increase in false

memories, such that participants would be more likely to falsely recognize critical lures in the

deep condition than in the shallow condition. By these tests, we aim to see whether deeper

cognitive processing unavoidably strengthens associative memory networks, thus making them

even more likely to create false memories.

References

Coburn, P. I., Dogra, K. K., Rai, I. K., & Bernstein, D. M. (2021). The trajectory of targets and

critical lures in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott paradigm: a systematic

review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 718818. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.718818

Deese, J. (1959). Influence of inter-item associative strength upon immediate free

recall. Psychological Reports, 5(3), 305-312. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1959.5.3.305

Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric

annals, 25(12), 720-725. https://doi.org/10.3928/0048-5713-19951201-07

Pardilla-Delgado, E., & Payne, J. D. (2017). The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task: A

simple cognitive paradigm to investigate false memories in the laboratory. Journal of visualized

experiments: JoVE, (119), 54793. http://dx.doi.org/10.3791/54793

Rhodes, M. G., & Anastasi, J. S. (2000). The effects of a levels-of-processing manipulation on

false recall. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 7, 158-162.

https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210735

Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not

presented in lists. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, Memory, and

Cognition, 21(4), 803.

https://psychology.hanover.edu/classes/Cognition/Papers/RoedigerMcDermott

%201996%20DRM%20False.pdf

Watson, J. M., Bunting, M. F., Poole, B. J., & Conway, A. R. (2005). Individual differences in

susceptibility to false memory in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Journal of

experimental psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(1), 76.

https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0278-7393.31.1.76