Memory III

False memory can be induced from experiencing semantically or perceptually similar events, as demonstrated in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. When participants learn words that are either semantically associated or possess orthographic/phonological overlap with a non-presented critical lure, high levels of false recognition are observed for the critical lure. Despite the parallel findings, researchers have argued that different mechanisms underlie semantic and perceptual false memory (Chang & Brainerd, 2021). One source of empirical evidence for this dissociation is that semantic critical lures elicit more false remember (R) judgments while perceptual associates yield more false know (K) judgments. The current study aimed to evaluate whether such evidence is sufficient for a two-mechanism account. We conducted a DRM recognition study with both semantic and perceptual categories where participants were asked to make old/new judgment and a subsequent RK judgement following “old” responses. Consistent with previous findings, we found higher R false alarms for semantic critical lures, while perceptual critical lures exhibited more frequent K false alarms. Nonetheless, both parametric and non-parametric analyses supported a single dimension underlying both tasks. First, the data were almost perfectly fit by a signal detection theory (SDT) model where R judgments merely reflect a higher response criterion than K judgments. In addition, a state-trace analysis performed on the individual items from both tasks uncovered a monotonic relationship between the old-new false alarm rate and the R false alarm rate that was consistent with a single dimension. We conclude that there is not strong evidence for different mechanisms being responsible for semantic and perceptual false recognition.

What is arguably the most common method of eliciting false memories in the laboratory is the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995), where participants study a set of items that are all similar to a non-presented critical lure. A common finding is that false alarm rates to the critical lures are much higher than to other non-presented items and are in some cases even comparable to hit rates, regardless of whether similarity is defined in terms of semantic or structural (e.g., phonemic or orthographic) relations. While there exists a handful of computational models of this paradigm, they have only been applied to semantic but not structural false recognition, they have not been fit at the level of individual participants, and they have not been applied to response times (RTs). We present a global matching model that addresses all three of these current gaps. Global similarity of perceptual and semantic representations drives a pair of linear ballistic accumulators, which are used to produce decisions as well as complete RT distributions. In addition to being able to account for heightened false recognition of critical lures, the model was able to account for differences across both individual participants and items, correlations between semantic and structural false recognition, differences in false recognition across levels of processing, and heightened false recognition under speed emphasis. These results suggest that both semantic and perceptual false recognition can be explained using only a single retrieval mechanism.