Abstract
Four experiments examined contributions of conceptual relatedness and feelings of familiarity to false recognition. Participants first studied lists of unrelated items (e.g., table, lock) followed by a recognition test with three types of items: (1) studied items (e.g., table), (2) semantically related lures (e.g., key), and (3) unrelated lures (e.g., cup). Participants falsely recognized more related than unrelated lures when the stimuli were words (Experiment 1A) and pictures (Experiment 1B), when the studied items and related lures differed in language (Experiment 2), and when they differed in perceptual format (Experiment 3). In Experiment 4, an attribution manipulation, designed to make feelings of familiarity nondiagnostic for memory judgments, eliminated the false-recognition effect obtained in Experiment 3. Overall, the study suggests that conceptual relatedness produces false recognition even in the absence of shared perceptual surface features between study and test items, and it does so by generating feelings of familiarity.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Arndt, J., &Hirshman, E. (1998). True and false recognition in MINERVA2: Explanations from a global matching perspective.Journal of Memory & Language,39, 371–391.
Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., Wright, R., &Mojardin, A. H. (2003). Recollection rejection: False-memory editing in children and adults.Psychological Review,110, 762–784.
Caramazza, A., &Brones, I. (1980). Semantic classification by bilinguals.Canadian Journal of Psychology,34, 77–81.
Chumbley, J. I., &Balota, D. A. (1984). A word’s meaning affects the decision in lexical decision.Memory & Cognition,12, 590–606.
Curran, T. (2000). Brain potentials of recollection and familiarity.Memory & Cognition,28, 923–938.
Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verb intrusions in immediate recall.Journal of Experimental Psychology,58, 17–22.
Gallo, D. A., McDermott, K. B., Percer, J. M., &Roediger, H. L., III (2001). Modality effects in false recall and false recognition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,27, 339–353.
Gallo, D. A., Roberts, M. J., &Seamon, J. G. (1997). Remembering words not presented in lists: Can we avoid creating false memories?Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,4, 271–276.
Gerkens, D. R., &Smith, S. M. (2004). Effects of perceptual modality on verbatim and gist memory.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,11, 143–149.
Grossman, L., &Eagle, M. (1970). Synonymity, antonymity, and association in false recognition responses.Journal of Experimental Psychology,83, 244–248.
Hintzman, D. L. (1988). Judgments of frequency and recognition memory in a multiple-trace memory model.Psychological Review,95, 528–551.
Israel, L., &Schacter, D. L. (1997). Pictorial encoding reduces false recognition of semantic associates.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,4, 577–581.
Jacoby, L. L., Allan, L. G., Collins, J. C., &Larwill, L. K. (1988). Memory influences subjective experience: Noise judgments.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,14, 240–247.
Jacoby, L. L., &Dallas, M. (1981). On the relationship between autobiographical memory and perceptual learning.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,110, 306–340.
Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C. M., &Dywan, J. (1989). Memory attributions. In H. L. Roediger III & F. I. M. Craik (Eds.),Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 391–422). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Jacoby, L. L., &Whitehouse, K. (1989). An illusion of memory: False recognition influenced by unconscious perception.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,118, 126–135.
Johnston, W. A., Hawley, K. J., &Elliot, J. M. G. (1991). Contribution of perceptual fluency to recognition judgments.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,17, 210–223.
Lindsay, D. S., &Kelley, C. M. (1996). Creating illusions of familiarity in a cued recall remember/know paradigm.Journal of Memory & Language,35, 197–211.
Luo, C. R. (1993). Enhanced feeling of recognition: Effects of identifying and manipulating test items on recognition memory.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 405–413.
Mandler, G., Nakamura, Y., &Van Zandt, B. J. S. (1987). Nonspecific effects of exposure on stimuli that cannot be recognized.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,15, 646–648.
Masson, M. E. J., &Caldwell, J. I. (1998). Conceptually driven encoding episodes create perceptual misattributions.Acta Psychologica,98, 183–210.
Norman, K. A. (2002). Differential effects of list strength on recollection and familiarity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,28, 1083–1094.
O’Reilly, R. C., &Norman, K. A. (2002). Hippocampal and neocortical contributions to memory: Advances in the complementary learning systems framework.Trends in Cognitive Sciences,12, 505–510.
Paivio, A., Rogers, T. B., &Smythe, P. C. (1968). Why are pictures easier to recall than words?Psychonomic Science,11, 137–138.
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.
Rajaram, S. (1993). Remembering and knowing: Two means of access to the personal past.Memory & Cognition,21, 89–102.
Reber, R., Winkielman, P., &Schwarz, N. (1998). Effects of perceptual fluency on affective judgments.Psychological Science,9, 45–48.
Reisenzein, R. (1983). The Schachter theory of emotion: Two decades later.Psychological Bulletin,94, 239–264.
Roediger, H. L., III,Balota, D. A., &Robinson, K. J. (2002).Automatic mechanisms in the arousal of false memories. Unpublished manuscript, Washington University, St. Louis, MO.
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.
Schachter, S., &Singer, J. E. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state.Psychological Review,69, 379–399.
Schwarz, N., Bless, H., Strack, F., Klumpp, G., Rittenauer-Schatka, H., &Simons, A. (1991). Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic.Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,61, 195–202.
Schwarz, N., &Clore, G. L. (1996). Feelings and phenomenal experiences. In E. T. Higgins & A. Kruglanski (Eds.),Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (pp. 433–465). New York: Guilford.
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 Mc-Dermott procedure.Psychological Science,13, 526–531.
Seamon, J. G., Luo, C. R., &Gallo, D. A. (1998). Creating false memories of words with or without recognition of list items: Evidence for nonconscious processes.Psychological Science,9, 20–26.
Smith, M. C. (1991). On the recruitment of semantic information for word fragment completion: Evidence from bilingual priming.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,17, 234–244.
Snodgrass, J. G., &Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: Norms for naming agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning & Memory,6, 174–215.
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness.Canadian Psychologist,26, 1–12.
Underwood, B. J. (1965). False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses.Journal of Experimental Psychology,70, 122–129.
Verfaellie, M., &Treadwell, J. R. (1993). Status of recognition memory in amnesia.Neuropsychology,7, 5–13.
Watkins, M. J., &Peynircioğlu, Z. F. (1983). On the nature of word recall: Evidence for linguistic specificity.Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,22, 385–394.
Weldon, M. S., Roediger, H. L., III,Beitel, D. A., &Johnson, T. R. (1995). Perceptual and conceptual processes in implicit and explicit tests with picture fragment and word fragment cues.Journal of Memory & Language,34, 268–285.
Whittlesea, B. W. A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition,19, 1235–1253.
Whittlesea, B. W. A. (2002). False memory and the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: The prototype-familiarity illusion.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,131, 96–115.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., Jacoby, L. L., &Girard, K. (1990). Illusions of immediate memory: Evidence of an attributional basis for feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality.Journal of Memory & Language,29, 716–732.
Whittlesea, B. W. A., &Williams, L. D. (1998). Why do strangers feel familiar, but friends don’t? A discrepancy-attribution account of feelings of familiarity.Acta Psychologica,98, 141–165.
Winkielman, P., Schwarz, N., Fazendeiro, T., &Reber, R. (2003). The hedonic marking of processing fluency: Implications for evaluative judgment. In J. Musch & K. C. Klauer (Eds.),The psychology of evaluation: Affective processes in cognition and emotion (pp. 189–217). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Yonelinas, A. P. (2002). The nature of recollection and familiarity: A review of 30 years of research.Journal of Memory & Language,46, 441–517.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BCS-0217294 to P.W.
Electronic supplementary material
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fazendeiro, T., Winkielman, P., Luo, C. et al. False recognition across meaning, language, and stimulus format: Conceptual relatedness and the feeling of familiarity. Mem Cogn 33, 249–260 (2005). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195314
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195314