Memory updating after retrieval: when new information is false or correct

ABSTRACT

We conducted three experiments testing the malleability of memory in incorporating new information following retrieval. All experiments used associative lists typical of the DRM paradigm [Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(1), 17–22; 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), 803–814]. This paradigm enabled the evaluation of the integration of false information and correct information with the original information. In Experiment 1, participants studied DRM lists, and in a later phase either retrieved or restudied the lists and were presented with never-presented critical lures. The results of Experiment 1 showed that compared to restudy, retrieval enhanced the integration of subsequent false information, as measured by later recall in a follow-up test. In Experiments 2 and 3, after initial study, participants retrieved or studied incorrect information and received corrective feedback. The results showed that retrieval led to more error correction than restudy, when feedback was presented immediately. In general, this research suggests retrieval facilitates incorporation of new, related information, regardless of whether it is false or correct.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory retrieval
• DRM paradigm
• false memories
• misinformation
• corrective feedback

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This task is based on the generate – recognise models of free recall (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1972; Kintsch, 1970) and has been used to understand the dynamics of correct and error responses in recall tests, suggesting that recall performance is determined by an initial generation stage and a final editing stage. The procedure requires participants to output related words that come to their minds during the test. They are also asked to differentiate the presented words from the unpresented words, either marking the words that were actually presented (as in Hege & Dodson, 2004) or marking the unpresented words that came to mind (as in Carneiro & Fernandez, 2013; and Unsworth et al., 2010). This task permits the measurement of two types of output: the inclusion output, characterised by all generated words, including studied and nonpresented related words, and the recall output, which corresponds to the words that the participants recalled as the studied words.

2 For this reason, in Experiment 3 for the intermediate recall test, we did not include an inclusion instruction as we did in Experiment 2 (asking participants to also type words related to the list -CIs.x), in order to focus this experiment specifically on correction of retrieved versus restudied critical items.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia – the Portuguese National Foundation for Science and Technology, under Project PTDC/PSI-ESP/28414/2017, grants IF/01555/2013 and PD/BD/114066/2015.