![Sample our Behavioral Sciences journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/110801/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Behavioral-Sciences.jpg"})
Abstract
The present study was conducted to assess an important prediction of the fuzzy trace theory that both true and false memories should increase with gist processing, but that this positive correlation should be stronger when free recall is used as a memory measure than when recognition is used. Children from Grades 3 to 5 and college students learned two sets of six Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists and after a set they received a free recall test or a yes/no recognition test. Instead of employing the traditional analysis of variance approach, a latent class analysis technique was used to investigate the relationship between gist processing and true and false free recall and recognition. The results showed that gist trace processing was positively related to true memories, and to false memories. Moreover, for true memories, this positive relationship was stronger for free recall than for recognition.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported in part supported by Erasmus University TOPTALENT grants to both authors. We thank Milou van Doorn, Lisette van Eck, and Chaveli Roosekrans for their assistance in collecting the data.
Notes
1Throughout this paper we will not use the word “intrusion” to denote a false memory in free recall. Instead, we will use the word “lure” to denote a word in free recall that corresponds with the critical lure in recognition.
2We used the eight strongest associates to the lure resulting in maximal total backward association strength. Although adding more associated words would increase the total association strength, the gain will be less for each addition.
3For the MANOVA, we assumed that the dependent variables are continuous and unbounded, but this is in fact not the case since the dependent variables are proportions that are bounded between 0 and 1.