In this paper, I argue that recent research on episodic memory supports a limited defense of the phenomena that Daniel Wegner has termed transactive memory. Building on psychological and neurological research, targeting both individual and shared memory, I argue that individuals can collaboratively work to construct shared episodic memories. In some cases, this yields memories that are distributed across multiple individuals instead of being housed in individual brains.

The present chapter provides a review of the literature addressing changes in memory performance in older adults (often retired individuals with an age between 60 and 80 years), compared to younger adults (often college students around age 20). While it is well-established that memory performance declines in older adults (e.g., Kausler, 1994; Ryan, 1992), it is now clear that not all aspects of memory are impaired (e.g., Balota & Duchek, 1988; Burke & Light, 1981; Craik, 1983; Schacter, Kihlstrom, Kaszniak & (...) Valdiserri, 1993; Shimamura, 1989). Dissociations across age groups with respect to impairments in different memory types/processes have provided (a) insights into the influence of aging on neuropsychological underpinnings of memory, and (b) leverage for memory theorists to develop a better understanding of normal memory functioning. This chapter involves three sections: First, we provide a summary of selected empirical findings that document the nature of age-related changes across a wide set of memory tasks. Although it is beyond the scope of the present chapter to review the rich literature concerning memory and aging, this section will acquaint the reader with examples of paradigms used to study distinct aspects of memory and the conclusions that researchers have reached regarding the influence of age on each memory type/process. Second, we discuss the major theoretical perspectives that have been proposed as explanatory constructs for these age-related memory deficits. Finally, we provide an overview of recent developments that shed some light on understanding the possible neurological underpinnings of aging on memory functioning. (shrink)

The primary aim of the current study was to examine whether depleted cognitive resources might have ramifications for the formation of neutral and negative spontaneous false memories. To examine this, participants received neutral and negative Deese/Roediger–McDermott false memory wordlists. Also, for half of the participants, cognitive resources were depleted by use of an ego depletion manipulation . Our chief finding was that depleted cognitive resources made participants more vulnerable for the production of false memories. Our results shed light on how (...) depleted cognitive resources affect neutral and negative correct and errant memories. (shrink)

While previous research has suggested that adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse may be more prone to produce false memories, little is known about the consequences of childhood neglect on basic memory processes. For this reason, the authors investigated how a group of women with a history of childhood emotional neglect and diagnosed with recurrent Major Depressive Disorder performed on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm in comparison to control groups. The results indicated that women with MDD and CEN were actually (...) less prone to produce false memories relative to both women with MDD but no CEN and healthy women without MDD and any form of childhood maltreatment. These findings were explained in terms of the inability to extract/retrieve gist memories that support false recognition of critical lures, an explanation that seems to fit well with emerging MRI findings linking childhood neglect to reduced volume of brain regions associated to memory function. (shrink)

Previous research has demonstrated that people are susceptible to developing false memories, that is to recall events that did not actually occur or recall them differently than they occurred (Dods...

The present study examined forgetting and recovery of narrative passages varying in emotional intensity, using what we refer to as the “dropout” method. Previous studies of this dropout procedure have used word lists as to-be-remembered material, but the present experiments used brief story vignettes with one-word titles . These vignettes showed a strong dropout forgetting effect in free recall. Both text and picture cues from the vignettes eliminated the forgetting effect on a subsequent cued recall test. Vignette-related pictures in an (...) incidental picture naming task, however, triggered little recovery of initially forgotten vignettes, as shown on a post-test. The results extend findings of large forgetting and memory recovery effects to materials that are more naturalistic than word lists. The findings also show that picture cues, which trigger strong memory recovery effects on a direct test of memory, had little effect on recovery when cues were encountered incidentally. (shrink)

The question whether memory aberrations in posttraumatic stress disorder also manifest as an increased production of false memories is important for both theoretical and practical reasons, but is yet unsolved. Therefore, for the present study we investigated veridical and false recognition in PTSD with a new scenic variant of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, which was administered to traumatized individuals with PTSD , traumatized individuals without PTSD , and non-traumatized controls . The PTSD group neither produced higher rates of false memories nor (...) expressed more confidence in errors, but did show inferior memory sensitivity. Whereas depressive symptoms did not correlate with veridical nor false recognition, state dissociation was positively associated with false memories. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: the agent has constant access to the resource; the information in the resource is directly available; retrieved information is automatically endorsed; information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, but (...) the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory. (shrink)

Previous studies have suggested that auditory hallucination is closely related to thought insertion. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the external misattribution of thought and auditory hallucination-like experiences. We used the AHES-17, which measures auditory hallucination-like experiences in normal, healthy people, and the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, in which false alarms of critical lure are regarded as spontaneous external misattribution of thought. We found that critical lures elicited increased the number of false alarms as AHES-17 scores increased and that scores (...) of AHES-17 predicted the rate of false memory of critical lures. Furthermore, we revealed that the relationship between AHES-17 scores and the rates of false alarms to critical lures was strictly linear. Therefore, it might be said that individual differences in auditory hallucination-like experiences are highly related to the external misattribution of thought. We discussed these results from the perspective of the sense of agency over thought. (shrink)

When subjects give higher confidence or memory ratings to a test word in a recognition test, do they simply raise their criterion without making better discrimination, or do they raise both criterion and true discrimination between the studied words and the lures? Given that previous studies found subjects’ false alarm responses to lures slower than to SW, and recognition latency inversely correlated with the confidence rating, can the latency difference between the lures and SW be accounted for by confidence or (...) memory ratings? The present results showed that when subjects gave higher confidence or memory ratings, both their bias and sensitivity were raised, indicating that they could consciously distinguish the lures from the SW. However, a latency difference between true and false recognitions persisted after confidence and memory ratings were held constant, suggesting an unconscious source of discrimination between the two types of memory. (shrink)

This article combines findings from cognitive psychology on the role of processing fluency in truth judgments with epistemological theory on justification of belief. We first review evidence that repeated exposure to a statement increases the subjective ease with which that statement is processed. This increased processing fluency, in turn, increases the probability that the statement is judged to be true. The basic question discussed here is whether the use of processing fluency as a cue to truth is epistemically justified. In (...) the present analysis, based on Bayes’ Theorem, we adopt the reliable-process account of justification presented by Goldman (1986) and show that fluency is a reliable cue to truth, under the assumption that the majority of statements one has been exposed to are true. In the final section, we broaden the scope of this analysis and discuss how processing fluency as a potentially universal cue to judged truth may contribute to cultural differences in commonsense beliefs. (shrink)

Asking people to discover the identity of a recognition test probe immediately before making a recognition judgment increases the probability of an old judgment. To inform theories of this “revelation effect,” event-related potentials were recorded for revealed and intact test items across two experiments. In Experiment 1, we used a revelation effect paradigm where half of the test probes were presented as anagrams and the other items were presented intact. The pattern of ERP results from this experiment suggested that revealing (...) an item decreases initial familiarity levels and caused the revealed items to elicit similar levels of activity. In Experiment 2, half of the probes were preceded by an addition task . The pattern of ERP effects in this study were distinct from those observed in Experiment 1. More specifically, revealed item ERPs were more negative than intact ERPs at frontal electrodes and more positive at parietal electrodes early in the interval. Later in the epoch, revealed item ERPs were more negative than intact items. These data suggest that related tasks decrease familiarity and alter the signal-to-noise ratio of old and new items, whereas unrelated tasks affect processing in a different way that also results in the revelation effect. The implications for current theories of the revelation effect are discussed. (shrink)

Extending a strategy previously used by Clancy, Schacter, McNally, and Pitman , we administered a neutral and a trauma-related version of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm to a sample of women reporting recovered or repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse , women reporting having always remembered their abuse , and women reporting no history of abuse . We found that individuals reporting recovered memories of CSA are more prone than other participants to falsely recalling and recognizing neutral words that were never presented. (...) Moreover, our study is the first to show that this finding even held when trauma-related material was involved. Correlational analyses revealed that fantasy proneness, but not self-reported traumatic experiences and dissociative symptoms were related to false recall and false recognition. (shrink)

Participants studied lists of nonwords that were orthographic-phonologically similar to a nonpresented critical lure, which was also a nonword . Experiment 1 showed a high level of false recognition for the critical lure. Experiment 2 showed that the false recognition effect was also present for forewarned participants who were informed about the nature of the false recognition effect and told to avoid making false recognition judgments. The present results show that false recognition effects can be obtained even when the critical (...) lure itself is not stored during study. This finding is problematic for accounts that attribute false memories to implicit associative responses or spreading activation but is easily explained by global familiarity models of recognition memory. (shrink)

Are nonconscious processes sufficient to cause false memories of a nonstudied event? To investigate this issue, we controlled and measured conscious processing in the DRM task, in which studying associates causes false memories of nonstudied associates . During the study phase, subjects studied visually masked associates at extremely rapid rates, followed by immediate recall. After this initial phase, nonstudied test words were rapidly presented for perceptual identification, followed by recognition memory judgments. On the perceptual identification task, we found significant priming (...) of nonstudied associates, relative to control words. We also found significant false recognition of these nonstudied associates, even when subjects did not recall this word at study or identify it at test, indicating that nonconscious processes can cause false recognition. These recognition effects were found immediately after studying each list of associates, but not on a delayed test that occurred after the presentation of several intervening lists. Nonconscious processes are sufficient to cause this memory illusion on immediate tests, but may be insufficient for more vivid and lasting false memories. (shrink)

Recent models of cognition in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder predict that trauma-related, but not neutral, processing should be differentially affected in these patients, compared to trauma-exposed controls. This study compared a group of 50 patients with PTSD related to the war in Bosnia and a group of 50 controls without PTSD but exposed to trauma from the war, using the DRM method to induce false memories for war-related and neutral critical lures. While the groups were equally susceptible to neutral critical lures, (...) the PTSD group mistakenly recalled more war-related lures. Both false and correct recall were related more to depression than to self-rated trauma. Implications for accounts of false memories in terms of source-monitoring are discussed. (shrink)

This research examines the methodologies employed by cognitive psychologists to study “false memory,” and assesses if these methodologies are likely to facilitate scientific progress or perhaps constrain the conclusions reached. A PsycINFO search of the empirical publications in cognitive psychology was conducted through January, 2004, using the subject heading, “false memory.” The search produced 198 articles. Although there is an apparent false memory research bandwagon in cognitive psychology, with increasing numbers of studies published on this topic over the past decade, (...) few researchers have studied false memory as the term was originally intended—to specifically refer to planting memory for an entirely new event that was never experienced in an individual’s lifetime. Cognitive psychologists interested in conducting research relevant to assessing the authenticity of memories for child sexual abuse should consider the generalizability of their research to the planting of entirely new events in memory. (shrink)

We assessed the effect of suggestion on the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm and associated it with the Remember–Know–Guess paradigm. Undergraduate students were given either lists of semantically related words or texts containing these words. After the recall task, if participants did not produce the critical lure, the experimenter suggested that the word had been present, using either a question or an assertion ; these conditions were compared to a condition without suggestion. Afterwards, participants took a recognition test. The results showed that strong (...) suggestions lead to more false recognitions than other conditions and the state of consciousness associated with false recognitions tends to be a feeling of knowing rather than remembering, regardless of the verbal version . Therefore moderate suggestions did not lead to more false recognitions compare to no suggestion. We discuss the impact of suggestion on consciousness associated with false memories. (shrink)

Pezdek and Lam [Pezdek, K. & Lam, S. . What research paradigms have cognitive psychologists used to study “False memory,” and what are the implications of these choices? Consciousness and Cognition] claim that the majority of research into false memories has been misguided. Specifically, they charge that false memory scientists have been misusing the term “false memory,” relying on the wrong methodologies to study false memories, and misapplying false memory research to real world situations. We review each of these claims (...) and highlight the problems with them. We conclude that several types of false memory research have advanced our knowledge of autobiographical and recovered memories, and that future research will continue to make significant contributions to how we understand memory and memory errors. (shrink)

The present study examined whether individuals with full-blown memories of highly implausible events are prone to commit source monitoring errors. Participants reporting previous-life memories and those without such memories completed a false fame task. This task provides an index of source monitoring errors . Participants with previous-life memories had a greater tendency to judge the names of previously presented non-famous people as famous than control participants. The two groups did not differ in terms of correct recognition of new non-famous names (...) and famous names. Although dissociation, cognitive failures, sleep-related experiences, depressive symptoms, and signs of psychological distress were all significantly higher in participants with previous-life memories than in controls, these variables did not predict the false fame illusion. (shrink)

Vector-based models of word meaning have become increasingly popular in cognitive science. The appeal of these models lies in their ability to represent meaning simply by using distributional information under the assumption that words occurring within similar contexts are semantically similar. Despite their widespread use, vector-based models are typically directed at representing words in isolation, and methods for constructing representations for phrases or sentences have received little attention in the literature. This is in marked contrast to experimental evidence (e.g., in (...) sentential priming) suggesting that semantic similarity is more complex than simply a relation between isolated words. This article proposes a framework for representing the meaning of word combinations in vector space. Central to our approach is vector composition, which we operationalize in terms of additive and multiplicative functions. Under this framework, we introduce a wide range of composition models that we evaluate empirically on a phrase similarity task. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud (...) adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

The term "false memories" has been used to refer to suggestibility experiments in which whole events are apparently confabulated and in media accounts of contested memories of childhood abuse. Since 1992 psychologists have increasingly used the term "false memory" when discussing memory errors for details, such as specific words within word lists. Use of the term to refer to errors in details is a shift in language away from other terms used historically (e.g., "memory intrusions"). We empirically examine this shift (...) in language and discuss implications of the new use of the term "false memories." Use of the term presents serious ethical challenges to the data-interpretation process by encouraging over-generalization and misapplication of research findings on word memory to social issues. (shrink)

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by . Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the conditions with shorter presentation times (20 (...) ms in Experiment 1; 20 and 40 ms in Experiment 2) no memory for studied words, nor a false memory effect was found. We argue that there is at present no strong evidence supporting the claim for a nonconscious basis of the false memory effect. (shrink)

This article presents and discusses transcripts of some 270 explanations subjects provided subsequently for recognition memory decisions that had been associated with remember, know, or guess responses at the time the recognition decisions were made. Only transcripts for remember responses included reports of recollective experiences, which seemed mostly to reflect either effortful elaborative encoding or involuntary reminding at study, especially in relation to the self. Transcripts for know responses included claims of just knowing, and of feelings of familiarity. These transcripts (...) indicated that subjects were often quite confident of the accuracy of their decisions, compared with those for guess responses. Transcripts for decisions associated with guess responses also expressed feelings of familiarity but additionally revealed various strategies and inferences that did not directly reflect memory for studied items. The article concludes with a historical and theoretical overview of some interpretations of the states of awareness measured by these responses. (shrink)