Memory Strength and Criterion Shift in the False Memory Paradigm: A Learning Case

doi:10.4236/psych.2011.23033

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Psychology

2011. Vol.2, No.3, 216-219

Memory Strength and Criterion Shift in the False Memory

Paradigm: A Learning Case

Shahid Naved, Ameer Haider Ali, Khubaib Ahmed Qureshi

Hamdard University, Karachi, Pakistan.

Email: [email protected]

Received February 28th, 2011; revised April 15th, 2011; accepted May 18th, 2011.

The attempt has been made to investigate the criterion shift hypothesis once again by re-evaluating the confi-

dence measurement, which will possibly clarify the role that criterion shifts play in the false memory phenome-

non (recollection of an event, or the details of an event, that did not occur). Literature review shows that this

hypothesis still needs research upon the same topic. The study was experimental in which students of Hamdard

University were selected as subjects—40 students from BBA and MBA programs. Both male/female and

left/right handed subjects participated. All the subjects were not native English speakers. The experiment was

conducted using a computer program to collect the data. The experiment had two parts, firstly a study/recall

phase and secondly a test/recognition phase. The scale we introduced to allow participants to assess their own

certainty about the classification of recognition items is more detailed than that used in the Roediger and

McDermott study. Our hypothesis was that a shift in decision criterion would become evident by means of a

lower certainty measure for lure words as compared to target words from the lists. This difference was found in

our data. The mean certainty measure we found for the critical lures is significantly lower than the mean cer-

tainty for the targets.

Keywords: Memory, Recognition, Lures, Associate Memory

Introduction

Roediger and McDermott (1995), by applying methods first

introduced by Deese (1959), have investigated the false mem-

ory phenomenon. In their study, subjects learned lists of words

strongly related to one non-presented word. In recognition and

recall tests, the non-presented strong association was recog-

nized and recalled at a rate comparable to actually presented

words. Specifically, in their first experiment, the non-presented

associates were recalled 40% of the time. The authors have

concluded that this procedure reliably creates false memories.

They put a heavy emphasis on the illusionary character of the

phenomenon, comparable to perceptual illusions. Additionally,

the effect could also be observed in cases where the subjects

were specifically informed that one would try to induce false

memories in them. Roediger and McDermott provided some

speculative explanatory approaches, one being that the false

memory experience is the result of a reconstructive process that,

in the case of auditory encoding, makes it possible for the sub-

ject to generate a representation of how the word would have

sounded if presented in the speaker’s voice. This clear repre-

sentation would make it plausible that the subjects wrongly

claim to remember the word’s presentation.

Miller and Wolford (1999) have reliably reproduced the

findings of Roediger and McDermott. In their opinion, however,

the high rates of false recall and recognition are due to a change

in the decision criterion. When asked to rate a presented item as

new/old, the strength of that particular item is generally be-

lieved to be made up of two factors. Firstly, the item gains evi-

dence of having been seen before through presentation. Addi-

tionally, however, the item also gains strength due to associa-

tive activation, meaning that an item semantically related to the

list items will be considered more likely to be old than unre-

lated items. If the strength of activation for a particular item

exceeds a certain threshold, it is considered to be old; otherwise

it will be classified as new. Yet, according to Miller and

Wolford (1999), the false memory phenomenon thus observed

does not really represent false memory. In their opinion, a

change in decision criteria, thus in the threshold for old/new

classification, is responsible for the phenomenon. More spe-

cifically, for the critical lures Miller and Wolford claim that the

decision criterion is lower than for unrelated lures, because

subjects judge the critical lures to be more likely to be old due

to the fact that they are strongly semantically related to the rest

of the list.

The thesis of Miller and Wolford has been criticized, for in-

stance by Wixted and Stretch (2000). Even though the claim

that the false memory phenomenon is only due to criterion shift

is quite controversial, even Wixted and Stretch admit that it is

uncertain if and to what extent criterion shifts contribute to

false memory. Further research is needed to answer this open

question.

The objective of this experiment is to test the criterion shift

hypothesis once again. We think that the introduction of a con-

fidence measurement could possibly clarify the role that crite-

rion shifts play in the false memory phenomenon. Thus, when

asked to judge an item, subjects will not only be asked to clas-

sify that item as being either new or old, but they will also be

asked to rate their own confidence about their decision on a

scale. If there is a change in the decision criterion during rec-

ognition of items and lures from a given list, then the rate of

false alarm for critical lures should be the same as in the

Roediger/McDermott experiment. However, the confidence

ratings for those items should generally be lower than the con-

S. NAVED ET AL. 217

fidence/memory strength ratings for presented items. This is,

after all, what is meant by a change in decision criterion: items

are judged to be old even though they have a lower activation

because the threshold for a positive decision is lower. Similar

measurements have been taken in the experiments by Roedi-

ger/McDermott and Miller/Wolford, but with a scaling that is

too rough to properly examine the distribution of memory

strength values.

Thus this experimental hypothesis is that criterion shifts

should become evident in our setting by means of lower mem-

ory strength/confidence measures for critical lures.

Methodology

Subjects

Due to the nature of the experiment, many more students

wanted to participate, however 40 subjects were randomly se-

lected from BBA and MBA programs. The ages ranged be-

tween 18 - 25 years, included both male/female and left/right

handed subjects participated. All subjects were not native Eng-

lish speakers.

Materials

Six lists of items by consulting the data from “Norms of

word association” by Russell (1954) were created. Every list

contained the 12 associates with the highest frequency from one

of Russell’s lists. We created seven recognition items per list,

one of which was the main associate of the original list. Among

these recognition items there were 2 unrelated items. These

were picked arbitrarily from the unused lists of Russell (1954).

Also, two weak associates were part of the recognition items

for each particular list. Those weak associates were taken from

the positions 13 and lower of the association norms. Finally,

two of the recognition items were studied words from the list.

One of these was the first item in the association norms list, the

other occurred somewhere in the first six positions. The recog-

nition items were presented in blocks of seven items, each

block corresponding to one studied list. One block always

started with a studied word and ended with the critical lure. The

order of the blocks corresponded to the order in which the lists

had been studied.

Procedure

The experiment was conducted using a computer program to

collect the data. Generally, the experiment had two parts, firstly

a study/recall phase and secondly a test/recognition phase.

During study phase, the lists were presented to the Subjects on

a computer screen one word at a time, each word presentation

lasting about 2 seconds. After the presentation of each list there

was a recall test, in which the Subjects were instructed to write

down as many words as they could remember from the previous

presentation. This process was repeated six times, once per list.

After the completion of the study/recall phase, there was a short

break, after which the recognition test took place. The instruc-

tions for this recognition test were displayed on each Subject's

computer screen. Then the recognition items were presented

one at a time in the order described in the materials section. For

each item, Subjects first had to decide whether it was a studied

item or an unstudied one. In both cases, they afterwards had to

rate their confidence on a scale of 1 (absolutely sure) ... 7 (not

sure at all).

At the end of the experiment, Subjects were given handouts

explaining the purpose of the experiment in which they had just

participated.

Results

We collected data for the old/new classification and for the

certainty measure. As expected, a high probability for “old”

classification was found for both lures and targets.

The certainty and old/new data was then compiled onto one

scale by multiplying the certainty value by –1 for words classi-

fied as “new” and by 1 for words classified as “old”. Thus, the

resulting scale ranged from –7 (absolutely sure the item is new)

to +7 (absolutely sure the item is old).

From Table 2 it can be seen that a difference in the mean

certainty for lure words and for targets was found.

The frequency distributions of the certainty values were also

computed, separately for each recognition item type:

Subsequently the standard error for both the mean certainty

values and the mean probability for an “old” response were

computed (Figure 5, Figure 6). Here the standard error of the

mean is indicated by the vertical lines through the data points.

A significant difference in mean certainty and mean probability

of old classification was found between targets and lure words.

Discussion

First of all, we reproduced the findings of Roediger/

Table 1.

Mean probability of “old” classification.

Item Type Mean P (Old)

Lures 0.7

Target 0.88

Weakly related 0.09

Unrelated 0.04

Table 2.

Mean certainty measure after rescal i ng (Scale from −7 to 7).

Item Type Mean Certainty

Lures 2.88

Target 5.05

Weakly related −4.34

Unrelated −5.23

S. NAVED ET AL.

218

Figure 1.

Histogram lure items certainty.

Figure 2.

Histogram target item certainty.

Figure 3.

Histogram weekly related items certainty.

McDermott (1995). The false alarm rates found for critical non-

studied lure words were almost as high as in the Roedi-

ger/McDermott study. The scale we introduced to allow par-

ticipants to assess their own certainty about the classification of

recognition items is more detailed than that used in the Roedi-

ger/McDermott study (1995).

Figure 4.

Histogram unrelated item certainty text with figure.

Figure 5.

Standard error of mean P (old) per item type.

Figure 6.

Standard error of me a n c e r ta i n t y p e r i t e m t y p e.

Our hypothesis was that a shift in decision criterion would

become evident by means of a lower certainty measure for lure

words as compared to target words from the lists. This differ-

ence was found in our data. The mean certainty measure we

found for the critical lures is significantly lower than the mean

certainty for the targets. The reason for this is most probably

S. NAVED ET AL. 219

the range of our certainty scale, since similar measurements

with a rougher scaling were taken for instance by Roediger/

McDermott (1995) and no such effect was found.

The question remains what this means for the ongoing dis-

cussion about the role that criterion shift plays in the false

memory phenomenon.

Conclusion

The fact that lower certainty measures could actually be col-

lected for critical lures indicates that criterion shift cannot be

ignored when discussing the false memory phenomenon. This

implies that it is very unlikely that associative models alone can

account for the false memory phenomenon.

At the same time, our results provide no further information

concerning the role of associative processes in the phenomenon.

Further research examining the exact mechanisms at work here

is needed to clarify the role that these processes play in the

phenomenon. Thus, it can by no means be ruled out that in fact

an interaction of associative mechanisms and mechanisms of

shifts in decision criterion result in the false memory effect.

Possibly the effect we found is weaker than it actually could

have been. This is because a number of participants reported

that they found the scaling range from 1 (not sure) to 7 (abso-

lutely sure) confusing. Thus it can be assumed that a number of

them made minor rating mistakes while assessing their certainty.

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