Lexical association and false memory for words in two cultures

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Memory Studies

Background:

• False memories, particularly those generated by the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, are influenced by semantic associations.
• Cross-linguistic differences in language experience may impact the formation and susceptibility to false memories.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the relationship between language experience and false memory formation using the DRM paradigm.
• To compare the influence of lexical association strength (co-occurrence and backward association) on false memory in Chinese and American participants.

Main Methods:

• Translated DRM word lists into Chinese.
• Administered false recall and false recognition tests to Chinese participants.
• Calculated average word co-occurrence rates from Chinese corpora.
• Analyzed correlations between lexical association measures and false memory performance.

Main Results:

• Significant correlation between American and Taiwanese participants' false recognition, but not false recall.
• Word co-occurrence rates significantly correlated with false recall and recognition in Taiwanese participants, but not American participants.
• Backward association strength correlated with false recall in American participants, but not Taiwanese participants.

Conclusions:

• Language experience, specifically lexical association strength and word co-occurrence, plays a significant role in shaping false memory.
• Cultural and linguistic differences mediate the relationship between lexical associations and false memory susceptibility.