False Memory Facilitation Through Semantic Overlap

This study investigated the effects of semantic overlap from multiple sources on false memories. Participants were presented with paired study lists comprising items highly associated with one nonstudied critical item. There were three types of list pairs: (1) the sharing condition, in which the words in both lists were classified into different semantic groups that converged on the same critical word (semantic overlap), (2) the repetition condition, in which the two lists comprised identical words, and (3) the single condition, in which the paired lists were attributed to different semantic groups that did not share a critical item. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with the paired study lists and responded to free recall tests and a recognition test including remember-know judgments. In Experiment 2, the participants responded to a recognition test, and the participants in Experiment 3 recalled the studied items. The results indicated that the false recall and false recognition rates in the sharing condition were higher than those in the repetition and single conditions. These results suggest that activation from multiple independent sources may have an accumulative additive effect. The findings are discussed in relation to the Activation-Monitoring theory.