Do you remember? Effects of lexical predictability on false and true recognition memory

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Linguistics

Background:

• Prediction, the anticipation of linguistic elements during reading, impacts immediate language processing.
• Conflicting theories exist on whether prediction influences stored memory representations, specifically false and true memories.
• Existing accounts suggest false memory arises from prediction during encoding or retrieval, while true memory is enhanced by schema congruency or novelty.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how prediction affects the formation of both false and true memories.
• To differentiate between prediction-based and retrieval-based accounts of false memory formation.
• To examine the roles of schema congruency and prediction error in true memory formation.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Manipulated prediction-disconfirming words during encoding to assess prediction error effects on memory.
• Experiment 2: Investigated false memory for unpredictable words to test the role of prediction.
• Experiment 3: Varied encoding conditions to explore the impact of predictability and congruency on memory.

Main Results:

• False memory is influenced by both prediction and retrieval-based activation, with retrieval-based activation having a larger impact.
• True memory is enhanced by both schema congruency and the magnitude of prediction error.
• Prediction plays a role in false memory, but retrieval-based activation is a more significant factor.

Conclusions:

• Both true and false memory formation are driven by multiple cognitive processes.
• Findings suggest a need for a unified framework to understand the complex interplay of factors in memory.
• Prediction and retrieval mechanisms interact to shape memory representations.