The impact of fabrication on recognition memory: An experimental study

Abstract

We examined whether fabrication affects memory using a new paradigm combining the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm (DRM) and the Amsterdam Short Term Memory task (ASTM). Participants were assigned to either a forced fabrication or honest condition, and encoded emotionally-negative and neutral wordlists by reading words out loud. The wordlists contained words that were associatively related to each other (e.g., symphony, sound, piano, radio, sing, orchestra), and converged to a non-presented critical word (e.g., music). Next, all participants had to indicate two words that were previously read out loud. However, participants in the forced fabrication condition had to fabricate that they read two additional words out loud, which were associated to the same DRM list. Participants in the forced fabrication condition formed false memories for their self-generated fabrications. Although fabrication did not increase spontaneous false memory rates for non-presented critical words, our results did highlight the perils of forcing people to fabricate.