MEMORY ILLUSIONS - RECALLING, RECOGNIZING, AND RECOLLECTING EVENTS THAT NEVER OCCURRED

Three experiments that document a powerful false memory effect in reca ll and recognition are reported. Subjects studied Lists of items relat ed to critical nonpresented themes (e.g., sleep, needle) and then comp leted recognition and/or recall tests, as well as various metamemory t asks (e.g., remember/know, source monitoring). Results showed that the critical nonpresented items were recalled and recognized nearly as of ten as studied items. False recognition of critical nonpresented items did not decrease over a 24-h retention interval, whereas the recognit ion rate for studied items did decrease significantly. The false memor y effect also increased across successive recall tests. Subjects' resp onses on the metamemory tasks indicated that they experienced the crit ical nonpresented items as being very similar to the presented items t hat were recalled and/or recognized. Subjects were even willing to ind icate which of two persons speaking the study items had spoken the cri tical nonpresented items that were recalled. Results are discussed in terms of fuzzy trace theory and it is argued that these false memory e ffects represent memory illusions that may yield important insights in to normal human memory processes. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.