False recognition in women reporting recovered memories of sexual abuse

False recognition- the mistaken belief that one has previously encountered a novel item- was examined in four groups of subjects: women reporting reco vered memories of childhood sexual abuse, women who believe that they were sexually abused as children but who cannot recall this abuse (the "represse d" group), women who were sexually abused as children and always remembered the abuse ,and women with no history of childhood sexual abuse. Subjects w ere administered a Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. The results suggest t hat the recovered-memory group was more prone to false recognition than the other groups. In addition, women reporting recovered and repressed memorie s showed greater reduction in false recognition across study trials than di d other subjects, perhaps reflecting strategic changes in performance.