Misguided multiplication: Creating false memories with numbers rather thanwords

We built Deese (1959)/Roediger and McDermott (1995) (DRM) false memory list s composed of multiplication problems rather than words. Half these lists c ontained table-related, near neighbors (e.g., 3 x 7 = ??, 3 x 9 = ??) of a missing multiplication answer lure (e.g., 24). The other half contained pro blems unrelated to the lure (e.g., 5 x 5 = ??, 11 x 3 = ??). Participants s olved each problem in a single list and then took immediate recognition (Ex periment 1) or recall and then recognition tests (Experiment 2) for the ans wers. Many people misremembered that the lure was an answer to a study-phas e problem, but only when solving the study list that contained the lure's n eighbors. False memory was also greater for some list-lure combinations tha n others, as seen previously with words. We have thus demonstrated that num bers can also produce false memory, and we use the mental math and DRM task literatures to explain these results.