False recognition occurs more frequently during source identification thanduring old-new recognition

A number of recent reports have investigated false memories using variants of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Because these false memorie s have been difficult to eliminate, this study investigated whether false r ecognition could be reduced by incorporating source-monitoring criteria int o decision processes. Making claims about the manner in which items were le arned should require more careful scrutiny of memories, and therefore false recognition should be minimized with source instructions as compared with old-new recognition instructions. In 3 experiments that varied the combinat ion of sources, false recognition was increased rather than reduced by appl ying source-monitoring processes. The theoretical implications of these cou nterintuitive results are discussed in terms of the old-new detection compo nent of source judgments.