Are false memories more difficult to forget than accurate memories? The effect of retention interval on recall and recognition.

What is the effect of retention interval on accurate and false recollection in the Deese, Roediger, and McDermott (DRM) procedure? Previous research has suggested that false recall is more persistent than accurate recall but the recognition results have been inconsistent. In two parametric studies, we tested recall and recognition for the same DRM lists, over retention intervals that ranged from no delay to a 2-month delay. We found that accurate and false memory were diminished by increases in retention interval, false memory persistence was present for recall and recognition, greater persistence for false memory than for accurate memory was more readily observed for recall than recognition, and the high-threshold (Pr), signal detection (d'), and nonparametric (A') recognition measures differed in their sensitivity for detecting change.

False memories are hard to inhibit: differential effects of directed forgetting on accurate and false recall in the DRM procedure.

Directed forgetting research shows that people can inhibit the retrieval of words that they were previously instructed to forget. The present research applied the directed forgetting procedure to the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) recall task to determine if directed forgetting instructions have similar or different effects on accurate and false memory. After studying lists of semantically related words, some participants were told to forget those lists, whereas other participants were not.