Context recollection and false memory of critical lures in the deese/roediger-mcdermott paradigm: The role of encoding-and retrieval-based mechanisms

Abstract

We examined the role of context memory for false recognition of critical lures and for illusory recollection of context in the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. In order to manipulate context (colour) memory, we asked the participants to read vs. generate items during the study and we presented items from one list using blocked-or mixed-colour formats. Both manipulations confirmed its influence on colour identification. Using signal detection analyses, we estimated memory sensitivity and response bias parameters, assuming that the former reflects encoding-mechanism influences, whereas the latter reflects retrieval-based mechanism effects. Our results showed no evidence for diagnostic monitoring, that is, the participants did not use failure of colour recollection as a retrieval strategy for lures rejection. However, we also showed that in the blocked-colour condition, the better memory for targets colours was related to a better gist memory and a stronger proneness to attribute the list-colour to corresponding critical lures. We interpret these results as indicating that participants "misbind" contextual details to activated critical lures at encoding and/or "borrow" these details at retrieval to corroborate the strong familiarity of critical lures.