Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) found that when adult subjects imagined childhood events, these events were subsequentlyjudged as more likely to have occurred than were not-imagined events, The authors termed this effect imagination inflation, We replicated the effect, using a novel set of Life Events Inventory events. Further, we tested whether the effect is related to four subject characteristics possibly associated with false memory creation. The extent to which subjects inflated judged likelihood following imagined events was associated with indices of hypnotic suggestibility and dissociativity, but not with vividness of imagery or interrogative suggestibility. Results suggest that imagination plays a role in subsequent likelihood judgments regarding childhood events, and that some individuals are more likely than others to experience imagination inflation.

This study investigated whether true autobiographical memories are qualitatively distinct from false autobiographical memories using a variation of the interview method originally reported by E. F. Loftus and J. Pickrell (1995). Participants recalled events provided by parents on 3 separate occasions and were asked to imagine true and false unremembered events. True memories were rated by both participants and observers as more rich in recollective experience and were rated by participants as more important, more emotionally intense, as having clearer imagery, and as less typical than false memories. Rehearsal frequency was used as a covariate, eliminating these effects. Imagery in true memories was most often viewed from the field perspective, whereas imagery in false memories was most often viewed from the observer perspective. More information was communicated in true memories, and true memories contained more information concerning the consequences of described events. Results suggest repeated remembering can make false memories more rich in recollective experience and more like true memories. Differences between true and false memories suggest some potentially distinct characteristics of false memories and provide insight into the process of false memory creation.

In 3 experiments the type of model that is best for conceptualizing the attentive similarity of natural textures was investigated. Different groups of participants placed pictures into groups however they wished, described the resulting clusters and multidimensional scaling dimensions, identified the objects or surfaces depicted in the pictures, and ranked the pictures along several hypothesized attribute-based dimensions. Results indicate that similarity is context dependent, that natural textures seem to be organized according to family resemblances, and that a dimensional model is inappropriate. These outcomes suggest that models of preattentive segregation and attentive cognition may be incommensurable.

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