This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract Can false memories have a positive consequence on human cognition? In two experiments we investigated whether false memories could prime insight problem-solving tasks. Children and adults were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists whose critical lure was also the solution to the problem. In Experiment 1 the results showed that regardless of age, when the critical lure was falsely recalled, CRAT problems were solved more often and significantly faster than problems that were not primed by a DRM list. When the critical lure was not falsely recalled, CRAT problem solution rates and times were no different than when there was no DRM priming. In Experiment 2, without an intervening recall test, children and adults still exhibited higher solution rates and faster solution times to CRATs that were primed than CRATs that were not primed. This latter result shows that priming occurred as a result of false memory generation at encoding and not at retrieval during the recall test. Together these findings demonstrate that when false memories are generated at encoding they can prime solutions to insight-based problems in both children and adults. Permanent repository link

Three experiments investigated the effects of divided attention at encoding and retrieval on false recognition. In Experiment 1, participants studied word lists in either full or divided attention (random number generation) conditions and then took part in a recognition test with full attention. In Experiment 2, after studying word lists with full attention, participants carried out a recognition test with either full or divided attention. Experiment 3 manipulated attention at both study and test. We also compared Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) and categorized lists, due to recent claims regarding the locus of false memories produced by such lists (Smith, Gerkens, Pierce, & Choi, 2002). With both list types, false "remember" responses were reduced by divided attention at encoding and increased by divided attention at retrieval. The findings suggest that the production of false memories occurs as a result of the generation of associates at encoding and failures of source monitoring retrieval. Crucially, this is true for both DRM and categorized lists.

The capability of adult and child witnesses to accurately recollect events from the past and provide reliable testimony has been hotly debated for more than 100 years. Prominent legal cases of the 1980s and 1990s sparked lengthy debates and important research questions surrounding the fallibility and general reliability of memory. But what lessons have we learned, some 35 years later, about the role of memory in the judicial system? In this review, we focus on what we now know about the consequences of the fallibility of memory for legal proceedings. We present a brief historical overview of false memories that focuses on three critical forensic areas that changed memory research: children as eyewitnesses, historic sexual abuse and eyewitness (mis)identification. We revisit some of the prominent trials of the 1980s and 1990s to not only consider the role false memories have played in judicial decisions, but also to see how this has helped us understand memory today. Finally, we consider the way in which the research on memory (true and false) has been successfully integrated into some courtroom procedures.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link:

Memory experts, the police and the public completed a memory questionnaire containing a series of statements about autobiographical memory. The statements covered issues such as the nature of memory, determinants of accuracy and the relation of emotion and trauma to memory, and respondents indicated their agreement/disagreement with each of the statements. The police and public were found to share a ‘common sense’ memory belief system (CSMBS) in which memories were like videos/photographs, and accuracy was determined by the number of details recalled and also by their vividness. In direct contrast, the scientific memory belief system, held by memory researchers, largely based on scientific evidence, was the opposite of the CSMBS and memories were judged to be fragmentary, number of details and their nature did not predict accuracy, and memories and their details could be in error and even false. The problematic nature of the CSMBS, which is pervasive in society, in raising the probability of flawed judgments of memory evidence is considered and, by way of illustration, applied to the (very high) attrition rate in complaints of rape.