“False memory” is a linguistic convenience.

Abstract

The term false memory describes outcomes to various procedures and techniques, such as coming to believe that suggested false events occurred, acceptance of postevent misinformation, and recognition of critical lures in the Deese−Roediger−McDermott (DRM) procedure. The literature to date has indicated that these memory errors intercorrelate poorly, if at all. However, issues with sample size and measurement reliability may have affected prior estimates. This study examined links among these 3 techniques in a sizable sample (N = 360), with attention to the reliability of procedures and measures. Weak but statistically reliable correlations emerged between false-event suggestion and postevent misinformation, and between postevent misinformation and DRM intrusions; correlations between false-event suggestion and DRM were weak and inconsistent. These effects were influenced by largely independent underlying mechanisms. The term false memory lacks precision and requires qualification.

Are children better witnesses than adolescents? Developmental trends in different false memory paradigms

“…Our correlational results showed no statistically significant relationship between DRM false memories (both recall and recognition) and false memories as elicited by the memory conformity paradigm. This echoes previous work showing that false memories as measured by different paradigms evince a weak relationship (i.e., Bernstein et al, 2018;Ost et al, 2013;Otgaar & Candel, 2009;Patihis et al 2013;Zhu et al, 2010). Our results imply that spontaneous false memories and false memories induced by suggestion are formed in different ways.…”

“…On the other hand, the research on spontaneous false memories has indicated that children are less susceptible to false memories (Anastasi & Rhodes, 2008;Metzger et al, 2008). This implies that false memory does not refer to a unitary concept and that different methods used to induce false memories produce different outcomes, which are carried by different mechanisms (Bernstein, Scoboria, Desjarlais, & Soucie, 2018). To further examine this, researchers should follow two important steps in their investigations.…”

“…Despite the lack of research properly addressing these issues, there are some studies being conducted following these two steps (i.e., Bernstein et al, 2018;Ost et al, 2013;Otgaar, Candel, Merckelbach, & Wade, 2009;Patihis et al 2013;Zhu et al, 2010). For example, Otgaar and Candel (2011) explored developmental trends using different types of false memory paradigms.…”

False memory tasks do not reliably predict other false memories.

“…These findings, combined with converging current research (Bernstein, Scoboria, Desjarlais, & Soucie, 2017) and past research (e.g. Ost et al, 2013), suggest that it may be difficult to identify false-memory prone individuals who are especially susceptible to memory distortions in different contexts.…”

Who is susceptible in three false memory tasks?

“…However, other studies have failed to find a relationship between misinformation and DRM false memories (Calvillo & Parong, 2016;Monds, Paterson, & Kemp, 2017;Ost et al, 2013), between DRM and false event suggestion (Otgaar & Candel, 2011), or between imagination inflations for childhood events and for simple actions performed in the laboratory (Calvillo et al, 2018). Only two studies to date have examined correlations between false memories in misinformation, DRM, and false event suggestion manipulations, and both failed to find any correlations among them (Bernstein, Scoboria, Desjarlais, & Soucie, 2018;Patihis, Frenda, & Loftus, 2018). Overall, the research describes largely null relationships between false memories of different paradigms, but none so far have explored false memories specifically in the misinformation, DRM, and imagination inflation paradigms all within subjects.…”