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Sketchpad Series

False memory and Individual Differences in Generalization and Specificity

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Cheyna Warner¹ (cheyna@uoregon.edu), Lainey Costa¹, Dagmar Zeithamova¹; ¹University of Oregon

The Deese, Roediger, and McDermott (DRM) paradigm is used to induce false memory in the laboratory. In the task, participants study and recall lists of related words (e.g., bed, dream, pillow). False memory manifests by recall of critical lures: words that are semantically related to the list items but never presented (e.g., sleep). False memory in the DRM is thought to rely on the extraction of a gist across the related information. But what processes underlie gist? Two main theories state that gist reflects either a lack of specificity in memory trace or an adaptive generalization process. We address this question by testing how individual differences in DRM false recall relate to the ability to remember differentiating details versus the ability to apply learned information to new scenarios. Participants completed the DRM paradigm along with measures of memory specificity and generalization. Results show that DRM false alarm rates are negatively related to specificity measures and unrelated to generalization measures. These findings indicate that DRM false alarms are driven by a lack of specificity in the memory trace rather than a adaptive generalization process.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic