False Memories and Source Monitoring

This article investigates the relation between misremembering and source judgments in both the misleading information paradigm and the false memory paradigm. A computational model, CHARM (Composite Holographic Associative Recall Model), is used to simulate source monitoring in both paradigms. Despite the fact that CHARM stores memories in a composite memory trace, it is shown that the model can account for source judgements, and can explain the discrepancy between the source judgement and the recognition data in the misleading information paradigm. It also can account for the basic phenomena of the false memory paradigm, wherein thematically related items induce a memory for a nonpresented but prototypical critical item. In two experiments linking these two research lines, we presented the critical item in a different list from that used to induce the false memory effect. Although the model predicted that the presentation of the critical item should increase the false memory effect, its presentation inhibited false memories instead—but only with particular word lists and in certain treatment combinations. It seems likely that the presence of the critical item in an alternate list allowed people to use an exclusionary rule to inhibit the false memories. Such a rule would be straightforward to implement in CHARM, and could allow the model to account for this false memory suppression effect.