Bilingual false recollection: an EEG study

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: False recollection in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm describes the phenomenon of remembering critical words, e.g., SLEEP that are thematically related to a list of study words, e.g., BED, REST, AWAKE. Different theoretical accounts of false recollection generate alternative predictions about the false memory effect. Activation monitoring theory (AMT) (Roediger & McDermott, 1999) assumes that false recollection of critical words results from failure to monitor the source of activation, which is the same process that is used to correctly identify studied words and thus support veridical recollection. Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) (Brainerd & Reyna, 2002) assumes that false memories arise because participants automatically infer the theme or meaning of studied words but confuse words presented at test with nonpresented items that are representative of that theme and veridical recollection depends on verbatim memory. The difference between these accounts is FTT allows for dissociable memory traces and AMT does not. …