FOCUS ON RESEARCH I Could Swear I Heard It

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Constructing Memories
remembered from it. Those who had read the “proposal” version recalled nice things
about the man, such as that he wanted the woman to meet his parents. Those who read
the “assault” version recalled negative things, such as that the man liked to drink a lot.
However, neither kind of information had actually been part of the original story. The
participants had “recalled” memories of the man that they had constructed in accordance with their overall impression of him (Carli, 1999).
B
FOCUS ON RESEARCH
y constructing our own versions of
what we have seen and heard, we may
I Could Swear I Heard It!
remember an event differently from the
way it actually happened. These errors, called
false memories, can occur in relation to anything from the objects present in a room to
the identity of an armed robber (Clancy et al., 2000). Later, we consider how false memories might color eyewitness testimony and reports of sexual abuse in childhood. For
now, though, let’s take a look at how researchers study false memories about less dramatic, everyday experiences.
■ What was the researchers’ question?
How easy is it for people to form false memories? Henry Roediger and Kathleen
McDermott (1995) addressed this question in an experiment to test for false memories
as people recalled lists of words that had been read to them.
■ How did the researchers answer the question?
On each of sixteen trials, college students heard a different list of words. Each list related
to a particular theme. For example, the “cold” list contained fifteen words such as sleet,
slush, frost, white, snow, and so on. Yet the list’s theme word—in this case, cold—was not
included. On half of these trials, the students were simply asked to recall as many words
as possible from the list as they had just heard. But on the other half, the students did
math problems instead of trying to recall the words. Once all sixteen lists had been presented, the students were given a new list of words and asked to say which of them they
recognized as having been on the lists they had heard earlier. Some of the words on this
new list were theme words, such as cold, that had not been presented earlier. Would the
students “remember” hearing these theme words on the list even though they hadn’t?
And if so, how confident would they be about their “memory” of these words?
■ What did the researchers find?
The students falsely, but confidently, recognized the theme words from twelve of the sixteen lists. In fact, theme words were falsely recognized as often as listed words were
correctly recognized. As you might expect, the chance of accurately recognizing the
listed words was greater when the students had been allowed to recall them shortly
after hearing them. However, false memory of never-presented theme words occurred
in both conditions.
■ What do the results mean?
The results of this study suggest that the participants could not always distinguish
words they had heard from those they had not heard. Why? The never-presented theme
words “belonged” with the lists of presented words and apparently were “remembered”
because they fit logically into the gaps in the students’ memories. In short, the students’
knowledge of words that should have been included on the lists created a “memory”
that they were presented.
■ What do we still need to know?
Studies such as this one make it clear that memory is constructive and that memory
distortion and inaccuracy are commonplace (Schacter et al., 1998; Schmolck et al.,