Associative processes in false recall and false recognition

Studying a list of words associated to a critical nonpresented word results in high rates of false recall and false recognition for that nonpresented item (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Two experiments examined the effect of manipulating the number of associates presented on false recall and later false recognition of a nonpresented item: In Experiment 1, associate lists of varying lengths were studied; in Experiment 2, list length was held constant and the number of associates within the list was manipulated. In both experiments, the rate of critical intrusions in recall increased steadily with increasing number of associates studied. Most notably, the filler words used in Experiment 2 to equate the list lengths did not affect the rate of critical intrusions, although they did depress recall of studied words. False recall and false recognition appear to be tied to the total, not the mean associative strength of items in the list.