Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - A brighter side to memory illusions: False memories prime children's and adults' insight-based problem solving
AU - Howe, Mark L.
AU - Garner, Sarah R.
AU - Charlesworth, Monica
AU - Knott, Lauren
PY - 2011/2
Y1 - 2011/2
N2 - Can false memories have a positive consequence on human cognition? In two experiments, we investigated whether false memories could prime insight problem-solving tasks. Children and adults were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists whose critical lures were also the solutions to the problems. In Experiment 1, the results showed that regardless of age, when the critical lure was falsely recalled, CRAT problems were solved more often and significantly faster than problems that were not primed by a DRM list. When the critical lure was not falsely recalled, CRAT problem solution rates and times were no different from when there was no DRM priming. In Experiment 2, without an intervening recall test, children and adults still exhibited higher solution rates and faster solution times to CRAT problems that were primed than to those that were not primed. This latter result shows that priming occurred as a result of false memory generation at encoding and not at retrieval during the recall test. Together, these findings demonstrate that when false memories are generated at encoding, they can prime solutions to insight-based problems in both children and adults. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
AB - Can false memories have a positive consequence on human cognition? In two experiments, we investigated whether false memories could prime insight problem-solving tasks. Children and adults were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists whose critical lures were also the solutions to the problems. In Experiment 1, the results showed that regardless of age, when the critical lure was falsely recalled, CRAT problems were solved more often and significantly faster than problems that were not primed by a DRM list. When the critical lure was not falsely recalled, CRAT problem solution rates and times were no different from when there was no DRM priming. In Experiment 2, without an intervening recall test, children and adults still exhibited higher solution rates and faster solution times to CRAT problems that were primed than to those that were not primed. This latter result shows that priming occurred as a result of false memory generation at encoding and not at retrieval during the recall test. Together, these findings demonstrate that when false memories are generated at encoding, they can prime solutions to insight-based problems in both children and adults. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
KW - False memory
KW - Problem solving
KW - Compound remote associates task
KW - Memory and reasoning
KW - Memory development
KW - DRM paradigm
KW - ACTIVATION THEORY
KW - MULTIPLE
KW - LISTS
KW - NORMS
U2 - 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.08.012
DO - 10.1016/j.jecp.2010.08.012
M3 - Journal article
VL - 108
SP - 383
EP - 393
JO - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
JF - Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
SN - 0022-0965
IS - 2
ER -