The Scope Of Variables On False Recognition

Since Bartlett began to study false memory , more and more psychologists came to focus on the phenomena. Deese' s(1959) and Rodiger & McDermott' s(1995) research work brought the study of false memory into a new stage. The study of false memory had important meanings about discussing the rules of memory and reducing memory illusion.The main idea of this study was to discuss the influence of different category variables on false recognition. The experiment materials were Chinese words. Participants were students in South China Normal University. The independent variable was participants 's reaction rate. So the study discussed the influence of category items repeated, familiarity degree, typicality degree and category size on false recognition. Four experiments investigated the basis of false recognition errors caused by category variables. Experiment 1 showed that false recognition response to nonstudied category members increased with the number of items from the same category that were presented at encoding. Participants in Experiment 2 made more false recognition response to category members of high familiarity degree. Participants in Experiment 3 made more false recognition response to category members of high typicality degree. Participants in Experiment 4 made more false recognition response to category members of small categories.