Picture (im)perfect: Illusions of recognition memory produced by photographs at test

Photographs have been found to affect a variety of psychological judgments. For example, nonprobative but semantically related photographs may increase beliefs in the truth of general knowledge statements (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19 (5), 969–974, 2012 ; Newman et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41 (5), 1337–1348, 2015 ). Photographs can also create illusions of memory (Cardwell, Henkel, Garry, Newman, & Foster, Memory & Cognition , 44 (6), 883–896, 2016 ; Henkel, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25 (1), 78–86, 2011 ; Henkel & Carbuto, 2008 ). A candidate mechanism for these effects is that a photograph increases the fluency with which a statement or an event is processed. The present study was conducted to determine whether photos at test can induce illusions of recognition memory and to test the viability of a conceptual fluency explanation of these effects. The results of the present study suggest that photographs enhance the fluency of related words ( Experiment 1 ), that false memories can be produced by the mere presence of a related photo on a recognition memory test for words ( Experiments 2 & 3 ), and that these effects appear to be limited to conceptually based recognition tests ( Experiments 4 & 5 ). The results support the notion that photograph-based illusions of memory stem from the ability of related photographs to increase the speed and ease of conceptual processing.