The Rise and Fall of False Recall: The Impact of Presentation Duration

The effect of presentation duration on false recall induced by presentation of semantically associated and phonologically associated word lists was examined. When 16-word lists comprised of semantically related words (e.g., bed, yawn) were presented at short durations (i.e., 20 or 250 ms/word), false recall of related but nonpresented words (e.g., sleep) increased with increasing duration. However, at longer presentation durations (i.e., 1000, 3000, or 5000 ms/word), false recall declined with increasing presentation duration. This pattern resolves discrepancies among previous experiments investigating the effects of presentation duration on associatively induced false recall. Further, these data constrain theoretical accounts of false recall in that single-process models cannot readily account for these effects. We propose a dual-process model that appears to account for these findings and much of the extant literature. Phonologically related lists (e.g., sweep, sleet) exhibited a very different pattern of results at the short presentation durations; specifically, false recall was exceedingly high at the fastest duration and declined as duration lengthened. Similarities and differences between the mechanisms underlying semantically and phonologically induced false recall are considered.