The roles of associative responses at study and semantically guided recollection at test in false memory: the Kirkpatrick and Deese hypotheses

False recall is found for semantically related words that are not presented on both categorized and associatively structured study lists. Four experiments provide evidence that the associative list method produces false memories because of semantic processes involved in studying list words (the Kirkpatrick hypothesis), but that false memories produced by categorized lists occur because of the use of semantic knowledge at test (the Deese hypothesis). In a free association task, words from associative lists, but not categorized lists, tended to evoke critical words as responses, indicating that our categorized list words have low associative strength to critical nonpresented items. Studying those associative lists, but not the categorized ones, produced indirect priming effects in stem completion. Critical nonpresented words from categorized lists showed a priming effect only when participants were instructed at test to try to complete stems with studied list words (i.e., stem cued-recall). The results highlight important differences between categorized and associative list methods, and indicate that false memories can be caused by semantic processes that occur at the time of a memory test.