Representation of shared surface information and false memory for abstract versus concrete pictures in the conjoint recognition paradigm.

An effective factor by which false memories can arise is relatedness which includes not only semantic associations but also perceptual resemblance. This issue raises questions about how patterns of perceptual features are represented in memory and how they relate to semantic representations. In five experiments, we investigated the memory processes underlying the false recognition of perceptually or semantically related pictures from the perspective of fuzzy trace theory. Multinomial processing tree model analyses for the conjoint recognition paradigm showed that the parameter representing gist trace retrieval not only contributes to false acceptances of semantically related pictures, but also underlies the false recognition of non-semantically related abstract shapes. These results challenged the hypothesis that the false recognition of non-semantically related distractors is solely due to interference with the verbatim suppression process. These experiments also showed that adding a surface feature (colour) to the category exemplars increases false recognition of related distractors by enhancing the contribution of the familiarity process, but only for pictures of real objects. Comparisons between experiments showed that different variants of the conjoint recognition model, used to analyse the effects of the same experimental manipulation, can lead to partially different conclusions.