False Recognition False Recognition: Words and Images

For the last century, psychologists have been very interested in the reasons why and how our memory system fails us. The purpose of the present study is to determine whether participants will recognize more false items when presented with a list of words or presented with the same words as a series of images. A total of 28 undergraduate students participated in this study including 14 females and 14 males. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions; a word condition or an image condition. Immediately after they were given a list of words or a sequence of images, they were asked to identify which ones had been in the previously viewed list or sequence. Results indicated that the false recognition rate was significantly lower for the participants in the image condition than for participants in the word condition and no significant gender differences were foimd. Limitations and possibilities for future research are discussed