False Memory for Pictures and Their Names

In order to explore how language planning influences memory, we investigated how lexical, conceptual, and perceptual properties of items affected accurate and false memory to picture lures of various types (state, exemplar, and color lures). We varied whether the item name needed to be generated or could be read to elicit the generation effect– a memory benefit for generated items. We also varied lexical and conceptual properties of items, such as the similarity of the lure and target, word length, word frequency, name agreement, prototypicality, and familiarity. Generation increased hits and decreased false alarms for exemplar and state lures, and increased hits as well as false alarms for color lures. Several item-level factors influenced false alarm performance but did not interact with generation. This shows how generation enhances both conceptual and lexical levels of processing, at the cost of memory for perceptual details.