Effects of Contextual Cues on False Memory: A Comparative Experimental Approach

Abstract

Research on false memory formation using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm has been extensively conducted in Western contexts. Yet, a significant gap remains in experimental investigations within South Asian populations, particularly in Pakistan. Existing studies, such as those on the Visual Mandela Effect, have explored collective false memories; however, they lack controlled experimental manipulation of contextual variables. To address this gap, the study examined the impact of contextual cues, both visual and auditory, and the effect of no contextual cues, on false memory formation. Sixty participants (aged 18–40) were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Visual and Auditory Cues, Visual Cues only, and Word List only. Each group was presented with three semantically themed DRM word lists across three recall blocks. A between-subjects one-way ANOVA revealed statistically significant differences in the recall of critical lures across groups, with the highest false memory incidence observed in the combined cue condition, [F (2,57) = 14.505, p < .001, η² = .337]. Post hoc analyses further confirmed that exposure to multimodal cues significantly increased susceptibility to false memories compared to the control condition. However, a repeated-measures of ANOVA indicated no significant change in critical lure recall across the three blocks within groups. Additionally, the control group demonstrated higher accurate recall and lower intrusion rates. These findings underscore the role of sensory contextual cues in modulating memory distortion and contribute novel cross-cultural evidence to the literature on memory and cognition. The study holds implications for legal, clinical, and educational settings where memory accuracy is critical.

References

Ahmed, W., Imtiaz, K., Muzammil, M., & Khan, S. M. (2025). Leadership Outcomes through the Lens of Workplace Spirituality and Character Development. Inverge Journal of Social Sciences, 4(4), 17–30. https://doi.org/10.63544/ijss.v4i4.176  

Akdoğan, M., Akırmak, Ü., & Gürsoy, İ. (2021). Summary an examination of the false memory rates of Turkish words with the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm.

Alakbarova, D., Hicks, J. L., & Ball, B. H. (2021). The influence of semantic context on false memories. Memory & Cognition, 49(8), 1555–1567. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-021-01182-1

Anglada-Tort, M., Baker, T., & Müllensiefen, D. (2018). False memories in music listening: Exploring the misinformation effect and individual difference factors in auditory memory. Memory, 27(5), 612–627. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2018.1545858

Arndt, J. (2010). The role of memory activation in creating false memories of encoding context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36(1), 66–79. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017394

Atilgan, H., Town, S. M., Wood, K. C., Jones, G. P., Maddox, R. K., Lee, A. K. C., & Bizley, J. K. (2018). Integration of visual information in auditory cortex promotes auditory scene analysis through multisensory binding. Neuron, 97(3), 640–655.e4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2017.12.034

Baddeley, A. (2000). The episodic buffer: A new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(11), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01538-2

Brainerd, C. J., & Reyna, V. F. (Eds.). (2005). The science of false memory. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195154054.001.0001

Brainerd, C. J., Reyna, V. F., & Ceci, S. J. (2008). Developmental reversals in false memory: A review of data and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 134(3), 343–382. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.134.3.343

Brockmole, J. R., Castelhano, M. S., & Henderson, J. M. (2006). Contextual cueing in naturalistic scenes: Global and local contexts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(4), 699–706. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.32.4.699

Burgess, N., & Hitch, G. (2005). Computational models of working memory: Putting long-term memory into context. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(11), 535–541. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.09.011

Cabeza, R., Rao, S. M., Wagner, A. D., Mayer, A. R., & Schacter, D. L. (2001). Can medial temporal lobe regions distinguish true from false? An event-related functional MRI study of veridical and illusory recognition memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(8), 4805–4810. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.081082698

Campbell, J. M., Edwards, M. S., Horswill, M. S., & Helman, S. (2007). Effects of contextual cues in recall and recognition memory: The misinformation effect reconsidered. British Journal of Psychology, 98(3), 485–498. https://doi.org/10.1348/000712606x160768

Chen, J. C., Li, W., Westerberg, C. E., & Tzeng, O. J. (2008). Test-item sequence affects false memory formation: An event-related potential study. Neuroscience Letters, 431(1), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2007.11.020

Chun, M. M., & Jiang, Y. (1998a). Contextual cueing: Implicit learning and memory of visual context guides spatial attention. Cognitive Psychology, 36(1), 28–71. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1998.0681

Chun, M. M., & Jiang, Y. (1998b). Contextual cueing: Implicit learning and memory of visual context guides spatial attention. Cognitive Psychology, 36(1), 28–71. https://doi.org/10.1006/cogp.1998.0681

Craik, F. I. M., & Schloerscheidt, A. M. (2011). Age-related differences in recognition memory: Effects of materials and context change. Psychology and Aging, 26(3), 671–677. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0022203

Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(1), 17–22. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0046671

Faizan, M., Yousaf, A., & Khan, S. M. (2025). Psychological Contract Breach and Its Consequences on Employee Turnover Intentions, Job Satisfaction, and Organizational Commitment: Insights from Human Resource Management and Workplace Psychology. Inverge Journal of Social Sciences, 4(3), 262–273. https://doi.org/10.63544/ijss.v4i3.164  

Gallo, D. A. (2010). False memories and fantastic beliefs: 15 years of the DRM illusion. Memory & Cognition, 38(7), 833–848. https://doi.org/10.3758/mc.38.7.833

Gallo, D. A., McDermott, K. B., Percer, J. M., & Roediger, H. L. (2001). Modality effects in false recall and false recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(2), 339–353. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.2.339

Gisquet-Verrier, P., & Riccio, D. C. (2018). Memory integration: An alternative to the consolidation/reconsolidation hypothesis. Progress in Neurobiology, 171, 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2018.10.002

Hina, B., Agha, N., & Rashdi, S. M. F. (2025). Gendered Barriers: How Patriarchal Norms Shape Married Women’s Employment in Sukkur City. Inverge Journal of Social Sciences, 4(3), 311–318. https://doi.org/10.63544/ijss.v4i3.169

Hockley, W. E., Bancroft, T. D., & Bryant, E. (2012). Associative and familiarity-based effects of environmental context on memory. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale, 66(2), 81–89. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027136

Howe, M. L. (2011). The adaptive nature of memory and its illusions. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(5), 312–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411416571

Jiang, Y. V., & Sisk, C. A. (2019). Contextual cueing. Neuromethods, 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/7657_2019_19

Kansteiner, W. (2002). Finding meaning in memory: A methodological critique of collective memory studies. History and Theory, 41(2), 179–197. https://doi.org/10.1111/0018-2656.00198

Kellogg, R. T. (2001). Presentation modality and mode of recall in verbal false memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(4), 913–919. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.27.4.913

Kurkela, K. A., & Dennis, N. A. (2016). Event-related fMRI studies of false memory: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis. Neuropsychologia, 81, 149–167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.12.006

Lindsay, D. S., Hagen, L., Read, J. D., Wade, K. A., & Garry, M. (2004). True photographs and false memories. Psychological Science, 15(3), 149–154. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.01503002.x

Loftus, E. F. (2005). Planting misinformation in the human mind: A 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory. Learning & Memory, 12(4), 361–366. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.94705

Loftus, E. F., & Pickrell, J. E. (1995). The formation of false memories. Psychiatric Annals, 25(12), 720–725. https://doi.org/10.3928/0048-5713-19951201-07

Lopes, E. J., & Garcia, R. B. (2014). On the possibility of using reaction time to study false memories. Psychology & Neuroscience, 7(3), 393–397. https://doi.org/10.3922/j.psns.2014.047

Loprinzi, P. D. (2023). Effects of pictorial and imagery encoding on false memories.

Malmberg, K. J., Raaijmakers, J. G. W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (2019). 50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). Memory & Cognition, 47(4), 561–574. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00896-7

Marian, V., Hayakawa, S., & Schroeder, S. R. (2021). Cross-modal interaction between auditory and visual input impacts memory retrieval. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 15, Article 661477. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.661477

McDermott, K. B. (1996). The persistence of false memories in list recall. Journal of Memory and Language, 35(2), 212–230. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1996.0012

Meyerhoff, H. S., Jaggy, O., Papenmeier, F., & Huff, M. (2022). Long-term memory representations for audio-visual scenes. Memory & Cognition, 51. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-022-01355-6

Neuschatz, J. S., Wetmore, S. A., & Gronlund, S. D. (2015). Memory gaps and memory errors. In Emerging trends in the social and behavioral sciences (pp. 1–13). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118900772.etrds0215

Olszewska, J. M., Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., Munier, E., & Bendler, S. A. (2015). Misremembering what you see or hear: Dissociable effects of modality on short- and long-term false recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(5), 1316–1325. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000115

Paas, F., & Sweller, J. (2012). An evolutionary upgrade of cognitive load theory: Using the human motor system and collaboration to support the learning of complex cognitive tasks. Educational Psychology Review, 24(1), 27–45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-011-9179-2

Paivio, A. (1990). Dual coding theory. In Mental representations (pp. 53–83). https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195066661.003.0004

Pardilla-Delgado, E., & Payne, J. D. (2017). The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task: A simple cognitive paradigm to investigate false memories in the laboratory. Journal of Visualized Experiments, (119). https://doi.org/10.3791/54793

Pearse, S. L., Powell, M. B., & Thomson, D. M. (2003). The effect of contextual cues on children’s ability to remember an occurrence of a repeated event. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 8(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1348/135532503762871228

Pearson, H., & Wilbiks, J. (2021). Effects of audiovisual memory cues on working memory recall. Vision, 5(1), Article 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/vision5010014

Reyna, V. F., & Brainerd, C. J. (1998). Fuzzy-trace theory and false memory: New frontiers. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 71(2), 194–209. https://doi.org/10.1006/jecp.1998.2472

Riaz, S., Lateef, A., Zeeshan, D. M., & Latif, D. A. (2025). A Study of Factors Affecting Parental Choice about Public and Private Institutions for their Children at Secondary School Level in District Bahawalpur. Inverge Journal of Social Sciences, 4(3), 395–412. https://doi.org/10.63544/ijss.v4i3.181

Richardson, J. (2003). Dual coding versus relational processing in memory for concrete and abstract words. The European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 15(4), 481–509. https://doi.org/10.1080/09541440244000256

Riesthuis, P., Otgaar, H., & Wang, J. (2019). Differences between bilinguals and monolinguals in false memory production? A look into the DRM paradigm using contextual details. Psychological Research on Urban Society, 2(2), 88. https://doi.org/10.7454/proust.v2i2.50

Roediger, H. L., & DeSoto, K. A. (2015). Memory and cognition: From laboratory to everyday life. In T. J. Perfect & D. S. Lindsay (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of applied memory (pp. 3–22). SAGE.

Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803–814. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.21.4.803

Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (2000). Tricks of memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(4), 123–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00075

Schacter, D. L., & Loftus, E. F. (2013). Memory and law: What can cognitive neuroscience contribute? Nature Neuroscience, 16(2), 119–123. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.3294

Sharkawy, J. E., Groth, K., Vetter, C., Beraldi, A., & Fast, K. (2008). False memories of emotional and neutral words. Behavioural Neurology, 19(1–2), 7–11. https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/587239

Slotnick, S. D., & Schacter, D. L. (2004). A sensory signature that distinguishes true from false memories. Nature Neuroscience, 7(6), 664–672. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1252

Smith, R. E., & Engle, R. W. (2011). Study modality and false recall. Experimental Psychology, 58(2), 117–124. https://doi.org/10.1027/1618-3169/a000076

Smith, S. M., & Vela, E. (2001). Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03196157

Straube, B. (2012). An overview of the neuro-cognitive processes involved in the encoding, consolidation, and retrieval of true and false memories. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 8(1), 35. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-8-35

Tat, M. J., & Azuma, T. (2016). The effect of cognitive load on hemispheric asymmetries in true and false memory. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain, and Cognition, 21(1), 50–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650x.2015.1073297

Tehan, G., Humphreys, M. S., Tolan, G. A., & Pitcher, C. (2004a). The role of context in producing item interactions and false memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 30(1), 107–119. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.30.1.107

Tulving, E., & Thomson, D. M. (1973). Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80(5), 352–373. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0020071

Unsworth, N. (2019). Individual differences in long-term memory. Psychological Bulletin, 145(1), 79–139. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000176