The effect of divided attention and presentation modality during studying on false remembering in the DRM paradigm

Some of theories which try to explain the mechanisms underlying false memory phenomenon postulate that false memories are due to existence of semantic relations between studied items which increase memory''s vulnerability to this kind of distortion. Thus، the aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of shifting attention away from semantic relations among words in associative lists in Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm، through dividing attention، on false memory in visual and auditory modalities. A total of 462 university students (355 girls، 107 boys) were tested in DRM paradigm for their false memories. Original series of DRM consists of the lists of words. Each list is related semantically with a lure word that doesn''t exist in the origin list، and reminding the lure word in testing time، measures false memory. Results revealed that false recall of divided attention group was less than control group، but there was not any difference between divided attention and full attention groups. In addition، the amount of false recall of visual lists was less than auditory lists. There was also a significant interaction effect between modality of presentation and dividing attention، indicating that the amount of false recall differs between visual and auditory presentation only when participants engage in the task with full attention. Results of the present study have shown that dividing attention in the study phase can act as an effective way to reduce false recall in both visual and auditory modalities.