Albuquerque, P. & Miranda, C.
Department of Basic Psychology.University of Minho. Braga, Portugal.
Can STM tasks produce false memories? Our major objective was to understand whether false memories produced with DRM paradigm on LTM tasks can be extended to STM ones. In order to accomplish this aim we applied the Sternberg paradigm using associative lists and manipulating memory set size, probe type and backward associative strength of the words presented (0.6 and 1.2). Results showed: (1) an increase of errors and RT with the increment of set size; (2) errors decrease in high BAS condition; (3) finally, false alarms are higher and RT are slower when the probe is a critical lure. In a second study, we intended to determine whether the theme identifiability is associated with accuracy of probe detection. We found that item identifiability is higher with a higher BAS lists and no set size effect was found. Also, RTs are slower for lists with higher identifiability. We can conclude that STM paradigms can produce false memories, and theme identifiability is crucial to that memory distortion.