Meaning’s moderating effect on recollection rejection☆

Across two experiments, we investigated the importance of meaning in facilitating recollection rejection in the memory conjunction paradigm. In support of a moderating role of meaning on the occurrence of recollection rejection, we observed conjunction and feature lures that shared considerable semantic similarity with their corresponding studied items to evoke greater rates of recollection rejection than conjunction and feature lures that shared minimal semantic similarity with their corresponding studied items. Collectively these findings suggest an important role for the amount of conceptual similarity shared between related lures and their corresponding study items in evoking recollection rejection, with an emphasis placed on the role of interference in generating the effect. The research also helps to clarify previous research conducted using the memory conjunction paradigm to investigate recollection rejection.