Integrating Distributed Semantic Models with an Instance Memory Model to Explain False Recognition

In this paper, we simulated true and false recognition in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM; Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm by incorporating word embeddings derived from distributed semantic models (word2vec) into an instance memory model (MINERVA2). Previously, Arndt and Hirshman (1998) demonstrated that MINERVA2 (Hintzman, 1984) could capture multiple classic false recognition findings with randomly generated word representations. However, as randomized representations deviate systematically from semantic representations learned from the natural language environment, there remains uncertainty about whether MINERVA2 can capture the false memory illusion when scaling up to real-life complexity in word representations. To address this uncertainty, we used word2vec embeddings that are derived from large corpora of natural language instead of randomized representations in MINERVA2. Our results showed that MINERVA2 can still capture the standard true and false recognition, and it can also accommodate the true and false recognition effects of various classic manipulations (e.g., associative strength, number of associates, divided attention, retention interval).