Researchers have demonstrated that imagining fictitious events can later lead to an increase in confidence that those events actually occurred. These findings lend support to the idea that false memories can be created through mere imagination. However, although researchers have agreed that false memories can be created for both childhood events, and more recent actions, little in known about the qualities and cues associated with false memories. Four experiments have been designed to examine false memory quality. Further these experiments attempt to disentangle two components which I believe are necessary for false memory creation through imagination. I hypothesize that imagination leads to increased accessibility of semantic information associated with events, and imagination leads to increased availability of sensory characteristics (Schooler, Gerhard, and Loftus, 1986; Johnson, Foley, Suengas, and Raye, 1988; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993).
In order to measure imagination's effects on sensory information, I manipulated how participants imagined simple actions. In four experiments, participants performed or imagined performing simple actions (e. g. kiss the frog). Then, 24 hours later, they were presented with both new and old actions. Depending on group, participants used elaborate imagination scripts, self-generated scripts, or were visually presented with action statements in the form of a command. Finally, they were tested in Session 3, two weeks later. The increase in the availability of sensory information was determined by comparing false memory creation among groups that received sensory heavy imagination versus groups that received simple imagination or no imagination at all. Accessibility of semantic information was measured through a lexical decision task. The lexical decision task was used to assess whether imagination affected the relationship between objects in action statements.
Results from this line of research have demonstrated that type and number of imagination affect the quality of false memories. I found that after repeated imagination people erroneously claimed to have performed both common and unusual actions. I also found that participants who engaged in elaborate imagination were more likely to falsely claim that they had performed actions relative to participants who engaged in simple or no imagination. However, after only reading action statements, participants also falsely claimed they had performed those actions, although not to the same extend as seen in the elaborate condition. These results suggest that the elaborate imagination activity results in "false memory traces" that more closely resemble true memories, and bear on our understanding of how false memories are constructed. Finally we found a relationship between performance on a lexical decision task and the creation of false memories. Results from the lexical decision tasks support the hypothesis that changes in semantic memory may affect the development of episodic false memories.