This study aimed to verify whether the activation of critical items in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm of producing false memories could also occur in the word stem completion task. The finding that the level of processing did not seem to have any effect on the word stem completion task supported the conclusion that the stem completion task was in fact an implicit memory test. The impact of a previous recall in a following memory task was also evaluated. The results indicated that the previous recall inhibited the effect of the processing level in the recognition task. In the word stem completion task the increase of stems completed with associates was only relevant when words were encoded superficially.
false memories; DRM paradigm; memory test; level of processing; previous recall
