The Binding of False Memory: Behavioral and Brain Stimulation Evidence

Memory is one of the most studied topics in cognitive science. Recent perspectives proposed that human memory is not actually a memory system, but rather a predictive system adaptively shaped. However, the role of false memory in such frameworks is not clear. Here, across five studies, we directly investigated the adaptive bases of false memory using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) task. Participants were required to study lists of associated words and then to perform a recognition task. In Study 1 we show that participants’ memory performance follows a continuous semantic gradient, while in Study 2 we show that semantic memory plays a role in participants’ performance even when correctly rejecting semantically related new non-studied items. Then, in Study 3 and Study 4 we adopt an individual differences approach and show that participants’ episodic and semantic memory scores differently predict false memory, as well as that participants’ reliance on semantic memory when falsely recognizing new words is predicted by theory of mind indexes. Finally, in Study 5 we show that cerebellar perturbation through TMS can over-activate semantic memory traces and thus increase the number of false recognitions. Overall, the studies presented in this Thesis point to the need to build a more global view of memory and of memory ultimate function itself.