Misguided multiplication: creating false memories with numbers rather than words.

We built Deese (1959)/Roediger and McDermott (1995) (DRM) false memory lists composed of multiplication problems rather than words. Half these lists contained table-related, near neighbors (e.g., 3 x 7 = ??, 3 x 9 = ??) of a missing multiplication answer lure (e.g., 24). The other half contained problems unrelated to the lure (e.g., 5 x 5 = ??, 11 x 3 = ??). Participants solved each problem in a single list and then took immediate recognition (Experiment 1) or recall and then recognition tests (Experiment 2) for the answers. Many people misremembered that the lure was an answer to a study-phase problem, but only when solving the study list that contained the lure's neighbors. False memory was also greater for some list-lure combinations than others, as seen previously with words. We have thus demonstrated that numbers can also produce false memory, and we use the mental math and DRM task literatures to explain these results.