ABSTRACT
Memory research traditionally has been task-driven, with researchers rallying around an interesting phenomenon long enough to manipulate it, debate it, and otherwise make sense of it. The false memory tasks reviewed here are firmly rooted in this tradition, but they also are somewhat unique, in the sense that they have been used in a variety of research domains. The general acceptance of a common set of task-spe-cific methods and controls has made results comparable across domains, including basic behavioral research, development and aging research, cognitive neuropsychology research (e.g., patient studies or drug studies), cognitive neurospanience research (e.g., neuroimaging studies), and other types of applied research (e.g., individual differences and comparisons with autobiographical memories). Equally important, the widespread adoption of a common set of procedures has fostered a common pool of conceptual terms and ideas, thereby speeding the rate of theoretical advances. No one can deny that we have learned a great deal about associative memory illusions over the past 10 years of intensified research, and that this type of research has fostered a cross-dispaniplinary approach to understanding the basic processes of human memory.
