Picture (im)perfect: Illusions of recognition memory produced by photographs at test

Photographs have been found to affect a variety of psychological judgments. For example, nonprobative but semantically related photographs may increase beliefs in the truth of general knowledge statements (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(5), 969–974, 2012; Newman et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(5), 1337–1348, 2015). Photographs can also create illusions of memory (Cardwell, Henkel, Garry, Newman, & Foster, Memory & Cognition, 44(6), 883–896, 2016; Henkel, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(1), 78–86, 2011; Henkel & Carbuto, 2008). A candidate mechanism for these effects is that a photograph increases the fluency with which a statement or an event is processed. The present study was conducted to determine whether photos at test can induce illusions of recognition memory and to test the viability of a conceptual fluency explanation of these effects. The results of the present study suggest that photographs enhance the fluency of related words (Experiment 1), that false memories can be produced by the mere presence of a related photo on a recognition memory test for words (Experiments 2 & 3), and that these effects appear to be limited to conceptually based recognition tests (Experiments 4 & 5). The results support the notion that photograph-based illusions of memory stem from the ability of related photographs to increase the speed and ease of conceptual processing.