Revisiting the Roles of Verbal Rehearsal and Attentional Refreshing in Enhancing True and False Memory

In Experiment 1, we investigated the facilitative effects of strengthening two working memory maintenance mechanisms—verbal rehearsal and attentional refreshing—on true memory. However, the stimuli in Experiment 1 were presented in a full list format, which may have influenced how participants encoded and maintained the words. Therefore, Experiment 2 aims to further explore memory performance when words in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm are presented one at a time, focusing on the effects of enhanced verbal rehearsal and attentional refreshing on true and false memory in both immediate and delayed tests. In this experiment, participants will be randomly assigned to one of three groups: verbal rehearsal, attentional refreshing, or a control group. During the learning phase, participants will study a series of semantically related words presented sequentially. In the maintenance phase, participants in the verbal rehearsal group will receive instructions to use verbal rehearsal strategies to strengthen rehearsal, while those in the attentional refreshing group will be guided to use attentional refreshing strategies to enhance refreshing. Participants in the control group will not receive any specific strategy instructions. After the learning phase, all participants will complete an immediate recall test, followed by a delayed recall test after a retention interval.By comparing true and false memory performance across the three groups in both immediate and delayed tests, we aim to reveal how enhancing different maintenance mechanisms affects memory at different time points.