Publications [#252735] of Elizabeth J. Marsh

Journal Articles

1. Mullet, HG; Umanath, S; Marsh, EJ (2014). Recent study, but not retrieval, of knowledge protects against learning errors.. Memory & cognition, 42(8), 1239-1249. [doi]
   (last updated on 2026/01/15)

   Abstract:
   Surprisingly, people incorporate errors into their knowledge bases even when they have the correct knowledge stored in memory (e.g., Fazio, Barber, Rajaram, Ornstein, & Marsh, 2013). We examined whether heightening the accessibility of correct knowledge would protect people from later reproducing misleading information that they encountered in fictional stories. In Experiment 1, participants studied a series of target general knowledge questions and their correct answers either a few minutes (high accessibility of knowledge) or 1 week (low accessibility of knowledge) before exposure to misleading story references. In Experiments 2a and 2b, participants instead retrieved the answers to the target general knowledge questions either a few minutes or 1 week before the rest of the experiment. Reading the relevant knowledge directly before the story-reading phase protected against reproduction of the misleading story answers on a later general knowledge test, but retrieving that same correct information did not. Retrieving stored knowledge from memory might actually enhance the encoding of relevant misinformation.