Introduction

In an era of insemantication-based warfare, the amount of insemantication people receives daily gradually increases, and all the intricate and complex insemantication is stored in our brain, which inevitably leads to some errors. Our memory is not an accurate reproduction of past events, but a constructive process that may be accompanied by distortions (Schacter and Addis, 2007). Errors in our memory are very common in everyday life, recalling something that was not experienced or different from the real experience is false memory (Loftus and Pickrell, 1995). False memory is a psychological phenomenon in which the memory of an event deviates from past experiences and facts, or recalls events that did not occur (Yang, 2012). There are individual differences in memories, most people are in between the deficient and highly extreme (LePort et al., 2016; Palombo et al., 2015).

False memory and research paradigms

In the past, most psychologists have likened memory to a storage room in order to investigate the storing, retaining, and forgetting of memories, but most of the research has been oriented towards about correct memories. The studies about false memory started gradually only after the rise of cognitive psychology, and the main research paradigms are DRM paradigm, KK paradigm, false association paradigm, unconscious perception paradigm and misinsemantication interference paradigm. According to the content of the experimental materials, words or events, they can be divided into two categories. The DRM paradigm, the unconscious perception paradigm and the category association paradigm are research paradigms based on words; and the KK paradigm, the misinsemantication interference paradigm are based on the experimental materials of events. Among these, the DRM paradigm is commonly used (Li and Sui, 2003).

Related works

The DRM (Deese Rodiger McDermott) paradigm is a centralized association procedure paradigm, which is an effective way to create and study false memories in the laboratory, where the word lists presented in the learning materials have a concentrated semantic association on unpresented critical-lures (Roediger and McDermott, 1995). A study by Ruixia Liu et al. indicated that the correlation between learning materials and critical-lures had a significant effect on false memories (Liu et al., 2011), in other words, the greater the extent of correlation between false memories and learnt items, the higher the rate of misrecognition. In the presentation of word lists, McDermott found that learning word lists produced fewer false memories when presented randomly than in groups, but both produced false memories (McDermott, 1996); in terms of how word lists were remembered, Read found that participants who focused on remembering word sequences had the lowest false memories of critical-lures, whereas either silent memorization or repetition produced higher rates of false memories (Li and Sui, 2003).

Experimental materials in false memory

However, most current research on false memories primarily employs English words or Chinese vocabularies as experimental materials, with limited studies focusing on Chinese characters. A research on the difference in the depth in Chinese characters found that, the correct recognition rate was significantly higher under semantic encoding than tonetic encoding (Lin and Han, 1999). The results of critical-lures generating false memories in studies related to false memories suggested that the Chinese phonological association could induce the false memory effect (Qu and Ding, 2010). As the level of similarity of Chinese characters increases, participants’ discrimination between critical-lures and old characters decreases, while discrimination between critical-lures and filler characters increases, i.e., the false memory effect(Yue et al., 2018). Materials similar in meaningfulness to previously learnt materials, may lead to incorrect recognition (Luo, 2018).

Recently, researches in “attribute amnesia” shows people fail to report attended information seconds earlier (Chen and Wyble, 2015). This phenomenon extends to various stimuli, e.g., simple semantics like letters, digits, colors (Born et al., 2019; Chen and Wyble, 2016; McCormick-Huhn et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2021) or meaningful simples, such as animals scenes, human faces, words, names, etc. (Nicolás CM et al., 2023; McCormick-Huhn et al., 2018; Tam et al., 2021). Participants may not accurately report Chinese poems in task mixing patriotic (Chen et al., 2019), same results were also found in irrelevant features of objects (Born et al., 2020; Chen et al., 2016, Eitam et al., 2015; Howe and Lee, 2021; O’Donnell et al., 2021; Swan et al., 2016; Tam and Wyble, 2023). False memory studies mostly used English vocabulary or Chinese words, highlighting differences in semantics, pronunciations, and ideographs (Guo et al., 2007), which means in Chinese phonological processing and graphemic processing do result in discrepancies in the rate of recognition, and there is an encoding depth advantage in grapheme processing.

False memory for personality

Nevertheless, the causes of false memory are multifaceted, with studies indicating that differences in false memory susceptibility are associated with personality traits. Researches on this relationship have primarily focused on the “Big 5” model, relying on traditional classification of personality habits. Few studies have empirically accounted for personality’s role in human cognitive processes, such as specific memory. Brainerd found that implicit participants exhibit more false memories by using the DRM paradigm (Brainerd et al., 2008). Field cognitive style has been revealed to influence individuals’ implicitness (Xu, 2012). Witkin mentioned that field-dependent individuals are more socially inclined, while field-independent ones are more autonomous in thought (Witkin and Goodenough, 1977). Field-dependent individuals are more prone to be disturbed (W. Chen, 2005) and more linked to false memory. For now, a variety of ways to measure field cognitive styles of individuals have been existed, such as rod frame test and cognitive analysis, among them, considering about stability and validity, etc. The Composite Figure Test(CFT) is a method developed from the Navon test(Navon, 1977) and has been widely used in psychological research to examine the allocation of attention as a function of an individual’s cognitive style towards indicators of the level of holistic and local processing (Čeněk et al., 2020, Kubíček et al., 2017; Šašinka et al., 2019). Previous research has shown that the CFT is a valuable measurement instrument with satisfactory empirical reliability, retest reliability, and discrimination validity for intelligence and personality (Lacko et al., 2021). Past studies have confirmed that field-dependent individuals are more likely to mistake critical-lures for old words that have been learnt and thus generate false memories(Meng, 2010), so would the same conclusion be reached when the experimental material is Chinese characters? Combining the findings of historical studies, this intersection of domains has not been addressed.

In daily life, false memory arise due to the complex encoding process of past events. It has been suggested that our brains undergo intricate encoding and reorganization, leading to distorted phenomena (Mao, 2009). Similarly, studies has also highlighted how students construct subjective knowledge, potentially leading to false memories (Liu and Cao, 2012). College students’ varied intellectual experiences, learning habits, and cognitive styles contributed to differences in academic performance (Xie, 2006). Understanding one’s cognitive style, particularly field cognitive style, aids in academic and professional endeavors. This study investigates the effect of field cognitive style on false memory of Chinese characters among college students.

Brief summary for literature review and hypothesis formation

In summary, previous research on false memory of Chinese characters’ graphic and phonological encoding, and their associations has yielded relatively mature conclusions (Guo et al., 2007). For example, studies have found that participants often exhibit false memories when recalling Chinese characters due to the intricate relationship between their graphical and phonological features. However, while these conclusions exist, further investigation into the factors influencing corresponding false memories is warranted.

Given the unique characteristics of Chinese characters and the depth of semantic encoding they possess, it is plausible that false memory in the context of Chinese characters follows similar patterns observed in other types of memory (Lin and Han, 1999). Additionally, studies have shown that the “Big 5” personality traits and field cognitive style exhibit phenomena related to false memory (Brainerd and Reyna, 2002). Therefore, it is hypothesized that field cognitive style may be associated with false memory, considering the influence of semantic encoding depth and individual cognitive processing.

Furthermore, phonetics also plays roles in contributing to false memory of Chinese characters. However, it is worth noting that there is currently a limited body of literature specifically focusing on the correlation between field cognitive style and false memory. Nevertheless, research on attributions of false memory commonly exists in various stages of memory encoding, retention, and retrieval. Exploring relevant factors in these stages may provide valuable insights for educational institutions, such as considering the impact of both group and individual characteristics in designing effective teaching methodologies.

Methods and materials

Participants

38 undergraduates (total N = 43, dropout N = 5) from H University participated who are native Chinese speakers between the ages of 18 and 23 years (M = 19.71, SD = 1.06), all those who have scored 510 or more in 750 in the Chinese College Entrance Examination and have fully understood the Chinese characters appearing in this experiment. None of the students had a history of neurological or psychiatric disorders. All of them were naive to cognitive psychological experiments and not acknowledged about various personality scales. Participants were required to provide written informed consent and given financial compensation for their participation. They were tested at individual workstations with same equipment of computers at same time.

Design

To examine the relationship between field cognitive style, Chinese characters phonological and graphemic coding and the phenomenon of false memories, as well as an insight into the effects caused by field cognitive style on false memories, and also to avoid the production of false memories in the process of education and teaching, to teach in a more specialized way and the accuracy of teaching can be improved, this empirical study takes 3 (field cognitive styles) *2 (Chinese characters types of symbol) *3 (Chinese characters types) three factors mixed experimental design, in which field cognitive style as a between-subjects factor (field-dependence, field-independence and hybrid), Chinese characters types of symbol as a within-subjects factor (tonetic symbol and semantic symbol), Chinese characters type as another within-subjects factor (old character, filler character and critical-lures), and test the following research hypotheses:

H1: Chinese phonological associations can produce false memory effects.

H2: The effect of field cognitive style and Chinese character type on the generation of false memories is significant.

H3: The rates of misrecognition of critical-lures for semantic symbol characters among individuals with different field cognitive styles has significant difference.

Measures

Assessment of field cognitive style

In our study, as a kind of CFT, the Cognitive Style Figure Test (CSFT) was be used, which was designed based on Witkin’s Group Embedded Figure Test by Houcan Zhang et al., in psychology department of Beijing Normal University in 1981. Participants required to observe and find out the specific simple pattern which was hidden in complex pictures that contained various basic structures, the scores are revealed peoples’ perception about distinguish the pattern in complex figures, which are suggest the degree of field dependence/independence. The highest 30% of scores are ranked as field independence people that are more easier to distinguish the pictures, while the last 30% are ranked as field dependence people who are difficult to discriminate, the rest of them are valued as Hybrid of field dependence and independence (Liu et al., 2011; Lv, 2014; Xie and Zhang, 1988).

Assessment of false memory

Both field dependence and independence people, false memory was assessed by tasks about Deese Roediger McDermott (DRM) paradigm in this research, eight Chinese characters word lists were used in the study of “The effect of Chinese phonological associations on false memories” by Quzhe et al., were selected (Qu and Ding, 2010). Among them, eight Chinese character lists are selected from the “Dictionary of Chinese character attributes”, each list consists of nine tonetic- symbol characters, four of the lists with same tonetic- symbol of characters, and the other lists’ characters have the same semantic symbol. In order to eliminate the interference caused by phonetic correlation factors as much as possible, we have strictly controlled the pronunciation of Chinese characters to ensure that there is no systematic phonetic correlation of Chinese characters in each character list. For the semantic characters beside the same shape, it is easier on the problem about systematic phonetic correlation. But for the tonetic characters, because the phonetic evolution of Chinese characters and some, the phonetic ability of some tonetic symbols is greatly weakened, there are also numerous of tonetic symbol characters with the same tonetic symbol but different pronunciations, such as “村” “肘” “衬”, those same symbol characters with great differences in pronunciation were selected as the materials. All the critical-lures characters are very distinct from other characters in each list, also there is tonetic correlation between the same semantic symbol characters, and there is no semantic correlation between the same tonetic symbol characters. The frequency of stimulation for all of the above Chinese characters ranged from 3.5 × 10−3 to 6.5 × 10−6, the full version of word lists was in Appendix.

Procedure

In the beginning, participants were administered the CSFT, this test consisted of two parts, the first part was used as a practice to familiarize participants with the experimental operations and procedures, which had no time limit and score; and the second part was the semantical experiment, which was limited to 4 min, and the results were scored according to the revised scoring method.

And then, DRM paradigm was presented in 19-inch monitor with a resolution of 1024 × 768 and a white background. Participants followed the instructions presented by the computer and started the semantical experiment at the end of the practice experiment, which was single-blind throughout. Using E-prime programming, the experiment was divided into two parts, the first part was a test of learning and recognition of the tonetic- symbol character lists, and the second part was a test of the semantic symbol character lists. The order of these two parts was counterbalanced among participants, with a 1-min rest between two parts. In order to balance the experimental practice effect and the sequential effect, the order of the individual character lists in each part was randomized among participants, but the order of the Chinese characters within the individual lists was fixed. Each Chinese character was presented for 1 s, and the interval between two characters was also 1 s, the presentation of the next character list began immediately after one list was presented. Participants began the experiment after familiarizing themselves with the instructions. The learning phase required participants to try to remember as many of the presented characters as possible, and participants were insemanticed that a subsequent recognition test would be administered to test their memory. At the end of the learning phase, a recognition test was conducted, in which 28 Chinese characters in the test word list were randomly presented, and the presentation time was changed to 2 s, with the interval remaining the same at 1 s, and participants were asked to judge whether the test characters had appeared in the learning phase: if they had appeared, they pressed the P key; if they had not appeared, they pressed the Q key.

At the completion of experiments, the data collected were statistically analyzed by E-Merge and SPSS 19.0, Bonferroni method was used for post hoc test.

Results

Descriptive statistics

Table 1 represents the insemantication about descriptive statistics. There were 38 valid data copies of the trial, of which 10 were males, accounting for 26.3%, and 28 were females, accounting for 73.7%, leaving a relatively unbalanced ratio of males to females. In terms of age, 2 subjects (5.3%) were 18 years old, 18 subjects (47.4%) were 19 years old, 10 subjects (26.3%) were 20 years old, 6 subjects (15.8%) were 21 years old, only one was 22 years old and one was 23 years old, with 2.6% respectively. Overall, participants were mainly concentrated in the 19-20 age group, with less of data collected in the 21-23.

Table 1 Characteristics of the Samples.
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Differences in demographic variables across variables

Demographic variables

Data were statistically analyzed and results are shown in Table 2. Regarding the cognitive style scores in total, for gender, boys scored 9.90 ± 3.00; girls scored 8.82 ± 3.77, t = 0.82, p = 0.23, so the difference on gender was not significant. The independent samples T test revealed that, in the type of symbols, the rate of recognition of tonetic symbols Chinese characters is t(35) = 2.13, p = 0.04, has a significant difference on gender, while the rate of recognition of the semantic symbols t(35) = 1.97, p = 0.06, is marginally significant. Which means that the difference in the percentage of male and female students who thought that the character had “appeared” on the type of characters with tonetic and semantic symbols was found to be significant, especially on the tonetic symbol characters, so does this indicate that there is a difference between the two types of characters (tonetic symbol and semantic symbol) in the occurrence of the phenomenon of induced false memories? Further research is needed to investigate the variation in the types of characters.

Table 2 Differences in the type of symbols.
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Demographic variables on Chinese character types

As can be seen from Table 3, when it comes to the Chinese characters types, the old characters recognition rate is t(35) = 0.97, p = 0.34, has no significant difference; the filler character recognition rate is t(35) = 0.73, p = 0.47, has no significant difference; the rate of recognition on critical-lures is t(35) = 2.33, p = 0.03, which has a statistical difference, and boys (M = 0.73) were greater than girls (M = 0.50), suggesting that boys may be more inclined to misrecognize critical-lures as old words that have been learned, i.e., the false memory effect is stronger.

Table 3 Independence sample T test (Chinese characters type).
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Effect of the type of symbols and character types on false memory

The rates of recognition (the probability of being judged as “appeared”) were calculated for each type of word, and the results are listed in Table 4.

Table 4 Proportions of words judged to have “appeared”.
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A two-factors ANOVA of 2 (tonetic symbol, semantic symbol) * 3 (old character, filler character, critical-lures) was conducted on the type of symbols and the Chinese characters types. The analysis of the data revealed a significant main effect of the type of symbols (F (1,37) = 2.59, p < 0.001), a significant main effect of the type of Chinese character (F (2,73) = 6.80, p < 0.001), and a significant interaction between these two-factors (F (2,73) = 7.50, p < 0.001). Post hoc testing of the Chinese character types (old characters, filler characters, critical-lures) revealed significant differences between two of the three types (p < 0.001). The results of the paired samples T tests of three Chinese characters types with the types of symbols (tonetic symbol and semantic symbol) were as follows: old characters: t(37) = 2.17, p = 0.04; filler characters t(37) = 1.83, p = 0.08; and critical-lures: t(37) = 2.09, p = 0.05. That is, there is no significant difference in the recognition rate of the filler type of Chinese characters in the two symbols of Chinese characters, but both old characters and critical-lures show significant differences, which is slightly dissimilar to the results of the previous study (Qu et al., 2010).

Likewise, the recognition rate of old characters and critical-lures is much higher when the symbol type is tonetic symbol than when the semantic symbol is the same. And regardless of the type of symbol (same tonetic symbol or same semantic symbol), the recognition rate of critical-lures is much higher than that of filler characters, which demonstrates that participants had a false memory effect on critical-lures in both types of symbols. The selection process of filler characters for this experimental material avoided the possible interference of their own attributes in the false memory effect: characters phonetically similar to some of the learning materials were selected as filler characters of the Chinese tonetic symbol type, and characters semantically related to the learning materials were selected as filler characters of the Chinese semantic symbol type, thus eliminating the interference of the semantic and tonetic components respectively, so that only the similarity in semantic between the critical-lures and the learning characters was present. Hence, it is demonstrated that associations on Chinese phonological can produce false memories, which is in line with previous studies, and hypothesis H1 is valid.

The effect of field cognitive style on false memory

Difference in the recognition on the type of symbols

Data on the differences in statistical field cognitive styles on each type of Chinese character are illustrated in Table 5.

Table 5 Effect of cognitive styles.
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Mean values were obtained for each of the three Chinese character types (old, filler, and critical-lures) for the two types of symbols (tonetic symbol, semantic symbol) and the resulting values were subjected to a two-factors ANOVA of 2 (tonetic symbol, semantic symbol) * 3 (field-independent, field-dependent, and hybrid). Analysis of the data concluded that tonetic symbol: F (2,35) = 0.29, p = 0.75; and semantic symbol F (2,35) = 1.12, p = 0.34, neither of which reached significance, i.e., the field cognitive styles did not produce a significant difference in the recognition rate of the type of symbol.

Difference in the recognition rate on characters types

The two symbol types (tonetic symbols and semantic symbols) of the Chinese character types (old characters, filler characters, critical-lures) were each asked for their mean values, and the resulting values were subjected to a 3 (field-independent, field-dependent, hybrid) × 3 (old characters, filler characters, critical-lures) two-factors analysis of variance (ANOVA), and the results obtained were as follows: for old characters: F (2,35) = 0.14, p = 0.87; for filler characters: F (2,35) = 1.04, p = 0.37; and critical-lures: F(2,35) = 1.18, p = 0.32, none of which reached a significant difference, which indicates that the difference in field cognitive styles was not significant in the rate of recognition of Chinese character types, and that hypothesis H2 was not valid.

Difference and relationships in the recognition rate of characters and type of symbols

Table 6 illustrates the differences in the fields cognitive styles in terms of the joint effect on the type of symbols and the Chinese characters type.

Table 6 Differences in cognitive style on the types of characters and symbols.
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The data were subjected to a 3 (field-independent, field-dependent, hybrid) × 6 (tonetic symbol old words, tonetic symbol filler words, tonetic symbol critical-lures, semantic symbol old words, semantic symbol filler words, semantic symbol critical-lures) two-factors ANOVA, with the following results: tonetic symbol old words: F(2,35) = 1.62, p = 0.21; tonetic symbol filler words: F (2,35) = 1.68, p = 0.20; tonetic symbol critical-lures: F (2,35) = 0.34, p = 0.714; semantic symbol old words: F (2,35) = 0.10, p = 0.91; semantic symbol filler words: F (2,35) = 0.48, p = 0.10; semantic symbol critical-lures: F (2,35) = 3.39, p = 0.05,there is significant difference. The interaction between field cognitive style and the type of symbols on Chinese characters was further analyzed for critical-lures words. As shown in Fig. 1, the interaction between the type of paraphrase and field cognitive style was significant under the type of critical-lures, and field-independent (M = 0.73) was significantly higher than field-dependent (M = 0.48). That is, people with different field cognitive styles differed significantly only in the misrecognition of critical-lures of the semantic symbol type.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Interaction Diagram: the interaction between cognitive styles and symbol types on critical lures.

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Furthermore, analysis of the mediating effects of symbol types on field cognitive styles and critical lure scores yielded the results in Table 7. It can be seen that the semantic symbol only significant on hybrid: F (1,15) = 12.54, p = 0.00, but the tonetic symbol is significantly different from the critical-lures scores on field independence (F (1,9) = 7.61, p = 0.02), hybrid (F (1,14) = 5.17, p = 0.04), and field dependence (F (1,8) = 7.21, p = 0.03). Thus, it can be assumed that tonetic symbols have a moderating effect on cognitive style and critical-lures scores. where hypothesis H3 was established.

Table 7 The mediations of symbol types on cognitive styles and critical-lures.
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Discussion

Demographic variables outcomes

According to previous studies, there is no significance in gender, age on field cognitive style, and false memory effect, which is largely similar to the results of this study. On field cognitive style, demographic variables such as gender and age, there is no significant difference. However, from the perspective of developmental psychology, Witkin et al. have concluded that during children’s development, their field cognitive style gradually evolves from field-dependent to field-independent and stabilizes in adulthood (Witkin et al., 1962). The samples selected for this study were university students, all of whom are adults, considering there is related reports suggesting the difference about self-reference underlying memory mechanisms in all age groups (Wang et al., 2022), so the results may not be fully generalizable, and the possibility that there may be different results by expanding the age gradient cannot be ruled out.

Also, the gender ratio of the current sample size is a limitation, referring to prior studies (Bosacki et al., 1997), gender is a factor need to be considered in the future.

Interaction of cognitive style, Chinese character tonetic and semantic type, and false memory outcomes

In this study, we presented a recognition experiment on tonetic symbol type and semantic symbol type of characters, including old characters, filler characters, and critical-lures, using the word lists from “The Effects of Chinese Phonological Associations on False Memory” by Quzhe et al. The experimental results indicated that the difference in the recognition rate of filler characters was not significant for the two symbol types of Chinese characters, and both old characters (t (37) = 2.17, p = 0.04) and critical-lures (t (37) = 2.09, p = 0.05) demonstrated a significant difference, which suggests that the Chinese phonological associations of Chinese characters can induce false memories. In addition, the correct recognition rate of old characters in this study was higher than the average misrecognition rate of critical-lures and the filler characters, suggesting that participants were able to effectively distinguish learned old characters from unlearned filler and critical-lure characters.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of field cognitive style and Chinese phonological associations on the evoked false memory effect, and the results showed that Chinese phonological associations can induce the production of false memory effect. Chinese phonological processing belongs to perceptual processing, and the depth is not as deep as that of semantic processing (Wang et al., 2009), and the fact that Chinese phonological processing alone can lead to the generation of false memories, and that semantic words account for the majority of the total number of Chinese characters (more than 80%), suggests that the evocation of false memories is very common. This is consistent with the results of many foreign studies using phonological texts as experimental materials(Brainerd and Reyna, 2002; Ramirez et al., 2013; Robinson and Roediger, 1997), suggesting that the phonological related false memory effect exists not only in alphabetic scripts but also in ideographic scripts.

However, although Chinese phonological correlation induces the false memory effect, reasonable use of Chinese phonological associations can also be used to help students memorize new characters by example(Yang, 2011). In the process of teaching Chinese characters with similar semanteme, teachers should actively guide students to pay attention to the various components of Chinese characters, focus on the overall shape of Chinese characters, assist memorization by combining the tonetic and semantic features of Chinese characters, as well as comparing and analyzing Chinese characters with similar semantic structures, in order to summarize the rules of Chinese characters, thus better preparing students to learn and memorize Chinese characters(Ge et al., 2016).

Relationships between field cognitive styles, and character phonological types in the present study

In this study, the field cognitive styles were not significantly different in the types of symbols (semantic symbols and tonetic symbol) and the types of Chinese characters (old characters, critical-lures, and filler characters), but in the interaction between the above two, that is, the difference in the recognition rate of the field cognitive styles was significant in the type of critical-lures of semantic symbols, which was manifested as field-independent type higher than field-dependent and hybrid, which is in accordance with the hypotheses, that is, the field-independent individuals are less disturbed, with a dominantly local processing(Wen, 2010). And the critical-lures of tonetic symbols did not reach significance, but they were much higher than the filler words, indicating that the false memory effect may be produced, meanwhile tonetic symbols mediated on the field cognitive style and critical-lures. The results of Sheng Ruqi demonstrated that the correct recognition rate of old characters in tonetic symbol type of Chinese characters was higher than that of old characters in semantic symbol, and the rate of misrecognition of critical-lures in semantic symbol type was significantly higher than that of tonetic symbol critical-lures (Sheng, 2014). Qu Zhe et al. showed that the similarity of Chinese semantics between characters is the fundamental reason for determining the false memory effect of character association (Qu et al., 2010). Past studies have suggested that the greater similarity of semantic between Chinese characters, the stronger induced false memory effect, and thus the misrecognition rate of semantic symbol critical-lures is higher than that of critical-lures in the tonetic symbol condition.

While the main effect of field cognitive style was not significant on the two factors of Chinese character tonetic-semantic symbol type, it was significant on the interaction effect of the two, which is precisely in line with previous studies. Based on the Fuzzy Trace Theory (FTT) proposed by Brainerd et al. memory for the event itself is determined by both literal traces (representations of the item’s surface semantic and item-specific insemantication) and gist traces (representations of the item’s meaning, interpretation, and refinement)(Brainerd et al., 2022). In a recognition test, because there is a large overlap between critical-lures and old characters that have been learned in terms of gist traces, and the literal traces of the two are more distinguishable, if participants tend to rely on the gist traces of the Chinese characters for a recognition test, they are likely to produce false memories (Dou et al., 2011). The reason for the emergence of hypothesis H3 may be that, since individuals with different cognitive styles have different internal and external references in the cognitive process (Cheng et al., 2015) and choose different processing modes, field-independent individuals encode Chinese characters in a localized processing mode and rely on the gist traces of Chinese characters to make their responses during the testing process, then when the stimulus is a semantic symbol critical-lures character with a high degree of similarity, the first thing that will be attended to will be the symbol portion of it such as “刂”, “辶”, “扌”, “氵”, which further blurs the critical-lures and the old characters, leading to a false memory effect to arise. In the study by Li Qiaolian et al, although it was mentioned that “the error rate of field-dependent participants was higher than that of field-independent”, it was also suggested that “the field cognitive style and the emotionality of vocabulary have a cumulative effect on the generation of false memories”, and the material of the experiment was emotional vocabulary (Li, 2013), which was different from the Chinese characters in this paper, so it cannot be ruled out, which needs further research.

For the result that semantic symbols have only partial interaction while tonetic symbols have a good moderating effect, it can be well demonstrated that Chinese readers access semantics, i.e., the process from visual lexical input to accessing semantic information, which has been one of the core issues in lexical processing research. Research on the Recognition Without Cued Recall paradigm for Chinese characters has found that semantic features of Chinese characters can trigger familiarity recognition (Jia et al., 2016), which mainly relies on the matching degree of the test items with the features in the memory trace (Clark and Gronlund, 1996), while pattern and pronunciation of Chinese characters can both affect recognition memory (Anthony et al., 2012). Chinese characters, as a typical componentized language, have not a mechanism for shape-to-sound conversion at the segmental level, but its symbols can provide relevant information for the whole character (Han and Bi, 2009). There are two main arguments against semantic access: the phonological mediation hypothesis, which states that a visual word must activate its phonological information firstly before it can access semantic information; and the direct access hypothesis, which agrees that a visual stimulus can directly activate its semantic information without mediating its phonological information. This separation in the present study maybe due to the fact that the tonetic symbol of a Chinese character provides the phonological information of Chinese character, especially in critical-lures, where the participant’s recognition is through the phonology of the Chinese character; whereas in the case of semantic symbols, the direct access to the semantics, which is not affected by the phonological influence of the Chinese character itself, is affected by the participants’ localized or global processing, which is the field cognitive styles. Meanwhile, it has been revealed that different brain regions contribute differently to different levels of language, for instance, syntactic and phonological functions are mainly controlled by the frontal-parietal lobe, whereas semantic functions are controlled by the temporal lobe (Fraser et al., 2015; Gorno-Tempini et al., 2004), which also suggests that reading comprehension processing of Chinese characters may exist in which the two pathways are not either one or the other, but rather, they exist at the same time and supporting each other. The functional brain imaging studies of lexical reading in alphabetic languages (e.g., English) have demonstrated that lexical language is read by both dorsal and ventral pathways in the left hemisphere of the brain (Laurie et al., 2009; Wang et al., 2021), and further research is needed to determine whether this processing also occurs in languages such as Chinese characters.

Limitations

In this study, the experimental procedure was programmed using the experimental materials and experimental parameters from the study “The effect of Chinese phonological associations on false memories” by Quzhe et al. In the recognition test, the presentation time was 2 s, and the interval time was 1 s. However, in the actual experimental process, some participants reacted after doing the experiment that the interval time was too short or the keyboard keys were easily confused, and it was too late for them to react, which may also be one of the reasons for the missing experimental data. In the process of future research and investigation, the response device can be adjusted appropriately, such as “appear” and “do not appear” in the way of the mouse and keyboard combination or develop a new two-key device and so on. Due to the lack of feasibility in supplementary experiments, we only analyzed the existing data.

Furthermore, the field cognitive style of this experiment was judged by the norm in our school, but Xu Weicheng’s research survey found that liberal arts students were generally field-dependent, while there were more field-independent individuals among science students (Xu, 1999). Since most of the participants are liberal arts students in the current study, there may be a bias in the determination of field cognitive styles, which may affect the results of the survey to a certain extent. According to the fuzzy trace theory as well as the research on field cognitive style, it can be noticed that age and the maturation process of an individual can impact the development of an individual’s literal extraction ability (related to mechanical memory), gist extraction ability (especially the ability to extract the meaning of an item spontaneously), and the field independence tendency, so that consideration should be given to continue to expand the number of participants and increase the diversity of the sample’s age in the subsequent research. Moreover, the language background and proficiency level should also be taken into consideration.

Suggestions for further study

Due to the limitations of subjective and objective factors, there are some aspects of this study that need to be improved. In future research, in addition to increasing the capacity of participants and further studying “the effect of field cognitive styles on Chinese characters’ false memories”, we can also consider starting from the direction of reducing the effect of false memories by means of emotional therapy, reinforcement, etc. Especially for children’s learning and memorizing of Chinese characters, we can minimize the effect of false memories so that they will learn more efficiently and effectively. Also, as we mentioned above, Chinese characters, as a kind of specials material, has different relationships between semantics, pronunciations, and semantics, may be used for a measure of indicating the availability of recovery strategies(Jomaa et al., 2022; José et al., 2017), or apply the software for automated generation of lists of stimuli, such as False Memory Generator (Petilli et al. 2024). Textual material remains by far the easiest and steadiest to induce false memories, in comparison to video, such as Deepfake(Murphy and Flynn, 2022).In addition to the research of cognitive style in the field, most of the domestic studies still focus on its effect on second language (Gurrola and Francis, 2024; Sıtkı et al., 2024; Lei and Gao, 2023; Liao, 2023; Zhang, 2022) and image searching (Kong et al., 2023, Poor et al., 2021) cognitive style as a kind of preference and habituation in the process of individual’s insemantication exchange with the outside world, memory of events, thinking and problem solving (Qu, 2014), it is suggested that its research on insemantication processing process can be enhanced, and we believe that something will definitely be found. Meanwhile, Field cognitive style as one of the theories of traditional psychology, like other theoretical concepts, its taxonomy of dualist view has some limitations (Kotov et al., 2017), as the results of the present study show, a certain number of subjects belonged to the hybrid of field independence and dependence, which is a problem with the current traditional psychological research methodology, where theoretical models are more available but still far from the clinic. This study may give hints to the classification studies in traditional psychology.

Also, with the gradual increase in population ageing, researches on the degradation of cognitive functions, especially on memory has become a topic of interest, the recently available ERPs (event-related potentials) studies on false memories in older adults have yielded more corresponding results on the continuum spectrum of neuroticism (Zhang et al., 2024). This paper may serve as a guide and practical contribution for research related to the early manifestations and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease, taking into account that false memories may be back on the research agenda (Dalla Barba et al., 2021). To diversify the research samples, memory related targets could be not only limited to humans, for example cuttlefish, suggesting cuttlefish could develop visual false memories but not olfactory false memories (Poncet et al., 2024). Future research could also be directed towards the discovery of multisensory channels associated with false memories, to be in line with the trend towards refinement of cognitive science researches and the precision medicine for neurological diseases.

Conclusion

To sum up, in the current study, gender differences were significant in recognizing tonetic and semantic symbols, with tonetic symbols recognized more frequently. Males had higher misrecognition rates than females for critical-lures. For the imbalances in sample sizes may limit the reliability and generalizability of the conclusions, feather exploration is still needed. It is worth noting that, the arrangement of Chinese phonological associations led to higher false memory rates for critical-lures. Field cognitive styles did not affect symbol and character recognition rates. However, field-independent individuals had higher false recognition rates for semantic symbols compared to field-dependent and hybrid types.

Theoretically, this finding supports the influence of field cognitive style on memory. It is widely believed that field-independent individuals focus more on details and local information, while field-dependent individuals pay more attention to the whole and contextual information. Therefore, field-independent individuals tend to perform higher in the misidentification of semantic cues, which may be because they are more easily misled by local information.

From a practical standpoint, this discovery can help us better understand the differences in false memory involving semantic cues. Understanding the impact of field cognitive style on false memory can assist educators and psychologists in developing more effective learning and memory strategies. For example, when designing learning materials and exam questions, considering relevant factors for individuals with different field cognitive styles may help reduce the occurrence of false memories and improve learning outcomes.

Specifically, this knowledge can be applied across multiple fields. For instance, understanding students’ field cognitive styles can aid educators in designing teaching methods and materials in language learning, to meet the needs and preferences of different students. In speech rehabilitation, it can be used to customize and adjust personalized speech rehabilitation plans, helping patients better cope with memory challenges in daily life. In the current field of artificial intelligence, it can be used for personalized interaction by understanding individuals’ field cognitive styles, enabling language models, among others, to better adapt to users’ needs and preferences. Providing personalized responses and suggestions for users with different field cognitive styles can enhance user experience.

Thus, this research result provides empirical support for the role of field cognitive style in false memory of semantic cues, offering new theoretical and practical guidance for further research.