The schema provokes a disparity of false recollection between actions and objects in an everyday scene

We explored the effect of the schema on recognition memories and subjective experiences for actions and objects in an everyday scene. At first, participants watched slides of a man cooking in a kitchen. The man performed schema-consistent actions, and schema-consistent objects were left. After watching the slides, participants completed a recognition test, a remember/know test, and a Perception/Thought/Emotion/Context questionnaire. We confirmed three main results. First, participants made more false recognitions for schema-consistent distracters than for schema-inconsistent distracters with more “remember” judgments accompanied by perceptual, thought, and contextual details, and with more “know” judgments. Second, participants made more false recognitions for schema-consistent object distracters than for schema-consistent action distracters. Third, participants more frequently recognized schema-consistent action targets than schema-consistent object targets with more “remember” judgments. Both action memory and object memory were reconstructed under the schema, provoking false recognitions for schema-consistent distracters. However, the memories of schema-consistent action targets were so recollective that they could prevent false recognitions for schema-consistent action distracters.