Classic Studies & Cognitive Psychology Practical | Desklib

This report explores the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm and its implications on human memory and cognition. It summarizes the findings from James Deese, Henry L. Roediger III, and Kathleen McDermott's research on false memory and intrusion. The report replicates Deese's experiment and analyzes the results, which show a strong memory illusion. The report also includes a filler task and a recognition task. The main implications of the findings are discussed.

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Classic Studies & Cognitive Psychology Practical
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Classic Studies & Cognitive Psychology Practical
Background
Human memory is not perfect but is usually subject to various errors and illusions that have a
great significance in the real world. Study of human psychology has shown that people usually
exhibit psychological phenomena that come out either by sensation, perception, mental
representations or cognition. For instance, people usually remember words that were not part of
the original list or even omission of some items in a recall. By 1950s, a number of researchers
were engaged in research to try to understand and explain human cognition. Cognition can
simply be termed as mental processes that influence human behaviours.
The following report summarizes the finding from three researchers namely James Deese, Henry
L. Roediger III and Kathleen McDermott. This research is commonly known as Deese–
Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. It was started by James Deese in 1959 but later on,
Henry L. Roediger III and Kathleen McDermott carried on the research and made the paradigm
popular. There are other researchers however that did a similar research, for example, Baddeley
who studied the hitch working memory model (Baddeley, 1966) and others. However, our focus
will be on the DRM paradigm.
Deese (1959): Intrusions
Among the early researchers of false memory in individuals was James Deese in the year 1959
(Deese, 1959). He discovered that partial verbal intrusions usually occur in an immediate recall.
His research was basically to understand and explain why many people remember words that are
not in a particular list of words but it is related to them. The procedure used was orally
presenting a list of words that were related, for example, dream, bed, blanket, awake, slumber,

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snore, nap, yawn, and peace. In this paradigm, the subject was required to remember as many
words as possible from the listed given. After the presentation, results showed that the subjects
remember words that were absent from the original list but relate to those words in the given list
for example ‘sleep'. The word ‘sleep' as presented is an intrusion since it is not from the list
given. Even before the research of James Deese, Bartlett (1932) had seen the field of memory
intrinsically connected with Social Psychology. In his 1932 book, entitled "Remembering",
Bartlett reported the very famous "War of the Ghosts Experiment". The experiment consisted of
reading to the participants a short story comprised of simple phrases, all of which conveyed a
general "gist" of the story, and some that were incongruent with the rest of the story. After some
days, the subjects were asked to give an account of the story as much as they could. The results
showed that participants tended to remember better details that are closely connected to the
general structure of the story than details that were not congruent with it (Bartlett, 1932). Also, it
was observed that participants tended to remember details that were not present at all, but were
consistent with the story, or to distort incongruent details into congruent ones.
Free Recall
In the Deese (1959) study, he found out that there were rampant false recalls and recognition in
the paradigm he was using in his research. The participants were given a free trial to recall items
in a list that was given to them in the order of their choice. The results showed that participants
usually omitted some items in the given list, that is, a free recall was usually influenced by
memory loss. In another set of experimental analysis, the participants are presented with short
different stories, each one at a time, then after a while, they are required to recall a particular
story, say the first one. Results show that the participants obviously cannot recall the full details
of a particular story. However, some tell an overview of a given story, others mix up the stories

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(Wheeler & Roediger, 1992). The researchers measured the amount of intrusion in each list from
the items that they were to recall.
Word Association List
Kent & Rosanoff (1910) studied the associations in Insanity. In this study, words of association
were examined in the reproduction for the frequency of occurrence of these associations as
intrusions. Deese's method of study was primarily used here. The results showed similarity with
the Deese's paradigm where there were false memory and instances of intrusion in immediate
recall. Words of association simply mean words that are associated with others or words whose
meaning can be related to other words.
Roediger & McDermott (1995)
Investigation of false memory has been greatly been championed by Deese's (1959) findings.
The most common paradigm employed is the use of sentences (Bransford & Franks, 1975), prose
passage (Sulin & Dooling, 1974), videotapes or even slide sequences (Loftus et al., 1978).
Between 1980's and 1990's, there were lots of advancements in research to understand and
advance the research on mechanisms of false recall and false recognition.

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Practical
Task 1: Replication of Deese (1959)
The reason we will replicate Experiment 1 of Deese's (1959) is to observe false recall using six
lists with a guide in order to obtain high levels of rampant false recalls in our experiments.
Students were given six lists. Each list was composed of 15 words that were closely associated
with a critical lure. The critical lure was hidden from them so as to be able to obtain intrusion as
much as possible.
Method
The participants were undergraduate psychology students, over 18 years of age who undertook
this project as part of their coursework. The method used to collect the data was by an audio
presentation of a list of items to the students during the class session and then the students were
required to master the words and write them down after a given period. The presentation would
be either by oral submission (free recall) or writing down the words they could remember.
Materials
The materials that were used were six lists containing 15 words that were closely associated with
particular words that were non-represented in the lists. The non-represented words were used as
the critical lure. Those words were carefully chosen in order to produce the highest intrusion
rates: chair, mountain, needle, rough, sleep, and sweet. For instance, we selected the following
words for chair: stool, legs, seat, sit, table, desk, rocking, couch, wood, cushion, recliner, swivel,
bench, sitting and sofa. For many instances, we selected a non-studied word that would most
probably bring about the highest intrusion. We separated marked both studied and non-studied
word.

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Procedure
The students were placed in groups and either an oral presentation or an audio given for them to
listen and then they were required to listen carefully before making any attempt. They were
given a booklet each where they would write whatever they remember from the words given.
This was usually done during a normal class session. Once a particular word was played, the
students were given a break of 2.5 minutes after which the next word would be played.
When the sixth list was done, students were given a break of about 5 minutes. The next
assessment was for recognition. Students were given instructions that they were to be shown a
set of words on a piece of paper. They would be given up to 3 minutes to read all the words in
one list. After that, they would be given a break of about 2 minutes and then required to write
down the words they saw. The words would be in any order.

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Results
The results of free recall showed that the students had a tendency to recall the last items first. For
a scale of 4, the percentage for critical lure was 3.3 with almost the same rate as items in the
middle of the given list. Similarly, the students recalled items that were presented at almost the
same rate as items that were not presented. Students falsely recalled the critical items at a high
rate. The rate of guessed answers was low in this experiment.
Analysis
From the results of Deese’s replication, we computed a correlation between the average
percentage (%) of words that were presented as associate and percentage word that was
presented as an intrusion. The words that were strongly associated with those on the list were
more presented as intrusions.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Percent Occurrence of Word in Recall
Average percent occurrence of word as associate to words on list
percent occurrence of word in recall

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Task 2: Filler Task
In this task, the participants were required to solve a cryptogram in three minutes. In the
cryptogram was the following letters: “JW JC ZLKKLQ DUULU WL JQBDU WMHW
WMJQPC IMJZM HUD ZLQCDZEWJSD JQ LURDU LB WJKD MHSD QDZDCCHUJFN
WMD UDFHWJLQ LB ZHECD HQR DBBDZW.” Once they have read it severally, they were
required to fill the letters that they thing missed out in the cryptogram. For another task, the
participants were required to memorize the short (two letters), medium (4 to 6 letters) and long
(more than 6 letters) group of letters so that they could write them down as much as they could
remember them from the cryptogram.
Results
The results for free recall showed that the participants had difficulties in solving the puzzle. Most
of them wrote words that were still presented in the cryptogram. The level of confidence,
however, was high. For the task of recognition, the rate of false recognition was high. Most of
them could not remember the long groups of letters. They wrote down a group of words that
were not presented. Short groups of letters however were recalled much easier compared to the
middle and long groups.

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Task 3: Recognition.
Materials
We replicated task 1 for this experiment although there were a few adjustments. Here we added a
set of 7 words, two words from the list in task 1, two new words related to the critical lure, and
two new words that were not related to the critical lure. The students were required to rate their
confidence in identifying the words in the given list. They were given a 4-point scale ranging
from old (presented earlier) to new (not presented earlier) to rate their confidence levels. Scale 4
was for “I’m sure it’s old”, scale 3 for “it’s probably old”, scale 2 for “It’s probably new” and
scale 1 for “I’m sure it’s new”.
Method
The lists were played in an audio file. After each list, the students were given a quiet period of 3
minutes and then the next list of words is read. After the last list, they were then asked a specific
word to tick which scale it falls. The first 3 lists were to be termed as old words while next three
lists of words were to be termed as new words.
Results and Discussion
Since the same words that were used for the test of free recall were also used for the recognition
test, results for the later were greatly affected by the former. It was noted that assessment where
the critical words were omitted on purpose, the confidence level was not much different from the
assessment for new and old words. However, it was much higher compared to the assessment of
related and unrelated new words. Some of the students gave words that were unrelated to the
words given, others gave words that were related but non-presented.

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Analysis of the Experiments
From the results obtained we came up with a design of a chart for analysis. Our design variables
were as follows: for independent variables, we used word lists and the types of words for each
bar were old, critical Lure (CL), Related and Unrelated words. For dependent variables, we
separated them into DV1 and DV2. For DV1 we used Percentage (%) intrusions (reported CL’s)
and DV2 we used Confidence ratings. Bellow was the chart developed:
old CL Related Unrelated
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3
3.5
Analysis
Type of word
Mean Confidencerating

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Main Implications of the Findings
Just as it is found out in the DRM paradigm, our test analysis confirmed that people tend to
remember events that did not actually happen but are closely related to the events that are
exposed to them. In addition to the free and false memory studies, examination of short term and
long term memory has also proven to be paramount. People that have short memory are more
prone to false recall as compared to people that have a long memory.
Conclusion
The results from the experiments carried out show a strong memory illusion. Once an event is
presented to human mind for the first time, it tends to be captured but after a short while, it
disappears from the memory. When an event repeats itself in a rhythm, a person tends to
memorize it almost permanently. It has also been proven that some people have a short memory
while others have a long memory.
Limitations
The research on false memory may be subject to various factors which may be a limitation to the
research. First, the accuracy of the research on false memory can be greatly limited by the
memory distortions (Allen & Mertens, 2009). Secondly, the results of the DRM paradigm show
high levels of false memory without giving sufficient evidence of brain activities that could
differentiate correct from false memory (Allen & Mertens, 2009). Thirdly, the research does not
consider the effects of the time delay which is not constant. This has an effect on the ability to
recall and recognize words since a list of words is only read once (Kensinger & Corkin, 2003).
There is a limitation of literature that relates to word association and many of the existing kinds
of literatures are obsolete.

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In our experiment, various limitations affected the accuracy of our research. First, some
participants relied on others for the answers. Secondly, during the periods the students were
given a break to sink the words into their brains, they often engaged in conversations. Thirdly,
outside the class that we were using, there were other activities which were going on like cars
passing, which disrupted students’ attention.

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