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Classic Studies & Cognitive Psychology Practical
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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.