Day 100 of 120 Memory Difficulty 6/10
Related word lists reliably plant a confident false memory
Quick answer
Related word lists reliably plant a confident false memory. Today's question (DRM false memory paradigm) asks about a finding from Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. in 1995. The correct option is Falsely recall a related lure word ('sleep') that was never on the list — full explanation, primary source, and glossary cross-links below.
Today's question
In the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, participants study a list like 'bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, snooze, blanket'. On a later recall test, they are very likely to:
Reveal the answer and explanation
Correct: B — Falsely recall a related lure word ('sleep') that was never on the list
Roediger and McDermott (1995) revived Deese's earlier paradigm and showed that thematically related word lists reliably produce confident false recall and recognition of a critical non-presented 'lure' — and that participants often report rich subjective recollection of having studied it. The DRM paradigm became a workhorse for studying memory illusions and the constructive nature of recall. It demonstrates that retrieval reconstructs gist as much as surface detail, and that even careful, motivated rememberers can be confidently wrong.
About the source
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803–814.
Every Cognition Bible question cites a primary source — a paper, book chapter, or monograph that exists, that we can point to on Google Scholar, and whose finding the question accurately summarizes. No fabricated authority strings, no name-drops without paper-level grounding.
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