Reported serial positions of true and illusory memories in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott paradigm

Abstract

One of the easiest ways to induce illusory memories in the laboratory is to use the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word-list paradigm. Researchers have used this paradigm not only to study people's memories of stimuli that were not actually presented, but also to study the phenomenological qualities of these illusions. In four experiments, the current investigation explored a phenomenological quality of illusory memories that has received almost no attention, specifically, temporality. A serial position task was incorporated into the DRM paradigm to examine temporal attributes of participants' true and false memories. Effects of list strength, presentation order, and types of warnings were examined. Results showed consistent serial position responses for true and false memories. However, only responses for illusory memories were affected by manipulations at study. The current findings thus lend support to encoding-based explanations of false recollections.

Keywords:

• False memory
• Recognition
• Serial position

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to acknowledge the assistance of Michael Ainette, Iraida Atiles, and Fredeswilda Maraj in data collection when they were undergraduate students at Lehman College. Experiment 4 was Debbie DelValle's Undergraduate Honors Research Project at Lehman College.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.