James March

There are a number of ways in which individuals study false memories; one way is to try and determine the nature of them, along with possible ways to distinguish them from genuine memories. One of the most common ways that false memories have been studied is through the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect. Subjects are given lists of words that are all associated with a prototype but the prototype itself is not presented. For example, if the prototype is sleep, the list would consist of the 15 words most highly associated with sleep, presented in order from the most highly associated (bed) to the least highly associated (drowsy). The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect refers to the high-confidence false recall or recognition of the prototypes. This false recall or recognition often exceeds that of other high associate distracters and even the correct recall or recognition of low-associate targets (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). This graphical depiction replicates commonly used word lists in this paradigm.