Exploring False Memory through the Deese Roediger McDermott Paradigm

False memory is a memory of an event that did not occur. In this study, we used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm which is almost always used in studies related to false memories. Two experiments were presented, and participants considered two sets of word lists. Following the presentation of words, participants did a recall test with or without intervention. We hypothesized that intervention makes participants not make a false memory error in the second set. Results show false memory will influence when participants saw a word that wasn't given.

A Chi-square Independent test design was used and there was no significant difference between groups. Forty participants were selected but only those who made the false memory error. They were 40 subjects, 12 students from Brooklyn College and 28 participants outside of Brooklyn College. Sixteen males and 24 females age range 18- 40 years old.

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False memory is a memory of an event that did not occur and word recall is the retrieval of recall of information, events and memories from the past.

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Interventions many or may not have a positive or a negative effect on word recollection. What is being studied is whether many, institutions can people recall words that aren’t there because they associate words relating to the theme they do see at hand. There have been recent studies doing these experiments in so many ways like recognition tests, recall tests, arithmetic tests, etc. with different manipulations, different duration times, or several study word terms. The purpose of this experiment was to study if intervention has a positive or negative effect on word recollection in false memory situationswas.

In the study by Huff and Hutchinson, 2010 they studied if false memory were affected when they used a list of words not relating to each other but all associated with one theme. When people begin the experiment and see the list of words two things happen in their brain. The verbatim theory is when the specific feature of the words stands out to them like the word size or the color they see of the word or around it and a gist extraction which is when they get the themes of the list of words. The recall of words is an effect of the retrieval of the verbatim or gist extraction because people have hints for each word they see that is related to the theme at the moment. In Jordan and Sherman, 2011 article they have this theory that the presentation of the DRM lists brings out the activation whether consciously or unconsciously of related responses to the word items. This result of related words makes participants create errors and remember words that weren’t there. We hypothesized that an intervention makes participants not make a false memory error in the second set.

Method

Participants

They were 40 subjects, 12 students from Brooklyn College and 28 participants outside of Brooklyn College. Sixteen males and 24 females age range 18- 40 years old. All participants were non-randomly selected. Twelve students were part of a psychology class and were required to participate for a cour, insituations was the Chi-Square credit. All subjects were tested separately in sittings lasting about 10- 15 min

Apparatus

The experiment was conducted on Brooklyn College PCs along with personal computers. Google Docs and Microsoft Excel and SPSS version 16 were all used to create the experiment and test it on participants. A total of 40 words were administered, condition one had 20 words and condition two had 20 words. A Chi Square Independent Test design was used.

Procedure

On arrival to the sessions, each participant was randomly assigned a conditioned and individually directed into a room. Each participant was given a pen and paper and directions to follow. They were then shown two sets of power point slides (each containing 20 words, displayed at 2 seconds intervals). One set comprised of words related to coffee and the other set comprised of words related to summer. This was counterbalanced manipulation because some participants were shown words relating to summer first and other participants were shown words relating to coffee first. Words were presented one at a time in the center of the computer screen. Each word played for 2 seconds. After each condition, the participants were asked to write down each word they recalled from the two conditions on the paper. Every other participant who made the error in the first condition was given the intervention. For those who received the intervention, the experimenter would say “why did you write “coffee or summer”? you know that that wasn’t a word given in the presentation” the participants were shocked they made that mistake and became aware of the second set and didn’t make that error. The sheets with the data were then given to the experimenter who submitted them into Microsoft Excel and SPSS for analysis.

Results

It was a Chi-Squareassignments, an Independence Test, and two random assignment of conditions. Two Conditions with interventions and without interventions, with words relating to summer first were displayed then words relating to coffee were displayed next. Participants who didn’t make mistakes were excluded. Only participants who made the mistake were included. In this case, the Chi-Square results were not significant.  X^2 (2, N=16) = 1.0, p > 0.05

Discussion

Interventions did not affect false memory and word recall. With intervention, seven participants had no effect and without intervention eight had no effect and one effect. So the intervention had no significant effect. However, this article by Robinson and Roediger III, 1997 studied the effect of words relating to the theme on false recognition and recall. In their first experiment, they chose to control the number of words and test them on different levels of false recall. The results were a clear difference between word recall and false recall of the word that wasn’t presented. False memory is important to study because given the amount of information we receive in our everyday life we should learn how much we should prioritize what information should be remembered. But then again researchers should be careful when considering and connecting these experiments with real-life situations because the errors made in these experiments may not replicate effectively false memories, for example, testimonies or abuse situations. Certain limitations with the current study are maybe if there were more participants, have an even amount of males and females, maybe have more word lists.