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Memory: Roediger and McDermott 1995
Script Name RoedigerMcDermott1995.zip
Stimulus Materials Roediger1995Stimuli.zip

Sample Data Files

 Roediger1995Data.zip
Citation Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, & Cognition Vol. 21(4), Jul 1995, 803-814. (HTML)
 
Summary of Experiment This experiment investigated the ability of participants to create false memories of words that are related to words they have heard in a list. Lists were intentionally structured so that participants would recall a particular word. For instance, one list included words like “bed”, “rest”, “awake”, and “tired”, and participants were expected to recall “sleep”.
Related Studies in this Corpus Tulving and Pearlstone 1966, Thomson and Tulving 1970, Bransford and Franks 1971, Brewer 1977
Works this Study Cites Alba, J.W., & Hasher, L. (1983). Is memory schematic? Psychological Bulletin, 93, 203-231.

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Appleby, D. (1986). Déjà vu in the classroom. Network, 4, 8.

Bartlett, F.C. (1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Bransford, J.D., & Franks, J.J. (1971). The abstraction of linguistic ideas. Cognitive Psychology, 2, 331-350.

Brewer, W.F. (1977). Memory for the pragmatic implications of sentences. Memory and Cognition, 5, 673-678.

Ceci, S.J., Huffman, M.L.C., Smith, E., & Loftus, E.F. (1994). Repeatedly thinking about non-events. Consciousness and Cognition, 3, 388-407.

Cofer, C.N. (1967). Does conceptual organization influence the amount retained in free recall? In B. Kleinmuntz (Ed.), Concepts and the structure of memory (pp.181-214). New York: Wiley.

Collins, A.M., & Loftus, E.F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. Psychological Review, 82, 407-428.

Cramer, P. (1965). Recovery of a discrete memory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1, 326-332.

Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58, 17-22.

Gardiner, J.M. (1988). Functional aspects of recollective experience. Memory & Cognition, 16, 309-313.

Gardiner, J.M., & Java, R.I. (1993). Recognizing and remembering. In A. Collins, S. Gathercole, & P. Morris (Eds.), Theories of memory (pp. 168-188). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Gauld, A., & Stephenson, G.M. (1967). Some experiments related to Bartlett’s theory of remembering. British Journal of Psychology, 58, 39-49.

Gillund, G., & Shiffrin, R.M. (1984). A retrieval model for both recognition and recall. Psychological Review, 91, 1-67.

Hall, J.F., & Kozloff, E.E. (1973). False recognitions of associates of converging versus repeated words. American Journal of Psychology, 86, 133-139.

Hasher, L., & Griffin, M. (1979). Reconstructive and reproductive processes in memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 318-330.

Hintzman, D.L. (1988). Judgments of frequency and recognition memory in a multiple-trace memory model. Psychological Review, 95, 528-551.

Hyman, I.E., Husband, T.H., & Billings, F.J. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9, 181-197.

Jacoby, L.L., Kelley, C.M., & Dywan, J. (1989). Memory attributions. In H.L. Roediger III & F.I.M. Craik (Eds.), Varieties of memory and consciousness: Essays in honour of Endel Tulving (pp. 391-422). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Jenkins, J.J., Wald, J., & Pittenger, J.B. (1986). Apprehending pictorial events: An instance of psychological cohesion. In V. McCabe & G.J. Balzano (Eds.), Event cognition: An ecological perspective (pp. 117-133). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Johnson, M.K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D.S. (1993). Source monitoring. Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28.

Johnson, M.K., & Raye, C.L. (1981). Reality monitoring. Psychological Review, 88, 67-85.

Johnson, M.K., & Suengas, A.G. (1989). Reality monitoring judgments of other people’s memories. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 27, 107-110.

Jones, T.C. & Roediger, H.L. III. (1995). The experiential basis of serial position effects. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 7, 65-80.

Lindsay, D.S., & Read, J.D. (1994). Psychotherapy and memories of childhood sexual abuse: A cognitive perspective. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 8, 281-338.

Loftus, E.F. (1993). The reality of repressed memories. American Psychologist, 48, 518-537.

Loftus, E.F., Miller, D.G., & Burns, H.J. (1978). Semantic integration of verbal information into a visual memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4, 19-31.

Loftus, E.F., & Palmer, J.C. (1974). Reconstruction of automobile destruction: An example of the interaction between language and memory. Journal of Verbal Learning and Behavior, 13, 585-589.

McClelland, J.L. (in press). Constructive memory and memory distortions: A parallel-distributed processing approach. In D.L. Schacter, J.T. Coyle, G.D. Fischbach, M.M. Meslaum, & L.E. Sullivan (Eds.), Memory distortion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

McCloskey, M., & Zaragoza, M. (1985). Misleading postevent information and memory for events: Arguments and evidence against memory impairment hypotheses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 114, 1-16.

Neely, J.H., Schmidt, S.R., & Roediger, H.L. III. (1983). Inhibition from related primes in recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9, 196-211.

Nelson, D.L., Bajo, M., McEvoy, C.L., & Schreiber, T.A. (1989). Prior knowledge: The effects of natural category size on memory for implicitly encoded concepts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learnin, Memory, and Cognition, 15, 957-967.

Paul, I.H. (1959). Studies in remembering: The reproduction of connected and extended verbal material. Psychological Issues, 1 (Monograph 2), 1-152.

Paul, L.M. (1979). Two models of recognition memory: A test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 5, 45-51.

Payne, D.G., Toglia, M.P., & Anastasi, J.S. (1994). Recognition performance level and the magnitude of the misinformation effect in eyewitness memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1, 376-382.

Posner, M.I., & Keele, S.W. (1970). Retention of abstract ideas. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 83, 304-308.

Raaijmakers, J.G.W., & Shiffrin, R.M. (1980). SAM: A theory of probabilistic search of associative memory. In G.H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 14, pp. 207-262). New York: Academic Press.

Rajaram, S. (1993). Remembering and knowing: Two means of access to the personal past. Memory & Cognition, 21, 89-102.

Rajaram, S., & Roediger, H.L., III (in press). Remembering and knowing as states of consciousness during recollection. In J.D. Cohen & J.W. Schooler (Eds.), Scientific approaches to the question of consciousness. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Reyna, V.F., & Brainerd, C.J. (1995). Fuzzy-trace theory: An interim synthesis. Learning and Individual Differences, 7, 1-75.

Roediger, H.L., III, & Payne, D.G. (1985). Recall criterion does not affect recall level or hypermnesia: A puzzle for generate/recognize theories. Memory & Cognition, 13, 1-7.

Roediger, H.L., III, Wheeler, M.A., & Rajaram, S. (1993). Remembering, knowing, and reconstructing the past. In D.L. Medin (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (pp. 97-134). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Russell, W.A., & Jenkins, J.J. (1954). The complete Minnesota norms for responses to 100 words from the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association Test. (Tech. Rep. No. 11, Contract N8 ONR 66216, Office of Naval Research). University of Minnesota.

Schacter, D.L. (in press). Memory distortion: History and current status. In D.L. Schacter, J.T. Coyle, G.D. Fischbach, M.M. Mesulam, & L.E. Sullivan (Eds.), Memory distortion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Schooler, J.W., Gerhard, D., & Loftus, E.F. (1986). Qualities of the unreal. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 171-181.

Shiffrin, R.M., Huber, D.E., & Marinelli, K. (1995). Effects of category length and strength on familiarity in recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 267-287.

Spiro, R.J. (1980). Accommodative reconstruction in prose recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 84-95.

Sulin, R.A., & Dooling, D.J. (1974). Intrusion of a thematic idea in retention of prose. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 103, 255-262.

Tulving, E. (1974). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychologist, 26, 1-12.

Underwood, B.J. (1965). False recognition produced by implicit verbal responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 122-129.

Wheeler, M.A., & Roediger, H.L., III. (1992). Disparate effects of repeated testing: Reconciling Ballard’s (1913) and Bartlett’s (1932) results. Psychological Science, 3, 240-245.

Whittlesea, B.W.A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1235-1253.

Whittlesea, B.W.A., Jacoby, L.L., & Girard, K. (1990). Illusions of immediate memory: Evidence of an attributional basis for feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality. Journal of Memory and Language, 29, 716-732.

Zaragoza, M.S., & Lane, S.M. (1994). Source misattributions and the suggestibility of eyewitness memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning. Memory, and Cognition, 20, 934-945.
Works in Set that Cite this Study {Cited By}
Original Abstract Two experiments (modeled after J. Deese’s 1959 study) revealed remarkable levels of false recall and false recognition in a list learning paradigm. In experiment 1, subjects studied lists of 12 words (e.g., bed, rest, awake); each list was composed of associates of 1 nonpresented word (e.g., sleep). On immediate free recall tests, the nonpresented associates were recalled 40% of the time and were later recognized with high confidence. In Experiment 2, a false recall rate of 55% was obtained with an expanded set of lists, and on a later recognition test, subjects produced false alarms to these items at a rate comparable to the hit rate. The act of recall enhanced later remembering of both studied and nonstudied material. The results reveal a powerful illusion of memory: People remember events that never happened.
Works Used to Replicate Experment {Works Cited}
Data Analysis Instructions {Data Instructions}
 
Date Modified

12-Mar-2002
Contact for More Information Brian MacWhinney