The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory

Summary

Here we present the Deese, Roediger and McDermott (DRM) task, a tool to study false memories in the laboratory. Subjects study lists of semantically related words (e.g., nurse, sick, etc.), and later falsely remember an unstudied word (doctor) that represents the gist, or theme, of the word list.

Abstract

The Deese, Roediger and McDermott (DRM) task is a false memory paradigm in which subjects are presented with lists of semantically related words (e.g., nurse, hospital, etc.) at encoding. After a delay, subjects are asked to recall or recognize these words. In the recognition memory version of the task, subjects are asked whether they remember previously presented words, as well as related (but never presented) critical lure words ('doctor'). Typically, the critical word is recognized with high probability and confidence. This false memory effect has been robustly demonstrated across short (e.g., immediate, 20 min) and long (e.g., 1, 7, 60 d) delays between encoding and memory testing. A strength of using this task to study false memory is its simplicity and short duration. If encoding and retrieval components of the task occur in the same session, the entire task can take as little as 2 - 30 min. However, although the DRM task is widely considered a 'false memory' paradigm, some researchers consider DRM illusions to be based on the activation of semantic memory networks in the brain, and argue that such semantic gist-based false memory errors may actually be useful in some scenarios (e.g., remembering the forest for the trees; remembering that a word list was about "doctors", even though the actual word "doctor" was never presented for study). Remembering the gist of experience (instead of or along with individual details) is arguably an adaptive process and this task has provided a great deal of knowledge about the constructive, adaptive nature of memory. Therefore, researchers should use caution when discussing the overall reach and implications of their experiments when using this task to study 'false memory', as DRM memory errors may not adequately reflect false memories in the real world, such as false memory in eyewitness testimony, or false memories of sexual abuse.

Introduction

The Deese, Roediger and McDermott (DRM) task was initially created by Deese¹, and later revitalized by Roediger and McDermott² as a convenient means of studying false memory in the laboratory. Although some^3,4 argue it should be called the DRMRS task, for the contributions of Read⁵ and Solso⁶, the most common name in the literature is the DRM task, and we call it by that name here. After a seminal paper published by Roediger and McDermott², interest of false memory research skyrocketed (....

Protocol

The Institutional Review Board of the University of Notre Dame approved all of the procedures, including use of human subjects, discussed here. The preparation and the administration of the DRM task materials described below were used in a published study²⁸, in which the effects of psychosocial stress following DRM word list encoding were assessed 24 h later.

1. Preparation of DRM Task

1. Use the word lists from Stadler, Roediger, and McDermott⁴⁷, presented in the Appendix, to select the appropriate number of word lists for the experiment. From Tables 1 and 2<....

Results

Using the procedure presented here, the authors have been able to reliably produce the DRM effect in two independent experiments; that is, subjects recall and recognize, with high probability, non-presented critical words that can be considered false memories for the 'gist' of the word lists.

Results for experiment 1 (see Figures 1 and 2) have been published elsewhere²⁸. .......

Discussion

In this report, the authors described a highly used cognitive task that reliably produces gist-based false memories in human subjects. It is important to note that, in the current report, the DRM task was presented in one of its simplest forms, very similar to the original protocol used by Deese¹ and Roediger and McDermott². The similarity with the original protocol used in the experiments described here has one particular exception: a long delay (24, 48 h) between encoding.......

Materials

List of materials used in this article

Name	Company	Catalog Number	Comments
Computer			No particular brand/type required.
Headphones			No particular brand/type required.
RODE NT1-A 1" cardioid condenser microphone	Rode	http://www.rode.com/microphones/nt1-a	recording equipment used to record the wordlists
Audacity	Audacity	http://www.audacityteam.org/	for editing the recording of the wordlists
E-Prime	Psychology Software Tools, Inc.	https://www.pstnet.com/eprime.cfm	for stimuli presentation and/or testing
MS PowerPoint (optional)	Microsoft		for stimuli presentation and/or testing
MS Word (optional)	Microsoft		for free recall testing. Any word processor application will work.