Judgments of recency and their relation to recognition memory
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Updated: Sep 26, 2026

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory
Published on: January 31, 2017
1Department of Psychology, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, USA. hintzman@oregon.uoregon.edu
Abstract:
Subjects went through a list of 550 high- and low-frequency words (Experiment 1) or concrete and abstract words (Experiment 2) in which individual items were repeated at lags of 5 to 30 other items. They made old versus new recognition decisions on each word and followed each "old" response with a numerical judgment of recency (JOR). Recognition judgments displayed the mirror effect. Conditionalized on recognition, JORs were shorter for low-frequency words than for high-frequency words, and shorter for concrete words than for abstract words. This was true at every lag, suggesting that recognition and JOR may have a common basis. However, recognition confidence ratings obtained in Experiment 3 proved much less sensitive than JOR to test lag. Memory models applicable to multiple judgment tasks will be needed to account for such findings.
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