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False Memories

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False memories represent a cognitive distortion in which individuals recall events that did not happen, or remember them in an altered form. This phenomenon highlights the brain's constructive nature in processing and recalling memories, emphasizing that memory is not a perfect representation of past events but rather a dynamic reconstruction influenced by various factors.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 26, 2026

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

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

Published on: January 31, 2017

Divided attention during retrieval suppresses false recognition in confabulation.

Elisa Ciaramelli¹, Simona Ghetti, Marco Borsotti

¹Rotman Research Institute, Toronto, Canada. elisa.ciaramelli@utoronto.ca

Cortex; a Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior

|January 20, 2009

Summary

Confabulating patients show reduced false recognition when cognitive resources are limited. This suggests that excessive processing of irrelevant memories contributes to their memory errors.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Neuropsychology

Background:

Confabulation is characterized by the production of false memories.
The underlying mechanisms of confabulation, particularly false recognition, are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To test the hypothesis that false recognition in confabulating patients stems from sustained processing of irrelevant information.
To investigate whether reducing cognitive resources at retrieval can mitigate false recognition in confabulating patients.

Main Methods:

Two experiments were conducted using a divided attention (DA) versus full attention (FA) retrieval paradigm.
Participants included confabulating patients, non-confabulating patients with memory/executive deficits, and normal controls.
A Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm was employed in the second experiment.

Main Results:

Confabulating patients showed decreased false recognition under DA compared to FA conditions.
Non-confabulating patients and controls exhibited increased false recognition under DA conditions.
Confabulating patients' false recognition to critical lures remained unchanged under DA, unlike controls.

Conclusions:

Findings support the hypothesis that excessive processing of task-irrelevant memories contributes to false recognition in confabulating patients.
Attentional manipulation effectively differentiated memory processing in confabulating patients versus controls.