Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 17, 2026

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory
Published on: January 31, 2017
The role of memory activation in creating false memories of encoding context
1Department of Psychology, Middlebury College, 276 Bicentennial Hall, Middlebury, VT 05753, USA. jarndt@middlebury.edu
None:
Using 3 experiments, I examined false memory for encoding context by presenting Deese-Roediger-McDermott themes (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) in usual-looking fonts and by testing related, but unstudied, lure items in a font that was shown during encoding. In 2 of the experiments, testing lure items in the font used to study their associated themes increased false recognition relative to testing lure items in a font that was used to study a different lure's theme. Further, studying a larger number of associates exacerbated the influence of testing lure items in a font used to study their associated themes. Finally, testing lures in a font that was encoded many times, but was not used to present the lures' studied associates, increased lure errors more than testing lures in a font that was encoded relatively fewer times. These results favor the explanation of false recognition offered by global-matching models of recognition memory over the explanations of activation-monitoring theory and fuzzy-trace theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).
Related Concept Videos
False Memories
One primary source of false memories is misattribution, where individuals incorrectly associate external information with...
Role of Amygdala in Memory
One of the...
Implicit Memories
One key aspect of implicit...
Understanding Memory
Role of Neurotransmitters in Memory
Glutamate and Synaptic Plasticity
Glutamate, the brain's main excitatory neurotransmitter, is critical for...
Eyewitness Memory
One such error is memory distortion, which occurs because human memory does not function like a...

