"Identify-to-reject": a specific strategy to avoid false memories in the DRM paradigm

Previous research using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm has shown that lists of associates in which the critical words were easily identified as the themes of the lists produce lower levels of false memories in adults. In an attempt to analyze whether this effect is due to the application of a specific memory-editing process (the identify-to-reject strategy), two experiments manipulated variables that are likely to disrupt this strategy either at encoding or at retrieval. In Experiment 1, lists were presented at a very fast presentation rate to reduce the possibility of identifying the missing critical word as the theme of the list, and in Experiment 2, participants were pressed to give yes/no recognition answers within a very short time. The results showed that both of these manipulations disrupted the identifiability effect, indicating that the identify-to-reject strategy and theme identifiability play a major role in the rejection of false memories in the DRM paradigm.