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Updated: Sep 20, 2025
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The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory
Published on: January 31, 2017
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Aphantasia does not affect veridical and false memory: Evidence from the DRM paradigm
Kata Pauly-Takacs1, Saeed Younus1, Natasha Sigala2
1School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds LS1 3HE United Kingdom.
Consciousness and Cognition
|May 29, 2025
Summary
People with aphantasia, the inability to form mental images, do not show differences in generating false verbal memories compared to others. This study found no protection against false memory in aphantasia.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Aphantasia is characterized by a reduced ability to voluntarily form mental images.
- Prior research on aphantasia's impact on cognition and memory yields inconsistent findings.
- Understanding individual differences in mental imagery is crucial for cognitive research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effect of aphantasia on verbal memory, specifically false memory generation.
- To compare false memory production in individuals with and without aphantasia using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm.
Main Methods:
- Participants were divided into aphantasic and non-aphantasic control groups.
- The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm was employed to assess verbal memory.
- Free recall and recognition tests were used to measure veridical and false memory.
Main Results:
- Correlational analyses indicated a weak association between higher visual imagery and better free recall, alongside more false memory intrusions.
- Experimental findings showed no significant difference in veridical or false memory between aphantasic and control groups in free recall or recognition.
- Aphantasia did not appear to confer protection against the generation of verbal false memories.
Conclusions:
- Aphantasia does not significantly alter the susceptibility to verbal false memory generation within the DRM paradigm.
- Future research should explore visual DRM tasks to assess aphantasia's impact on visual false memories.
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