The Deese-Roediger-McDermott Effect

Roediger and McDermott (1995) replicated and extended the study by Deese (1959).

He showed that in a free recall test, participants listed the word needle after they have learned the word list:

thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, pricked, thimble, haystack, pain, hurt, and injection.

Obviously, the word list activated the associated word needle.

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The Deese-Roediger-McDermott Effect

Roediger and McDermott replicated this experiment and found in one experiment that in immediate recall tests, associated words that were not in the learning list were retrieved about 40% of the time and were later recognized with high confidence.

In a second experiment, they found false recall rates of as much as 55%, and false alarm rates for associates not in the learning list were comparable to hit rates.

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The Deese-Roediger-McDermott Effect

This powerful effect has become known as the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect.

It demonstrates the constructive nature of memory, as earlier demonstrated by Bartlett’s (1932) memory for details of the ghost story and later by the malleability of autobiographical memories in eyewitness testimony.

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