Name: the deese-roediger-mcdermott (drm) task: a simple cognitive paradigm to investigate false memories in the laboratory
Uploaded: 2017-01-31T13:00:00
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory at JoVE.com

The authors thank all members of the Sleep, Stress, and Memory Lab for their help in data collection, particularly Stephen M. Mattingly for proofreading the final manuscript.

The Institutional Review Board of the University of Notre Dame approved all of the procedures, including use of human subjects, discussed here. The preparation and the administration of the DRM task materials described below were used in a published study28, in which the effects of psychosocial stress following DRM word list encoding were assessed 24 h later.
1. Preparation of DRM Task
<ol>
	<li>Use the word lists from Stadler, Roediger, and McDermott<sup class="xref"...

In this report, the authors described a highly used cognitive task that reliably produces gist-based false memories in human subjects. It is important to note that, in the current report, the DRM task was presented in one of its simplest forms, very similar to the original protocol used by Deese1 and Roediger and McDermott2. The similarity with the original protocol used in the experiments described here has one particular exception: a long delay (24, 48 h) between encoding...

An erratum was issued for: <a href="http://www.jove.com/video/54793">The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory</a>.&#160; Additional references have been added to the References section.

An erratum was issued for: <a href="http://www.jove.com/video/54793">The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory</a>. Additional references have been added to the References section.

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

The Deese,&#160;Roediger and McDermott (DRM) task was initially created by Deese1, and later revitalized by Roediger and McDermott2 as a convenient means of studying false memory in the laboratory. Although some3,4 argue it should be called the DRMRS task, for the contributions of Read5 and Solso6, the most common name in the literature is the DRM task, and we call it by that name here. After a seminal paper published by Roediger and McDermott2, interest of false memory research skyrocketed (see7), resulting in over 2,800 citations of that article to date. According to Roediger and McDermott, they revived the experimental design created by Deese because there was no reliable laboratory paradigm to induce false recall, while evidence of false recognition (e.g.,8,9) did &#34;little to discourage the belief that more natural, coherent materials are needed to demonstrate powerful false memory effects&#34;2.
One such example of a &#34;more natural&#34; paradigm is the misinformation paradigm10,11. In this task, subjects are presented with a story through pictures, slides, or video. Later, misleading information is provided, and the question is whether subjects will incorporate this misleading information into their recollection of the story. The DRM task is simpler than the misinformation paradigm in several respects. DRM encoding requires only the quick presentation and learning of lists of words, either visually or aurally. Retrieval testing for the DRM task is equally convenient regardless of the particular method used. In a recognition test participants are presented with a subset of the encoded words, the critical lure words (e.g., &#39;doctor&#39;), and unrelated lure words and have to make simple judgments of whether they remember each word or not, whereas in a recall test, participants have to write down all the words they are able to remember. In contrast, free recall testing for the misinformation paradigm is impractical, as it requires time-consuming content analysis. Additionally, the DRM task does not require any manipulation between encoding and testing, as DRM &#39;false memories&#39; are spontaneously self-generated. The misinformation errors, on the other hand, are induced via external suggestions. Although both the DRM and misinformation paradigms are argued to assess false memory, newer studies have found small (r = 0.12)12 or no relationship13,14 between the misinformation and the DRM effects, suggesting that different mechanisms may be at play for each type of false memory. Moreover, the DRM illusions are argued to be a byproduct of the constructive nature of memory15, which can be considered an evolutionarily adaptive process16.
The DRM false memory effect is highly robust across studies (for quantitative reviews see 17,18), and there is considerable evidence that the DRM task is quite reliable19 (but see20). The DRM false memory effect has been found using various delay intervals, including those as short as an immediate test, and those delaying memory testing until 60 days later21,22,23 (but see 24). Warning subjects of the DRM illusion reduces, but does not erase, the effect 14,25. The DRM effect has also been found with different encoding strategies, such as changes in word presentation duration26, and can be increased by several post-encoding manipulations, such as sleep27 or stress28.
Moreover, the DRM task has been utilized by many laboratories to study false memory formation in a variety of subject populations, such as children29,30,31,32 and older adults33, and in a variety of research fields, including individual cognitive (e.g., working memory20,34) and personality differences35, neuroimaging36,37, and neuropsychology38. In spite of its popularity, however, many have argued against the generalizability of the DRM task, and whether the creation of DRM false memories is comparable to the naturalistic creation of false autobiographical memories outside of the laboratory, such as memories of child abuse recovered in psychotherapy39,40,41. Nonetheless, several studies have found that subjects that are more susceptible to DRM false memories are also more prone to autobiographical memory distortions42, fantastic autobiographical memories (alien abductions43; past lives44), and recovered autobiographical memories45.
In short, the DRM task has been a useful tool to investigate the neurocognitive underpinnings of the (re)constructive nature of memory15,16, regardless of the ongoing debate about how appropriate and relevant it is in the study of autobiographical false memories7. In the current report, the DRM task procedures are explained in their simplest form, with a focus on targeting memory consolidation processes (i.e.&#160;experimental manipulations, such as sleep and stress, occur after encoding has finished and are thus used as tools to evaluate consolidation), as this has been the focus in our laboratory. The authors refer the reader to Gallo (2013)46 for an excellent review of the DRM task, along with the different variations on encoding and testing procedures.

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="905">
	<tbody>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:247px;">Computer</td>
			<td style="width:275px;"></td>
			<td style="width:192px;"></td>
			<td style="width:191px;">No particular brand/type required.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:247px;">Headphones</td>
			<td style="width:275px;"></td>
			<td style="width:192px;"></td>
			<td>No particular brand/type required.</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="42">
			<td height="42" style="height:42px;">RODE NT1-A 1&#34; cardioid condenser microphone</td>
			<td style="width:275px;">Rode</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">http://www.rode.com/microphones/nt1-a</td>
			<td>recording equipment used to record the wordlists</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="42">
			<td height="42" style="height:42px;width:247px;">Audacity</td>
			<td style="width:275px;">Audacity</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">http://www.audacityteam.org/</td>
			<td>for editing the recording of the wordlists</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="42">
			<td height="42" style="height:42px;width:247px;">E-Prime&#160;</td>
			<td style="width:275px;">Psychology Software Tools, Inc.</td>
			<td style="width:192px;">https://www.pstnet.com/eprime.cfm</td>
			<td>for stimuli presentation and/or testing</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:247px;">MS PowerPoint (optional)</td>
			<td style="width:275px;">Microsoft</td>
			<td style="width:192px;"></td>
			<td>for stimuli presentation and/or testing</td>
		</tr>
		<tr height="21">
			<td height="21" style="height:21px;width:247px;">MS Word (optional)</td>
			<td style="width:275px;">Microsoft</td>
			<td style="width:192px;"></td>
			<td>for free recall testing. Any word processor application will work.</td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

the deese-roediger-mcdermott (drm) task: a simple cognitive paradigm to investigate false memories in the laboratory

The Deese,&#160;Roediger and McDermott&#160;(DRM) task is a false memory paradigm in which subjects are presented with lists of semantically related words (e.g., nurse, hospital, etc.) at encoding. After a delay, subjects are asked to recall or recognize these words. In the recognition memory version of the task, subjects are asked whether they remember previously presented words, as well as related (but never presented) critical lure words (&#39;doctor&#39;). Typically, the critical word is recognized with high probability and confidence. This false memory effect has been robustly demonstrated across short (e.g., immediate, 20 min) and long (e.g., 1, 7, 60 d) delays between encoding and memory testing. A strength of using this task to study false memory is its simplicity and short duration. If encoding and retrieval components of the task occur in the same session, the entire task can take as little as 2 - 30 min. However, although the DRM task is widely considered a &#39;false memory&#39; paradigm, some researchers consider DRM illusions to be based on the activation of semantic memory networks in the brain, and argue that such semantic gist-based false memory errors may actually be useful in some scenarios (e.g., remembering the forest for the trees; remembering that a word list was about &#34;doctors&#34;, even though the actual word &#34;doctor&#34; was never presented for study). Remembering the gist of experience (instead of or along with individual details) is arguably an adaptive process and this task has provided a great deal of knowledge about the constructive, adaptive nature of memory. Therefore, researchers should use caution when discussing the overall reach and implications of their experiments when using this task to study &#39;false memory&#39;, as DRM memory errors may not adequately reflect false memories in the real world, such as false memory in eyewitness testimony, or false memories of sexual abuse.

Using the procedure presented here, the authors have been able to reliably produce the DRM effect in two independent experiments; that is, subjects recall and recognize, with high probability, non-presented critical words that can be considered false memories for the &#39;gist&#39; of the word lists.
Results for experiment 1 (see Figures 1 and 2) have been published elsewhere28...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about The Deese-Roediger-McDermott DRM Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories in the Laboratory at JoVE.com

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

Here we present the Deese,&#160;Roediger and McDermott&#160;(DRM) task, a tool to study false memories in the laboratory. Subjects study lists of semantically related words (e.g.,&#160;nurse, sick, etc.), and later falsely remember an unstudied word (doctor) that represents the gist, or theme, of the word list.

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

The Deese,&#160;Roediger and McDermott&#160;(DRM) task is a false memory paradigm in which subjects are presented with lists of semantically related words ...

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