The Effect of Motivation on False Word Recall in the DRM Paradigm

The experiment I intend to conduct will analyze the effects of motivation on false word recall in the DRM paradigm. The DRM paradigm has been extensively analyzed, and it has been concluded that participants readily recall words that are associated with presented lists, however, not presented in the lists. This phenomenon is known as false recall. I am interested if the presence of a secondary reinforcer will affect the proportion of false word recall. I reviewed three studies that I believe are pertinent to my experiment.

The first study I reviewed was “Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists” by Roediger III and Kathleen B. McDermott. The study was published in 1995, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition. Roediger and McDermott conducted two separate experiments in their study. The experiments were modeled after Deese’s 1959 study “On the Prediction of Occurrences of Particular Verbal Intrusions in Immediate Recall.” The results of Deese’s study concluded that participants falsely recalled a nonpresented critical lure 44% of the time. 36 students from Rice University participated in Roediger and McDermott’s first experiment. The students participated as part of a course project. The participants were presented with six lists that were developed from Deese’s study and Russell and Jenkins 1954 study “The complete Minnesota norms for responses to 100 words from the Kent-Rosanoff word association Test.” The six lists that were chosen for the Roediger and McDermott study were shown to elicit high rates of false recall in Deese’s study. The list contained 12 associated words that related to one nonpresented word. An example nonpresented word is chair, the 12 associated w...

... middle of paper ...

...am, Emery, & Elliott, 2011).

Works Cited

Hess, T. M., Popham, L. E., Emery, L., & Elliott, T. (2011). Mood, motivation, and misinformation: aging and affective state influences on memory. Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition, 13-34. doi:10.1080/13825585.2011.622740

Roediger III, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating False Memories: Remembering Words Not Presented in Lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cogntion, 21, 803-814.

Roediger III, H. L., Watson, J. M., McDermott, K. B., & Gallo, D. A. (2001). Factors that determine false recall: A multiple regression analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(3), 385-407.

Ruud, C., Bijleveld, E., & Aarts, H. (2011). Once the money is in sight: Distinctive effects of conscious and unconscious rewards on task performance. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(4), 865-869.