Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm

The Deese-Roediger-McDermott-Paradigm , often referred to as the DRM paradigm, is a memory illusion in cognitive psychology. After studying a list of semantically related words, people will falsely remember that an associated word was in the list, even though this word was not actually presented. For example, if a research subject heard the words: bed rest awake tired dream wake snooze blanket doze slumber snore nap peace yawn drowsy, there is a statistical likelihood that they would falsely recall that the word "sleep" was in the list. These memory errors can be difficult to avoid even if the research subject is informed about the illusion.

Several theoretical explanations have been proposed to explain the DRM memory illusion. One theory is that neural activity caused by the related words spreads to the brain's representation of the non-studied word, thereby activating this word. The source of this mental activation is then confused with actual presentation in the study list, analogous to confusions between imagined and perceived events in memory. Another theory is that people remember the overall "gist" of the list, and then mistakenly believe that the non-studied word was in the list because it is consistent with this gist representation.

The implications of the DRM paradigm are far-reaching, but generally it supports the idea that human memories are often "filled in" with what people thought they should have experienced, rather than what they actually experienced. Many cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have used this illusion as a basic tool to investigate how the brain creates false memories.

See also

• False memory
• Source-monitoring error
• Schema (psychology)