Pardilla-Delgado Enmanuelle, Payne Jessica D
Psychology, University of Notre Dame;
Psychology, University of Notre Dame.
J Vis Exp. 2017 Jan 31(119):54793. doi: 10.3791/54793.
The Deese, Roediger and McDermott (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 ('doctor'). 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 'false memory' 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 "doctors", even though the actual word "doctor" 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 'false memory', 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.
迪斯、罗迪格和麦克德莫特（DRM）任务是一种错误记忆范式，在编码阶段向受试者呈现语义相关的单词列表（如护士、医院等）。经过一段时间延迟后，要求受试者回忆或识别这些单词。在该任务的识别记忆版本中，受试者被问及是否记得之前呈现的单词以及相关的（但从未呈现过的）关键诱饵单词（“医生”）。通常，关键单词被高概率且自信地识别出来。这种错误记忆效应在编码和记忆测试之间的短延迟（如即时、20分钟）和长延迟（如1天、7天、60天）中都得到了有力证明。使用该任务研究错误记忆的一个优点是其简单性和持续时间短。如果任务的编码和检索部分在同一会话中进行，整个任务可能只需2至30分钟。然而，尽管DRM任务被广泛认为是一种“错误记忆”范式，但一些研究人员认为DRM错觉是基于大脑中语义记忆网络的激活，并认为这种基于语义要点的错误记忆错误在某些情况下可能实际上是有用的（例如，见森林不见树木；记住一个单词列表是关于“医生”的，即使实际单词“医生”从未呈现用于研究）。记住经验的要点（而不是个别细节或与之一起）可以说是一个适应性过程，并且该任务已经提供了大量关于记忆的建设性、适应性本质的知识。因此，当使用该任务研究“错误记忆”时，研究人员在讨论其实验的总体范围和影响时应谨慎行事，因为DRM记忆错误可能无法充分反映现实世界中的错误记忆，如目击证人证词中的错误记忆或性虐待的错误记忆。
