Transcript Deese (1959)

False Memories from Word Lists
Deese (1959) was interested in whether
learning a list of words from a certain category
resulted in intrusions of associated words
during free recall. In other words: Do people
add elements to their memory that fit their prior
knowledge (see Bartlett, 1932)?
Let us look at an example:
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False Memories from Word Lists
One of the word lists participants had to learn was:
thread, pin, eye, sewing, sharp, point, pricked,
thimble, haystack, pain, hurt, and injection.
The associated word needle did not appear in the
learning list. Nevertheless, participants often listed
the word needle in a free recall test.
In a later study, Roediger and McDermott (1995)
replicated and extended Deese’s findings.
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