In a study, researchers showed undergraduate participants a 15-word list including "bed," "rest," "tired," "awake," "dream," "blanket," and "pillow," presented one second per word. Later, on a surprise recognition test, many participants confidently reported having seen the word "sleep," which had never appeared on the list. Their false-recognition confidence was as high as for words actually presented earlier.
This phenomenon is best explained by the
- Acheck_circle
DRM paradigm and spreading activation creating false memories of associatively related lures
- B
Encoding specificity principle requiring matching context
- C
Serial position effect's primacy advantage
- D
Levels-of-processing framework requiring deep semantic encoding
Explanation
The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm demonstrates that semantically related lures activate associative networks, producing high-confidence false memories.