Experience

The Memory Trap

Memorise a few lists of words. Then see whether your memory quietly added one of its own.

13 lists of words will flash by, one word at a time. Try to remember them.
2Then a little mental arithmetic, and a memory test.
3Finally, we reveal what your memory got up to.

Your answers stay on this phone. Nothing is saved or sent.

What is the DRM false-memory experiment?

People study a list of related words, such as bed, rest, tired, dream, but never the word at its heart: sleep. Asked later which words they saw, many people say they saw "sleep", and they are often quite sure.

Psychologist James Deese first described the method in 1959, and Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott revived it in 1995. It is now known by their initials, DRM. It shows something simple and striking: memory is not a recording. The brain rebuilds it from meaning.

Based on the false-memory studies of Deese (1959) and Roediger & McDermott (1995).

How to play

1Three lists of words flash by, about one word a second. Try to remember them.
2Twenty seconds of quick sums to clear your head.
3The memory test: for each word, choose "definitely saw it", "I think I saw it" or "didn't see it". Then see whether your memory was caught.

Memory is not a recording. It is rebuilt.

The brain doesn't store words one by one. It keeps the gist, and when you remember, it fills the details back in by meaning. The word that fits best, though it was never there, gets "remembered" too.

Psychologist James Deese first recorded this in 1959. In 1995, Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott revived and extended the experiment: many participants said they had seen the missing word, at rates close to the words they really saw, and some said they clearly "remembered" it being shown.

A note

This is a small experiment with lists of words, showing how memory fills in details by meaning. It does not mean your memories of things you have lived through are false, including painful ones. If some memories keep troubling you, you can talk them through with a professional.

All the word lists (spoilers: play first)

The English lists are the first ten words of the classic published DRM lists. Each game picks three of them at random.

bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, wake, snooze, blanket, doze, slumber
Never shown: “sleep”
nurse, sick, lawyer, medicine, health, hospital, dentist, physician, ill, patient
Never shown: “doctor”
sour, candy, sugar, bitter, good, taste, tooth, nice, honey, soda
Never shown: “sweet”
table, sit, legs, seat, couch, desk, recliner, sofa, wood, cushion
Never shown: “chair”
hill, valley, climb, summit, top, molehill, peak, plain, glacier, goat
Never shown: “mountain”
hot, snow, warm, winter, ice, wet, frigid, chilly, heat, weather
Never shown: “cold”

References

Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58(1), 17–22.
Roediger, H. L., III, & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21(4), 803–814.