Jordan P. Lippman et al.
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replication of Deese’s (1959) classic study: A list of target words (e.g., sour, candy, sugar,
bitter, good, taste, etc.) is presented, and then participants immediately categorize a new list
of words as either present or not present in the originally experienced list. Because words in
the original list all tend to activate the “sweet” schema, this critical lure is inevitably “remem-
bered” as being on the target list whereas unrelated distractors in the new list are appropri-
ately rejected. Students are often surprised that, even when aware of the effect ahead of
time, they cannot prevent these false memories from appearing. This simple and robust
effect can be demonstrated with visual or auditory stimuli and with recognition or recall
tests. In class, the instructor can present the list of target words visually or orally and the
number of people who recognize each word can be recorded.
To promote critical thinking about the nature of the episodic memory process, we
introduce the paradigm and then ask students to make predictions about the results (even
though they can access their results and that of the larger group online, many do not make
use of this feature of CogLab). Figure 16.1 presents a graph of the results from the
Wadsworth CogLab for Ohlsson’s Spring 2005 class showing accurate recognition of
original target words, accurate recognition of unrelated distractor or lure words, and a
Table 16.1. List of Sample CogLabs from Pellegrino’s Class by Topic and Popularity
Topic CogLabs
a
PopularitybMental imagery and visual processing Mental Rotation 13%
Mental Scanning 7%
Semantic memory: organization and processing Prototypes 8%
Lexical Decision 6%
Implicit Learning 5%
Sensory memory Partial Report 3%
Short-term and working memory Memory Span 34%
Brown–Peterson 13%
Operation Span 8%
Sternberg Search 3%
Episodic memory: Storage & retrieval Encoding Specificity 12%
Levels of Processing 7%
Episodic memory: Forgetting & false memories False Memory 36%
Forgot-it-all-Along 17%
Remember/Know 15%
Introduction to language Word Superiority 21%
Stroop 13%
Comprehension (Vocabulary & comprehension) 5%
Problem solving and decision making Risky Decisions 21%
Monty Hall 15%
Wason Selection Task 9%
Typical Reasoning 9%
Intelligence (Nonverbal reasoning) 12%
a
“Home-grown” labs are listed in parentheses. The rest are part of the Wadsworth CogLab Package.
b
Percentage of students who chose each as one of their three favorite labs.