220 • CHAPTER 8 Everyday Memory and Memory Errors
if you want to send the letter by registered or certifi ed mail, giving your letter to the post
offi ce employee, watching the employee weigh the letter and determine the postage, paying
for the postage, perhaps buying some stamps for future use, and then leaving the post offi ce.
Scripts can infl uence our memory by setting up expectations about what usually
happens in a particular situation. To test the infl uence of scripts, Gordon Bower and
coworkers (1979) did an experiment in which participants were asked to remember
short passages like the following:The DentistBill had a bad toothache. It seemed like forever before he fi nally arrived at the dentist’s
offi ce. Bill looked around at the various dental posters on the wall. Finally the dental
hygienist checked and x-rayed his teeth. He wondered what the dentist was doing. The
dentist said that Bill had a lot of cavities. As soon as he’d made another appointment, he
left the dentist’s offi ce.The participants read a number of passages like this one, all of which were about
familiar activities such as going to the dentist, going swimming, or going to a party.
After a delay period, the participants were given the titles of the stories they had read
and were told to write down what they remembered about each story as accurately as
possible. The participants created stories that included much material that matched the
original stories, but they also included material that wasn’t presented in the original
story but is part of the script for the activity described. For example, for the dentist
story, some participants reported reading that “Bill checked in with the dentist’s recep-
tionist.” This statement is part of most people’s “going to the dentist” script, but it was
not included in the original story. Thus, knowledge of the dentist script caused the par-
ticipants to add information that wasn’t originally presented. Another example of a link
between knowledge and memory is provided by the demonstration in the next section.False Recall and Recognition Try the following demonstration.DEMONSTRATION Memory for a List
Read the following list at a rate of about one item per second, and then cover the list and write
down as many of the words as possible. In order for this demonstration to work, it is important
that you cover the words and write down the words you remember before reading past the
demonstration.bed, rest, awake, tired, dream
wake, night, blanket, doze, slumber
snore, pillow, peace, yawn, drowsyDoes your list of remembered words include any words that are not on the list
above? This experiment was introduced by James Deese (1959) and studied further by
Henry Roediger and Kathleen McDermott (1995). When I present this list to my class,
there are always a substantial number of students who report that they remember the
word “sleep.” Remembering sleep is a false memory because it isn’t on the list. This
false memory occurs because people associate sleep with other words on the list. This
is similar to the effect of schemas, in which people create false memories for offi ce fur-
nishings that aren’t present because they associate these offi ce furnishings with what is
usually found in offi ces. Again, constructive processes have created an error in memory.
The crucial thing to take away from all of these examples is that false memories
arise from the same constructive process that produces true memories. Memory, as we
have seen, is not a camera or a tape recorder that creates a perfect, unchanging record
of everything that happens. This constructive property of memory may actually serve us
well in most situations, as described next, but it may not be such a good thing in situa-
tions such as testifying in court, which we will describe after the Test Yourself questions.False Memory
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