This activity is designed to foster a connection between the skills learned in a prerequisite statistics course to a research methods course. At the beginning of a research methods course, students often have difficulty applying statistics to an actual experiment.

In this activity, students replicate a study about false memory by Roediger and McDermott (1995). False memory occurs when a person believes they "remember" an untrue event. Many traditional studies about false memory have assumed that false memory is more apt to occur with memories for events associated with an elaborate story line. Roediger and McDermott (1995) showed that false memory can also occur with rote memory situations where people, e.g., are asked to remember word lists. In this class activity, students replicate Roediger and McDermott's study and then analyze the data using descriptive statistics and Excel.

False Memory Experiment: Class Activity

False Memory Experiment: Results Spreadsheet

False Memory Experiment: Confidence Ratings Spreadsheet

False Memory Experiment: Memory Demonstration Slides

False Memory Experiment: Results Summary Slides