Children and Adults are Differentially Affected by Presentation Modality in the DRM Paradigm MAYA M. KHANNA 1 * and MICHAEL J. CORTESE 2 1 Department of Psychology, Creighton University, USA 2 Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA SUMMARY Using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) method for free recall, we examined mode of list presentation and association type in 8–9 year old children and adults. Participants verbally recalled lists of associates that were presented orally (Experiment 1) or visually (Experiment 2). Lists consisted of semantic associates (e.g. hound, puppy , etc.), phonological associates (e.g. log, dot, etc.) and both semantic and phonological associates (e.g. hound, dot, etc.) to a nonpresented lure word (e.g. dog). Interestingly, the ratio of false to true recall was higher in children than adults only when lists were presented orally. These results suggest that children rely more on sublexical information or item-specific information than adults when reading lists, and, thus, are less likely to activate the critical lure via lexical associations. Furthermore, these results suggest that information processing differences at encoding between children and adults need to be taken into account when interpreting free recall studies. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The examination of false memory has been an area of active research for many years dating back to Bartlett’s (1932) classic work. A well-known procedure for studying false memory is the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm (e.g. Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995; also see Read, 1996). In this procedure, participants are presented with a list of words all related to a theme word (i.e. the critical lure) that does not appear on the list. Upon testing, participants will often falsely recall and/or falsely recognize the critical lure. Childhood to adulthood developmental trends in false recall and false recognition in the DRM paradigm recently have received a great deal of interest (e.g. Anastasi & Rhodes, 2008; Brainerd & Reyna, 2007; Brainerd, Reyna, & Forrest, 2002; Carneiro, Albuquerque, Fernandez, & Esteves, 2007; Ghetti, Qin, & Goodman, 2002; Howe, Gagnon, & Thouas, 2008; Metzger, Warren, Shelton, Price, Reed, & Williams, 2008). Developmental studies of the DRM paradigm are important because two leading theories make contrasting predictions about the developmental trajectory of true and false memories produced via the DRM paradigm. The activation monitoring framework (AMF, e.g. Roediger, Watson, McDermott, & Gallo, 2001) predicts that false recall will decrease with age while true APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY Appl. Cognit. Psychol. (2008) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/acp.1519 *Correspondence to: Maya M. Khanna, Department of Psychology, Creighton University, 2500 California Plaza, Omaha, NE 68178, USA. E-mail: mayakhanna@creighton.edu Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.