Abstract
Two contemporaneous reports by J. Deese—one concerned with correct recall (1959a), the other with recall intrusions (1959b)-have differed dramatically in their citations to date. The differences represent an unusually compelling instance of the operation of the scientific Zeitgeist. The article dealing with correct recall was congruent with the Zeitgeist of memory research when it was published. Hence it flourished. Just the opposite was true of the article on intrusions, which by the mid 1970s had gone into eclipse. A markedly different Zeitgeist in the 1990s, however, led two investigators simultaneously and independently to adapt Deese’s intrusion method to the investigation of false memories.
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We thank Harry Bahrick, Robyn Fivush, Elizabeth Loftus, Don Read, Roddy Roediger, and Roger Thomas for helpful criticisms of an earlier version of the essay. We also thank the following individuals for patiently replying to our numerous queries: John Barresi, Douglas Bernstein, James Deese, Randy Engle, Jim Jenkins, Colleen Kelley, Elizabeth Loftus, Bill McKeachie, Don Read, Roddy Roediger, Dan Schacter, and Endel Tulving. The manuscript was written while the first author was on sabbatical leave at Emory University; the hospitality of the Department of Psychology at Emory is gratefully acknowledged. Financial support was provided by the Emory Cognition Project and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
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Bruce, D., Winograd, E. Remembering Deese’s 1959 articles: The Zeitgeist, the sociology of science, and false memories. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 5, 615–624 (1998). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208838
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03208838