False Memories of a Psychology Professor’s Office After briefly waiting in the psychology professor’s office shown above, participants were taken to another room and asked to recall details of the office—the real purpose of the study. Many participants falsely remembered objects that were not actually in the office, such as books, a filing cabinet, a telephone, a lamp, pens, pencils, and a coffee cup. Why? The details that the participants erroneously remembered were all items that would be consistent with a typical professor’s office (Brewer & Treyens, 1981). Schemas can cause memory errors by prompting us to fill in missing details with schema-consistent information (Kleider & others, 2008).
Reprinted from Cognitive Psychology 23 Brewer, W. F., and Treyens, J. C. “Role of Schemata in memory for place.” Figure 1. Copyright 1981, with permission from Elseiver.