Henry L. "Roddy" Roediger III (born July 24, 1947) is an American psychology researcher in the area of human learning and memory.
[10] However, inspired by his graduate advisor at Yale, Robert G. Crowder, Roediger began to see the importance of a retrieval-based approach to memory research.
[14] Neurophysiological studies have provided further evidence suggesting that transfer appropriate processes play a crucial role in memory.
Studies using electroencephalography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have shown that the overlap in brain activity between encoding and retrieval facilitates memory performance.
[17] Transfer appropriate processing also had a notable impact on the field of marketing, by providing a more comprehensive understanding of consumer memory.
Throughout the 1990s, he and his colleagues took the methodology from a relatively unknown study by James Deese from 1959 and worked to develop it into one of the most widely used tools in human memory research; the DRM Paradigm.
In a typical DRM experiment, a subject listens to a list of related words, for example; Thread, Pin, Eye, Sewing, Sharp, Point, Prick, Thimble, Haystack, Torn, Hurt, Injection, Syringe, Cloth, Knitting, and is then tested on their memory for this list.
[22] Roediger and Kathleen McDermott asked people whether they actually remembered hearing this unpresented word, or if they merely felt like they had heard it.
However, retrieval processes alone were not enough to explain the findings – in a number of studies Roediger and his colleagues showed that a warning about developing a false memory had no effect if it was presented before retrieval, but could reduce false memories if presented before the encoding phase, suggesting an important role being played by the encoding process.
Further work led Roediger and his research team to acknowledge both encoding and retrieval processes in explaining this phenomenon.
[24] Roediger's most recent interests have involved applying knowledge from cognitive psychology research to the realm of education.
They report that short answer questions produce stronger testing-enhancements of learning compared to multiple-choice testing.