DANEGELD REMEMBERED - TAXING FURTHER THE COIN HEAD ILLUSION

Two experiments studied memory for the appearance of a Danish 20 krone r coin. The coin bears the portrait of Queen Margrethe II in profile, facing to the right. Previous studies have examined memory for British coins, which similarly bear a right-facing portrait of Queen Elizabet h II. They have revealed the occurrence of a mnemonic illusion, in tha t British people tend to believe the portrait faces left. This finding has been attributed to the occurrence of a joint coin-stamp schema. B ritish stamps bear a left-facing profile of the Queen, and it is possi ble that information from the stamp predominates in the formation of t he schema. In the case of Denmark, however, stamps bear a full-face po rtrait of the Queen. Nevertheless, the present experiments showed that the Coin Head Illusion is also found in Denmark. That is, the number of participants recalling the Queen's head as facing to the right was significantly below even the chance level of 50%. Further, this result occurred both for residents of Denmark and for visitors to Denmark. T hese findings suggest that the bias underlying the Coin Head Illusion may be a more general one than that envisaged by the joint coin-stamp schema hypothesis.