MISREMEMBERING A FAMILIAR OBJECT - MNEMONIC ILLUSION, NOT DRAWING BIAS

It was reported by Jones (1990) that the design of British coins is sy stematically misremembered. Although the Queen's head in fact faces ri ght, most people draw it facing left. It is possible, however, that th e origin of this phenomenon does not reside in memory but instead in a leftward drawing bias. Two experiments of the three reported here tes ted this hypothesis. In Experiment 1, British participants attempted t o recall the direction of the Queen's head but responded verbally inst ead of pictorially. The results were similar to those of Jones and thu s contradict the hypothesis that misremembering of the Queen's head is caused by a leftward drawing bias. In Experiment 2, Canadian particip ants attempted to draw a Canadian coin. Leftward misremembering was no t observed in this case. Thus the hypothesized importance of a leftwar d drawing bias was again not supported. Instead, the results provided support for the schema explanation of the Queen's Head memory illusion proposed by Jones. The results of Experiment 3, which compared memory for British coins and stamps, further bolstered this conclusion.