Adults also have difficulty recalling one instance of a repeated event

Some forms of abuse, such as domestic violence, tend to occur repeatedly. Although memory for repeated events has received considerable empirical attention, most of this research has used a child sample. Experiments that have examined adult repeated‐event memory tend to use vastly different methodological paradigms to that used for children. To investigate whether the same pattern of findings emerge with young adults, we adapted the methodological paradigm used in child repeated‐event experiments. In this experiment, 41 undergraduate students experienced one, or multiple similar events. All participants were then interviewed about the same event. Participants who had experienced a single‐event were more likely to report correct details than those who had experienced a repeated event. Repeated‐event participants were more likely to report general details. These results have implications for the methodological paradigm which is used to examine adult memory for a recurring event.     

DECIDING WHOM TO TELL: EXPECTATIONS AND OUTCOMES OF RAPE SURVIVORS' FIRST DISCLOSURES

In this study, 102 female rape survivors were interviewed regarding their first post-assault disclosure. Qualitative analysis revealed that nearly 75% of first disclosures were to informal support providers and over one third of the disclosures were not initiated by the survivors themselves. Over half of the survivors received positive reactions and less than one third felt the disclosure had a detrimental impact on their recovery. Loglinear analysis suggested that survivors who actively sought help from informal support providers were more likely to receive positive than negative reactions. In contrast, survivors who actively sought help from formal support providers were more likely to receive negative than positive reactions. When disclosure to formal support providers was initiated by the formal support providers themselves, however, survivors received exclusively positive reactions. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Is knowing believing? The role of event plausibility and background knowledge in planting false beliefs about the personal past

False memories are more likely to be planted for plausible than for implausible events, but does just knowing about an implausible event make individuals more likely to think that the event happened to them? Two experiments assessed the independent contributions of plausibility and background knowledge to planting false beliefs. In Experiment 1, subjects rated 20 childhood events as to the likelihood of each event having happened to them. The list included the implausible target event “received an enema,” a critical target event of Pezdek, Finger, and Hodge (1997). Two weeks later, subjects were presented with (1) information regarding the high prevalence rate of enemas; (2) background information on how to administer an enema; (3) neither type of information; or (4) both. Immediately or 2 weeks later, they rated the 20 childhood events again. Only plausibility significantly increased occurrence ratings. In Experiment 2, the target event was changed from “barium enema administered in a hospital” to “home enema for constipation”; significant effects of both plausibility and background knowledge resulted. The results suggest that providing background knowledge can increase beliefs about personal events, but that its impact is limited by the extent of the individual’s familiarity with the context of the suggested target event.     

Believing is seeing: how rumors can engender false memories in preschoolers

This study examined how an erroneous rumor circulated among preschoolers can influence their memory. One fourth of the children overheard a rumor from an adult conversation in which it was alleged that an event the children had not experienced themselves had occurred. A second fourth were the classmates of those who overheard the rumor. A third group had no exposure to the rumor. The remaining children actually experienced the event suggested by the rumor. One week later, the children were interviewed in either a neutral or a suggestive manner. Results from a second interview after a 2-week delay revealed that under both interview conditions, children who overheard the rumor, either from the adult conversation or during naturally occurring interactions with classmates, were as likely to report experiencing the rumored but nonexperienced event as were those who actually experienced it. Most reports of the rumored but nonexperienced event were in children's free recall and were accompanied by high levels of fictitious elaboration.     

An analogue study of the effects of Psychological Debriefing on eyewitness memory

Sixty-one participants from the community participated in a randomised controlled trial of group debriefing to assess the effect of this intervention upon memory for a stressful event. Participants were randomly allocated to one of three groups: debriefing; debriefing with an experimenter confederate present (who supplied three pieces of misinformation to the group regarding the stressful event); and a no-treatment control. All groups were shown a very stressful video and were again reviewed after 1 month. Members of the debriefing group where a confederate provided misinformation were more likely to recall this misinformation as fact than members of the other two groups. The debriefing group was also more accurate in their recall of peripheral content than the confederate group. Across all groups, participants were found to be more accurate at central rather than peripheral recall yet more confident for incorrect memories of the video than correct memories.     

The development of the memorability-based strategy: insight from a training study

We investigated whether the memorability-based strategy, a process supporting the rejection of nonexperienced event occurrence, could be promoted through training. The performance of children who received memorability-based training was compared with that of (a) children who received source-monitoring training and (b) children who did not receive any specific training but were instructed to be as accurate as possible. Participants (142 6- to 10-year-olds) enacted common and bizarre actions. Eighteen days later, participants received misinformation about the first session. Five days after being misinformed, children were questioned about the first session. Compared with children in the no training condition, those in both training conditions reported significantly more true events, but only older children who received the memorability-based training were more likely to reject bizarre suggested events. Age interacted with action type when metacognitive assessments about false event rejection were examined, consistent with the idea that the use of the memorability-based strategy develops late during the elementary school years.     

Human affection exchange: VI. Further tests of reproductive probability as a predictor of men's affection with their adult sons

The authors examined the communication of affection in men's relationships with their fathers. Drawing from Affection Exchange Theory, the authors advanced four predictions: (a) heterosexual men receive more affection from their own fathers than do homosexual or bisexual men, (b) fathers communicate affection to their sons more through supportive activities than through direct verbal statements or nonverbal gestures, (c) affectionate communication between fathers and sons is linearly related to closeness and interpersonal involvement between them, and (d) fathers' awareness of their sons' sexual orientation is associated with the amount of affection that the fathers communicate to them. Participants were 170 adult men who completed questionnaires regarding affectionate communication in their relationships with their fathers. Half of the men were self-identified as exclusively heterosexual, and the other half were self-identified as exclusively homosexual or bisexual. The results supported all predictions substantially.     

Comparing methods of encountering post‐event information: the power of co‐witness suggestion

The current study compared the effects of co‐witness information on memory with more widely studied methods of encountering post‐event information. Participants were shown a crime video and then exposed to both correct and incorrect post‐event information about the video through one of four methods: (1) leading questions, (2) media report, (3) indirect co‐witness information, or (4) co‐witness discussion. There was also a control condition in which participants did not receive any post‐event information. All participants were individually tested on their memories for the event 1 week later. Results suggest that co‐witness information had a particularly strong influence on eyewitness memory, whether encountered through co‐witness discussion or indirectly through a third party. That is, participants were more likely to report co‐witness information than post‐event information encountered through leading questions or a media report. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender differences in depressive response: The role of social support

The present study investigated the possibility that women's ruminative response style to stressful events is due in part to differential advice that women and men receive from their social support networks. Undergraduates (60 men, 136 women) of various ethnic backgrounds (e.g., 21.4% English, 16.8% West Indian, 12.8% Chinese, 10.7% Italian) indicated the extent to which they would endorse various statements of advice for a stimulus person described as experiencing a negative life event. As predicted, subjects endorsed more ruminative advice for female stimulus persons than for male stimulus persons (p< .02). These findings imply that, since females in stressful situations seem more likely to receive ruminative advice than do their male counterparts, women's greater vulnerability to depressive symptoms may be partly the result of the concomitant dangers of stressful events and potentially harmful advice.     

Event valence and spatial metaphors of time

Recent research suggests that people's understanding of the abstract domain of time is dependent on the more concrete domain of space. Boroditsky and Ramscar (2002) found that spatial context influences whether people see themselves as moving through time (ego-moving perspective) or as time moving towards them (time-moving perspective). Based on studies of the embodiment of affective experience, we examined whether affect might also influence which spatial metaphor of time people adopt. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that participants who imagined a negative event were more likely to report that the event was approaching them, whereas those who imagined a positive event were more likely to report that they were approaching the event. Experiments 3a and 3b showed that participants judge an event to be more positive if it is described from the ego-moving perspective than if it is described from the time-moving perspective. Results from these studies provide initial evidence that positive and negative events are associated with different spatial metaphors of time.     

Omitting details from post-event information: are true and false memory affected in the same way?

Participants who witness an event and later receive post-event information that omits a critical scene are less likely to recall and to recognise that scene than are participants who receive no post-event information (Wright, Loftus, & Hall, 2001). The present study used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, in which participants study lists of semantic associates (e.g., hot, snow, warm, winter) that commonly elicit false memories of critical non-presented words (e.g., cold), to determine whether omitting information from a second presentation decreases memory for both presented and non-presented information. Participants were presented with a list of the semantic associates of six non-presented words. For half the participants, this list was presented a second time with the semantic associates of one of the non-presented words omitted. As expected, participants were less likely to recall and to recognise the presented words when they had been omitted from the second presentation. Omission also decreased the rate at which non-presented words were recalled, although false recognition of these words was not reduced. These results suggest that false recognition may be particularly difficult to attenuate and that post-event omission may be more detrimental to memory accuracy than previously thought.     

False and veridical collaborative recognition

Participants who witness an event and later receive post-event information that omits a critical scene are less likely to recall and to recognise that scene than are participants who receive no post-event information (Wright, Loftus, & Hall, 2001). The present study used the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, in which participants study lists of semantic associates (e.g., hot, snow, warm, winter) that commonly elicit false memories of critical non-presented words (e.g., cold), to determine whether omitting information from a second presentation decreases memory for both presented and non-presented information. Participants were presented with a list of the semantic associates of six non-presented words. For half the participants, this list was presented a second time with the semantic associates of one of the non-presented words omitted. As expected, participants were less likely to recall and to recognise the presented words when they had been omitted from the second presentation. Omission also decreased the rate at which non-presented words were recalled, although false recognition of these words was not reduced. These results suggest that false recognition may be particularly difficult to attenuate and that post-event omission may be more detrimental to memory accuracy than previously thought.     

Personal choice: A blessing or a burden,or both? A cross‐cultural investigation on need for closure effects in two Western and two East‐Asian societies

The present study investigates the role of dispositional need for closure (NFC) in how individuals within a particular culture perceive and appreciate choice. Data sets from the US (283 adults), Europe (263 adults and 427 students), China (218 adults and 309 students) and Singapore (258 students) were collected. The results showed that in Western cultures, people perceived choice in a linear way as either a burden or a blessing, whereas in Chinese culture, such opposition between perspectives did not appear, and individuals generally saw choice as both burden and blessing simultaneously. In Western cultures, high dispositional NFC was strongly associated with viewing choice‐as‐a‐burden, whereas Chinese respondents with a high NFC perceived choice as a blessing and a burden simultaneously. The Singaporean results were similar to the Western pattern. These findings are discussed in terms of the NFC literature and cultural differences in dialectic versus differentiation thinking styles.     

Primary care decision making in response to psychological complaints: the influence of patient race

Eighteen general practitioners indicated diagnostic and treatment decisions in response to patient vignettes. Results indicated that White patients were more likely to be correctly diagnosed as having anxiety than any other complaint. Asians were just as likely to receive a physical diagnosis as they were to receive one of anxiety. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Individual differences in imagination inflation

Garry, Manning, Loftus, and Sherman (1996) found that when adult subjects imagined childhood events, these events were subsequentlyjudged as more likely to have occurred than were not-imagined events. The authors termed this effect imagination inflation. We replicated the effect, using a novel set of Life Events Inventory events. Further, we tested whether the effect is related to four subject characteristics possibly associated with false memory creation. The extent to which subjects inflated judged likelihood following imagined events was associated with indices of hypnotic suggestibility and dissociativity, but not with vividness of imagery or interrogative suggestibility. Results suggest that imagination plays a role in subsequent likelihood judgments regarding childhood events, and that some individuals are more likely than others to experience imagination inflation.     

Of sex roles and strollers: Female and male attention to toddlers at the zoo

Research supports the conclusion that adults interact differently with children of different sexes. Laboratory and home studies indicate that fathers/adult males are the primary agents of sex typing and that mothers/adult females are the primary caretakers, especially regarding the managerial aspects of child care. Little attention, however, has been directed at the public display of these differences and their covariance. Observations were made of 6414 visitors to the Sacramento zoo, with 524 adult females, 524 adult males, and 524 toddler triumvirates targeted for specific analyses of adult-child interactions and caretaking behaviors. Males were significantly more likely to carry female toddlers than male toddlers, while females made no such distinction. Adult females were more likely than adult males to push the child's stroller. Related research on the father's role in sex-typing behavior and the role of the division of child care between parents in the maintenance and reproduction of gender roles is discussed.This research was supported by a University of California at Davis Faculty Research Grant to the second author. We thank R. J. Mitchell for his contributions, both in and out of his stroller.     

Predicting binary choices from probability phrase meanings

The issues of how individuals decide which of two events is more likely and of how they understand probability phrases both involve judging relative likelihoods. In this study, we investigated whether derived scales representing probability phrase meanings could be used within a choice model to predict independently observed binary choices. If they can, this simultaneously provides support for our model and suggests that the phrase meanings are measured meaningfully. The model assumes that, when deciding which of two events is more likely, judges take a single sample from memory regarding each event and respond accordingly. The model predicts choice probabilities by using the scaled meanings of individually selected probability phrases as proxies for confidence distributions associated with sampling from memory. Predictions are sustained for 34 of 41 participants but, nevertheless, are biased slightly low. Sequential sampling models improve the fit. The results have both theoretical and applied implications.     

Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal transgressions: self-serving or relationship-serving biases?

Two studies investigated perpetrator and victim biases in reported transgressions. Study 1 showed that in nonromantic relationships, perpetrators were more likely than victims to emphasize details that minimized their transgressions, whereas victims were more likely to exaggerate the severity of the event. Study 2 examined these perspective-related differences in romantic relationships and their relationship to forgiveness. Although victims were less likely than perpetrators to include features that minimized the event, they were no more likely to include features that magnified the event; individuals in highly satisfying relationships were less likely to exhibit self-serving biases than were individuals in less satisfying relationships. The data also were consistent with a causal sequence in which positive relationship quality led to more benign interpretations of a transgression, which in turn, promoted forgiveness.     

Changing food preference as a function of mood

The authors investigated the effect of mood on food selection. Participants (N = 98) indicated the likelihood of general eating and the likelihood of eating specific foods after reading and projecting themselves onto the events and emotions described in a sad and a happy vignette. Both men and women believed they were more likely to consume food following a happy versus a sad event, and men believed they were significantly more likely to eat than did women. However, the type of food men and women believed they would consume interacted with the type of event experienced. Vegetarian snack foods were more likely to be consumed following a happy versus a sad event, with men more likely to eat snack foods. Men did not significantly change in likelihood of consuming sweet foods as their mood changed. However, women believed they were more likely to consume sweet foods following a sad event. The authors discuss the results in terms of a self-medication hypothesis and the effect of carbohydrates on central serotonin and endogenous opioids. Overall, results demonstrated that mood influences belief in the likelihood of food selection.     

Jacob's Blessing and the Curse of Oedipus: Sibling Rivalry and its Resolution

The present paper examines the effects of paternal relationship with sons on the sons' relationship with each other. The Biblical stories initially abound with conflict between the sons because they vie for the father's blessing and favor. The Greek stories initially show little sign of sibling rivalry because the sons band together against a threatening father. With time, paternal blessing (as exemplified by Jacob's blessing) overcomes sibling rivalry. The Greek families become more pathological with time, as the diminution of the paternal threat allows on accentuating of sibling conflict (as exemplified by the curse of Oedipus).