False recollection in children with reading comprehension difficulties

Children with reading comprehension difficulties display impaired performance on semantic processing tasks. These impairments are assumed to reflect weaker knowledge about abstract semantic associations between words in poor comprehenders [Nation, K., and Snowling, M. (1999). Developmental differences in sensitivity to semantic relations among good and poor comprehenders: evidence from semantic priming. Cognition, 19, B1-B13.]. We examined the performance of poor comprehenders on the Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Children studied spoken words that were semantic associates (e.g., bed, rest, and awake) or phonological associates (e.g., pole, bowl, and hole) followed by free recall and a recognition test containing nonstudied critical words (e.g., sleep and roll). Results showed reduced recall and recognition of critical words in the semantic condition but not in the phonological condition for poor comprehenders. We argue that poor comprehenders are less sensitive to abstract semantic associations between words because of reduced gist memory.     

焦虑情绪对奖赏学习的影响

焦虑是在我们日常生活中占据重要地位的一种情绪, 对人类的决策行为能够产生显著影响。探讨决策研究的重要领域--奖赏学习, 可以帮助我们更深入地认识焦虑情绪在决策过程中扮演的角色。过往研究者较少关注焦虑对奖赏学习的潜在影响, 而且已有研究在实验技术和任务范式方面存在一定的局限性。考虑到奖赏学习概念的复杂性, 为了全面地考察个体焦虑水平与奖赏学习的关系, 本文作者建议设置不同类型的奖赏学习情境, 例如概率学习、联结学习、逆向学习和社会学习等。在上述各类不同任务中, 个体焦虑水平对奖赏学习能力的影响模式可能并不一致, 有待研究者们进行深入探讨。     

Placing events in time: the role of autobiographical recollection

Episodic experience is argued to be rich in temporal information, but it remains unclear whether temporal information is directly coded in the event memory or is reconstructed at retrieval. The two experiments reported here emphasise the role of reconstructive processes of autobiographical context in establishing the date of memories. Younger and older participants were presented with famous public events, although only the latter had actually lived through them. Participants were asked to make forced-choice judgements about the date of the event and other event-related facts. Overall, while the older group showed better fact knowledge of the events, this did not translate into better dating performance. This older group showed similar dating performance across events with high and low factual knowledge. In contrast, the younger group's dating accuracy was determined by their level of knowledge. This suggests that older individuals who have direct episodic experience of an event may perform the task in a qualitatively different manner, eschewing semantic facts in favour of other sources of information. Crucially, this process does not appear to enhance performance. A second experiment addressed the issue of whether older participants date events based on general qualities of the event memory (e.g., vividness), the availability of other event-related semantic facts, or autobiographical context. It was found that the ability to place an event in autobiographical context is related to dating accuracy, but not to other aspects of memory.     

The role of phantom recollection in false recall

Although high levels of phantom recollection (illusory vivid experience of the prior "presentation" of unpresented items) have been found for false recognition, little is known about phantom recollection in recall. We examined this issue with Deese/Roediger-McDermott lists using two paradigms: repeated recall and conjoint recall. High levels of phantom recollection were observed with both standard behavioral measures and the parameters of fuzzy-trace theory's dual-recall model. In addition, phantom recollection and the true recollection that accompanies presented items appear to involve different retrieval processes, because they were dissociated by manipulations such as number of recall tests and list strength.     

Expectations about the short-term functional role played by defensive behavior in interpersonal interactions

Based on the theory of interpersonal defense (Westerman, 1998, Westerman, 2005 and Westerman and Steen, 2005), an interpersonal conceptualization of defense processes, we conducted a set of studies to investigate (a) implicit lay beliefs (i.e., implicit beliefs widely held by people in our culture) about the effects of defensive behavior on short-term interaction events, and (b) individual differences in implicit beliefs about the costs and benefits of defensive behavior and their relation to behaving defensively. In these studies, participants imagined themselves in several interpersonal situations presented in a paper-and-pencil protocol and responded to questions about what they expected would happen after they behaved defensively or nondefensively. As predicted, results indicated that, according to participants’ implicit lay beliefs, defensive behavior as compared to nondefensive behavior makes short-term clear-cut feared occurrences less likely, reduces the likelihood of clear-cut wished-for short-term outcomes, and affects how these outcomes will be experienced when they do take place. Also, findings indicated that there was an inverse association between self-reports of behaving defensively and the extent to which participants appreciated the short-term costs of defensive behavior. Alternative models for explaining this association are considered, including the idea that expectations minimizing the costs of defensive behavior develop because they support previously established, emotionally charged interpersonal behavior patterns.     

Revisiting the role of recollection in item versus forced-choice recognition memory

Many memory theorists have assumed that forced-choice recognition tests can rely more on familiarity, whereas item (yes-no) tests must rely more on recollection. In actuality, several studies have found no differences in the contributions of recollection and familiarity underlying the two different test formats. Using word frequency to manipulate stimulus characteristics, the present study demonstrated that the contributions of recollection to item versus forced-choice tests is variable. Low word frequency resulted in significantly more recollection in an item test than did a forced-choice procedure, but high word frequency produced the opposite result. These results clearly constrain any uniform claim about the degree to which recollection supports responding in item versus forced-choice tests.     

Neuroticism and marital satisfaction: the mediating role played by the sexual relationship

Why is Neuroticism so harmful to marriage and other intimate relationships? Given that such relationships generally involve a sexual component, the current longitudinal study explored whether the apparent negative impact of own and partner's Neuroticism on marriage could be explained by dissatisfaction with the sexual relationship. Just after their weddings, 72 couples reported their marital satisfaction, sexual satisfaction, and Neuroticism. One year later, they again reported their marital and sexual satisfaction. Own Neuroticism predicted lower levels of concurrent marital and sexual satisfaction among husbands and wives, declines in sexual satisfaction among husbands and wives, and declines in marital satisfaction among wives. Partner's Neuroticism predicted lower levels of concurrent marital satisfaction among husbands and wives, lower levels of concurrent sexual satisfaction among husbands, and declines in sexual satisfaction among husbands. Consistent with predictions, sexual satisfaction mediated every effect of own and partner Neuroticism on marital satisfaction. Results highlight the prominent role played by the sexual relationship in accounting for marital outcomes and thus suggest specific processes through which Neuroticism may affect the marriage.     

The role of recollection and partial information in source monitoring

Two experiments were conducted to assess the degree to which source monitoring required recollective details or could be based on vaguer partial information. Source judgments were followed by remember-know judgments during testing. On the authors' assumption that remember judgments are highly correlated with the presence of recollective details, the results showed that accurate source monitoring did not necessarily require such recollective details. Rather, the high proportion of correct source judgments that were associated with know responses suggests that source-monitoring processes can successfully use the partial information that is recorded in vaguer memories. Consequently, source monitoring can be based on recollection but can also effectively use qualitative characteristics that lack clarity and sufficient amounts of details to give rise to the subjective feeling of remembering.     

Placing events in time: The role of autobiographical recollection

Episodic experience is argued to be rich in temporal information, but it remains unclear whether temporal information is directly coded in the event memory or is reconstructed at retrieval. The two experiments reported here emphasise the role of reconstructive processes of autobiographical context in establishing the date of memories. Younger and older participants were presented with famous public events, although only the latter had actually lived through them. Participants were asked to make forced-choice judgements about the date of the event and other event-related facts. Overall, while the older group showed better fact knowledge of the events, this did not translate into better dating performance. This older group showed similar dating performance across events with high and low factual knowledge. In contrast, the younger group's dating accuracy was determined by their level of knowledge. This suggests that older individuals who have direct episodic experience of an event may perform the task in a qualitatively different manner, eschewing semantic facts in favour of other sources of information. Crucially, this process does not appear to enhance performance. A second experiment addressed the issue of whether older participants date events based on general qualities of the event memory (e.g., vividness), the availability of other event-related semantic facts, or autobiographical context. It was found that the ability to place an event in autobiographical context is related to dating accuracy, but not to other aspects of memory.     

Context effects in recognition memory: the role of familiarity and recollection

A variant of the process dissociation procedure was coupled with a manipulation of response signal lag to assess whether manipulations of context affect one or both of the familiarity and search processes described by the dual process model of recognition. Participants studied a list of word pairs (context+target) followed by a recognition test with target words presented in the same or different context, and in the same or different form as study (singular/plural). Participants were asked to recognize any target word regardless of changes to form (inclusion), or to only recognise words that were presented in the same form (exclusion). The standard context reinstatement effect was evident even at the short response lags. Analyses of the estimates of the contributions of familiarity and search processes suggest that the context effect demonstrated here can be attributed in part to the influence of familiarity on recognition, whereas the effect on recollection was less clear.     

The role played by Gerhard Adler in the development of analytical psychology internationally and in the UK

The Jungian analyst Gerhard Adler left Berlin and re‐settled in London in 1936. He was closely involved with the professionalization of analytical psychology internationally and in the UK, including the formation of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) and The Society of Analytical Psychology (SAP).The tensions that arose within the latter organization led to a split that ended in the formation of the Association of Jungian Analysts (AJA). A further split at AJA resulted in the creation of another organization, the Independent Group of Analytical Psychologists (IGAP). Adler's extensive publications include his role as an editor of Jung's Collected Works and as editor of the C.G. Jung Letters.     

The role of recollection in source memory: an examination of schizophrenia patients and their first-degree relatives

Source recognition memory deficits have repeatedly been observed in people with schizophrenia (SZ), and have also recently been observed in their first-degree relatives. These deficits have been hypothesized to result, at least in part, from impairments in the conscious recollection process. Although other processes are clearly also affected in SZ, it has been proposed that impairments in the conscious recollection process could be a parsimonious explanation for the source memory deficits observed in their relatives. Here, we tested 25 patients with SZ and 34 of their non-affected parents, as well as two groups of matched healthy controls, on a short-term associative memory task that shares the characteristics of standard source recognition tasks but minimizes the need for recollection of stored information from memory. This task was administered in order to determine if deficits can still be observed in these people when involvement of the conscious recollection process is minimized. We observed deficits on our short-term source memory task in people with SZ, but their first-degree relatives did not share this deficit. These results support the idea that multiple memory processes supporting associative/source memory are affected in SZ, whereas the source memory deficits previously observed in relatives of SZ seem specific to tasks that rely on the conscious recollection process.     

Environmental context and recognition: the role of recollection and familiarity

Evidence for effects of changed environmental context on recognition has been equivocal. Using 3 experiments, the author investigated the role of environmental context from a dual-processing approach. Experiment 1 showed that testing word recognition in a novel context led to a reliable decrement but only for recognition accompanied by conscious recollection, with familiarity-based recognition judgments being unaffected. This was replicated in Experiment 2 using stimuli that were novel to the participants (nonwords). Experiment 3 showed that the decrement in recollection also occurred when the changed-context condition involved presenting items in a different but familiar context. The results suggest that effects of environmental context will only be found when recognition is accompanied by conscious recollection and that this effect is due to a specific item-context association.     

Method for examining children's beliefs about the functional role played by defensive interpersonal behaviour

The goal of this study was to develop a method for examining children's expectations about the short‐term consequences of defensive interpersonal behaviour. We employed the theory of interpersonal defence (Dahmen & Westerman, in press; Westerman, 1998, 2005 ; Westerman & Prieto, 2006 ), an interpersonal reconceptualization of defence processes, as the framework for this method. We developed a two‐part procedure for eliciting children's responses to closed‐ended and open‐ended questions about interpersonal vignettes presented in storyboard format, and we employed this method in a preliminary investigation with a sample of 62 intellectually gifted boys and girls aged 7–8 and 10–11. The results showed that the participants understood that defensive interpersonal behaviours affect the likelihood that feared and wished‐for short‐term outcomes will occur. Participants demonstrated that they understood that people behave defensively in order to avoid feared consequences and nondefensively in order to pursue wished‐for outcomes. Findings also indicated that older participants understood that a person is more likely to behave defensively in highly conflict‐ridden situations. The results suggest that our method provides the basis for research that complements previous studies of children's understanding of how intrapsychic defence mechanisms regulate a person's affective experience. Future research using this method could investigate the role of beliefs about defensive behaviour in the development of behaviour problems.     

The role of detection and recollection of change in list discrimination

In two experiments, we examined the importance of the detection and recollection of change for list discrimination. Two lists of pairs were presented, with the right-hand member being changed between lists for some pairs. Participants in Experiment 1 were instructed to explicitly indicate when they detected a change between pairs during the presentation of List 2, whereas participants in Experiment 2 were not instructed to do so. At the time of test, participants in both experiments were presented with a pair and asked whether it had been presented in List 2. Next, recollection of change was measured by asking whether the right-hand member of the pair was changed between the lists. The results from Experiment 1 revealed high correspondence between the detection of change during the presentation of List 2 and the recollection of change at the time of test. Consequently, change recollection at test can serve as a measure of earlier change detection, in combination with access to memory for change at the time of test. In both experiments, as compared to control conditions, proactive facilitation in list discrimination was observed when change was recollected, whereas proactive interference was observed when change was not recollected. These results were interpreted as showing that recursive reminding—bringing a List 1 pair to mind during the presentation of its changed List 2 pair—embeds memory for the earlier event into memory for the later event, and doing so preserves information about list membership.     

Information presentation format moderates the unconscious-thought effect: The role of recollection

The unconscious-thought effect occurs when distraction improves complex decision-making. In two experiments using the unconscious-thought paradigm, we investigated the effect of presentation format of decision information (i) on memory for decision-relevant information and (ii) on the quality of decisions made after distraction, conscious deliberation or immediately. We used the process-dissociation procedure to measure recollection and familiarity. The two studies showed that presenting information blocked per criterion led participants to recollect more decision-relevant details compared to a presentation by option. Moreover, a Bayesian meta-analysis of the two studies provided strong evidence that conscious deliberation resulted in better decisions when the information was presented blocked per criterion and substantial evidence that distraction improved decision quality when the information was presented blocked per option. Finally, Study 2 revealed that the recollection of decision-relevant details mediated the effect of presentation format on decision quality in the deliberation condition. This suggests that recollection contributes to conscious deliberation efficacy.     

Estimating the frequency of nonevents: The role of recollection failure in false recognition

Participants studied lists of multiply presented converging associates (e.g.,bed, dream, pillow, etc.) and were timed as they estimated how often they saw list items, related foils (e.g.,blanket), and non-presented critical items (SLEEP). Average number of repetitions (few [3] vs. many [6]) and repetition variability (fixed vs. variable) were manipulated between subjects. Participants responded more slowly to critical items (3.18 sec) than to list items (2.45 sec) or foils (2.22 sec). In addition, critical-item judgments of frequency (JOFs) were about as large as list-item JOFs, and false recognition (i.e., nonzero JOFs) of critical items was most likely in the few-fixed condition (96%) and least likely in the many-fixed condition (74%). These findings suggest that people can userecollection failure—the absence of an anticipated recollective experience, coupled with strong familiarity—to distinguish critical items from list items and that recollection failure is weighted most heavily when people expect familiar probes to access episodic information.     

Conscious recollection in autobiographical memory: an investigation in schizophrenia

Whether or not conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is affected in schizophrenia is unknown. The aim of this study was to address this issue using an experiential approach. An autobiographical memory enquiry was used in combination with the Remember/Know procedure. Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 22 normal subjects were asked to recall specific autobiographical memories from four lifetime periods and to indicate the subjective states of awareness associated with the recall of what happened, when and where. They gave Remember, Know or Guess responses according to whether they recalled these aspects of the event on the basis of conscious recollection, simply knowing, or guessing. Results showed that the frequency and consistency of Remember responses was significantly lower in patients than in comparison subjects. In contrast, the frequency of Know responses was not significantly different, whereas the frequency of patients' Guess responses was significantly enhanced. It is concluded that the frequency and consistency of conscious recollection in autobiographical memory is reduced in patients with schizophrenia.     

The effect of ageing on recollection: the role of the binding updating process

The aim of this study was to highlight the underlying process responsible for the age-related deficit in recollection. Through two experiments using the Remember-Know-Guess procedure (Gardiner, J. M., & Richardson-Klavehn, A. [2000]. Remembering and knowing. In The Oxford handbook of memory (pp. 229–244). New York, NY: Oxford University Press) in recognition, we manipulated the opportunity to update bindings between target items and their encoding context, in young and older adults. In the first experiment we impaired the binding updating process during the encoding of items, while in the second we supported this process. The results indicated that the “Remember” responses in the younger group were specifically reduced by the impairment of the binding updating process (Exp. 1), suggesting that this ability is useful for them to encode a specific episode. Conversely, only the “Remember” responses in the older group were improved in accuracy by supporting the binding updating process (Exp. 2), suggesting that their weakness in this ability is the source of their failure to improve the accuracy of their memories. The overall results support the hypothesis that the age-related decline in episodic memory is partly due to a greater vulnerability to interference on bindings, impairing the ability to update content-context bindings as and when events occur.