Memory of pain induced by physical exercise

The aim of this study was to assess the memory of pain induced by running a marathon and the factors that influence it. Sixty-two marathon runners participated in the study, which comprised two phases. Immediately after a participant had reached the finishing line of the marathon, they were asked to rate the intensity and the unpleasantness of their pain and the emotions they felt at that time. Either three or six months later they were asked again to rate the intensity and the unpleasantness of the same pain experience. Regardless of the length of recall delay, participants underestimated both recalled pain intensity and unpleasantness. The pain and negative affect reported at the time of the pain experience accounted for 24% of the total variance in predicting recalled pain intensity and 22% of the total variance in predicting recalled pain unpleasantness. Positive affect at the time of pain experience was not a significant predictor of both the recalled pain intensity and pain unpleasantness. It is concluded that pain induced by physical exercise is not remembered accurately and the pain and negative affect experienced influence recall. Further research is needed on the influence of positive affect on the memory of pain.     

Memory of pain and affect associated with migraine and non-migraine headaches

The main aims of this study were to assess memory of pain and pain-related affect in headache sufferers and to compare the pain memories of individuals who suffer from migraines and those who experience non-migraine headaches. A total of 313 women participated in the study, 86 of whom had a diagnosis of migraine headache. The women rated their state anxiety about having a headache, the intensity and unpleasantness of headache pain, and their emotions while actually experiencing a headache. Either three or six months later, the participants were asked to recall their state anxiety, the intensity and unpleasantness of pain, and the emotions they had felt. Regardless of the length of recall delay or migraine diagnosis, participants accurately remembered both pain intensity and unpleasantness. Together, recalled anxiety, experienced pain and recalled positive affect were the most important predictors of memories for headache, accounting for 41% and 37% of the total variance in recalled pain intensity and unpleasantness, respectively. However, participants overestimated recalled positive and negative affect. The effect of recalled affect on memory of headache, together with the overestimation of recalled affect, suggests that although memory of headache is accurate, it is influenced by distorted memories of affect.     

As time goes by: Sixth graders remember a kindergarten experience

In this research we compared kindergarten children's immediate recall of a class field trip to a museum of archaeology on the same day of the trip to their recall 6 weeks later, 1 year later and 6 years later. Not surprisingly, children remembered less about this event over time. However, what children did recall was recalled as accurately and in as much detail 6 years after the trip as immediately after the trip. Most striking were the effects of cueing on memory over time. Without specific cues the event was forgotten by almost all of the children after 1 year, but with cues, 87 per cent of the children could recall details of the event even after 6 years. The set of ‘core’ activities which all children tended to recall on all recall trials were those activities that made this particular event distinctive. However, with increasing time since experiencing the event, children's recall tended to become more reconstructive and inferential. Thus, forgetting in autobiographic memory seems to involve three processes: decreases in amount recalled, changes in accessibility, and changes in memory content.     

The effects of affect and input source on flashbulb memories

Flashbulb memories of shocking news (Challenger Explosion, death of Princess Diana, Pearl Harbour and Iraq bombings) were employed to test two hypotheses: encoding emotion enhances memory and how one gets the shocking news will help determine the nature of what is recalled. Different groups of subjects (Total = 2405) remembered their discoveries at delays ranging from 2 weeks to 50 years on three memory measures: a free and probed recall test of their flashbulb discovery, and a probed recall of the facts concerning the events themselves. Subjects were grouped according to the source of their discovery (Media vs. Person), affect at encoding (calm vs. upset) and recounts (few vs. many). The results indicated that how one learns of shocking news determined the type and extent of the resultant memory. ‘Media’ subjects remembered more facts whereas ‘person’ subjects recalled more of their personal discoveries regardless of the initial flashbulb inspiring event. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Motive-related memories: content, structure, and affect

Two studies tested hypotheses on the content and structure of autobiographical memories and the affect linked to them. In Study 1, agentic- and communal-motivated individuals recorded their most memorable experiences and completed the PANAS each day for 6 weeks. Memories were coded for content and structure. Agentics and communals reported more motive congruent memories, and their congruent memories were structured using more differentiation and integration, respectively. In addition, agentics had slightly higher PA and lower NA scores. In Study 2, agentics and communals recalled an event pertaining to either social separation or connection and then completed an affect measure of agentic and communal items. Agentics recalled more agentic memories in the separation condition and communals recalled more communal memories in the connection condition. Complexity analyses showed that agentics and communals used differentiation and integration respectively to recall their motive-congruent memories. The affect data showed a modestpredicted pattern. Results suggest that implicit motives have an impact on autobiographical memory but are not as clearly related to self-report affect measures, possibly due to method variance.     

Adult attachment and preemptive defenses: converging evidence on the role of defensive exclusion at the level of encoding

The objective of this research was to determine whether the tendency of highly avoidant adults not to recall attachment-related information is best explained through defensive strategies that operate on encoding or retrieval processes. In Study 1 participants listened to an emotionally evocative recording and were given both explicit and implicit tests of their memory for the material. Compared to less avoidant people, highly avoidant people recalled fewer details from the recording and performed worse on an implicit test of their memory for the information. In Study 2 we manipulated people's motivation to retrieve information from memory by offering participants a monetary award for recall. Highly avoidant people recalled less information than less-avoidant people despite the monetary incentive. Taken together, these results suggest that the relative inability of avoidant adults to recall attachment-related information is due to the defensive exclusion of information at the time of encoding rather than the time of retrieval.     

Working memory load differentially affects tip-of-the-tongue states and feeling-of-knowing judgments

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are judgments of the likelihood of imminent retrieval for items currently not recalled, whereas feeling-of-knowing judgments (FOKs) are predictions of successful recognition for items not recalled. The assumption has been that similar metacognitive processes dictate these similar judgments. In Experiment 1, TOTs and FOKs were compared for general information questions. Participants remembered four digits (working memory load) during target retrieval for half of the questions, and there was no memory load for the other questions. Working memory did not affect recall but decreased the number of TOTs and increased FOKs. In Experiment 2, participants maintained six digits during retrieval. TOTs decreased in the working memory condition, but FOKs remained constant. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiment 2 while asking for FOKs for recall. In each of the first three experiments, positive metacognitive judgments also affected working memory performance, supporting the idea that working memory and metamemory use similar monitoring processes. In Experiment 4, visual working memory did not affect TOTs or FOKs. The data support a view that TOTs and FOKs are separable metacognitive entities.     

Recognition and Recall-Like Processes in the Long-Term Reconstruction of Order

Abstract

Four experiments examined whether the recovery of an item's position in a sequence taps processes similar to recognition and/or recall. Across the experiments, subjects either recalled, recognised, or made position judgements about list items that differed in word frequency. Typical word frequency effects were found in recall and recognition, but frequency failed to affect measures of position memory consistently across the four experiments. Despite the apparent procedural similarities across tasks, it appears that the recovery of position information may tap mnemonic processes that are different from those tapped by recognition and recall. Implications of these findings for current models of position memory are discussed.     

The effects of autobiographical memory and visual perspective on working memory

The present research aims to explore whether recalling and writing about autobiographical memory from different perspectives (first-person perspective vs. third-person perspective) could affect cognitive function. The participants first performed a working memory task to evaluate their working memory capacity as a baseline and then were instructed to recall (Study 1) or write about (Study 2) personal events (failures vs. successes) from the first-person perspective or the third-person perspective. Finally, they performed the working memory task again. The results suggested that autobiographical memory and perspective influence working memory interactively. When recalling a success, the participants who recalled from the third-person perspective performed better than those who recalled from the first-person perspective on the working memory capacity task; when recalling a failure, the opposite was true.     

Fifty years of memory of college grades: accuracy and distortions

One to 54 years after graduating, 276 alumni correctly recalled 3,025 of 3,967 college grades. Omission errors increased with the retention interval, and better students made fewer errors. Accuracy of recall increased with confidence in recall. Eighty-one percent of commission errors inflated the actual grade. Distortions occur soon after graduation, remain constant during the retention interval, and are greater for better students and for courses students enjoyed most. Confidence in recall is unrelated to distortion. Courses that were not freely recalled, but had to be cued, were recalled less accurately and with less distortion. The data support a supplementary theory of memory distortion. The theory assumes that forgetting and distorting memory content are relatively independent processes, that relevant generic memories are used to fill in gaps after episodic memory fails, that systematic distortions affect autobiographical content that is emotionally and motivationally valenced, and that most individuals supplement with content that is emotionally more gratifying than the veridical content. The data conflict with dynamic displacement theories according to which screen memories actively block access to unpleasant veridical content.     

Emotion and prior knowledge in memory and judged comprehension of ambiguous stories

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effects of experimentally induced mood states on memory and judged comprehension of stories. The experiments examined the issue of whether induction of a depressed mood would affect prose memory and comprehension and impair the ability of individuals to use prior knowledge, activated by way of a title, in remembering the passage. In Experiment 1, depressed subjects who were given a title for the passage recalled fewer idea units when compared with neutral control conditions, but no depressive deficit in recall occurred in the absence of a title. In Experiment 2 the same pattern of results occurred when subjects learned two successive passages. The depressive deficits obtained were interpreted in terms of a resource allocation model which proposes that emotional states increase the production of irrelevant, competing thoughts that interfere with processes important in remembering the criterion passage. Alternative explanations involving cognitive initiative and schema theory were discussed. Finally, judgments of comprehension predicted passage recall and were better predictors for neutral than depressed mood subjects. A depressed mood state did not affect average judgments of comprehension even when recall was correspondingly impaired.     

Developments in long-term explicit memory late in the first year of life: behavioral and electrophysiological indices

Coincident with developments in the temporal-cortical explicit memory network, long-term recall abilities are newly emergent late in the first year of human life. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in 9-month-olds as an index of the integrity of the neural substrate underlying a task thought to reflect explicit memory, namely, deferred imitation. ERP measures of recognition memory 1 week after unique laboratory experiences predicted whether and how much infants recalled of the experiences 1 month later. The findings further imply that memory storage and consolidation processes are a major source of variability in long-term recall memory late in the first year of life.     

Group identification and historical memory

Differences in ingroup identification can influence the accessibility of historical memories. In Study 1, the authors examined individual differences in identity; in Study 2 they experimentally manipulated identity. In Study 1, high identifiers recalled fewer incidents of ingroup violence and hatred than did low identifiers. High and low identifiers did not differ in their recall of ingroup suffering. In Study 2, participants in the high-identity condition recalled fewer incidents of violence and hatred by members of their group than did those in the low-identity condition but a similar number of good deeds. Control participants recalled more positive than negative group actions; this bias was exaggerated in the high-identity condition and eliminated in the low-identity condition. The authors interpret the results as indicating the effects of social identity on individual-level memory processes, especially schema-consistent recall. They evaluate other explanations of the bias, including collective censorship of negative histories.     

The tooth,the whole tooth and nothing but the tooth: how belief in the Tooth Fairy can engender false memories

To examine how children's fantasy beliefs can affect memory for their experiences, 5‐ and 6‐year‐olds with differing levels of belief in the reality of the Tooth Fairy were prompted to recall their most recent primary tooth loss in either a truthful or fun manner. Many of the children who fully believed in the existence of the Tooth Fairy reported supernatural experiences consistent with the myth under both sets of recall instructions, whereas those who realized the fictionality of the myth recalled mainly realistic experiences. However, those children with equivocal beliefs evidenced a different pattern under each set of instructions, recalling mainly realistic experiences when asked to be truthful and reporting many fantastical experiences when prompted to relate the tooth loss in a fun manner. These findings suggest that children's beliefs in the reality of fantastic phenomena can give rise to genuine constructive memory errors in line with their fantasies. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory and metamemory performance in older adults: One deficit or two?

In two separate experiments, three groups of older adults (50-80 years old) were shown lists of forename-surname pairs. At test subjects were cued with the surname and asked whether they knew the forename (prospective evaluation). Subjects attempted recall for those items they claimed to know and rated their confidence in their answer (retrospective evaluation). In Experiment 1 subjects saw the name list on 5 successive occasions and attempted recall after each. The older subjects recalled fewer items, but there were no age differences on retrospective memory evaluation. There was a marginally significant age effect on the prospective memory evaluation, which on closer inspection appeared to be a scaling effect related to recall performance. Experiment 2 verified this conclusion in a sample of older adults taking part in a training study extended over many weeks. The main implication of this work is that studies that compare metamemory accuracy in groups that differ in baseline memory performance should be careful before drawing conclusions about metamemory independently of memory performance.     

Predicting memory completeness and accuracy: emotion and exposure in repeated autobiographical recall

Using a repeated testing procedure modified for an autobiographical event, individuals provided narrative accounts of their memory for the announcement of the verdict in a widely publicized murder trial. The goal of the study was to determine whether different factors would predict initial versus final recall performance. Ratings of negative emotional reaction during the event predicted initial amount recalled, and frequency of exposure to the event predicted final amount recalled. Judged completeness of recall and phenomenological ratings of the vividness of the memory were also related to final amount recalled. The measured variables were unrelated to recall accuracy. Examining memory over repeated recall attempts offers a fruitful way to examine processes in autobiographical memory. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Recognition memory and the recall of spatial location

It is argued that memory for events should depend on the ability to recall their attributes. Two experiments suggest that this is so for the attribute of spatial location. When words presented in spatial arrays were later re-presented in a joint test of recognition memory and location recall, it was found that the surer one’s recognition, the greater the accuracy of location recall. Instructions to attend to a word’s location resulted in poorer recognition memory and marginally poorer location recall than were obtained when location was “incidentally” learned. Finally, when words were presented in color as well as in space, recognition memory was best when both attributes were recalled, was better when only location, was recalled than when only color was recalled, and was poorest when neither attribute was recalled.     

Verbal and Spatial Short-term Memory: Two Sources of Developmental Evidence Consistent with Common Underlying Processes

Developments in serial short-term memory (STM) typically have been assessed using verbal items, and mechanisms of development unique to the verbal system have been postulated. Here we review two studies of the development of spatial STM. The first (Chuah & Maybery, 1999) showed that variance in spatial span was partitioned among a set of predictor variables in a configuration very similar to that found for verbal span. The second (Maybery & Chuah, 1999) examined the timing of recall for spatial sequences. Intervals between touches as children recalled spatial sequences showed comparable effects to those reported for the oral recall of verbal sequences. Discussion focuses on processes that could serve both verbal and spatial memory and mediate span development.