Assessing autobiographical memory: the web-based autobiographical Implicit Association Test

By assessing the association strength with TRUE and FALSE, the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) [Sartori, G., Agosta, S., Zogmaister, C., Ferrara, S. D., &; Castiello, U. (2008). How to accurately detect autobiographical events. Psychological Science, 19, 772–780. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02156.x] aims to determine which of two contrasting statements is true. To efficiently run well-powered aIAT experiments, we propose a web-based aIAT (web-aIAT). Experiment 1 (n?=?522) is a web-based replication study of the first published aIAT study [Sartori, G., Agosta, S., Zogmaister, C., Ferrara, S. D., &; Castiello, U. (2008). How to accurately detect autobiographical events. Psychological Science, 19, 772–780. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02156.x; Experiment 1]. We conclude that the replication was successful as the web-based aIAT could accurately detect which of two playing cards participants chose (AUC?=?.88; Hit rate?=?81%). In Experiment 2 (n?=?424), we investigated whether the use of affirmative versus negative sentences may partly explain the variability in aIAT accuracy findings. The aIAT could detect the chosen card when using affirmative (AUC?=?.90; Hit rate?=?81%), but not when using negative sentences (AUC?=?.60; Hit rate?=?53%). The web-based aIAT seems to be a valuable tool to facilitate aIAT research and may help to further identify moderators of the test’s accuracy.     

Impact of age-relevant goals on future thinking in younger and older adults

This study investigated how personal goals influence age differences in episodic future thinking. Research suggests that personal goals change with age and like autobiographical memory, future thinking is thought to be organised and impacted by personal goals. It was hypothesised that cueing older adults with age-relevant goals should modulate age differences in episodic details and may also influence phenomenological characteristics of imagined scenarios. Healthy younger and older adults completed the Future Thinking Interview [Addis, D. R., Wong, A. T., & Schacter, D. L. (2008). Age-related changes in the episodic simulation of future events. Psychological Science, 19(1), 33–41. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02043.x] adapted to activate age-appropriate goals. Narratives were scored with an established protocol to obtain objective measures of episodic and semantic details. Subjective features such as emotionality and personal significance showed age differences as a function of goal domain while other features (e.g., vividness) were unaffected. However, consistent with prior reports, older adults produced fewer episodic details than younger adults and this was not modulated by goal domain. The results do not indicate that goal activation affects level of episodic detail. With respect to phenomenological aspects of future thinking, however, younger adults show more sensitivity to goal activation, compared with older adults.     

How do ordered questions bias eyewitnesses?

ABSTRACT

Background: Suggestive techniques can distort eyewitness memory (Wells & Loftus, 2003, Eyewitness memory for people and events. In A. M. Goldstein (Ed.), Handbook of psychology: Forensic Psychology, Vol. 11 (pp. 149–160). Hoboken, NY: John Wiley & Sons Inc). Recently, we found that suggestion is unnecessary: Simply reversing the arrangement of questions put to eyewitnesses changed what they believed (Michael & Garry, 2016, Ordered questions bias eyewitnesses and jurors. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23, 601–608. doi:10.3758/s13423-015-0933-1). But why? One explanation might be that early questions set an anchor that eyewitnesses then adjust away from insufficiently. Methods: We tracked how eyewitness beliefs changed over the course of questioning. We then investigated the influence of people’s need to engage in and enjoy effortful cognition. This factor, “Need for Cognition,” (NFC) affects the degree to which people adjust (Cacioppo, Petty, & Feng Kao, 1984, The efficient assessment of need for cognition. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 306–307. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa4803_13; Epley & Gilovich, 2006, The anchoring-and-adjustment heuristic: Why the adjustments are insufficient. Psychological Science, 17, 311–318. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01704.x). Results: In our first two experiments we found results consistent with an anchoring-and-adjustment account. But in Experiments 3 and 4 we found that NFC provided only partial support for that account. Conclusions: Taken together, these findings have implications for understanding how people form beliefs about the accuracy of their memory.     

Self-knowledge,belief, ability (and agency?)

Matthew Boyle [(2011). “Transparent Self-Knowledge.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 85 (1): 223–241. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8349.2011.00204.x] has defended an account of doxastic self-knowledge which he calls “Reflectivism”. I distinguish two claims within Reflectivism: (A) that believing that p and knowing oneself to believe that p are not two distinct cognitive states, but two aspects of the same cognitive state, and (B) that this is because we are in some sense agents in relation to our beliefs. I find claim (A) compelling, but argue that its tenability depends on how we view the metaphysics of knowledge, something Boyle does not consider. I argue that in the context of the standard account of knowledge as a kind of true belief – what I call the Belief Account of knowledge – the claim faces serious problems, and that these simply disappear if we instead adopt an Ability Account of knowledge, along the lines of that defended by John Hyman [(1999). “How knowledge Works.” The Philosophical Quarterly 49 (197): 433–451; John Hyman (2015). Action, Knowledge, and the Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press]. I find claim (B) less compelling, and a secondary aim of the paper is to suggest that once we reject the Belief Account of knowledge, and move over to an Ability Account, there is no explanatory role for (B) left to play.     

Of two minds or one? A registered replication of Rydell et al. (2006)

ABSTRACT

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is proposed as a mechanism of automatic preference acquisition in dual-process theories of attitudes (Gawronski, B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (2006). Associative and propositional processes in evaluation: An integrative review of implicit and explicit attitude change. Psychological Bulletin, 132(5), 692–731. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.132.5.692). Evidence for the automaticity of EC comes from studies claiming EC effects for subliminally presented stimuli. An impression-formation study showed a selective influence of briefly presented primes on implicitly measured attitudes, whereas supraliminally presented behavioural information about the target person was reflected in explicit ratings (Rydell, R. J., McConnell, A. R., Mackie, D. M., & Strain, L. M. (2006). Of two minds forming and changing valence-inconsistent implicit and explicit attitudes. Psychological Science, 17(11), 954–958. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01811.x) This finding is considered one of the strongest pieces of evidence for dual process theories (Sweldens, S., Corneille, O., & Yzerbyt, V. (2014). The role of awareness in attitude formation through evaluative conditioning. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(2), 187–209. doi:10.1177/1088868314527832), and it is therefore crucial to assess its reliability and robustness. The present study presents two registered replications of the Rydell et al. (2006) study. In contrast to the original findings, the implicit measures did not reflect the valence of the subliminal primes in both studies.     

Further evidence in favor of prior entry from endogenous attention to a location in space

Titchener’s (1908) law of prior entry states that “the object of attention comes to consciousness more quickly than the objects which we are not attending to,” or otherwise, that attended stimuli are perceived earlier than unattended stimuli. Shore, Spence, and Klein (Psychological Science, 12, 205–212. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00337, 2001) showed that endogenous visuospatial orienting does in fact elicit prior-entry effects, albeit to a smaller degree than does exogenous visuospatial orienting. In disagreement with this finding, Schneider and Bavelier (Cognitive Psychology, 47, 333–366. doi: 10.1016/S0010-0285(03)00035-5, 2003) found no effect of their instruction to attend. They concluded that nonattentional effects could masquerade as prior entry, which could account for findings such as those in Shore et al.’s endogenous condition. We investigated this empirical and theoretical discord by replicating the temporal-order judgment task used by Shore, Spence, and Klein, while manipulating and measuring endogenous orienting by way of an orthogonal color probe task. We showed evidence of prior entry as a consequence of endogenous orienting, supporting the conclusions of Shore, Spence, and Klein.     

The Effect of Action Valence and Race on 3- to 8-Year-Old Children's Social Cognitive Judgments

The present study investigated children's judgments of actions as a function of the valence of the action and the race of the actor. Three- to 8-year-old children were read an illustrated storybook in which 1 character did not share (a negatively valenced action) and the other character was helpful (a positively valenced action). The race of the characters was manipulated such that in the story, there was 1 Black character and 1 White character. Children were asked to make judgments about how mean/nice the characters were and what consequence (reward or punishment) they should receive for their actions. Despite the fact that children of this age show explicit and implicit pro-White biases (e.g., Baron & Banaji, 2006 Baron, A. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2006). The development of implicit attitudes: Evidence of race evaluations from ages 6 and 10 and adulthood. Psychological Science, 17, 53–58. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01664.x[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), children's judgments were based solely on the valence of action and not on character race. The findings are discussed in light of moral development and the development of bias as it pertains to race.     

The Place of Purpose in Life in Women’s Positive Aging

Purpose in life is an orientation associated with energy, effectiveness, and optimism. A general trend is for purpose to decline in the later years, with unclear implications for positive aging. This article, however, takes a new approach to exploring the role of purpose. Using data from the Mills Study, a 55-year study of women’s adult development, we examine four sharp patterns of change in purpose on Ryff’s scale (1995 Ryff, C. D. (1995). Psychological well-being in adult life. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 4, 99–104. doi:10.1111/1467-8721.ep10772395[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) between ages 61 and 70: high at both times, low at both times, and changes from high to low or low to high. Guiding ideas are advanced about each kind of change and findings examined for each group. Looking at individual women's lives since childhood provides illustrative examples of each pattern. These lives show the impact of depression, inner resources, personality traits (especially Conscientiousness), attachment (secure and avoidant/dismissive styles), life situations (e.g., retirement), and events (e.g., early parental loss or widowhood), and of a motivation in one's 60s to grow or to transform regrets. Women differed in how traditional their lives were and in how much they associated purposiveness and goal attainment with life satisfaction. Implications for therapists include both helping women find the energy and commitment associated with purpose in life, and helping them value more process-oriented experiences such as appreciation, wonder, connection, and relationship. Emphasis on appreciation may become more common as women age. Positive aging is manifested in these ways, but also in acceptance and the courageous and steadfast coping with painful situations.     

SNARC (spatial–numerical association of response codes) meets SPARC (spatial–pitch association of response codes): Automaticity and interdependency in compatibility effects

Concepts, including the mental number line, or addressing pitch as high and low, suggest that the spatial–numerical and spatial–pitch association of response codes (SNARC and SPARC) effects are domain-specific and thus independent. Alternatively, there may be dependencies between these effects, because they share common automatic or controlled decision mechanisms. In two experiments, participants were presented with spoken numbers in different pitches; their numerical value, pitch, and response compatibility were varied systematically. This allowed us to study SNARC and SPARC effects in a factorial design (see also Fischer, Riello, Giordano, &; Rusconi, 2013 Fischer, M. H., Riello, M., Giordano, B. L., &; Rusconi, E. (2013). Singing numbers?…?in cognitive space--a dual-task study of the link between pitch, space, and numbers. Topics in Cognitive Science, 5(2), 354–366. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12017[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Participants judged the stimuli on numerical magnitude, pitch, or parity (odd–even). In all tasks, the SNARC and SPARC effects had superadditive interactions. These were interpreted as both effects sharing a common mechanism. The task variation probes the mechanism: In the magnitude judgement task, numerical magnitude was explicit, whereas pitch was implicit; in the pitch judgement task, it was vice versa. In the parity judgement task, both dimensions were implicit. Regardless of whether they were implicit or explicit, both SNARC and SPARC effects occurred in all tasks. We concluded that by not requiring focal attention the common mechanism operates automatically.     

Exploitation,structural injustice,and the cross-border trade in human ova

Global demand for human ova in in vitro fertilization has led to its expansion in countries with falling average incomes and rising female unemployment. Paid egg donation in the context of national, regional, and global inequalities has the potential to exploit women who are socioeconomically vulnerable, and indeed there is ample evidence that it does. Structural injustices that render women in middle-income countries – and even some high-income countries – economically vulnerable contribute to a context of ‘omissive coercion’ (Wilkinson 2003 Wilkinson, S. 2003. “The Exploitation Argument Against Commercial Surrogacy.” Bioethics 17 (2): 169–187. doi: 10.1111/1467-8519.00331[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that is morally troubling. When egg brokers or fertility clinics take advantage of these background structural injustices and prospective ova providers’ vulnerability in order to pay them less than they need to meet their livelihood needs, they engage in exploitation. Analyzing paid egg donation as a form of reproductive labor, however, can direct our attention to reforms that would reduce exploitative instances of this practice. In contrast to those who see egg provision as inescapably commodifying and harmful, I argue that compensated egg provision can be made less exploitative. I defend my approach against commodification-driven analyses of egg donation and concerns about undue inducement, and conclude by discussing some of the ways in which policy-makers and medical practitioners might reduce the harms that may result from this global practice.     

Optimal testing time for suppression of competitors during interference resolution

Interference between competing memory traces is a common cause of memory failure. Recent research has demonstrated a suppression mechanism that operates at retrieval to resolve interference. Using an adaptation of the suppression paradigm in Healey, Ngo, and Hasher [(2014). Below-baseline suppression of competitors during interference resolution by younger but not older adults. Psychological Science, 25(1), 145–151. doi:10.1177/0956797613501169], we tested whether the ability to suppress competing memory traces varies with the synchrony between optimal arousal period and time of testing. We replicate the below-baseline suppression effect for young adults tested at optimal times of day, and present novel evidence that they do not show competitor suppression during non-optimal times of day. In fact, competitors are actually strengthened at non-optimal times. Our results suggest that the ability to resolve interference by suppression varies with circadian arousal.     

Repetition Priming Across the Adult Lifespan—The Long and Short of It

ABSTRACT

Previous reports suggest that repetition priming (i.e., enhanced processing of a stimulus after experience with that stimulus) is long lasting and impervious to the effects of age, in contrast to the pattern found with explicit memory. However, the nature of repetition priming in aged individuals remains unclear, as conflicting findings have also been reported. We used a longitudinal design to examine how repetition priming is affected by multiple stimulus repetitions (three presentations) and different delay intervals (no delay, 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month) in young adults, as well as in two groups of aging adults (young-elderly and old-elderly). Our findings extend previous reports that priming is long lasting, even when 1 month intervenes between the initial experience with an item and the subsequent priming test of that item (Cave, 1997 Cave, C. B. 1997. Very long-lasting priming in picture naming. Psychological Science, 8: 322–325. [CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), and is relatively impervious to the effects of age (Mitchell, et al., 1990 Mitchell, D. B., Brown, A. S. and Murphy, D. R. 1990. Dissociations between procedural and episodic memory: effects of time and aging. Psychology and Aging, 5: 264–276. [INFOTRIEVE][CSA][CROSSREF] [Google Scholar]). In addition, a more detailed characterization of priming and the effects of aging was revealed. Although priming is long lasting, remaining significant even at the month delay for all groups, it did decline over time and the rate of that decline differed with age. Both young-elderly and old-elderly groups showed a marked drop-off at 1 day, whereas young adults did not show a decline until 1 week. All groups benefited from multiple repetitions; however, this benefit disappeared at the month delay (in contrast to recognition memory, where the benefit remained significant). These findings support the assertion that repetition priming and explicit memory reflect the operation of distinct systems, and that these systems may undergo different rates of change in aging.     

The Utility of the State Space Grid Method for Studying Peer Interactions in Youth Sport

Although previous studies indicate that peer interactions represent an important component of the youth sport experience, studies examining peer interactions in the sport context are limited. Furthermore, the methodological tools commonly used to investigate peer interactions have restricted researchers’ understandings of the complex, reciprocal nature of these experiences. This paper outlines the potential contribution of a novel dynamic systems-based methodology, the state space grid method (SSG; Lewis, Lamey, & Douglas, 1999 Lewis, M. D., Lamey, A. V. and Douglas, L. 1999. A new dynamic system method for the analysis of early socioemotional development. Developmental Science, 2: 457–475. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), to the study of peer interactions in sport. Concrete recommendations to guide the practical application of the SSG method to future peer research in youth sport are presented.     

Revelation effects in remembering,forecasting, and perspective taking

The revelation effect is a robust phenomenon in episodic memory whereby stimuli that immediately follow a simple cognitive task are more likely to garner positive responses on a variety of memory tests, including autobiographical memory judgments. Six experiments investigated the revelation effect for judgments of past and future events as well as judgments made from others’ perspectives. The purpose of this work was to determine whether these subjectively distinct judgments are subject to the same decision-making biases, as might be expected if they are governed by similar processes (e.g., Schacter, Addis, & Buckner 2007). College-aged participants were asked to rate a variety of life events according to whether the events had occurred during their childhoods or would occur during the next 10 years. Events that followed an anagram task were judged as more likely to have happened in the past and more likely to occur in the future. We also showed a revelation effect when participants were asked to adopt the perspective of others when making judgments about past and future events. When the task was reworded to be non-episodic (participants judged how common the events were during childhood and adulthood), no revelation effect was found for either past or future time frames, which suggests common boundary conditions for both types of judgments. The results are consistent with studies showing strong parallels between remembering and other forms of self-projection but not with semantic memory judgments.     

Common Factors Come Alive: Practical Strategies for Implementing Common Factors in MFT Training

Presently, MFT training programs teach MFT models in a way that emphasizes differences over similarities (Karam et al. in J Marital Fam Ther, 2015. doi: 10.1111/jmft.12096; Sprenkle and Blow in J Marital Fam Ther 30:113–129, 2004a. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2004.tb01228.x, in J Marital Fam Ther 30:151–157, b. doi: 10.1111/j.1752-0606.2004.tb01230.x; Sprenkle et al. in Common factors in couple and family therapy: the overlooked foundation for effective practice. Guilford Press, New York, 2009). Although teaching a variety of models and their distinctiveness is vital, doing so may create a competitive rather than integrative relationship between models (Karam et al. 2015). While Karam et al. 2015 encourage the inclusion of common factors in MFT training, we expand their justification for the importance of doing so We also explain conceptual and practical ways to include common factors in MFT training. Common factors instruction can fulfill multiple purposes: (a) create a sense of cohesiveness for programs which need to teach breadth of topics that can seem unrelated, (b) help prepare practitioners who need to learn many models well but will likely adopt an integrative approach, (c) align with basic skills training, (d) align with process research, and (e) enhance the richness of individual models. For each of these purposes, we provide an example of a classroom activity. We conclude with a unifying example of how one student may learn the common-factors perspective and weave it into her reflective practices as an MFT student.     

Is Disclosure of Sexual Traumas Helpful? Comparing Experimental Laboratory Versus Field Study Results

Disclosing trauma is generally viewed as beneficial for survivors, yet few studies have used experimental methods to determine whether disclosure of sexual traumas in particular has positive effects. This article compares and contrasts knowledge based on lab studies of sexual trauma disclosure using Pennebaker's (1997 Pennebaker, J. W. 1997. Writing about emotional experiences as a therapeutic process. Psychological Science, 8: 162–166. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) experimental disclosure paradigm with data from nonexperimental studies of sexual assault disclosure. The most surprising result was that unlike the majority of experimental trauma disclosure studies using Pennebaker's method that have typically shown positive effects of disclosure, both laboratory and field studies of sexual assault have not shown positive effects, particularly when victims receive negative responses from others. Future research on disclosure of sexual victimization should consider various mediators and moderators, which are suggested by existing findings, as well as a broader range of adjustment outcomes within an ecological framework.     

List of Reviewers

ABSTRACT

Anxious individuals report disproportionately negative expectations concerning the future, termed the negative expectancy bias. In contrast, ageing is associated with an inflated expectancy for positive future events. A recent study [Steinman, S. A., Smyth, F. L., Bucks, R. S., MacLeod, C., &; Teachman, B. A. (2013). Anxiety-linked expectancy bias across the adult lifespan. Cognition and Emotion, 27, 345–355. doi:10.1080/02699931.2012.711743] found using an interpretation bias task, a negative expectancy bias in young adults and positive expectancy bias in older adults with high trait anxiety. Extending this, the current study examined expectancy bias for positive, negative and ambiguously emotionally toned information in younger and older adults with clinical levels of depression and anxiety to community control groups, thus allowing examination of both disorder status and age on biases. Clinical participants reported a pervasive tendency to expect negative events relative to positive regardless of whether the current scenarios were positive, negative or ambiguous. Older adults showed greater expectancy for future positive scenarios when the initial scenario was negative or ambiguous. Age moderated the negative expectancy bias shown by clinical participants for ambiguous scenarios. Clinical disorders in older adults attenuated the positive expectancy bias that was otherwise strong in community participants. These findings provide further evidence for age differences in processing of emotionally toned information, with older adults showing a greater expectancy for positive future events.     

Syntactic agreement attraction reflects working memory processes

Does producing syntactic agreement rely on syntactic or memory-based retrieval processes? The present study investigated the extent to which syntactic processing deficits and working memory (WM) deficits predict susceptibility to agreement attraction [Bock, K., &; Miller, C. A. (1991). Broken agreement. Cognitive Psychology, 23, 45–93], where speakers tend to erroneously produce plural agreement for a singular subject when another noun in the sentence is grammatically plural. Four brain-injured patients with varying degrees of grammatical and WM deficits completed sentences with local nouns that matched or mismatched in number with the head noun, and that were plausible or implausible subjects. Both aspects of grammatical deficits and the extent of WM deficits predicted the extent of agreement attraction effects. These data are consistent with the proposal that producing an agreeing verb involves a cue-based search in WM for an appropriate controlling noun, which is subject to interference from other elements in memory with similar properties [cf. Badecker, W., &; Kuminiak, F. (2007). Morphology, agreement and working memory retrieval in sentence production: Evidence from gender and case in Slovak. Journal of Memory and Language, 56(1), 65–85. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2006.08.004].     

Retrieval activates related words more than presentation

Retrieving information enhances learning more than restudying. One explanation of this effect is based on the role of mediators (e.g., sand-castle can be mediated by beach). Retrieval is hypothesised to activate mediators more than restudying, but existing tests of this hypothesis have had mixed results [Carpenter, S. K. (2011). Semantic information activated during retrieval contributes to later retention: Support for the mediator effectiveness hypothesis of the testing effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(6), 1547–1552. doi:10.1037/a0024140; Lehman, M., &; Karpicke, J. D. (2016). Elaborative retrieval: Do semantic mediators improve memory? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42(10), 1573–1591. doi:10.1037/xlm0000267]. The present experiments explored an explanation of the conflicting results, testing whether mediator activation during a retrieval attempt depends on the accessibility of the target information. A target was considered less versus more accessible when fewer versus more cues were given during retrieval practice (Experiments 1 and 2), when the target had been studied once versus three times initially (Experiment 3), or when the target could not be recalled versus could be recalled during retrieval practice (Experiments 1–3). A mini meta-analysis of all three experiments revealed a small effect such that retrieval activated mediators more than presentation, but mediator activation was not reliably related to target accessibility. Thus, retrieval may enhance learning by activating mediators, in part, but these results suggest the role of other processes, too.     

Processing emotions in sounds: cross-domain aftereffects of vocal utterances and musical sounds

Nonlinguistic signals in the voice and musical instruments play a critical role in communicating emotion. Although previous research suggests a common mechanism for emotion processing in music and speech, the precise relationship between the two domains is unclear due to the paucity of direct evidence. By applying the adaptation paradigm developed by Bestelmeyer, Rouger, DeBruine, and Belin [2010. Auditory adaptation in vocal affect perception. Cognition, 117(2), 217–223. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2010.08.008], this study shows cross-domain aftereffects from vocal to musical sounds. Participants heard an angry or fearful sound four times, followed by a test sound and judged whether the test sound was angry or fearful. Results show cross-domain aftereffects in one direction – vocal utterances to musical sounds, not vice-versa. This effect occurred primarily for angry vocal sounds. It is argued that there is a unidirectional relationship between vocal and musical sounds where emotion processing of vocal sounds encompasses musical sounds but not vice-versa.