Memory for details with self-referencing

Self-referencing benefits item memory, but little is known about the ways in which referencing the self affects memory for details. Experiment 1 assessed whether the effects of self-referencing operate only at the item, or general, level or whether they also enhance memory for specific visual details of objects. Participants incidentally encoded objects by making judgements in reference to the self, a close other (one's mother), or a familiar other (Bill Clinton). Results indicate that referencing the self or a close other enhances both specific and general memory. Experiments 2 and 3 assessed verbal memory for source in a task that relied on distinguishing between different mental operations (internal sources). The results indicate that self-referencing disproportionately enhances source memory, relative to conditions referencing other people, semantic, or perceptual information. We conclude that self-referencing not only enhances specific memory for both visual and verbal information, but can also disproportionately improve memory for specific internal source details.     

Autobiographical Memory in Patients with Tinnitus

Studies on psychiatric patients have found that their memories of the past are often unspecific and overgeneral, but the extent to which this is the case for patients with somatic problems has so far only been examined in patients with chronic pain and in patients with diabetes. The present study investigated autobiographical memories in 19 tinnitus patients and 19 controls without tinnitus. Participants were administered the autobiographical memory test (AMT), the Controlled word association test, and self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and tinnitus distress. Compared to control participants, tinnitus patients had difficulty retrieving specific memories and showed longer retrieval latencies. Additionally, tinnitus patients had fewer specific memories to positive cue words. While AMT responses were associated with depression scores, the difference between controls and patients remained significant for positive cue words after controlling for depression scores. Results suggest that cognitive components should be an integral element of the psychological management of tinnitus. The use in future studies of experimental methods such as AMT in health psychology is encouraged.     

Memory,past and self

The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories. First, I distinguish two features of memory that a construal of mnemic content should respect. These are the ‘attribution of pastness’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe of those events that she remembers that they happened in the past) and the ‘attribution of existence’ feature (a subject is inclined to believe that she existed at the time that those events that she remembers took place). Next, I distinguish two kinds of theories of memory, which I call ‘perceptual’ and ‘self-based’ theories. I argue that those theories that belong to the first kind but not the second one have trouble accommodating the attribution of existence. And theories that belong to the second kind but not the first one leave the attribution of pastness unexplained. I then discuss two different theories that are both perceptual and self-based, which I eventually reject. Finally, I propose a perceptual, self-based theory that can account for both the attribution of pastness and the attribution of past existence.     

Cross‐Cultural Differences in Categorical Memory Errors

Cultural differences occur in the use of categories to aid accurate recall of information. This study investigated whether culture also contributed to false (erroneous) memories, and extended cross‐cultural memory research to Turkish culture, which is shaped by Eastern and Western influences. Americans and Turks viewed word pairs, half of which were categorically related and half unrelated. Participants then attempted to recall the second word from the pair in response to the first word cue. Responses were coded as correct, as blanks, or as different types of errors. Americans committed more categorical errors than did Turks, and Turks mistakenly recalled more non‐categorically related list words than did Americans. These results support the idea that Americans use categories either to organize information in memory or to support retrieval strategies to a greater extent than Turks and suggest that culture shapes not only accurate recall but also erroneous distortions of memory.     

Memory for temporally dynamic scenes

Recognition memory was investigated for individual frames extracted from temporally continuous, visually rich film segments of 5–15 min. Participants viewed a short clip from a film in either a coherent or a jumbled order, followed by a recognition test of studied frames. Foils came either from an earlier or a later part of the film (Experiment 1) or from deleted segments selected from random cuts of varying duration (0.5 to 30?s) within the film itself (Experiment 2). When the foils came from an earlier or later part of the film (Experiment 1), recognition was excellent, with the hit rate far exceeding the false-alarm rate (.78 vs. 18). In Experiment 2, recognition was far worse, with the hit rate (.76) exceeding the false-alarm rate only for foils drawn from the longest cuts (15 and 30?s) and matching the false-alarm rate for the 5?s segments. When the foils were drawn from the briefest cuts (0.5 and 1.0 s), the false-alarm rate exceeded the hit rate. Unexpectedly, jumbling had no effect on recognition in either experiment. These results are consistent with the view that memory for complex visually temporal events is excellent, with the integrity unperturbed by disruption of the global structure of the visual stream. Disruption of memory was observed only when foils were drawn from embedded segments of duration less than 5?s, an outcome consistent with the view that memory at these shortest durations are consolidated with expectations drawn from the previous stream.     

False rumors and true belief: Memory processes underlying children’s errant reports of rumored events

Previous research has shown that overhearing an errant rumor—either from an adult or from peers—about an earlier experience can lead children to make detailed false reports. This study investigates the extent to which such accounts are driven by changes in children’s memory representations or merely social demands that encourage the reporting of rumored information. This was accomplished by (a) using a warning manipulation that eliminated social pressures to report an earlier heard rumor and (b) examining the qualitative characteristics of children’s false narratives of a rumored-but-nonexperienced event. Findings indicated that overheard rumors can induce sensory and contextual characteristics in memory that can lead children to develop genuine false beliefs in seeing rumored-but-nonexperienced occurrences. Such constructive tendencies were especially likely among 3- and 4-year-olds (relative to 5- and 6-year-olds) and when rumors were picked up from peers during natural social interactions (relative to when they were planted by an adult).     

Memory for symmetry and perceptual binding in patients with schizophrenia

The present study investigated the use of perceptual binding processes in schizophrenic (SC) patients and matched healthy controls, by examining their performance on the recall of symmetrical (vertical, horizontal and diagonal) and asymmetrical patterns varying in length between 2 and 9 items. The results showed that, although SC patients were less accurate than controls in all conditions, both groups recalled symmetrical patterns better than asymmetrical ones. The impairment of SC patients was magnified with supra-span symmetrical arrays, and they were more likely to reproduce symmetrical patterns as asymmetrical, particularly at medium and high length levels. Hierarchical regression analyses further indicated that the between-group differences in the recall of supra-span vertical and horizontal arrays, which require a greater involvement of visual pattern processes, remained significant after removing the variance associated with performance on asymmetrical patterns, which primarily reflects intrafigural spatial processes. It is proposed that schizophrenia may be associated with a specific deficit in the formation and retrieval of the global visual images of studied patterns and in the use of the on-line information about the type of symmetry being tested to guide retrieval processes.     

Place and the self: An autobiographical memory synthesis

In this article, I argue that the relationship between place and self can be accounted for by recent theoretical work on autobiographical memory. The link between place and self is conceptualized as a transitory mental representation that emerges as a “place of mine” (personal autobiographical experience) from a “place” (declarative knowledge). The function of “place of mine” is to guide personal memory and self-knowing consciousness of periods of our lives. I combine inquiries of memory, self, and place in a triadic relationship, a synthesis, suggesting a conceptual model for the phenomenon of place-related self as a sub-system of the self. This is formed by a causal progression from a physical place across time via emotional and cognitive bonds, components of the autobiographical information grounding the self, apportioned across declarative memory. Finally, using the methods of factor analysis and structural equation modeling, I show that the proposed model accounts for previous and new data on place-related identity.     

Memory and time

The purpose of this essay is to clarify the notion of mnemonic content. Memories have content. However, it is not clear whether memories are about past events in the world, past states of our own minds, or some combination of those two elements. I suggest that any proposal about mnemonic content should help us understand why events are presented to us in memory as being in the past. I discuss three proposals about mnemonic content and, eventually, I put forward a positive view. According to this view, when a subject seems to remember a certain event, that event is presented to her as making true a perceptual experience that caused the very memory experience that she is having.

Investigating the variability of memory distortion for an analogue trauma

In this paper, we examine whether source monitoring (SM) errors might be one mechanism that accounts for traumatic memory distortion. Participants watched a traumatic film with some critical (crux) and non-critical (non-crux) scenes removed. Twenty-four hours later, they completed a memory test. To increase the likelihood participants would notice the film's gaps, we inserted visual static for the length of each missing scene. We then added manipulations designed to affect people's SM behaviour. To encourage systematic SM, before watching the film, we warned half the participants that we had removed some scenes. To encourage heuristic SM some participants also saw labels describing the missing scenes. Adding static highlighting, the missing scenes did not affect false recognition of those missing scenes. However, a warning decreased, while labels increased, participants' false recognition rates. We conclude that manipulations designed to affect SM behaviour also affect the degree of memory distortion in our paradigm.     

The role of frequency of experience with a product category and temporal orientation in self‐referent advertising

Previous research conceptualized consumers' evaluations of self-referent advertisements as discrete episodic processing instances requiring the ad-hoc matching of ad and personal knowledge detail. The present research proposes that consumers with frequent (infrequent) experiences in a product category are primarily semantic (episodic) processors. Consequently, consumers with frequent experiences have an illusion of detail matching in retrospective self-referencing resulting from schema-driven memory intrusions induced by highly detailed ads. Alternatively, consumers with infrequent experiences exhibit intrusions in anticipatory self-referencing due to imagination inflation prompted by these ads. Two experiments demonstrate how consumer knowledge-based details interact with message details in retrospective and anticipatory self-referencing situations to alter ad evaluations depending on the extent of prior experience.     

Memory for contextual details: effects of emotion and aging

When individuals are confronted with a complex visual scene that includes some emotional element, memory for the emotional component often is enhanced, whereas memory for peripheral (nonemotional) details is reduced. The present study examined the effects of age and encoding instructions on this effect. With incidental encoding instructions, young and older adults showed this pattern of results, indicating that both groups focused attention on the emotional aspects of the scene. With intentional encoding instructions, young adults no longer showed the effect: They were just as likely to remember peripheral details of negative images as of neutral images. The older adults, in contrast, did not overcome the attentional bias: They continued to show reduced memory for the peripheral elements of the emotional compared with the neutral scenes, even with the intentional encoding instructions.     

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.     

Recall of details never experienced: Effects of age,repetition, and semantic cues

To test theoretical predictions about the role of meaning connections in false memory, the effects of semantic cues and list repetition on children's false memories were evaluated across early childhood to mid-adolescence using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm. True recall and false recall increased from 7 to 13 years. Study list repetition increased true recall of list words with the magnitude of this effect largest in the older children and adolescents. Repetition reduced false recall of critical lures in all age groups. Consistent with theoretical predictions, false recall of critical lures increased when children were informed of the thematic gist of each list prior to study.     

Memory for action events in the bottlenosed dolphin

We investigated whether a bottlenosed dolphin’s ability to recall and repeat actions on command would immediately generalize to actions performed with specified objects. The dolphin was tested on her ability to repeat 18 novel behaviors performed with potentially interchangeable objects specified using an artificial gestural language. Such “action events” were correctly repeated at above chance levels, indicating that the dolphin had access to memories of those events. Performance levels were, however, lower than in previous tests. The dolphin appeared to have difficulty recalling which object an action was performed with. Previous research has demonstrated that animals can recall features of their environment and features of their actions independently of one another. The results of this study demonstrate (1) that the dolphin’s concept of repeating extends beyond simply accessing memories of movement patterns, and (2) that dolphins’ memories of past events incorporate representations of both self-performed acts and objects, locations, or gestural instructions. Received:10 October 1998 / Accepted after revision: 22 December 1998     

Reversible Verbal Memory Integration Deficits in Obstructive Sleep Apnoea

When presented with novel but semantically related elements after learning verbal material, healthy participants tend to endorse these items as previously learned. This reflects the normal integration and association of novel verbal information into long-term memory. How obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) negatively impacts verbal memory performance, and whether deficits are reversible following positive airway pressure (PAP) treatment, remain elusive. We investigated immediate and delayed OSA- and PAP treatment-related effects on verbal memory integration, using a false memory paradigm. Twenty-three patients with OSA learned lists of words semantically related to target non-presented words (1) at baseline after a polysomnography diagnosis night, (2) after a consecutive polysomnography night under PAP titration, and (3) after three months of compliant PAP treatment. At each session, participants learned 10 different lists of words, each list comprising 15 semantically related items. They had then to recognize 15 minutes later (after an intermediate vigilance task) previously learned words within a list including studied words (learned), unstudied but semantically related items (lures), and non-related unstudied items (controls). Sleep quality and fatigue questionnaires, and psychomotor vigilance tests (PVT) were administered at each session. PAP treatment led to OSA remission and improvement in objective and subjective sleep quality. Crucially, recognition of learned and lure words increased after the first night under treatment and remained stable three months later, suggesting successful memory integration and restoration of semantic processes. No treatment-related outcome was found on PVT performance. OSA exerts a detrimental but PAP-reversible effect on verbal learning and semantic memory integration mechanisms underlying the acquisition of novel memory representations.