Collaborative inhibition persists following social processing

In this experiment, participants read target words that were presented in the context of a social sentence “Willow towered over Meadow” or a nonsocial sentence “The willow towered over the meadow.” Subsequently, they received a surprise cued recall test for the target nouns/names and completed the test either alone or in a group of two. Despite the fact that the stimulus materials were held constant across conditions, participants showed a social processing advantage in memory—that is, they remembered the social (name) versions of the target words significantly better than the nonsocial (noun) versions. Further, the social benefit was not strong enough to neutralise the inhibitory effects of collaboration as collaborative groups (two people working together) recalled significantly fewer words than did nominal groups (combined, nonredundant, output of two individuals working separately). The present study also demonstrated robust collaborative inhibition with cued recall, a task previously assumed to eliminate such inhibition.     

Mood,dissociation and false memories using the Deese‐Roediger‐McDermott procedure

Who is likely to have a false memory? Does being in a certain transient state, such as a negative mood, mean that a person is more like to have a false memory? These important questions are examined using the Deese‐Roediger‐McDermott (DRM) procedure. The amount of false memories was compared with people's score on a dissociation measure and by mood. Unlike past research, which has used different procedures to explore false memories, we found that dissociation was not associated with false memories. We argue that this is because the DRM procedure requires two processes for a false memory (the generation of the critical lure and mistaking its source), while most false memory procedures only require one process (source monitoring error) because the errant information is suggested to the participant. This pattern of results suggests that only errors with the source monitoring process are associated with dissociation. We found that mood was related to false memories, but it was dependent on the specific task demands. If participants were told to recall as many words as they could, then people in a negative mood had more false memories. However, if they were told to recall as many words as they felt like recalling, then there were more false memories for people in a positive mood. This can be explained by the mood‐as‐input hypothesis. Results are discussed in relation to both theories and applications of memory.     

Influences of intentional and unintentional forgetting on false memories

In 2 experiments, we examined the interplay of 2 types of memory errors: forgetting and false memory--errors of omission and commission, respectively. We examined the effects of 2 manipulations known to inhibit retrieval of studied words--directed forgetting and part-list cuing--on the false recall of an unstudied "critical" word following study of its 15 strongest associates. Participants cued to forget the 1st of 2 studied lists before studying the 2nd recalled fewer List 1 words but intruded the missing critical word more often than did participants cued to remember both lists. By contrast, providing some studied words as cues during recall reduced both recall of the remaining studied words and intrusions of the critical word. The results suggest that forgetting can increase or decrease false memories, depending on whether such forgetting reflects impaired access to an entire episode or retrieval competition among elements of an episode.     

The Effect of Social Disclosure on the Intensity of Affect Provoked by Autobiographical Memories

Affect associated with negative autobiographical memories fades faster over time than affect associated with positive autobiographical memories (the fading affect bias). Data described in the present article suggest that this bias is observed when people use their own words to describe both the emotions that they originally felt in response to events in their lives and the emotions that they feel when they recall those events. The data also suggest that the fading affect bias is not a consequence of distortion in memory for the emotions experienced at event occurrence, but instead reflects current affective responses to memories for those events. Moreover, this bias has a social component. Frequently disclosed memories evince a stronger fading affect bias than less frequently disclosed memories. Memories disclosed to many types of people evince a stronger fading affect bias than memories disclosed to few types of people. Finally, the relation between social disclosure and fading affect appears to be causal: the results of an experiment demonstrate that social disclosure decreases the fading of pleasant affect and increases the fading of unpleasant affect associated with autobiographical memories.     

The effect of practice on recall of emotional information in individuals with generalized social phobia

Understanding memory processes in social anxiety is important because these individuals often report negative memories of anxiety-provoking situations and because of the recent emphasis on learning and memory in models of anxiety. The authors examined the effect of learning on memory for negative social, positive social, and nonsocial information using the retrieval-induced forgetting paradigm in individuals with generalized social phobia (GSPs) and in nonanxious controls (NACs). Words were presented in 1 of 3 practice conditions: practiced words from a practiced category, unpracticed words from a practiced category, and unpracticed words from an unpracticed category. GSPs and NACs showed the same patterns of memory for practice categories for positive social and nonsocial words. However, for negative social words, GSPs benefited less from practice and were hurt less from the effect of practicing competing negative social information than were NACs. This pattern of processing may hamper GSPs' learning of, and habituation to, negative social information.     

Explorations in the social contagion of memory

Four experiments examined social influence on the development of false memories. We employed the social contagion paradigm: A subject and a confederate see scenes and then later take turns recalling items from the scenes, with the confederate erroneously reporting some items that were not present in the scenes; on a final test, the subject reports these suggested items when instructed to recall only items from the scenes. The first two experiments showed that the social contagion effect persisted when subjects were explicitly warned about the possibility that confederates' responses might induce false memories and when they were tested via source-monitoring tests that explicitly gave the choice of attributing suggested items to the other person. Levels of false recall and recognition increased with the number of times the misleading information was suggested (Experiment 3), and subjects were more likely to incorporate the erroneous responses of an actual confederate on a recognition/source test as compared with those of a simulated confederate (Experiment 4). Collectively, the data support the claim that false memories may be transmitted between people and reveal critical factors that modulate the social contagion of memories.     

The effect of burn injury on adolescents autobiographical memory

Autobiographical memory recall was investigated in two female adolescent groups; one group who had experienced a burn injury and a matched control group. The Burn group was not currently depressed or anxious, but scored significantly higher on the intrusion subscale of the impact of event scale compared to controls. Two autobiographical memory tasks, the autobiographical memory cueing task and the Children's Autobiographical Memory Inventory (CAMI), were used. For the cueing task, the Burn group was significantly slower to recall specific memories. This group also recalled significantly fewer specific memories and significantly more extended overgeneral memories. For the CAMI, the burns group produced significantly lower semantic and episodic recall. The Burn group also produced significant correlations between sub-scales of the impact of event scale and selected measures on the autobiographical memory tasks. Higher intrusion scores were associated with less detailed episodic recall. Higher avoidance scores were associated with longer latencies to recall memories to negative cue words and fewer specific memories to all cue words. These results are discussed from the perspective that the Burn group experienced intrusive thoughts which interfered with normal autobiographical functioning.     

Autobiographical memory and clinical anxiety

Abstract

Previous experiments on the recall of threatening and neutral information in clinically anxious subjects have yielded mixed results. The present study assessed autobiographical memory in patients with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), and normal controls. Subjects were first presented with neutral cue words and asked to respond with any personal memory. GAD subjects judged the content of their own memories as more consistent with anxious mood, and less consistent with pleasant mood, than that reported by controls. Subjects were then again presented with neutral cue words, but with instructions to provide either “anxious” or “nonanxious” personal memories, on specified trials. Significant interactions between group and instruction condition indicated that anxious subjects recalled more anxiety-evoking memories, and recalled them more rapidly, relative to controls. Ratings by blind judges did not support the hypothesis that this apparent difference in the content of autobiographical recall was an artefact due to anxious subjects labelling memories as being more anxiety evoking than would controls. Possible explanations of the findings, and reasons for the apparent discrepancy between these and earlier results, are discussed.     

外显、内隐记忆中不同认知方式个体的社会定向

以中文双字词为实验材料,分别从两个层面探讨场依存个体与场独立个体对社会词或非社会词的记忆有无偏向。实验一采用双任务,分散注意学习条件,实验二引入加工分离程序(PDP)。研究结果表明:(1)在双任务分散注意学习条件下,场依存个体对非目标社会词存在记忆偏向。(2)在内隐记忆成绩上,场依存个体对社会词存在记忆偏向,场独立个体对非社会词存在记忆偏向。     

The neural correlates of attempting to suppress negative versus neutral memories

We performed an event-related fMRI study comparing attempts at suppressing recall of negative versus neutral memories. The hippocampus is crucial for successful explicit recall. Hippocampal activation has been shown to decrease during the suppression of previously learned neutral words. However, different effects may occur in the case of emotional memories. Participants first learned 40 word pairs consisting of a cue and either a neutral or a negative target. During fMRI scanning, the participants were shown the cues and were instructed to recall the targets or to suppress the targets, using attentional distraction. Similar right-lateralized frontoparietal regions were activated more during suppression than during recall, regardless of emotion. However, we show for the first time that lowered hippocampal activation occurs during the suppression of neutral, but not negative, words. Coinciding with this sustained hippocampal activation, the amygdala, insula, anterior cingulate, and fusiform gyrus showed greater activation during the suppression of negative memories than during suppression of neutral memories. Thus, during attempts to suppress negative memories, regions involved in the emotional and sensory aspects of memory reactivate, along with regions indexing conscious recall. Revealing the neural correlates and mechanisms of the suppression of negative memories has relevance for disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder, in which traumatic memories often intrude and are associated with avoidance. Supplemental materials for this article may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.     

Eliciting false memories on implicit and explicit memory tests after incidental learning

Abstract: In a false memory experiment, lists of semantic associates (e.g., newspaper, letter, book, etc.) were presented to three groups of participants to induce false memories for critical nonpresented (CN) words (e.g., read) in an incidental learning task. The control group simply estimated the frequency rate in everyday Japanese discourse of each word on a list. The imagery instruction group received an additional instruction to imagine a thematically related converging word from the target words on a list. Participants in the imagery plus writing group received the same instructions as those in the imagery instruction group, but were also required to write down the word they imagined for each list. The results from the implicit and explicit memory tests given after the incidental learning episode showed that the level of priming for CN words was equivalent to that for actually presented target words for all three groups on the implicit test, whereas explicit memory results showed that participants explicitly recognized more target words than CN words. The implications for implicit associative response and fuzzy‐trace theories of false memory, as well as implicit priming, are discussed.     

Autobiographical memory style in seasonal affective disorder and its relationship to future symptom remission

Autobiographical memory was examined in participants with seasonal affective disorder (SAD). In Experiment 1, participants with SAD performed an autobiographical memory task (AMT) in the winter, when depressed. The AMT required participants to generate autobiographical memories to positive and negative cue words. Symptom levels were reassessed in the summer, when participants were remitted. The number of overly general memories to positive cues generated when the SAD participants were depressed predicted symptom levels when remitted, over and above initial symptom levels, with greater winter overgenerality being associated with high levels of summer symptoms. However, this was dependent on the exact measure of depressive symptoms used. The degree of overgenerality of memories in SAD participants was further investigated in Experiment 2. Results revealed that SAD participants did not show elevated recall of overgeneral memories relative to controls. The results as a whole indicate that, even when levels of general memories are no greater in a given target group than in controls, the absolute level of general memories to positive cue words is still independently related to symptom outcome.     

Social Contagion in Competitors Versus Cooperators

The current study examined social contagion—or the spreading of memories from individual to individual—in two different social contexts: Competition and Cooperation. Participants were provided with words (Experiments 1A and 1B) or scenes (Experiment 2) to study. After study, participants were randomly divided: Half were given a competitive context, and the other half, a cooperative context. Then, in the paired recall phase, each participant took turns with a confederate partner in recalling the previously studied items. On a subsequent test, participants had to report the items that were recalled on the pair recall phase, in addition to who had recalled that item. The results showed that competitors, as compared with cooperators, were more likely to focus on other people's memories, and surprisingly, the same difference obtained for false memories. Essentially, people who are primed with a competitive context were more easily ‘infected’ by memories, true or false. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Derived false memories using a respondent‐type (ReT) procedure

The present investigation used a respondent‐type (ReT) training procedure to generate derived false memories. A one‐to‐many ReT training procedure was implemented in order to establish two stimulus equivalence classes, each consisting of one shape and 24 random words (i.e., Class 1 and Class 2). A partial test for stimulus equivalence with a subset of stimuli from each class followed. Failing an equivalence test resulted in additional ReT training and equivalence testing on new subsets of stimuli. After passing an equivalence test, participants were presented with 12 study‐list words from Class 1 for memorization, followed by a distraction task. Finally, free recall and recognition tests for the study‐list words were implemented. False recall and false recognition were more frequent for nonstudied Class 1 words than for nonstudied Class 2 words. These derived false‐memory effects were more pronounced among those participants exhibiting more training and testing cycles and higher accuracy on stimulus equivalence tests. Furthermore, false recall and false remembering of nonstudied Class 1 words were more frequent for words that had been equivalence‐tested than for words that had not been equivalence‐tested. These results show how responses to contiguous stimuli could produce derived false memories and also highlight the role played by the equivalence test in increasing their emergence.     

Collaboration in Recall: Do Pairs of People Cross-cue Each Other to Produce New Memories?

When people collaborate over their recall of a shared experience, it might be expected that they could “cross-cue” each other so as to produce new memories not available to either member of the pair on their own. In a previous series of experiments (Meudell et al., 1992), we found that pairs of people always recalled more than one person, but we failed to show that social interaction facilitated performance so as to produce such “emergent” new memories. However, a phenomenon akin to cross-cuing was employed by Tulving and Pearlstone (1966) in their classic study of the availability and accessibility of memories; accordingly, in this study, we repeated Tulving and Pearlstone's work directly in a social context. So as to assess whether new memories emerged in collaborating pairs, a sequential design was employed. People learned categorized lists of words, and then all the subjects recalled the items strictly on their own. Subjects then recalled again in pairs (collaboratively) or once more on their own. The results showed that even when the opportunity for cross-cuing was directly manipulated through the provision of categorized lists, no additional new memories emerged in the collaborating groups. Possible mechanisms for the results are considered.     

儿童的最早记忆特征及其与早期记忆数量的关系

本研究采用记忆流畅性任务和回忆最早记忆的方式考察了9岁和13岁共60名中国城镇独生儿童的早期记忆特征及各特征之间的关系。结果发现:(1)和西方研究相比,中国儿童回忆最早记忆时更多自发提及他人,尤其是父母。(2)最早记忆年龄与早期记忆数量有显著负相关,最早记忆中关于重要他人的记忆容量、社会取向和道德情绪与早期记忆数量有显著正相关。这些结果说明文化渗透对自传体记忆发生的影响,以及提示无论是最早记忆的质量,还是早期记忆的数量,回忆童年记忆背后可能潜藏着共同机制。     

Testing the exclusivity effect in location memory

There is growing literature exploring the possibility of parallel retrieval of location memories, although this literature focuses primarily on the speed of retrieval with little attention to the accuracy of location memory recall. Baguley, Lansdale, Lines, and Parkin (2006) found that when a person has two or more memories for an object's location, their recall accuracy suggests that only one representation can be retrieved at a time (exclusivity). This finding is counterintuitive given evidence of non-exclusive recall in the wider memory literature. The current experiment explored the exclusivity effect further and aimed to promote an alternative outcome (i.e., independence or superadditivity) by encouraging the participants to combine multiple representations of space at encoding or retrieval. This was encouraged by using anchor (points of reference) labels that could be combined to form a single strongly associated combination. It was hypothesised that the ability to combine the anchor labels would allow the two representations to be retrieved concurrently, generating higher levels of recall accuracy. The results demonstrate further support for the exclusivity hypothesis, showing no significant improvement in recall accuracy when there are multiple representations of a target object's location as compared to a single representation.     

Effects of self-complexity on mood-incongruent recall

Some people cope with negative moods by retrieving positive memories, which is mood-incongruent recall. Though mood-incongruent recall is helpful for mood-regulation, the factors that influence people's ability to utilize mood-incongruent recall are not well understood. This study investigated whether complex knowledge structure is a factor for the ability of mood-incongruent recall, based on self-complexity. In the experiment, 50 participants were requested to recall positive memories in both neutral and negative moods. The results of this study indicated that self-complexity was an important factor associated with participants' ability to recall positive memories while they were in negative moods. Participants who rated high in self-complexity were those whose knowledge is structured in a complex way, recalled more highly positive memories in negative moods than in neutral moods. On the other hand, participants who were rated low in self-complexity with simple knowledge structures recalled memories with a lower extent of positivity in negative moods than those in neutral moods.     

Retrieval dynamics in false recall: revelations from identifiability manipulations

The present study analyzed the retrieval dynamics of false recall, using an externalized free-recall task after participants studied Deese/Roediger–McDermott lists with high- and low-identifiable critical words. In Experiment 1, the memory test required participants to write down the words they remembered as having been presented in each list (recall output) plus any related words that came to mind (inclusion output). The results of the inclusion output showed that highly identifiable critical items were more frequently generated than less identifiable critical items, suggesting that highly identifiable critical words were more accessible in a first phase of retrieval. At the same time, the results of the recall output showed that highly identifiable critical items were less often falsely recalled than low-identifiable critical items, a replication of previous findings. In Experiment 2, self-reports corroborated that participants were using an editing strategy based on the identification and exclusion of critical words—that is, the identify-to-reject strategy. These results help us to more fully understand the identifiability effect and, beyond that, emphasize the importance of considering the intervening of dual processes of accessibility and error correction as a crucial feature in theoretical explanations of false memories.     

What is the connection between true and false memories? The differential roles of interitem associations in recall and recognition.

Veridical memory for presented list words and false memory for nonpresented but related items were tested using the Deese/Roediger and McDermott paradigm. The strength and density of preexisting connections among the list words, and from the list words to the critical items, were manipulated. The likelihood of producing false memories in free recall varied with the strength of connections from the list words to the critical items but was inversely related to the density of the interconnections among the list words. In contrast, veridical recall of list words was positively related to the density of the interconnections. A final recognition test showed that both false and veridical memories were more likely when the list words were more densely interconnected. The results are discussed in terms of an associative model of memory, Processing Implicit and Explicit Representations (PIER 2) that describes the influence of implicitly activated preexisting information on memory performance.