How analogies are generated: The roles of structural and superficial similarity

Laboratory studies of analogical reasoning have shown that subjects are mostly influenced by superficial similarity in the retrieval of source analogs. However, real-world investigations have demonstrated that people generate analogies using deep structural features. We conducted three experiments to determine why laboratory and real-world studies have yielded different results. In the first two experiments, we used a "production paradigm" in which subjects were asked to generate sources for a given target. Results show that the majority of the analogies that were generated displayed low levels of superficial similarity with the target problem. Moreover, most of the analogies were based on complex underlying structures. The third experiment used a "reception paradigm" methodology. The subjects had to retrieve predetermined sources instead of generate their own. In this case, retrieval was largely constrained by surface similarity. We conclude that people can use structural relations when given an appropriate task and that this ability has been underestimated in previous research on analogy.     

Promoting interdomain analogical transfer: When creating a problem helps to solve a problem

Research on analogical thinking has devised several ways of promoting an abstract encoding of base analogs, thus rendering them more retrievable during later encounters with similar situations lacking surface similarities. Recent studies have begun to explore ways of facilitating transfer at retrieval time, which could facilitate the retrieval of distant analogs learned within contexts that were not specially directed to emphasize their abstract structure. Such studies demonstrate that comparing a target problem to an analogous problem helps students retrieve base analogs that lack surface similarities. To devise more portable ways of enhancing analogical transfer, Experiment 1 replicated Kurtz and Loewenstein’s (Memory & Cognition, 35, 334–341, 2007) target-comparison procedure with an additional condition in which participants compared the target to a nonanalogous problem before attempting to reach its solution. Although comparing two analogous targets outperformed the standard transfer condition in promoting analogical transfer, comparing nonanalogous problems did not yield a transfer advantage. Based on prior studies that showed that the activity of creating analogous problems during their initial encoding elicits a more abstract representation of base analogs, in Experiment 2 we assessed whether constructing a second analogous target problem at retrieval time helps participants retrieve superficially dissimilar base analogs. As predicted, target invention increased the retrieval of distant sources. In both experiments we found an association between the quality of the generated schemas and the probability of retrieving a distant base analog from memory.     

More Inaccurate But Not More Biased: Anxiety During Encoding Impairs Face Recognition Accuracy But Does Not Moderate the Own‐Ethnicity Bias

Heightened state anxiety can have a deleterious impact on memory for faces. In this paper we investigated whether anxiety: (i) moderates the own‐ethnicity bias (OEB) and (ii) impairs face recognition accuracy at the encoding or retrieval phase of an OEB face‐recognition task. Using a typical OEB task, anxiety was induced during encoding and retrieval in Experiment 1, but only during retrieval in Experiment 2. An OEB was found in both experiments, but anxiety did not moderate the OEB in either experiment. In Experiment 1, anxious participants were poorer at face recognition for both own‐ and other‐ethnicity faces. In Experiment 2 anxiety did not impair face recognition. Together, these studies suggest that anxiety impaired participants' encoding, but not retrieval, of faces. The implications of these findings are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Voluntary Remembering: Elucidating the Mental Strategies Used to Recall the Past

This study investigated the possibility that people use multiple different types of voluntary retrieval strategies when they are attempting to recall past episodes. In two experiments, we used a retrieve out loud procedure where participants were required to verbalize their thoughts while attempting to retrieve personal memories in response to phrase cues. In Experiment 1, we hypothesized that three main types of voluntary retrieval strategies would be evident during the retrieve out loud procedure, repeating, temporal, and generative/hierarchical retrieval. The results confirmed our hypothesis, showing that the three strategies were used equally. In Experiment 2, we examined the retrieval speed and success rates of the three strategies. The results showed that the repeating strategy was statistically faster than the other two strategies, while also showing that the temporal strategy had the least success in generating memories.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mood and the reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic

Four studies investigate the relationship between individuals' mood and their reliance on the ease retrieval heuristic. Happy participants were consistently more likely to rely on the ease of retrieval heuristic, whereas sad participants were more likely to rely on the activated content. Additional analyses indicate that this pattern is not due to a differential recall (Experiment 2) and that happy participants ceased to rely on the ease of retrieval when the diagnosticity of this information was called into question (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 shows that reliance on the ease of retrieval heuristic resulted in faster judgments than reliance on content, with the former but not the latter being a function of the amount of activated information.     

A retrieval-based approach to eliminating hindsight bias

Individuals exhibit hindsight bias when they are unable to recall their original responses to novel questions after correct answers are provided to them. Prior studies have eliminated hindsight bias by modifying the conditions under which original judgments or correct answers are encoded. Here, we explored whether hindsight bias can be eliminated by manipulating the conditions that hold at retrieval. Our retrieval-based approach predicts that if the conditions at retrieval enable sufficient discrimination of memory representations of original judgments from memory representations of correct answers, then hindsight bias will be reduced or eliminated. Experiment 1 used the standard memory design to replicate the hindsight bias effect in middle-school students. Experiments 2 and 3 modified the retrieval phase of this design, instructing participants beforehand that they would be recalling both their original judgments and the correct answers. As predicted, this enabled participants to form compound retrieval cues that discriminated original judgment traces from correct answer traces, and eliminated hindsight bias. Experiment 4 found that when participants were not instructed beforehand that they would be making both recalls, they did not form discriminating retrieval cues, and hindsight bias returned. These experiments delineate the retrieval conditions that produce—and fail to produce—hindsight bias.     

An asymmetry between memory encoding and retrieval. Revelation, generation, and transfer-appropriate processing

Transfer-appropriate-processing accounts of memory emphasize the similarity of encoding and retrieval processes, and imply that experimental manipulations should have similar effects on encoding and retrieval. Exceptions to this expectation are thus of great interest, but extant exceptions (produced by studies using divided attention, alcohol, and benzodiazepines) are debatable, single dissociations between encoding and retrieval. The present experiments demonstrate a reversed dissociation, in which the same variable produced opposite effects when implemented at encoding and retrieval. At encoding, participants either solved anagrams of study words or read intact study words. At retrieval, participants likewise solved anagrams or read intact words prior to making recognition memory judgments. Compared with reading intact words, solving anagrams at encoding enhanced later recognition accuracy, whereas solving anagrams at test impaired accuracy. These results were obtained with old/new decisions (Experiment 1) and with confidence ratings (Experiment 2).     

characters and clues: factors affecting children's extension of knowledge through integration of separate episodes

Children build up knowledge about the world and also remember individual episodes. How individual episodes during which children learn new things become integrated with one another to form general knowledge is only beginning to be explored. Integration between separate episodes is called on in educational contexts and in everyday life as a major means of extending knowledge and organizing information. Bauer and San Souci (2010) provided an initial demonstration that 6-year-olds extend their knowledge by integrating between separate but related episodes; the episodes shared a high level of surface similarity. Experiments 1A and 1B of the current research were tests of integration under low and high levels of surface similarity, respectively. In Experiment 1A, when surface similarity of the episodes was low, 6-year-olds integrated between passages of text, yet their performance was not as robust as observed previously. In Experiment 1B, when surface similarity of the episodes was high, a replication of Bauer and San Souci's results was observed. In Experiment 2, we tested whether a "hint" to consult the information learned in the passages improved performance even when surface level similarity was low. The hint had a strong facilitating effect. Possible mechanisms of integration between separate yet related episodes are discussed.     

协作抑制的多机制解释:来自编码加工方式和编码相似性的证据

协作抑制是指小组提取的信息量比等量个体单独提取的信息总量要少。对于协作过程降低小组成员提取潜能的机制解释,不同研究之间仍有争论。本研究实验1使用经典的生存加工范式,实验2使用联想记忆训练法,分别考察编码加工方式和编码相似性对协作提取成绩的影响,从而检验提取抑制和策略破坏机制是否能分别影响协作抑制。研究结果表明,被试在生存和非生存(愉悦度和自我经历)加工条件下都出现协作抑制现象,而生存加工条件下的协作抑制量显著小于非生存加工条件;在使用联想记忆训练法之后,相同学习顺序组没有出现协作抑制,而不同学习顺序组出现了经典的协作抑制。本研究结果为协作抑制的可能存在的多机制解释提供了证据。     

Synchrony effects in automatic and controlled retrieval

Using a speeded retrieval procedure, we investigated time-of-day effects in automatic and controlled retrieval. Morning-type adults were tested at either peak (early morning) or off-peak (late afternoon) times on a speeded implicit (Experiment 1) or explicit (Experiment 2) stem completion task. In Experiment 1, retrieval strategies were identified by changes in response speed between a practice phase with rapid retrieval and an implicit memory test phase. Performance based on controlled retrieval (shown by slowdown participants) showed more priming at peak than at off-peak times of day, a finding confirmed in Experiment 2, in which the participants were given intentional retrieval instructions when the materials switched. In contrast, performance based on automatic retrieval (shown by nonslowdown participants) did not differ across peak and off-peak times. The finding suggests a robust synchrony effect in controlled retrieval, but not in automatic retrieval, which does not appear to vary across the day.     

Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Calvini, G. (1999). Contexts of cryptomnesia: May the source be with you. Social Cognition, 17, 273–297. doi:10.1521/soco.1999.17.3.273]. Two sets of experiments explore these phenomena, using extensions of the standard unconscious plagiarism paradigm. In Experiment 1A participants worked together in same- or different-sex dyads before trying to recall their own ideas or their partner's ideas. More source errors were evident for same-sex dyads (Experiment 1A), but this effect was absent when participants recalled from both sources simultaneously (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, participants recalled ideas from a single source either alone or in the presence of the partner, using an extended-recall task. Partner presence did not affect the availability of ideas, but did reduce the propensity to report them as task compliant, relative to a partner-present condition. Simultaneous recall from both sources removed this social effect (Experiment 2B). Thus social influences on unconscious plagiarism are apparent, but are influenced by the salience of the alternate source at retrieval.     

Searching for two things at once: Evidence of exclusivity in semantic and autobiographical memory retrieval

We examined whether retrieval from semantic memory (Experiment 1) and autobiographical memory (Experiment 2) is exclusive, or whether people can search for two things at once. In Experiment 1, participants retrieved items as quickly as possible over 4 ruin from single categories (e.g., foods, countries) and from disjunctive categories (e.g., foods or countries). In Experiment 2, participants retrieved autobiographical episodes associated with single cue words (e.g., flower, ticket) or with disjunctive cue words (e.g., flower or ticket). In both experiments, retrieval of items from the disjunctive category did not exceed predictions based on optimal sequencing of retrieval from the corresponding two single categories. That is, exclusivity was observed to occur in retrieval from among multiple nonoverlapping categories in both semantic and autobiographical memory.     

Is overall similarity classification less effortful than single-dimension classification?

It is sometimes argued that the implementation of an overall similarity classification is less effortful than the implementation of a single-dimension classification. In the current article, we argue that the evidence securely in support of this view is limited, and report additional evidence in support of the opposite proposition—overall similarity classification is more effortful than single-dimension classification. Using a match-to-standards procedure, Experiments 1A, 1B and 2 demonstrate that concurrent load reduces the prevalence of overall similarity classification, and that this effect is robust to changes in the concurrent load task employed, the level of time pressure experienced, and the short-term memory requirements of the classification task. Experiment 3 demonstrates that participants who produced overall similarity classifications from the outset have larger working memory capacities than those who produced single-dimension classifications initially, and Experiment 4 demonstrates that instructions to respond meticulously increase the prevalence of overall similarity classification.     

Cued Memory Collaboration: Effects of Friendship and Type of Retrieval Cue

The effects of friendship and collaboration on memory retrieval were investigated in two experiments. The net negative effect of collaboration in memory retrieval and the effect of friendship were studied within a cueing framework. The aim of the study was to investigate the reduced cue effectiveness hypothesis. In Experiment 1, dyadic retrieval was compared to that of a nominal group (a pooled score from two individuals working individually). The task was to encode and retrieve 90 words individually or dyadically. The retrieval phase was supported by cues produced by others or produced by the participants themselves (individually or dyadically). In Experiment 2, friends were compared to non-friends in a memory retrieval phase. All participants retrieved alone in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that dyadic retrieval suffered compared to nominal group retrieval and that no such discrepancies were found for retrieval with cues produced by others. In Experiment 2, friends could help each other towards successful retrieval to a greater extent than non-friends, and “for others” instructions increased retrieval performance as well. These findings replicate previous studies by Andersson and Ronnberg (1995, 1996), and advance the understanding of collaborative memory; that is, net negative effects of collaboration can be explained in terms of the reduced cue effectiveness hypothesis.     

Rumination and overgeneral autobiographical memory

Two studies investigated the effects of rumination on the retrieval of autobiographical memories in high-depressed and low-depressed individuals. Experiment 1 administered either a rumination or distraction task prior to a cued autobiographical memory task. High-depressed participants recalled more overgeneral memories following rumination relative to distraction, whereas experimental inductions did not influence low-depressed participants. Experiment 2 administered either a positive or negative rumination task prior to a cued autobiographical memory task. Negatively valenced rumination led high-depressed participants to recall more overgeneral memories than positively valenced rumination; this effect was not observed in low-depressed participants. These findings accord with the proposal that rumination is a mediating mechanism in the retrieval of overgeneral memories, and extends this proposal by indicating that negatively valenced ruminative content is particularly instrumental in inducing overgeneral retrieval.     

Similarity on the rebound: inhibition of similarity assessment leads to an ironic postsuppressional rebound

A widely held but rarely tested assumption among cognitive scientists is that different cognitive tasks may rely upon a single basic cognitive process. Using an established methodology to examine the suppression and subsequent rebound of mental operations, the present research indicates that suppressing use of similarity in one domain results in the subsequent rebound of similarity assessment in a different domain, suggesting that both domains rely on the same underlying cognitive process. In two studies, we demonstrate that leading people to suppress natural similarity assessment in one task produces increased reliance on similarity in subsequent, different, and apparently unrelated tasks. In Experiment 1, participants led to suppress similarity in a concentration task subsequently made more errors in a false-memory paradigm than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants suppressing similarity in a categorization task made more false-memory errors and perceived more similarity between word pairs than participants who did not suppress. The findings suggest that the cognitive process of similarity assessment may be a domain-general process, such that it is widespread across a number of different mental tasks.     

Similarity on the rebound: Inhibition of similarity assessment leads to an ironic postsuppressional rebound

A widely held but rarely tested assumption among cognitive scientists is that different cognitive tasks may rely upon a single basic cognitive process. Using an established methodology to examine the suppression and subsequent rebound of mental operations, the present research indicates that suppressing use of similarity in one domain results in the subsequent rebound of similarity assessment in a different domain, suggesting that both domains rely on the same underlying cognitive process. In two studies, we demonstrate that leading people to suppress natural similarity assessment in one task produces increased reliance on similarity in subsequent, different, and apparently unrelated tasks. In Experiment 1, participants led to suppress similarity in a concentration task subsequently made more errors in a false-memory paradigm than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants suppressing similarity in a categorization task made more false-memory errors and perceived more similarity between word pairs than participants who did not suppress. The findings suggest that the cognitive process of similarity assessment may be a domain-general process, such that it is widespread across a number of different mental tasks.     

Identifying expectations about the strength of causal relationships

When we try to identify causal relationships, how strong do we expect that relationship to be? Bayesian models of causal induction rely on assumptions regarding people’s a priori beliefs about causal systems, with recent research focusing on people’s expectations about the strength of causes. These expectations are expressed in terms of prior probability distributions. While proposals about the form of such prior distributions have been made previously, many different distributions are possible, making it difficult to test such proposals exhaustively. In Experiment 1 we used iterated learning—a method in which participants make inferences about data generated based on their own responses in previous trials—to estimate participants’ prior beliefs about the strengths of causes. This method produced estimated prior distributions that were quite different from those previously proposed in the literature. Experiment 2 collected a large set of human judgments on the strength of causal relationships to be used as a benchmark for evaluating different models, using stimuli that cover a wider and more systematic set of contingencies than previous research. Using these judgments, we evaluated the predictions of various Bayesian models. The Bayesian model with priors estimated via iterated learning compared favorably against the others. Experiment 3 estimated participants’ prior beliefs concerning different causal systems, revealing key similarities in their expectations across diverse scenarios.     

Auditory spatial negative priming: What is remembered of irrelevant sounds and their locations?

The categorization and identification of previously ignored visual or auditory stimuli is typically slowed down—a phenomenon that has been called the negative priming effect and can be explained by the episodic retrieval of response-inadequate prime information and/or an inhibitory model. A similar after-effect has been found in visuospatial tasks: participants are slowed down in localizing a visual stimulus that appears at a previously ignored location. In the auditory modality, however, such an after-effect of ignoring a sound at a specific location has never been reported. Instead, participants are impaired in their localization performance when the sound at the previously ignored location changes identity, a finding which is compatible with the so-called feature-mismatch hypothesis. Here, we describe the properties of auditory spatial in contrast to visuospatial negative priming and report two experiments that specify the nature of this auditory after-effect. Experiment 1 shows that the detection of identity-location mismatches is a genuinely auditory phenomenon that can be replicated even when the sound sources are invisible. Experiment 2 reveals that the detection of sound-identity mismatches in the probe depends on the processing demands in the prime. This finding implies that the localization of irrelevant sound sources is not the inevitable consequence of processing the auditory prime scenario but depends on the difficulty of the target search process among distractor sounds.     

On the prevalence of directly retrieved autobiographical memories

In this study, we used process measures to understand how people recall autobiographical memories in response to different word cues. In Experiment 1, participants provided verbal protocols when cued by object and emotion words. Participants also reported whether memories had come directly to mind. The self-reports and independent ratings of the verbal protocols indicated that directly recalled memories are much faster and more frequent than generated memories and are more prevalent when cued by objects than emotions. Experiment 2 replicated these results without protocols to eliminate any demand characteristics or output interference associated with the protocol method. In Experiment 3, we obtained converging results using a different method for assessing retrieval strategies by asking participants to assess the amount of information required to retrieve memories. The greater proportion of fast direct retrievals when memories are cued by objects accounts for reaction time differences between object and emotion cues, and not the commonly accepted explanation based on ease of retrieval. We argue for a dual-strategies approach that disputes generation as the canonical form of autobiographical memory retrieval and discuss the implication of these findings for the representation of personal events in autobiographical memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).