Relative fluency and illusions of recognition memory

A hallmark of the experience of perceptual fluency is the sense that a familiar stimulus seems to pop out from its background, such as when one notices the face of a friend in a crowd of strangers. This experience suggests that fluency-based illusions of recognition memory may be more powerful when there are only a few fluent stimuli presented in a recognition context. The results of the present study were consistent with this prediction. The magnitude of fluency-based illusions of recognition memory was inversely related to the percentage of fluent stimuli on a recognition test. Furthermore, standard fluency manipulations did not impact recognition responses in between-participants designs. The results suggest that illusions of recognition memory may be more powerful when fluency is encountered in a context in which the surrounding stimuli are less fluent.     

Need for achievement and performance on measures of behavioral fluency.

This investigation was designed to assess the relationship between a validated personality characteristic, need for achievement (nAch), and performance on measures of behavioral fluency. To infer this relationship, 50 neurologically intact college undergraduates were administered a questionnaire assessing nAch and a battery of tests including a short form of the WAIS and measures of behavioral fluency (i.e., verbal fluency). Statistical analysis indicated that subjects high on nAch obtained higher scores than subjects low on nAch on the measures of figural fluency and the WAIS Verbal Scale. No significant difference on verbal fluency was seen between the two groups. Secondly, the group high on nAch also had a higher mean Verbal IQ but not a higher mean Performance IQ as measured by a short form of the WAIS than did subjects scoring low on nAch.     

Autobiographical fluency: A method for the study of personal memory

Fifty-five subjects recalled autobiographical episodes or personal facts such as names of friends and teachers, from different lifetime periods. In each case, subjects were given 90 sec in which to retrieve as many items as possible. Also tested was subjects' fluency in generating items from semantic categories (animals, vegetables, British prime ministers, and U.S. presidents). Results of cluster analysis on the fluency tasks showed a dissociation between subjects' ability to retrieve personal episodes, personal semantic information, and nonpersonal semantic information. The dissociations observed in the fluency tasks are interpreted in terms of the different retrieval strategies required for the different types of information sought.     

Working memory as a predictor of verbal fluency

This study investigated whether working memory capacity could account for individual differences in verbal fluency. Working memory was assessed by the speaking span test (Daneman & Green, 1986) that taxes the processing and storage functions of working memory during sentence production. Verbal fluency was assessed by (1) a speech generation task in which subjects made a speech about a picture; (2) an oral reading task in which subjects read aloud a prose passage; and (3) a Baars, Motley, and MacKay (1975) task for eliciting oral slips of the tongue (e.g.,wet gun forget one). Speking span was significantly correlated with performance on all three tasks; individuals with small speaking spans were less fluent and more prone to making speech errors. Whereas speaking span was related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the speech and reading tasks, reading span, a measure included to assess working memory capacity during sentence comprehension, was only significantly related to individual differences in verbal fluency on the reading task. The methodology proved useful for revealing whether a particular kind of oral reading error reflected a reading failure or an articulatory failure.This research was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.     

Statistical equating with measures of oral reading fluency

Recent research on curriculum-based measurement of oral reading fluency has revealed important issues in current passage development procedures, highlighting how dissimilar passages are problematic for monitoring student progress. The purpose of this paper is to describe statistical equating as an option for achieving equivalent scores across non-parallel reading passages. The psychometric and design properties of words-correct scores are examined, and the requirements of traditional equating methods are discussed. Simulated and empirical words-correct scores are used to demonstrate the steps in the equating process and the situations in which each method is most appropriate.     

On the contribution of perceptual fluency and priming to recognition memory

Repetition priming has been shown to be independent of recognition memory. Thus, the severely amnesic patient E.P. has demonstrated intact stem completion priming and perceptual identification priming, despite at-chance performance on recognition memory tasks. It has also been shown that perceptual fluency can influence feelings of familiarity, in the sense that items perceived more quickly tend to be identified as familiar. If studied items are identified more fluently, due to perceptual priming, and fluency leads to familiarity, why do severely amnesic patients perform no better than chance on recognition memory tasks? One possibility is that severely amnesic patients do not exhibit normal fluency. Another possibility is that fluency is not a sufficiently strong cue for familiarity. In two experiments, 2 severely amnesic patients, 3 moderately amnesic patients, and 8 controls saw words slowly clearing from a mask. The participants identified each word as quickly as possible and then made a recognition (old/new) judgment. All the participants exhibited fluency, in that old responses were associated with shorter identification times than new responses were. In addition, for the severely amnesic patients, priming was intact, and recognition memory performance was at chance. We next calculated how much priming and fluency should elevate the probability of accurate recognition. The tendency to identify studied words rapidly (.6) and the tendency to label these rapidly identified words old (.6) would result in 36% of the studied words being labeled old. Other studied words were identified slowly (.4) but were still labeled old (.4), resulting in an additional 16% of studied words labeled old. Thus, the presence of fluency increases the probability of accurate recognition judgments to only 52% (chance = 50%). This finding explains why amnesic patients can exhibit both priming and fluency yet still perform at chance on recognition tests.     

Judgment heuristics and recognition memory: Prime identification and target-processing fluency

In three experiments, the effect of identification of a briefly presented word (prime) on a subsequent recognition response to that word (target) was investigated. Theories of current processing fluency (e.g., Jacoby & Whitehouse, 1989) suggest that prime identification should reduce P(old) relative to prime misidentification because awareness of the prime provides a source to which to attribute target fluency, rendering attributions to prior presentation less likely. However, counter to these predictions, Experiment 1 demonstrated that prime identification increased P(old) relative to misidentified primes. It is hypothesized that this reversed effect was due to participants' using a heuristic that related prime identification success to prior presentation but was not based on current processing fluency. In Experiment 2, participants were induced to avoid using this heuristic by making an alternate source for prime identification success (display duration) highly available. Under these circumstances, prime identification reduced P(old) relative to prime misidentification, suggesting that participants now relied on current processing fluency rather than on prime identification success. Experiment 3 replicated the results of Experiments 1 and 2, but with fixed rather than variable prime displays.     

Scaling techniques for modeling directional knowledge

A common way for researchers to model or graphically portray spatial knowledge of a large environment is by applying multidimensional scaling (MDS) to a set of pairwise distance estimations. We introduce two MDS-like techniques that incorporate people’s knowledge of directions instead of (or in addition to) their knowledge of distances. Maps of a familiar environment derived from these procedures were more accurate and were rated by participants as being more accurate than those derived from nonmetric MDS. By incorporating people’s relatively accurate knowledge of directions, these methods offer spatial cognition researchers and behavioral geographers a sharper analytical tool than MDS for studying cognitive maps.     

Evaluating mixture modeling for clustering: recommendations and cautions

This article provides a large-scale investigation into several of the properties of mixture-model clustering techniques (also referred to as latent class cluster analysis, latent profile analysis, model-based clustering, probabilistic clustering, Bayesian classification, unsupervised learning, and finite mixture models; see Vermunt & Magdison, 2002). Focus is given to the multivariate normal distribution, and 9 separate decompositions (i.e., class structures) of the covariance matrix are investigated. To provide a link to the current literature, comparisons are made with K-means clustering in 3 detailed Monte Carlo studies. The findings have implications for applied researchers in that mixture-model clustering techniques performed best when the covariance structure and number of clusters were known. However, as the information about the shape and number of clusters became unknown, degraded performance was observed for both K-means clustering and mixture-model clustering.     

Obtaining separate measures for implicit and explicit memory

In this paper a new model, the Implicit/Explicit Separation (IES) model, is developed and applied. The model is designed to obtain separate probability measures for explicit memory storage, implicit memory storage, fractional storage, and non-storage. The model is needed because memory research has shown the importance of the distinction between a conscious memory of a target event and a memory residue that is unable to support conscious recall or confident recognition, but it is still able to support guessing at rates above chance. Maximum likelihood and population-parameter mapping estimates for the parameters of the IES model are provided. The accuracy of parameter estimates is studied as a function of sample size. Three experiments are reported to demonstrate how the IES model is used to achieve a more fine grained assessment of the quality of information storage. These experiments also provide strong validation support for the IES model itself. Across the three experiments, each of the four components for representing target information (explicit, implicit, fractional, and non-storage) demonstrates a different pattern. The IES model is discussed in terms of alternative models such as the dual-process model and the process-dissociation model.     

Very long term memory for tacit knowledge

Very long term memory for abstract materials was examined by recalling subjects who had served in a synthetic grammar learning experiment two years earlier. In that study (Reber & Allen, 1978) we differentiated among several cognitive modes of acquisition, their resultant memorial representations, and their associated decision processes. Two years later and without any opportunity for rehearsal or relearning, subjects still retain knowledge of these grammars to a remarkable degree. Although some differences have become blurred with the passage of time, the form and structure of that knowledge and the manner in which it is put to use remain strikingly similar to the original. That is, differences traceable to acquisition mode and conditions of initial training can still be observed. As in the original study, these results are discussed within the general context of a functionalist approach to complex cognitive processes.     

The bilingual effects of linguistic distances on episodic memory and verbal fluency

The impact of linguistic distance or the relatedness between two languages, on bilinguals’ episodic memory performance and verbal fluency is an understudied area. Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine if differences in linguistic distances have differential effects on these abilities. Measures of episodic recognition, categorical fluency, and global cognitive functioning were also considered in the analyses. Two matched samples with participants living and educated in Sweden were drawn from the Betula Prospective Cohort Study. Results showed that bilinguals who speak linguistically similar languages (Swedish and English), performed significantly better than monolinguals on both episodic memory recall and letter fluency, while bilinguals who speak two languages that are more distant (Swedish and Finnish), showed no advantages compared to their monolingual counterparts. For both tasks, however, a linear trend was observed indicative of better performance for the Swedish-English group compared to the Finnish-Swedish group, and for the Swedish-Finnish group compared to the monolinguals group. As expected, no differences between groups were found in any of the other cognitive tasks. Overall, results suggest that the impact of linguistic distances should be explored in more detail in the future.     

Measures of fluency as predictors of incidental memory among older adults

This study investigated fluency performance as a mediator of age-related declines in incidental memory performance as both are thought to rely on strategic retrieval processes. A large sample of community dwelling older adults completed a battery of tests assessing fluency, verbal knowledge, speed of information processing, and incidental recall. Fluency measures included initial and excluded letter fluency and the Uses for Objects Test, and they were assumed to reflect increasing reliance on strategic retrieval search. Speed emerged as the best mediator of age-related variance in incidental recall, and Uses for Objects Test performance added to the variance after controlling for verbal knowledge and speed. The results suggest that age-related decline in incidental recall is largely due to speed and the strategic search of memory.     

Support for a continuous (single-process) model of recognition memory and source memory

Does memory retrieval occur in a continuous or an all-or-none manner? The shape of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) has been used to answer this question, with curvilinear and linear memory ROCs indicating continuous and all-or-none retrieval processes, respectively. Signal detection models (e.g., the unequal variance model) correspond to a continuous retrieval process, whereas threshold models (including the multinomial model and the recollection component of the dual-process model) correspond to an all-or-none process. In studies of source memory, Slotnick et al. (2000) and others have observed curvilinear ROCs (supporting the unequal variance model), whereas Yonelinas (1999) observed linear ROCs (supporting the dual-process model). We resolve these seemingly inconsistent results, showing that source memory ROCs are naturally curvilinear but can appear linear when nondiagnostic source information is included in the analysis. Furthermore, the unequal variance model accounted for both recognition memory and source memory ROCs, supporting a continuous process of memory retrieval.     

Culture as situated cognition: Cultural mindsets,cultural fluency,and meaning making

Culture is a human universal, a “good enough” solution to universal needs. It is also a specific meaning-making framework, a “mindset” that influences what feels fluent, what is attended to, which goals or mental procedures are salient. Cross-national comparisons demonstrate both universality and between-group difference (specificity) but cannot address underlying process or distinguish fixed from context-dependent effects. I use a situated cognition framework and experimental methods to address these gaps, demonstrating that salient cultural mindsets have causal downstream consequences for meaning making, self-processes, willingness to invest in relationships, and complex mental procedures. Moreover, individualistic and collectivistic mindsets are accessible cross-culturally so both can be primed. Between-group differences arise in part from momentary cues that make either individualistic or collectivistic mindset accessible.     

Implementing continuous non-normal skewed distributions in latent growth mixture modeling: An assessment of specification errors and class enumeration

Abstract

Recent advances have allowed for modeling mixture components within latent growth modeling using robust, skewed mixture distributions rather than normal distributions. This feature adds flexibility in handling non-normality in longitudinal data, through manifest or latent variables, by directly modeling skewed or heavy-tailed latent classes rather than assuming a mixture of normal distributions. The aim of this study was to assess through simulation the potential under- or over-extraction of latent classes in a growth mixture model when underlying data follow either normal, skewed-normal, or skewed-t distributions. In order to assess this, we implement skewed-t, skewed-normal, and conventional normal (i.e., not skewed) forms of the growth mixture model. The skewed-t and skewed-normal versions of this model have only recently been implemented, and relatively little is known about their performance. Model comparison, fit, and classification of correctly specified and mis-specified models were assessed through various indices. Findings suggest that the accuracy of model comparison and fit measures are dependent on the type of (mis)specification, as well as the amount of class separation between the latent classes. A secondary simulation exposed computation and accuracy difficulties under some skewed modeling contexts. Implications of findings, recommendations for applied researchers, and future directions are discussed; a motivating example is presented using education data.     

Effects of domain-specific knowledge on memory for serial order

Knowledge concerning domain-specific regularities in sequential structure has long been known to affect recall for serial order. However, very little work has been done toward specifying the exact role such knowledge plays. The present article proposes a theory of serial recall in structured domains, based on Bayesian decision theory and a set of representational assumptions proceeding from recent computational and neurophysiologic research. The theory suggests that the accuracy with which a target sequence will be recalled is influenced by two interacting factors: (1) the 'goodness' of the sequence, i.e. its fit with the sequencing constraints that characterize its source domain, and (2) the sequence's neighborhood relations, i.e. the degree to which it resembles other sequences in the source domain. A specific prediction of the theory is that recall will be relatively poor for target lists with high-goodness near neighbors (the good neighbor effect). This prediction was tested and confirmed in an experiment evaluating recall for sequences based on an artificial grammar.     

On the cultural constitution of collective memory

The study of collective memory needs to take into consideration the cultural context in which the remembering takes place. In this article, I analyse how functional variations of collective memory across cultures may influence the processes, practices, and outcomes of collective remembering. I then discuss the transitory nature of culture in affecting collective memory across an individual's lifespan as well as across time and generations. I borrow recent findings from cross-cultural research on autobiographical memory to illustrate the cultural effects, and propose a new approach to studying collective memory in which the individual, the collective, and the culture are treated as a single unit of analysis.