Exaggeration in memory: Systematic distortion of self-evaluative information under reduced accessibility

The tendency to exaggerate specific information about oneself can stem from reconstructive memory processes that are distinct from motivated self-enhancement or self-presentation. While exaggerations sometimes reflect these motives, they also result from attempts to reconstruct one’s past. Three studies examined test scores as they became less accessible in memory. Study 1 provided a real-world illustration, demonstrating reduced accessibility and increased exaggeration of SAT scores over time. Two experiments utilized test scores randomly assigned in a controlled laboratory setting. Increased exaggeration was observed following distraction (Study 2), and after a one-week delay (Study 3). Distortions in scores reported were consistent with beliefs about the self, rather than uniformly self-serving. Under reduced accessibility, exaggeration was predicted by beliefs about achievement (Study 1) and subjective perceptions of test performance (Study 2). Study 3 manipulated perceived performance. Positive performance feedback caused greater exaggeration under reduced accessibility, whereas negative feedback reduced the tendency to exaggerate.     

Availability and accessibility of information in the semantic memory of retarded and nonretarded adolescents

The availability of semantic information in storage and the accessibility of that information for retrieval were studied in retarded and nonretarded adolescents. In Experiment 1, 40 normal and 40 CA-equivalent (mean, 15 years) retarded subjects were required to retrieve information from semantic categories as well as to judge whether specific items were members of a given category. The results showed large IQ group differences on the retrieval task which could not be wholly accounted for by the items available in storage. Experiment 2 was designed as an attempt to remediate this retrieval deficit by introducing an organized retrieval plan consisting of subcategory cues. This organization facilitated retrieval as long as it was experimentally provided. Retrieval returned to its original level, however, when the cues were withdrawn. It was concluded that retarded persons had an accessibility deficit in addition to an availability deficit; one aspect of this accessibility deficit involved the failure to use spontaneously mnemonic strategies that were consistent with the semantic organization.     

How optimists face skin cancer information: Risk assessment,attention, memory,and behavior

The purpose of the present study was to investigate how optimists process health-related information. Sixty-five young adults (ages 18–35) reported skin cancer-related knowledge and behaviors, and read slides of information on skin and skin cancer. Visual attention to the slides was recorded using eye tracking, and their memory for the information was measured. Additionally, participants’ self-reported skin cancer-relevant behavior was assessed prospectively in the months following the lab component of the study. Results show that individuals low in dispositional optimism or high in health-related optimism paid more attention when they were at high objective risk of developing skin cancer; and individuals high in dispositional optimism or high in health-related optimism were more likely to perform adaptive, health-promoting behaviors. In addition, optimistic beliefs were found not to be related with unrealistic optimism. Dispositional and health-related optimism therefore appear to predict health-related cognition and behavior in distinct ways.     

A diary after dinner: How the time of event recording influences later accessibility of diary events

Recording the events of a day in a diary may help improve their later accessibility. An interesting question is whether improvements in long-term accessibility will be greater if the diary is completed at the end of the day, or after a period of sleep, the following morning. We investigated this question using an internet-based diary method. On each of five days, participants (n?=?109) recorded autobiographical memories for that day or for the previous day. Recording took place either in the morning or in the evening. Following a 30-day retention interval, the diary events were free recalled. We found that participants who recorded their memories in the evening before sleep had best memory performance. These results suggest that the time of reactivation and recording of recent autobiographical events has a significant effect on the later accessibility of those diary events. We discuss our results in the light of related findings that show a beneficial effect of reduced interference during sleep on memory consolidation and reconsolidation.     

Rehearsal in serial memory for visual-spatial information: Evidence from eye movements

It is well established that rote rehearsal plays a key role in serial memory for lists of verbal items. Although a great deal of research has informed us about the nature of verbal rehearsal, much less attention has been devoted to rehearsal in serial memory for visual-spatial information. By using the dot task—a visual-spatial analogue of the classical verbal serial recall task—with delayed recall, performance and eyetracking data were recorded in order to establish whether visual-spatial rehearsal could be evidenced by eye movement. The use of eye movement as a form of rehearsal is detectable (Experiment 1), and it seems to contribute to serial memory performance over and above rehearsal based on shifts of spatial attention (Experiments 1 and 2).     

Accessibility as input: The use of construct accessibility as information to guide behavior

Priming typically increases behavioral enactments of primed constructs. The current work explored a novel mechanism for the behavioral effects of priming, termed the “accessibility as input” account. In two experiments, participants were nonconsciously primed and then completed anagrams until they judged themselves to have reached a particular state. Two different states, or stop rules, were specified, and were matched to the primed constructs such that the combination either implied that the state had been met (e.g., “slow” prime and “tired” stop rule) or had not been met (e.g., “fast” prime and “tired” stop rule). The priming and stop rule manipulations interacted to determine persistence on the anagram task. The results demonstrate that the heightened accessibility resulting from priming can be used as information about one’s current state in relation to situational requirements and, hence, can produce varying, contextually-dependent behavior.     

Selective memory biases in individuals' memory for health-related information and behavior recommendations

Behavior change is central to both prevention and treatment of many chronic diseases. Frequently, however, individuals do not initiate the behavior change recommendations suggested by health professionals. One explanation for low rates of compliance with such recommendations may be selective memory biases in favor of information supporting the idea that one is healthy. Two studies examined whether memory for health information would be biased by preexisting health beliefs. In the first study (N?=?113), individuals' attitudes about the value of alcohol consumption influenced their memory for pro- versus anti-alcohol information. Participants showed better memory for information supporting their attitudes. In Study 2 (N?=?50), memory for behavioral recommendations depended on participants' behavioral practices. Participants displayed better memory for behavioral recommendations consistent with the idea that they were healthy than for recommendations which challenged those beliefs. These findings illustrate an additional manner in which selective processing can affect health promotion efforts, suggest that a motivation to maintain existing health beliefs may underlie the memory differences, and demonstrate that there may be value in developing efforts to ensure that people remember potentially threatening health recommendations.     

The self and involuntary memory: Identifying with the victim increases memory accessibility for stressful events

Autobiographical memory is intimately linked to the self. However, the relation between the self and involuntary recall has been understudied. Theoretically, the more relevant an event is to the self the more accessible the memory should be. In line with this prediction, the present study tested the hypothesis that self-relevance of a stressor modulates involuntary recall. Healthy student participants viewed distressing film clips and were presented with information that defined the main characters as more or less similar to them, or without any information about the characters. In line with predictions, participants in the high self-relevance condition reported more involuntary memories of the film clips after one week compared to participants in the low self-relevance and control conditions. The findings support the theoretical relation between the self and memory accessibility and extend findings from previous research to the domain of involuntary recall.     

To see and remember: visually specific information is retained in memory from previously attended objects in natural scenes

What is the nature of the representation formed during the viewing of natural scenes? We tested two competing hypotheses regarding the accumulation of visual information during scene viewing. The first holds that coherent visual representations disintegrate as soon as attention is withdrawn from an object and thus that the visual representation of a scene is exceedingly impoverished. The second holds that visual representations do not necessarily decay upon the withdrawal of attention, but instead can be accumulated in memory from previously attended regions. Target objects in line drawings of natural scenes were changed during a saccadic eye movement away from those objects. Three findings support the second hypothesis. First, changes to the visual form of target objects (token substitution) were successfully detected, as indicated by both explicit and implicit measures, even though the target object was not attended when the change occurred. Second, these detections were often delayed until well after the change. Third, changes to semantically inconsistent target objects were detected better than changes to semantically consistent objects.     

The processing of spatial information in short-term memory: Insights from eye tracking the path length effect

Effects of averageness and symmetry on the judgment of facial attractiveness were investigated using a generalized Procrustes method and multiple regression analyses. Participants (n = 114) rated attractiveness of 96 photographs of faces with neutral expressions. Through a generalized Procrustes method, the faces and their mirror-reversed versions were represented as points on a hyperplane. Both averageness and symmetry of each individual were defined as distances on the plane. A multiple regression analysis was performed to examine the effect of symmetry and averageness for each gender. For male faces, both symmetry and averageness affected attractiveness ratings positively , and there was no difference between the effects of averageness and symmetry. On the other hand, for female faces only averageness affected attractiveness, whereas symmetry did not. However, these effects were not large.     

Remembering more than meets the eye: a study of memory confusions about incomplete visual information

The purpose of this series of four experiments was to examine the possible role of spontaneous imagery in memory confusions about the way in which visual information had been experienced. After viewing pictures of familiar objects, complete or incomplete in visual form, participants were asked to remember the way in which the objects had been presented. Although, as predicted, memory for the objects themselves was quite good, participants falsely remembered seeing complete versions of pictures that were actually presented as incomplete. These false reports were observed across a variety of encoding and testing conditions. The results suggest that the false reports (referred to here as completion errors) are due to internal representations based on filling-in processes in response to the encoding of incomplete visual information. As such, the results also speak to alternative explanations for the completion errors and, more broadly, to theoretical perspectives that draw on filling-in processes when accounting for object identification and object memory.     

The role of working memory in information acquisition and decision making: Lessons from the binary prediction task

The effects of memory constraints upon information acquisition and decision making were examined in two experiments using binary prediction tasks, where participants observe outcomes for two options before deciding which one to bet upon. Our studies extend previous investigations to the case where participants learn the structure of the task through observation, but where information acquisition is separated from the task of prediction. Participants with higher cognitive capacity (larger memory span or higher intelligence) were more likely to adopt the “maximizing” strategy (always selecting the more frequent alternative). This finding conflicts with some recent investigations of similar tasks, a contrast that implies that the presence of feedback on choices may be important in determining the strategic actions of high-capacity individuals. Participants selecting the optimal strategy were in turn more efficient in their data acquisition. The behaviour of participants adopting suboptimal choice strategies was consistent with prediction based upon a “narrow window of experience”—that is, seeking to match the characteristics of small samples of observations.     

Gradients versus dichotomies: How strength of semantic context influences event-related potentials and lexical decision times

In experiments devoted to word recognition and/or language comprehension, reaction time in the lexical decision task is perhaps the most commonly used behavioral dependent measure, and the amplitude of the N400 component of the event-related potential (ERP) is the most common neural measure. Both are sensitive to multiple factors, including frequency of usage, orthographic similarity to other words, concreteness of word meaning, and preceding semantic context. All of these factors vary continuously. Published results have shown that both lexical decision times and N400 amplitudes show graded responses to graded changes of word frequency and orthographic similarity, but a puzzling discrepancy in their responsivity to the strength of a semantic context has received little attention. In three experiments, we presented pairs of words varying in the strengths of their semantic relationships, as well as unrelated pairs. In all three experiments, N400 amplitudes showed a gradient from unrelated to weakly associated to strongly associated target words, whereas lexical decision times showed a binary division rather than a gradient across strengths of relationship. This pattern of results suggests that semantic context effects in lexical decision and ERP measures arise from fundamentally different processes.     

A comparison of recognition memory to numerical decision: How prior probabilities affect cutoff location

In two experiments, a recognition memory task, in which subjects judged whether a given five-digit number had been shown previously, was compared to a numerical decision task, in which subjects judged whether a given five-digit number represented the height of a man or a woman. Subjects were found to shift β (the cutoff point along the decision axis) with changes in prior probabilities in the direction specified by signal detection theory in the numerical decision task but not in the recognition memory task. An explanation of the results, in terms of a difference in ? (discriminability) between the two tasks, was ruled out. In contrast, explanations which cannot be ruled out involve differences between the tasks in the amount of practice required for the subject to learn the manner in which the stimuli are distributed along the decision continuum, and differences in the availability of an alternative basis for response other than the decision continuum.     

Deciding to defect: the effects of video-game violence on cooperative behavior

This experiment examined the effect of video-game violence on cooperative decision making. Participants (N= 48) were randomly assigned to play either a violent or a nonviolent version of the video game Doom in dyads. Following the video-game task, participants were separated and given an opportunity to choose to cooperate with their partner for mutual gain, withdraw from the interaction, or exploit their partner for their own benefit. Participants in the violent condition were significantly more likely to choose to exploit their partners than participants in the nonviolent condition. These findings suggest that playing violent video games may undermine prosocial motivation and promote exploitive behavior in social interactions.     

Choice behavior and the accessibility of the reinforcer

In Experiment 1, matching of relative response rates to relative rates of reinforcement was obtained in concurrent variable-interval schedules when the absolute values of the two concurrent variable-interval schedules varied from 6 sec and 12 sec to 600 sec and 1200 sec. Increases in the duration of the changeover delay, however, produced decreases in the relative response rates and, consequently, some deviation from matching. In Experiment 2, matching of relative response rates to the relative duration of the reinforcer failed to occur when the equal variable-interval schedules arranging access to the two different reinforcer durations (1.5 and 6 sec) were varied in size from concurrent variable-interval 10-sec schedules to concurrent variable-interval 600-sec schedules.     

The role of eye movements in the perception of visually induced motion

Changes in eye position were recorded while S experienced visually induced motion. Movement of the eye was not found to correlate, in either direction or extent, with this type of apparent motion. Induced movement was explained, therefore, in terms of a change in phenomenal rather than retinal location.     

The role of eye movements in the perception of visually induced autokinesis

Changes in eye position were recorded physiologically while S experienced visually induced autokinesis. Eye movements did not seem to sufficiently explain this phenomenon. Apparent motion was found to be based upon a change in phenomenal rather than retinal location. Special consideration was given to those parameters possibly responsible for paradoxical motion.     

Order information in working memory: an integrative review of evidence from brain and behavior

Evidence about memory for order information comes from a number of different methodologies: human cognition, patient studies, neuroimaging studies, and animal lesion and behavioral studies. The present article discusses (a) evidence that order and item memory are separable; (b) proposed mechanisms for order memory (interitem associations, direct codes, hierarchical codes, feature codes, and magnitude codes) and evidence for each; (c) evidence for the neural substrates of order memory from patient, neuroimaging, and animal lesion and single-cell recording studies; (d) barriers to integration between the disciplines; and (e) suggestions for better coordination of efforts between the different disciplines.