Part-set cuing effects in younger and older adults

In 3 experiments, the authors examined part-set cuing effects in younger and older adults. Participants heard lists of category exemplars and later recalled them. Recall was uncued or cued with a subset of studied items. In Experiment 1, participants were cued with some of the category names, and they remembered fewer never-cued categories than a free-recall condition. In Experiment 2, a similar effect was observed for category exemplar cues. There was also an age difference: By some measures, a small number of cues impaired older adults more than younger. Experiment 3 replicated this result and found that older adults were disproportionately slow in the presence of cues. Across experiments, older adults showed robust part-set cuing effects, and sometimes, they were disproportionately impaired by cues.     

Focused attention on one contextual attribute does not reduce source memory for a different attribute

In three experiments, participants were asked to learn a particular contextual dimension of a study episode for a later memory test. The hypothesis being evaluated was that focused attention towards learning a particular source-specifying attribute would decrease memory for a different attribute dimension. Although source memory for the attribute dimensions in the focus of attention were generally improved, memory was not diminished for contextual attributes ostensibly outside the focus of primary attention. The absence of any decrease in memory appears to be a somewhat general phenomenon because it was found with external-external, internal-external, and internal-internal combinations of attribute dimensions. The results may be most consistent with a model of cognitive processing in which people have separate pools of attentional resources rather than a single pool of general resources.     

The cognitive, emotional, and social impacts of the September 11 attacks: group differences in memory for the reception context and the determinants of flashbulb memory

The authors examined group differences in memories for hearing the news of and reactions to the September 11 attacks in 2001. They measured memory for reception context (immediate memory for the circumstances in which people first heard the news) and 11 predictors of the consistency of memory for reception context over time (flashbulb memory). Shortly after 9/11, a questionnaire was distributed to 3,665 participants in 9 countries. U.S. vs. non-U.S. respondents showed large differences in self-rated importance of the news and in memory for event-related facts. The groups showed moderate differences in background knowledge and emotional-feeling states. Within non-U.S. groups, there were large differences for emotional-feeling states and moderate differences for personal rehearsal, background knowledge, and attitudes toward the United States. The authors discuss the implications of those findings for the study of group differences in memory and for the formation of flashbulb memories.     

Gender and orientation stereotypes bias source-monitoring attributions

Four experiments were conducted to determine whether gender stereotypes influence source-monitoring decision processes. Statements that were consistent with a male were more often correctly attributed to a male source and less frequently correctly attributed to a female. The reverse was true for items traditionally associated with a female. Both of these biases were reversed if participants believed the speaker was either a gay male or a lesbian female. These effects persisted under divided attention during test, suggesting that they are caused by automatic influences. But these biases were partially attenuated when participants first considered the detrimental impact of stereotypes. Because these biases were absent for gender-neutral statements, the results from this study show that the content of a memory can influence judgements about the context in which something was learned. The authors argue that the data are most consistent with a heuristic, early selection process that can be influenced by a conscious, late correction process (e.g., Jacoby, Kelly, & McElree, 1999).     

Repetition effects in associative false recognition: Theme-based criterion shifts are the exception, not the rule

Previous reports have demonstrated that false memory for the critical items of associative lists decreases when lists are studied multiple times (Benjamin, 2001). In three experiments, we explored two hypotheses that might account for false memory reductions with repetition. Under an identification hypothesis, repetition decreases false memory because participants realise that critical items are absent from the list at encoding and thus reject them at test. Under a criterion shift hypothesis, repetition decreases false memory because it increases the discriminability of studied words from lures, causing participants to set a higher response criterion for positive recognition responses. Results uniquely supported the criterion shift hypothesis. Furthermore, results showed that participants only changed their criterion on separate recognition tests, not on an item-by-item basis within a single recognition test. The failure to establish separate criteria within a test increased false memory for repeated lists.     

Fan effects in event-based prospective memory

Three experiments investigated whether event-based prospective memory was affected by the associative fan of the cues to be detected. The associative fan was operationally defined as the number of associates paired with event-based cues in a paired associate learning phase. Subsequent to the paired associate learning, participants were given a lexical decision task in which event-based cues were embedded. The results from Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed that a larger associative fan significantly reduced event-based cue detection. The third experiment confirmed that the absolute strength of an association does not affect performance, rather the number of associations does. As an ancillary issue, the authors tested whether cue detection was affected by the familiarity of the background words used in the lexical decision task. No consistent evidence for a discrepancy plus search model of prospective memory was found.     

The Role of Recollection and Familiarity in the Context Variability Mirror Effect

Context variability refers to the number of preexperimental contexts that are associated with concepts. In four experiments, we investigated the basis for increased recognition memory for low context variability words. Low context variability was associated with greater recollection in the hit rates, and high context variability was associated with greater familiarity in the false alarms. Shortening the study time reduced recollection, but low context variability still influenced recollection in the hit rates. A modality change from study to test also reduced recollection but preserved recollective differences for low versus high context variability items. One interpretation of the results suggests that low context variability evokes more specific and, perhaps, idiosyncratic recollective associations during learning and that these associations support better recognition in the hit rates. By contrast, activating the larger number of associations for high context variability items may be mistaken for familiarity in the false alarm rates.     

Source memory in the absence of successful cued recall

Five experiments were conducted to address the question of whether source information could be accessed in the absence of being able to recall an item. The authors used a paired-associate learning paradigm in which cue-target word pairs were studied, and target recall was requested in the presence of the cue. When target recall failed, participants were asked to make a source judgment of whether a man or woman spoke the unrecalled item. In 3 of the 5 experiments, source accuracy was at or very close to chance. By contrast, if cue-target pairs were studied multiple times or participants knew in advance of learning that a predictive judgment would be required, then predictive source accuracy was well above chance. These data are suggestive that context information may not play a very large role in metacognitive judgments such as feeling-of-knowing ratings or putting one into a tip-of-the-tongue state without strong and specific encoding procedures. These same results also highlight the important role that item memory plays in retrieving information about the context in which an item was experienced.