Reasons for withdrawing belief in vivid autobiographical memories

Previous studies have shown that many people hold personal memories for events that they no longer believe occurred. This study examines the reasons that people provide for choosing to reduce autobiographical belief in vividly recollected autobiographical memories. A body of non-believed memories provided by 374 individuals was reviewed to develop a qualitatively derived categorisation system. The final scheme consisted of 8 major categories (in descending order of mention): social feedback, event plausibility, alternative attributions, general memory beliefs, internal event features, consistency with external evidence, views of self/others, personal motivation and numerous sub-categories. Independent raters coded the reports and judged the primary reason that each person provided for withdrawing belief. The nature of each category, frequency of category endorsement, category overlap and phenomenological ratings are presented, following which links to related literature and implications are discussed. This study documents that a wide variety of recollective and non-recollective sources of information influence decision-making about the occurrence of autobiographical events.     

Global-local processing impacts academic risk taking

Research has shown that academic risk taking—the selection of school tasks with varying difficulty levels—affords important implications for educational outcomes. In two experiments, we explored the role of cognitive processes—specifically, global versus local processing styles—in students’ academic risk-taking tendencies. Participants first read a short passage, which provided the context for their subsequent academic risk-taking decisions. Following which, participants undertook the Navon’s task and attended to either global letters or local letters only, i.e., were either globally or locally primed. The effects of priming on academic risk taking were then assessed using a perception-based measure (Experiment 1) and a task-based measure (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 provided preliminary evidence, which Experiment 2 confirmed, that globally focused individuals took more academic risk than did locally focused individuals after controlling for participants’ need for cognition (how much they enjoy effortful cognitive activities). Additionally, the inclusion of and comparisons with a control group in Experiment 2 revealed that locally focused participants drove the observed effects. The theory of predictive and reactive control systems (PARCS) provides a cogent account of our findings. Future directions and practical applications in education are discussed.     

Both differences in encoding processes and monitoring at retrieval reduce false alarms when distinctive information is studied

A reduction in false alarms to critical lures is observed in the DRM paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995) when distinctive information is presented at encoding. Two mechanisms have been proposed to account for this reduction. According to the monitoring theory (e.g., the distinctiveness heuristic), lack of diagnostic recollection serves as a basis for discarding non-presented lures. According to the encoding theory, presenting distinctive information at study leads to impoverished relational processing, which results in a reduction in memorial information elicited by critical lures. In the present study a condition was created in which the use of the distinctiveness heuristic was precluded by associating, within the same study, lures with distinctive information in a context different from the study session. Under that condition reduction in false alarms to distinctive critical lures was still observed. This result supports the predictions of the encoding theory. However, when in the same study the use of the distinctiveness heuristic was not precluded, reductions in false alarms to unrelated lures were also observed when distinctive information was presented at study, indicating that both mechanisms are likely to contribute to the rejection of false memories.     

Object imagery and object identification: object imagers are better at identifying spatially-filtered visual objects

Object imagery refers to the ability to construct pictorial images of objects. Individuals with high object imagery (high-OI) produce more vivid mental images than individuals with low object imagery (low-OI), and they encode and process both mental images and visual stimuli in a more global and holistic way. In the present study, we investigated whether and how level of object imagery may affect the way in which individuals identify visual objects. High-OI and low-OI participants were asked to perform a visual identification task with spatially-filtered pictures of real objects. Each picture was presented at nine levels of filtering, starting from the most blurred (level 1: only low spatial frequencies—global configuration) and gradually adding high spatial frequencies up to the complete version (level 9: global configuration plus local and internal details). Our data showed that high-OI participants identified stimuli at a lower level of filtering than participants with low-OI, indicating that they were better able than low-OI participants to identify visual objects at lower spatial frequencies. Implications of the results and future developments are discussed.     

Metamemory and reality monitoring

Metamemory judgements and reality monitoring judgements were compared for real and imagined stimuli. Line drawings of everyday items were either perceived or imagined in differing ratios, to (a) investigate people's ability to predict the class of item that would be better recalled (Judgements of Learning, JOL), and the class of item which would be better sourced (Judgements of Source, JOS) in a future recall test, and (b) test the hypothesis that participants would show a bias towards calling remembered items real when the source had been forgotten. Although participants' JOLs indicated that they believed real items would be more memorable than imagined, in both experiments a larger proportion of items from either class (real or imagined) was only recalled when presentation modality was less frequent for that class. By contrast, JOSs were no different for real or imagined items, even though source attribution was more accurate for real than imagined items. An attribution of memories to real rather than to imagined events that often occurs when participants are unsure about the source (labelled a ‘bias towards the real’) was due to phenomenological qualities of the memories. The results are discussed in terms of Johnson and Raye's ( 1981 ) reality‐monitoring model. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Suggested visual hallucination without hypnosis enhances activity in visual areas of the brain

This functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) study investigated high and low suggestible people responding to two visual hallucination suggestions with and without a hypnotic induction. Participants in the study were asked to see color while looking at a grey image, and to see shades of grey while looking at a color image. High suggestible participants reported successful alterations in color perception in both tasks, both in and out of hypnosis, and showed a small benefit if hypnosis was induced. Low suggestible people could not perform the tasks successfully with or without the hypnotic induction. The fMRI results supported the self report data, and changes in brain activity were found in a number of visual areas. The results indicate that a hypnotic induction, although having the potential to enhance the ability of high suggestible people, is not necessary for the effective alteration of color perception by suggestion.     

Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: Verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues

In two experiments, pictorial cues were compared with their verbal labels to assess their effectiveness in eliciting involuntary autobiographical memories. Cues were relatively complex in Experiment 1 (e.g., relaxing on a beach) and simple objects in Experiment 2 (e.g., a ball). In both experiments, participants went through a vigilance task in which they were presented with frequent nontarget and rare target visual stimuli. Pictures or their corresponding verbal labels were also displayed on both target and nontarget stimuli, but participants were told that these were irrelevant to the task. They were asked to interrupt the vigilance task whenever they became aware of task-unrelated mental contents and to report them. In both experiments, more involuntary memories were elicited in the verbal cue condition, rather than in the pictorial cue condition. This result is discussed in relation to previous work that highlighted the greater effectiveness of verbal cues in memory tasks.     

"Don't know" responding to answerable and unanswerable questions during misleading and hypnotic interviews

"Don't know" (DK) responses to interview questions are conceptually heterogeneous, and may represent uncertainty or clear statements about the contents of memory. A study examined the subjective intent of DK responses in relation to the objective status of information queried, in the context of memory distorting procedures. Participants viewed a video and responded to answerable and unanswerable questions phrased in misleading or nonmisleading formats, while hypnotized or not hypnotized. Subjective meanings of DK responses were queried, and a recognition measure assessed the contents of memory. Lower DK and accuracy rates were consistently associated with unanswerable and misleading questions. One-third of DK responses were statements that the information had no not presented. When these were recoded, accuracy estimates for answerable questions decreased and more so for hypnotized participants. These results demonstrate that DK responses convey different types of information, thus accuracy estimates in studies that permit DK responses may be misestimated. Robust risks associated with asking unanswerable questions and asking questions at all were observed. Implications for working with DK responses during interviews are discussed.     

Day-Hospital Multifocal Integrated Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa in Adolescents: A One-Year Follow-Up

The current guidelines for treatment of Anorexia Nervosa (AN) in children and adolescents recommend an integrated multidisciplinary approach as the elective intervention for this disorder. Nevertheless, there is insufficient evidence on the results of an integrated approach for the treatment of AN adolescent patients, especially in a Hospital setting. This study aims to analyze clinical and psychological changes occurring in adolescent patients after completion of a Day-Hospital Multifocal Integrated Treatment (MIT) for Anorexia Nervosa. The sample consisted of 60 adolescents with AN or Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) restrictive type, aged 11 to 18 years, and their parents. Clinical course was evaluated at 3, 6 and 12-month follow-up periods. Our results showed clinical remission in a good percentage of patients. In general, we found a significant reduction of the eating psychopathology, whereas we did not detect any significant improvement in body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, and relational difficulties. This positive trend was confirmed at 3, 6, and 12-month follow-up, despite the increase of drop-outs. These results suggest that the proposed treatment is reasonably effective, because it aims to contain and reduce the acute phase of the disease in a limited time and in a hospital setting, but it is necessary to continue the treatment with targeted psychotherapeutic interventions to address the deeper psychological discomfort underlying the eating disorder.