On the relationship between autobiographical memory and perceptual learning

Although the majority of research on human memory has concentrated on a person's ability to recall or recognize items as having been presented in a particular situation, the effects of memory are also revealed in a person's performance of a perceptual task. Prior experience with material can make that material more easily identified or comprehended in perceptually difficult situations. Unlike with standard retention tests, effects of prior experience on a perceptual task do not logically require that a person be aware that he or she is remembering. Indeed, amnesic patients purportedly show effects of practice in their subsequent performance of a perceptual or motor task even though they profess that they do not remember having engaged in that prior experience. The experiments that are reported were designed to explore the relationship between the more aware autobiographical form of memory that is measured by a recognition memory test and the less aware form of memory that is expressed in perceptual learning. Comparisons of effects on perceptual learning and recognition memory reveal two classes of variables. Variables such as the level of processing of words during study influenced recognition memory, although they had no effect on subsequent perceptual recognition. A study presentation of a word had as large an effect on its later perceptual recognition when recognition memory performance was very poor as it did when recognition memory performance was near perfect. In contrast, variables such as the number and the spacing of repetitions produced parallel effects on perceptual recognition and recognition memory. Following Mandler and others, it is suggested that there are two bases for recognition memory. If an item is readily perceived so that it seems to "jump out" from the page, a person is likely to judge that he or she has previously seen the item in the experimental situation. Variables that influence ease of perceptual recognition, then, can also have an effect on recognition memory, so parallel effects are found. The second basis for recognition memory involves elaboration of a word's study context and depends on such factors as level of processing during study--factors that are not important for perceptual recognition of isolated words. Comparisons of perceptual recognition and recognition memory are shown to be useful for determining how a variable has its effect. Effects of study on perceptual recognition appear to be totally due to memory for physical or graphemic information. Results reported are also relevant to theories of perceptual learning. A single presentation of an item is shown to have large and long-lasting effects on its later perceptual recognition. At least partially, effects of study on perceptual recognition depend on the same variables as do effects on more standard memory tests.     

False Remembering in the Aged

ABSTRACT— Researchers studying human memory have increasingly focused on memory accuracy in aging populations. In this article we briefly review the literature on memory accuracy in healthy older adults. The prevailing evidence indicates that, compared to younger adults, older adults exhibit both diminished memory accuracy and greater susceptibility to misinformation. In addition, older adults demonstrate high levels of confidence in their false memories. We suggest an explanatory framework for the high level of false memories observed in older adults, a framework based on the theory that consciously controlled uses of memory decline with age, making older adults more susceptible to false memories that rely on automatic processes. We also point to future research that may remedy such deficits in accuracy.     

Dissociating automatic and controlled processes in a memory-search task: Beyond implicit memory

Our goal in this paper was to examine the processes that give rise to action slips. Procedures used to examine implicit memory and automatic processes were found to be unsatisfactory. However, the process-dissociation procedure proved useful for examining the contribution of the automatic and controlled processes underlying performance. The procedure was used in conjunction with a Sternberg memory-search task to examine the effects of set size, response speed, and stimulus-response mapping on controlled and automatic processes. The formulation allowed us to predict accurately how subjects would perform in a varied mapping condition. Moreover, set size and response speed were found to influence the controlled search process, but to leave the automatic influences unaffected. Stimulus-response mapping, on the other hand, was found to lead to probability matching in the automatic processes; this pattern was found to remain constant across changes in set size and response speed.     

Similarity-guided depth of retrieval: constraining at the front end.

Lee Brooks has done important work to show that categorization often reflects reliance on specific instances rather than on an abstract representation. His work on the advantages of using a diagnostic hypothesis to search medical stimuli has demonstrated how constraining what one looks for influences clinical reasoning. Similarly, cognitive control can be accomplished by constraining memory retrieval in ways that influence interpretation of a memory probe. Here, we report two experiments in which the similarity of study items constrained how test items were interrogated for an immediate memory test and thereby produced differences in the depth of retrieval. A novel procedure that tests foil memory was used to diagnose differences in similarity-guided retrieval depth.     

The role of detection and recollection of change in list discrimination

In two experiments, we examined the importance of the detection and recollection of change for list discrimination. Two lists of pairs were presented, with the right-hand member being changed between lists for some pairs. Participants in Experiment 1 were instructed to explicitly indicate when they detected a change between pairs during the presentation of List 2, whereas participants in Experiment 2 were not instructed to do so. At the time of test, participants in both experiments were presented with a pair and asked whether it had been presented in List 2. Next, recollection of change was measured by asking whether the right-hand member of the pair was changed between the lists. The results from Experiment 1 revealed high correspondence between the detection of change during the presentation of List 2 and the recollection of change at the time of test. Consequently, change recollection at test can serve as a measure of earlier change detection, in combination with access to memory for change at the time of test. In both experiments, as compared to control conditions, proactive facilitation in list discrimination was observed when change was recollected, whereas proactive interference was observed when change was not recollected. These results were interpreted as showing that recursive reminding—bringing a List 1 pair to mind during the presentation of its changed List 2 pair—embeds memory for the earlier event into memory for the later event, and doing so preserves information about list membership.     

Memory for flip-flopping: Detection and recollection of political contradictions

During political campaigns, candidates often change their positions on controversial issues. Does changing positions create confusion and impair memory for a politician’s current position? In 3 experiments, two political candidates held positions on controversial issues in two debates. Across the debates, their positions were repeated, changed, or held only in the second debate (control). Relative to the control condition, recall of the most recent position on issues was enhanced when change was detected and recollected, whereas recall was impaired when change was not recollected. Furthermore, examining the errors revealed that subjects were more likely to intrude a Debate 1 response than to recall a blend of the two positions, and that recollecting change decreased Debate 1 intrusions. We argue that detecting change produces a recursive representation that embeds the original position in memory along with the more recent position. Recollecting change then enhances memory for the politician’s positions and their order of occurrence by accessing the recursive trace.