Limitations of episodic memory for highly similar auditory stimuli

Two experiments investigated participants’ recognition memory for word content, while varying vocal characteristics, and for vocal characteristics alone. In Experiment 1, participants performed an auditory recognition task in which they identified whether a spoken word was “new”, “old” (repeated word, repeated voice), or “similar” (repeated word, new voice). Results showed that word recognition accuracy was lower for similar trials than old trials. In Experiment 2, participants performed an auditory recognition task in which they identified whether or not a phrase was spoken in an old or new voice, with repetitions occurring after a variable number of intervening stimuli. Results showed that recognition accuracy was lower when old voices spoke an alternate message than a repeated message and accuracy decreased as a function of number of intervening items. Overall, the results suggest that speech recognition is better for lexical content than vocal characteristics alone.     

The cognitive processes underlying false beliefs

Why do consumers sometimes fall for spurious claims—for example, brain training games that prevent cognitive decline, toning sneakers that sculpt one's body, flower essence that cures depression—and how can consumers protect themselves in the modern world where information is shared quickly and easily? As cognitive scientists, we view this problem through the lens of what we know, more generally, about how people evaluate information for its veracity, and how people update their beliefs. That is, the same processes that support true belief can also encourage people to sometimes believe misleading or false information. Anchoring on the large literature on truth and belief updating allows predictions about consumer behavior; it also highlights possible solutions while casting doubt on other possible responses to misleading communications.     

Integrating Social Identity and the Theory of Planned Behavior: Predicting Withdrawal from an Organizational Recruitment Process

This study develops and tests a model of applicant withdrawal. Drawing on tenets from social identity theory and the theory of planned behavior, this study proposes that applicants who highly identify with an organization will experience higher pursuit intentions and subsequently be less inclined to withdraw from recruitment. Data were collected from a sample of 669 applicants to the U.S. military at 2 intervals, separated by 3 months. Strong support was found for the proposed theoretical model. Implications for research and practice will be discussed.     

Positive and Negative Effects of Monitoring Popular Films for Historical Inaccuracies

History educators often use popular films in the classroom to teach critical thinking through an exercise that involves identifying historical inaccuracies in the films. We investigated how this exercise affects the acquisition of true and false historical knowledge. In two experiments, subjects studied texts about historical topics and watched clips from corresponding films. Each film contained one piece of information that contradicted the text (i.e. misinformation). Some subjects received instructions to monitor for inaccuracies in the films. After a delay, they were tested on the texts. Monitoring instructions did not reduce subjects' acquisition of misinformation, and even when subjects successfully detected the inaccuracies, they sometimes still reproduced the misinformation. However, when they received feedback about the inaccuracies, the production of misinformation was substantially reduced. Overall, these findings indicate that educators should provide feedback when using popular films for this critical thinking exercise so that students do not acquire false knowledge. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Predictors of decision-making style among cancer patients: An empirical test of theory

Abstract

Patient decision-making has been shown to be far from data-driven which results in serious consequences for physical health and psychological well-being. Cancer patients were found to have made their medical decisions in four ways: information-seeking, information-processing, advice-following, and ruminating. These four ways represent two routes of cognitive processing. The first two exemplify central route processing and the second two exemplify peripheral route processing. Medical decisions have also been shown to be highly influencable based on message presentation. This study represents the first step in applying social influence theory to medical decision-making. The elaboration likelihood model was used to determine whether the variables shown to have influenced routes of processing could predict which decisional style the cancer patients used. Specifically, the elaboration likelihood model of Petty and Cacioppo (1986) was applied as predictors of decisional processing style. Using a discriminant function analysis, the variables motivation (both cognitive and emotional), ability to process, and cognitive responding predicted whether cancer patients made their medical decisions using the four categories of decisional styles.     

A Multilevel Investigation of the Influences of Employees' Resistance to Empowerment

We employed a multilevel research design to examine the effects of employees' resistance to empowerment. Survey responses were obtained from 637 customer service engineers who worked in 121 empowered teams. At the team level of analysis, resistance to empowerment climate related negatively to customer satisfaction as mediated by transition processes. In addition, resistance to empowerment climate evidenced an indirect relation with team performance via team action processes. At the individual level of analysis, employees' resistance to empowerment related negatively to their job satisfaction. Moreover, a cross-level relation was evidenced whereby team-level resistance to empowerment climate related negatively to job satisfaction, beyond that accounted for by the individual-level effects, as partially mediated by team interpersonal processes. Results are discussed in terms of the multilevel manner in which employees' resistance to empowerment can undermine organizational design changes.     

Threat-related processing supports prospective memory retrieval for people with obsessive tendencies

Obsessive-compulsive disorder can result in a variety of deficits to cognitive performance, including negative consequences for attention and memory performance. The question addressed in the current study concerned whether this disorder influenced performance in an event-based prospective memory task. The results from a subclinical population indicated that, relative to non-anxious controls and mildly depressed controls, people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies (washing compulsions) incur decrements in remembering to respond to cues related to a neutral intention (respond to animals). This deficit was ameliorated by giving the subclinical group an intention about a threat-related category (respond to bodily fluids) and cueing them with concepts that they had previously rated as particularly disturbing to them. Thus, their normal attentional bias for extended processing of threat-related information overcame their natural deficit in event-based prospective memory.     

The role of rehearsal and generation in false memory creation

The current research investigated one possible mechanism underlying false memories in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. In the DRM paradigm, participants who study lists of related words (e.g., “table, sitting, bench …”) frequently report detailed memories for the centrally related but non-presented critical lure (e.g., “chair”). One possibility is that participants covertly call to mind the critical non-presented lure during the study phase, and later misattribute memory for this internally generated event to its external presentation. To investigate this, the DRM paradigm was modified to allow collection of on-line thoughts during the study phase. False recognition increased following generation during study. False recognition also increased following study of longer lists; this effect was partially explained by the fact that longer lists were more likely to elicit generations of the critical lure during study. Generation of the lure during study contributes to later false recognition, although it does not explain the entire effect.     

The selective power of causality on memory errors

We tested the influence of causal links on the production of memory errors in a misinformation paradigm. Participants studied a set of statements about a person, which were presented as either individual statements or pairs of causally linked statements. Participants were then provided with causally plausible and causally implausible misinformation. We hypothesised that studying information connected with causal links would promote representing information in a more abstract manner. As such, we predicted that causal information would not provide an overall protection against memory errors, but rather would preferentially help in the rejection of misinformation that was causally implausible, given the learned causal links. In two experiments, we measured whether the causal linkage of information would be generally protective against all memory errors or only selectively protective against certain types of memory errors. Causal links helped participants reject implausible memory lures, but did not protect against plausible lures. Our results suggest that causal information may promote an abstract storage of information that helps prevent only specific types of memory errors.