Serial-position effects on a free-recall task in bilinguals

In this study, we examined mechanisms that underlie free-recall performance in bilinguals' first language (L1) and second language (L2) through the prism of serial-position effects. On free-recall tasks, a typical pattern of performance follows a U-shaped serial-position curve, where items from the beginning of the list (the primacy effect) and items from the end of the list (the recency effect) are recalled with higher accuracy than items from the middle of the list. The present study contrasted serial-position effects on the free-recall task in Korean-English bilinguals' L1 vs. L2 and examined the relationship between an independent working memory (WM) measure and serial-position effects in bilinguals' two languages. Results revealed stronger pre-recency (primacy and middle) effects in L1 than in L2, but similar recency effects in the two languages. A close association was observed between WM and recall performance in the pre-recency region in the L1 but not in the L2. Together, these findings suggest that linguistic knowledge constrains free-recall performance in bilinguals, but only in the pre-recency region.     

Collective interviewing: A transactive memory approach towards identifying signs of truthfulness

Group interviewing has been neglected in the deception literature, yet it coincides with recent collective memory research. The present experiment applied the transactive memory theory to a collective interviewing situation and explored whether signs of truthfulness emerged through measuring joint memory recall. Truth-tellers were real couples who had been in a relationship for at least one year and cohabiting. Lying pairs were friends who pretended to be in a relationship for at least one year and cohabiting. All couples were interviewed in their pairs about their ‘real’ or ‘fictitious’ relationships. It was found that truth-telling pairs posed questions to one another, provided cues to one another, handed over remembering responsibility, and finished each others’ sentences significantly more than lying pairs, supporting the idea that real couples have a transactive memory system, unlike pretending couples. Implications for a collective interview approach that considers memory within deception detection are discussed.     

Mental context reinstatement or drawing: Which better enhances children's recall of witnessed events and protects against suggestive questions?

The aim of this experiment was to examine the effectiveness of two techniques in enhancing children's recall of an event that they experienced approximately a week earlier. Younger (5–6 years) and older (8–9 years) children were interviewed about a magic show event in one of three conditions. Before recalling the event, some children were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the event (MCR group), others were asked to draw the context of the event (DCR group), and others received no reinstatement instructions (NCR). Results showed that these instructions had no impact on children's free recall or responses to open‐ended prompts. However, reinstatement instructions impacted children's responses to suggestive questions: those in the DCR group gave more accurate responses than those in the NCR group. These findings provide preliminary support for the use of drawing as a potentially protective exercise that lessens the impact of biased questions with child witnesses.     

The effects of bilingual language proficiency on recall accuracy and semantic clustering in free recall output: evidence for shared semantic associations across languages

Two experiments investigated how well bilinguals utilise long-standing semantic associations to encode and retrieve semantic clusters in verbal episodic memory. In Experiment 1, Spanish-English bilinguals (N?=?128) studied and recalled word and picture sets. Word recall was equivalent in L1 and L2, picture recall was better in L1 than in L2, and the picture superiority effect was stronger in L1 than in L2. Semantic clustering in word and picture recall was equivalent in L1 and L2. In Experiment 2, Spanish-English bilinguals (N?=?128) and English-speaking monolinguals (N?=?128) studied and recalled word sequences that contained semantically related pairs. Data were analyzed using a multinomial processing tree approach, the pair-clustering model. Cluster formation was more likely for semantically organised than for randomly ordered word sequences. Probabilities of cluster formation, cluster retrieval, and retrieval of unclustered items did not differ across languages or language groups. Language proficiency has little if any impact on the utilisation of long-standing semantic associations, which are language-general.     

Predicting immediate ordered recall of lists with products of probabilities

Immediate ordered recall performance is often reported in terms of recall of individual items or of lists. Schweickert, Chen and Poirier (Int. J. Psychol. 34 (1999) 447) proposed that the probability of recalling a list approximately equals the product of the conditional probabilities that each item is recalled, given its immediate predecessor is recalled. This Product of Adjacent Conditionals gave a close lower bound to the probability of recalling a list, although it is not exactly right. An alternative is that dependencies are expressed through probabilities conditioned on retrieval of higher level units such as chunks. An example is a key assumption of Anderson and Matessa (Psychol. Rev. 104 (1997) 728). This alternative is rejected here. Overall, the Product of Adjacent Conditionals formula and the Anderson and Matessa theory predicted recall of a list about equally well.     

Did you wash your hands? Evaluating memory for objects touched by healthy individuals and individuals with contagious and noncontagious diseases

Prior research suggests that individuals recruit a disease‐avoidance system designed to avoid sources of illness through threat detection and memory. Our study evaluated whether disease‐related memory benefits reflect the distinctive/salient nature of a diseased state versus the infectious nature of a disease by comparing memory for objects touched by healthy individuals or those with a contagious or noncontagious disease. Participants studied videos depicting an actor interacting with objects in which the actor was described as diagnosed with influenza, an infectious disease, cancer, a noninfectious disease, or was healthy, followed by free‐recall and source‐recognition tests. Correct recall and source recognition were greater overall for touched versus nontouched items, but source recognition was particularly elevated for items touched by the infectious influenza actor. Further, touched‐item recognition was positively related to participants' assessed germ aversion—supplemental evidence that disease concerns may facilitate source recollections for touched objects.     

A meta‐analysis of the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on witness recall

There is widespread belief in the legal system that alcohol impairs witness testimony. Nevertheless, most laboratory studies examining the effects of alcohol on witness testimony suggest that alcohol may affect the number of correct but not incorrect details recalled. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions because sample sizes, testing paradigms, and recall measures vary between individual studies. We conducted a meta‐analysis to address this issue. We found alcohol intoxication had a significant and moderate sized effect on the number of correct details recalled (g = 0.40). The effect of alcohol on the number of incorrect details recalled was not significant. Further, the effect of alcohol on the recall of correct details was significantly moderated by multiple factors like intoxication level, the retention interval length between encoding and recall, and the types of questions asked (i.e., free recall vs. cued recall). We discuss the applied implications of the results.     

In search of transfer following cued recall practice: The case of process‐based biology concepts

Previous work has demonstrated that cued recall of a term from a fact yields learning that does not transfer, relative to a restudy control, to recall of another term from the same fact. Here we report six experiments in which a series of manipulations during the initial study and training phases of learning, hypothesized to increase transfer for process‐based biology concepts, were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, fill‐in‐the‐blank questions combined with immediate or delayed and repeated correct answer feedback improved learning but not transfer. In Experiments 3 and 4, practice questions that involved recalling process steps, understanding ordinal relationships, or making inferences did not improve transfer. Positive transfer was produced, however, in Experiments 5 and 6 via retrieval–verification–scoring, a new method in which difficult fill‐in‐the‐blank questions were combined with extensive feedback processing. We discuss implications for transfer in both theoretical and applied contexts.     

Choosing words at the study phase: The self‐choice effect on memory from the viewpoint of connective processing1

Abstract: The self‐choice effect, that is the superior memory performance observed when participants are allowed to choose the item at the study phase than when they are not (lack of choice), has been explained by the encoding‐strategy hypothesis ( Takahashi, 1997 ). This hypothesis distinguishes between organizational processing, which focuses upon the relationship between chosen items, and item‐speci?c processing, which itself focuses on the elements that make the chosen item distinctive. The encoding‐strategy hypothesis predicts that the ability for the successive recall of chosen items can be affected by organized list (Experiment 1). The results of our experiments ran counter to the prediction and were interpreted by a new concept called connective processing, which would emphasize the relationship of paired items. Connective processing was examined through orienting tasks (Experiment 2). The results were more suitably interpreted by connective than organizational processing.     

Remarks on the Absentminded Driver

Piccione and Rubinstein (1997) present and analyse the sequential decision problem of an “absentminded driver”. The driver's absentmindedness (imperfect recall) leads him to time-inconsistent strategy evaluations. His original evaluation gets replaced by a new one under impact of the information that the circumstances have changed, notwithstanding the fact that this change in circumstances has been expected by him all along. The time inconsistency in strategy evaluation suggests that such an agent might have reason to renege on his adopted strategy. As we shall see, however, this danger is only apparent. There is no serious problem of dynamic inconsistency in this case. My diagnosis of the case under consideration is in many respects similar to the one provided by Aumann, Hart and Perry (1997), but the analysis leading to this diagnosis is not quite the same. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.