Response bias,recollection, and familiarity in individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM)

ABSTRACT

The current study focused on individuals with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) and had two main objectives: 1) investigate whether HSAMs have increased recollection performance compared to controls, and 2) investigate whether HSAMs have a reliably different response bias than controls. While previous lab-based recognition tests have shown that HSAMs have normal memory performance, these tests were based on a mixture of both recollection and familiarity. Here, we employed recognition tests specifically designed to separate recollected responses from those based on familiarity. Additionally, we were interested in how HSAMs make their memory decisions. Several studies have shown a great deal of variability between individuals in their response bias. Here, individuals with HSAM and age- matched controls completed a remember/know and a source memory test. HSAMs behaved like controls in both overall and recollection-based memory discrimination. However, HSAMs showed a significantly more liberal response bias, endorsing more items as “old” than controls. These findings contribute to our understanding of how memory processes – especially those related to decision-making – function in those with superior memory abilities and may help elucidate how other (non-HSAM) memory experts make decisions.     

Spontaneously occurring images and early memories in people with body dysmorphic disorder

A semi‐structured interview assessing the presence and characteristics of spontaneous appearance‐related images was designed and administered. A total of 18 patients with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and 18 normal controls took part. The BDD patients were found to have spontaneously occurring appearance‐related images that were significantly more negative, recurrent, and viewed from an observer perspective than control participants. These images were more vivid and detailed and typically involved visual and organic (internal body) sensations. The study also found that BDD images were linked to early stressful memories, and that images were more likely than verbal thoughts to be linked to these memories. Implications for theory and clinical practice are discussed.     

The effect of emotion-focused orientation at retrieval on emotional memory in young and older adults

This study examines how emotion-focused orientation at retrieval affects memory for emotional versus neutral images in young and older adults. A total of 44 older adults (ages 61–84 years, M=70.00, SD=5.54) and 43 young adults (ages 17–33 years, M=20.58, SD=3.72) were tested on their free recall and forced-choice recognition of images. At retrieval the emotion-focused orientation was manipulated by instructing participants to focus on emotion-related information (i.e., emotional content of images and the emotional reactions evoked by the images). In the control conditions participants were either instructed to focus on visual information or not provided any specific orientation instruction. In free recall but not forced-choice recognition, the emotion-focused orientation increased young adults’ positivity bias and thus wiped out their superior negativity bias. However, the emotion-focused orientation did not affect older adults’ emotional memory. The data suggest that young adults activate and prioritise emotional goals in response to external demand during intentional information processing whereas older adults seem to spontaneously tune themselves to emotional goals.     

Remembering the past and imagining the future: A role for nonvisual imagery in the everyday cognition of blind and sighted people

Past research has associated depression with memory biases pertaining to the frequency, duration, and specificity of past events. Associations have been proposed between both negative and positive memory biases and depression symptoms. However, research has not examined the occurrence of actual events over time in the study of memory bias. To address these limitations and investigate whether a negative or positive memory bias is associated with symptoms of depression, we collected weekly data on specific types of life events over a 4-year period from a sample of college students, and asked students to recall event frequency at the end of that period. Exaggerated recall of frequency for positive events but not other types of events was associated with depression symptoms, using both continuous and categorical measures. Moderator analyses indicated that these effects were evidenced primarily for memories involving the self and among individuals low in trait self-enhancement. The current study indicates that positive memory-frequency bias is an important type of memory bias associated with symptoms of depression. Results support the idea that the link between memory bias for positive event frequency and depressed mood arises out of a current-self vs past-self comparison.     

Changing the working self alters the emotions prompted by recall

Results from three studies indicated that emotional responses to memories can be changed by altering the working self. In particular, these results showed that emotional reactions to memories: (1) were especially positive when memories were perceived to be central to the working self (Experiment 1); (2) were muted when the working self was changed by adopting a third-person perspective during recall (Experiment 1); (3) of an event in the life of each participant's mother weakened when an individual was induced to experience a self that felt less close to their mother (Experiment 2) and (4) of a childhood event provoked especially positive emotional reactions after exposure to a mortality salience manipulation that increased perceived self-worth (Experiment 3). The extent to which mother was included in the self (Experiment 2) and self-worth (Experiment 3) plausibly mediated the effects of the manipulations on participants' emotional reactions to recalled events.     

The effects of local and global processing orientation on eyewitness identification performance

Recent work has demonstrated that performance on a simultaneous target-present photographic line-up can be enhanced by prior global processing orientation, and hindered by prior local processing orientation induced by processing Navon letter stimuli. A series of studies explore the generality of this processing bias effect using either videotaped scenarios or live interactions. Five experiments demonstrate that these effects are seen across a range of test stimuli, test formats, and test instructions. These data inform the processes engaged in by witnesses when making line-up identifications and indicate that it may be possible to improve the accuracy of witnesses making such judgements.     

Racial healthcare disparities: A social psychological analysis

Around the world, members of racial/ethnic minority groups typically experience poorer health than members of racial/ethnic majority groups. The core premise of this chapter is that thoughts, feelings, and behaviours related to race and ethnicity play a critical role in healthcare disparities. Social psychological theories of the origins and consequences of these thoughts, feelings, and behaviours offer critical insights into the processes responsible for these disparities and suggest interventions to address them. We present a multilevel model that explains how societal, intrapersonal, and interpersonal factors can influence ethnic/racial health disparities. We focus our literature review, including our own research, and conceptual analysis at the intrapersonal (the race-related thoughts and feelings of minority patients and non-minority physicians) and interpersonal levels (intergroup processes that affect medical interactions between minority patients and non-minority physicians). At both levels of analysis, we use theories of social categorisation, social identity, contemporary forms of racial bias, stereotype activation, stigma, and other social psychological processes to identify and understand potential causes and processes of health and healthcare disparities. In the final section, we identify theory-based interventions that might reduce ethnic/racial disparities in health and healthcare.     

A Review of “The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion”

Online and distance learning are delivery modes in theological education that prompt questions about a library's ability to serve non-resident or occasionally resident students. This bibliometric study of 23 Doctor of Ministry theses completed at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary between 2006 and 2010 includes data about the kind of resources that are being used by distance students. The data is analyzed longitudinally and also by overall sample. Percentages of items cited that are in the library holdings either in hard or e-versions are also provided. Preliminary recommendations are made about how the library might adapt to serve the research needs of distance students.     

Putting yourself in the skin of a black avatar reduces implicit racial bias

Although it has been shown that immersive virtual reality (IVR) can be used to induce illusions of ownership over a virtual body (VB), information on whether this changes implicit interpersonal attitudes is meager. Here we demonstrate that embodiment of light-skinned participants in a dark-skinned VB significantly reduced implicit racial bias against dark-skinned people, in contrast to embodiment in light-skinned, purple-skinned or with no VB. 60 females participated in this between-groups experiment, with a VB substituting their own, with full-body visuomotor synchrony, reflected also in a virtual mirror. A racial Implicit Association Test (IAT) was administered at least three days prior to the experiment, and immediately after the IVR exposure. The change from pre- to post-experience IAT scores suggests that the dark-skinned embodied condition decreased implicit racial bias more than the other conditions. Thus, embodiment may change negative interpersonal attitudes and thus represent a powerful tool for exploring such fundamental psychological and societal phenomena.     

Bias and learning in temporal binding: Intervals between actions and outcomes are compressed by prior bias

It has consistently been shown that agents judge the intervals between their actions and outcomes as compressed in time, an effect named intentional binding. In the present work, we investigated whether this effect is result of prior bias volunteers have about the timing of the consequences of their actions, or if it is due to learning that occurs during the experimental session. Volunteers made temporal estimates of the interval between their action and target onset (Action conditions), or between two events (No-Action conditions). Our results show that temporal estimates become shorter throughout each experimental block in both conditions. Moreover, we found that observers judged intervals between action and outcomes as shorter even in very early trials of each block. To quantify the decrease of temporal judgments in experimental blocks, exponential functions were fitted to participants’ temporal judgments. The fitted parameters suggest that observers had different prior biases as to intervals between events in which action was involved. These findings suggest that prior bias might play a more important role in this effect than calibration-type learning processes.