Peer influence on event reports among adolescents and young adults

When two or more people witness an event together, the event report from one person can influence others’ reports. In the current study we examined the role of age and motivational factors on peer influence regarding event reports in adolescents and young adults. Participants (N=249) watched a short video of a robbery then answered questions with no co-witness information or with information believed to be from a co-witness. Public and private response conditions were included to explore motivations for peer influence. Co-witness information influenced participants’ responses, although the effect was equally strong in the private and the public co-witness conditions. Peer influence on event reports was steady across a large age range (11- to 25-year-olds).     

Influence of recollection and plausibility on age-related deficits in associative memory

Age-related declines in associative memory are proposed to result from deficits in older adults’ ability to recollect the past. The present experiment investigated the ability of older adults to compensate for deficits in recollecting the past by using plausibility. Participants studied a list of word pairs that shared category or rhyme relations. To measure the processes used during the recognition memory test, participants provided self-reported explanations for their memory judgements. Older adults relied primarily on plausibility, and the younger adults relied on both plausibility and recollection. Older adults experienced both positive and negative consequences as a result of using a knowledge-based strategy to compensate for their decreased ability to recollect the past. Specifically, they were just as capable as younger adults at recognising previously studied items and correctly rejecting distractors that were inconsistent with the rule provided at study. However, they falsely recognised distractors that were consistent with that rule more often than younger adults.     

The future-orientation of memory: Planning as a key component mediating the high levels of recall found with survival processing

In a series of papers, Nairne and colleagues have demonstrated that tasks encouraging participants to judge words for relevance to survival led to better recall than did tasks lacking survival relevance. Klein, Robertson, and Delton (2010) presented data suggesting that the future-directed temporal orientation of the survival task (e.g., planning), rather than survival per se, accounts for the good recall found with the task. In the present studies we manipulated the amount of survival and planning processing encouraged by a set of encoding tasks. Participants performed tasks that encouraged processing stimuli for their relevance to (a) both survival and planning, (b) planning, but not survival, or (c) survival but not planning. We predicted, and found, that recall performance associated with tasks encouraging planning (i.e., survival with planning and planning without survival) should exceed tasks that encouraged survival but not planning (i.e., survival without planning). We draw several conclusions. First, planning is a necessary component of the superior recall found in the survival paradigm. Second, memory, from an evolutionary perspective, is inherently prospective—tailored by natural selection to support future decisions and judgements that cannot be known in advance with certainty.     

The retrieval of self-defining memories is associated with the activation of specific working selves

This article presents two studies that investigated the impact of the retrieval of self-defining memories on individuals' sense of self. Participants recalled positive and/or negative self-defining memories, rated memory characteristics and completed measures focusing on different self-aspects. Study 1 found that participants reported higher state self-esteem after recalling a positive memory than after recalling a negative one. They also reported lower negative self-consistency and higher state self-concept clarity and positive self-consistency, but this result became non-significant after controlling for state self-esteem. Study 2 found that participants reported higher state self-esteem, a marginally higher proportion of recreation/exploration, goals and a marginally lower proportion of achievement goals after recalling a positive memory than after recalling a negative one. They also reported a higher proportion of self-cognitions referring to emotional states after recalling memories from which they had not abstracted meaning than after recalling memories from which they had done this. These findings suggest that the retrieval of vivid, emotional and highly self-relevant memories may be accompanied by the activation of specific self-representations or working selves. They also suggest that the experience of memory-related intrusive images may temporarily influence individuals' sense of self. The implications of these findings for clinical practice are discussed.     

Likable co-witnesses increase eyewitness accuracy and decrease suggestibility

This study examines the impact of likability on memory accuracy and memory conformity between two previously unacquainted individuals. After viewing a crime, eyewitnesses often talk to one another and may find each other likable or dislikable. One hundred twenty-seven undergraduate students arrived at the laboratory with an unknown confederate and were assigned to a likability condition (i.e., control, likable or dislikable). Together, the pair viewed pictures and was then tested on their memory for those pictures in such a way that the participant knew the confederate's response. Thus, the participant's response could be influenced both by his or her own memory and by the answers of the confederate. Participants in the likable condition were more accurate and less influenced by the confederate, compared with the other conditions. Results are discussed in relation to research that shows people are more influenced by friends than strangers and in relation to establishing positive rapport in forensic interviewing.     

Age,memory type,and the phenomenology of autobiographical memory: Findings from an Italian sample

The present research explored differences in phenomenology between two types of memories, a general self-defining memory and an earliest childhood memory. A sample of 76 Italian participants were selected and categorised into two age groups: 20–30 years and 31–40 years. The Memory Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) was administered, taking note of latency and duration times of the narratives. Consistent with the literature, the self-defining memory differed significantly from the earliest childhood memory in terms of phenomenology, with the recency of the memory associated with more intense phenomenological experience. The self-defining memory took longer to retrieve and narrate than the earliest childhood memory. Meaningful differences also emerged between the two age groups: Participants in their 30s rated their self-defining memory as more vivid, coherent, and accessible than participants in their 20s. According to latency findings, these differences suggest an expanded period of identity consolidation for younger adults. Further applications of the MEQ should be carried out to replicate these results with other samples of young adults.     

Overcoming fixation with repeated memory suppression

Fixation (blocks to memories or ideas) can be alleviated not only by encouraging productive work towards a solution, but, as the present experiments show, by reducing counterproductive work. Two experiments examined relief from fixation in a word-fragment completion task. Blockers, orthographically similar negative primes (e.g., ANALOGY), blocked solutions to word fragments (e.g., A_L_ _GY) in both experiments. After priming, but before the fragment completion test, participants repeatedly suppressed half of the blockers using the Think/No-Think paradigm, which results in memory inhibition. Inhibiting blockers did not alleviate fixation in Experiment 1 when conscious recollection of negative primes was not encouraged on the fragment completion test. In Experiment 2, however, when participants were encouraged to remember negative primes at fragment completion, relief from fixation was observed. Repeated suppression may nullify fixation effects, and promote creative thinking, particularly when fixation is caused by conscious recollection of counterproductive information.     

Specificity in autobiographical memory narratives correlates with performance on the Autobiographical Memory Test and prospectively predicts depressive symptoms

Reduced autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) is an important cognitive marker in depression that is typically measured with the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT; Williams & Broadbent, 1986). The AMT is widely used, but the over-reliance on a single methodology for assessing AMS is a limitation in the field. The current study investigated memory narratives as an alternative measure of AMS in an undergraduate student sample selected for being high or low on a measure of depressive symptoms (N=55). We employed a multi-method design to compare narrative- and AMT-based measures of AMS. Participants generated personally significant self-defining memory narratives, and also completed two versions of the AMT (with and without instructions to retrieve specific memories). Greater AMS in self-defining memory narratives correlated with greater AMS in performance on both versions of the AMT in the full sample, and the patterns of relationships between the different AMS measures were generally similar in low and high dysphoric participants. Furthermore, AMS in self-defining memory narratives was prospectively associated with depressive symptom levels. Specifically, greater AMS in self-defining memory narratives predicted fewer depressive symptoms at a 10-week follow-up over and above baseline symptom levels. Implications for future research and clinical applications are discussed.     

Adaptive memory: Animacy effects persist in paired-associate learning

Recent evidence suggests that animate stimuli are remembered better than matched inanimate stimuli. Two experiments tested whether this animacy effect persists in paired-associate learning of foreign words. Experiment 1 randomly paired Swahili words with matched animate and inanimate English words. Participants were told simply to learn the English “translations” for a later test. Replicating earlier findings using free recall, a strong animacy advantage was found in this cued-recall task. Concerned that the effect might be due to enhanced accessibility of the individual responses (e.g., animates represent a more accessible category), Experiment 2 selected animate and inanimate English words from two more constrained categories (four-legged animals and furniture). Once again, an advantage was found for pairs using animate targets. These results argue against organisational accounts of the animacy effect and potentially have implications for foreign language vocabulary learning.