Memory

Sunday, October 02nd,   2011 [18:00 - 20:00]

PS_3.041 - False recognition for 75 DRM lists with three critical words: Forward associative strength

Beato, M. S. ¹ , Pulido, R. F. ¹ , Pinho, M. S. ² , Gozalo, M. ³ & Cadavid, S. ¹

1 Universidad de Salamanca. Spain
2 Universidade de Coimbra. Portugal
3 Universidad de Extremadura. Spain

A normative study was conducted using the Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm to obtain false recognition for 75 six-word lists in Spanish. In this paradigm, participants study word lists highly associated with a nonpresented critical word. Using this procedure, true recall and recognition of the studied words is observed at the same time as false recall and recognition of the critical words. In this study the 75 lists were designed with a new methodology: Six words (e.g., fire, war, gun, weapon, shot, bullet) simultaneously associated with three critical words (e.g., CANNON, FUSIL, RIFLE). Forward associative strength between critical and lists words was taken into account when creating the lists. Results showed that all lists produced false recognition and presented a wide variability in the effectiveness to elicit false recognition. Moreover, some lists had a very high false recognition rate, interesting aspect to raise the signal-to-noise ratio in false recognition event-related potential studies.

PS_3.042 - Interplay between identity of objects and their spatial trajectories in infants

Ressel, V. & Sebastian-Galles, N.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Infants’ abilities have been the focus of many studies in the past decades. Here, we explored if 12-month-old infants are able to recall features of episodes: the identity of objects, the performed trajectory of the objects and an expected outcome. Thirty-one healthy infants were investigated using a newly developed implicit recall task, which eliminates the need for verbal output. A video was presented in which pictures of four puppets performed a trajectory from the middle upper part to the left bottom or to the right bottom part of a screen (two puppets moving all the trials to the same side). After an encoding phase, the trajectory was occluded in the retrieval phase to assess if infants remember the identity and trajectory of the puppets. An eye tracking system was used to record eye fixation length for anticipatory gaze during the occlusion. Correct performance by looking longer to the expected side was seen, suggesting interplay between encoding and the retrieval of identity of objects and their spatial trajectories. Although a high variability between participants was found, evidence for early episodic-like memory was present in this age group.

PS_3.043 - Is the testing effect dependent on an overt testing procedure?

Jönsson, F. & Kubik, V.

Department of psychology, Stockholm University

A combination of study and memory testing trials during learning is sometimes more beneficial for final recall performance than repeated study only (i.e., the testing effect), and in particular it seems to decrease the rate of forgetting over time. Previous research has almost exclusively demonstrated the testing effect with an overt testing procedure. In a learning session we let three groups (Study/Overt/Covert) of 20 participants study 40 paired associates three times. The Study group only did this. The Overt and Covert testing groups also performed three cued recall tests where they were shown the first word in a pair and should generate the second. The Overt group entered their response on the keyboard, whereas the Covert group was instructed to covertly retrieve the item. Final cued recall tests were given 15 minutes and 1 week later. As measured in terms of the rate of forgetting between the first and the second final recall test, the Overt group forgot significantly less information over a week than the two other groups, which did not differ. This demonstrates that the overt testing procedure is required for testing to effectively mitigate forgetting.

PS_3.044 - Why is retrieval “expensive”?: An analysis of component-processes

Vranic, A. & Tonkovic, M. .

Department of Psychology, University of Zagreb

Research shows that division of attention during retrieval affects memory performance only minimally. This relative immunity of episodic retrieval is offset by a cost, as measured by the concurrent secondary task in a divided attention paradigm. This experiment was conducted with the aim of further exploring this relative immunity and the attentional costs associated with what seems to be obligatory retrieval processes. More specifically, we aimed at exploring the attentional cost associated with each of three retrieval component-processes: 1) cue-encoding, 2) cue elaboration, 3) retrieval mode (Tulving, 1983). A componential analysis, as introduced by Naveh-Benjamin et al. (2000), was employed to assess attentional demands of four different retrieval tasks: two tapping the episodic and two tapping the semantic memory system. Furthermore, within each of these „system tasks“, one task was data-driven and one was conceptually-driven, as proposed by the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) approach. Our results show a similar pattern of attentional costs of the three retrieval component-processes, across various types of retrieval. The cue elaboration was found to be the most attention demanding of the three component-processes, and also this process was shown to demand significantly more attention in the non-TAP situation. These findings are interpreted within the TAP framework.

PS_3.045 - Recollection, sensitivity, and bias in false memories with visual and auditory study

Şahin, G. & Tekman, H. G.

Psychology Department. Uludag University. Bursa, TURKEY

Recollection, sensitivity and bias parameters for false memories after visual or auditory study in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm were examined using signal detection theory (SDT). Hit and false alarm rates were determined for three types of words: Critical words of DRM lists; members of DRM lists, which were related to the other list words; and members of lists made of unrelated words. In a visual recognition test, participants indicated their confidence in having studied each item on a six-point scale. According to the analyses of the recollection, sensitivity, and bias parameters of the best-fitting ROC curves, sensitivity was lower for critical and related words and there was significantly greater bias for accepting critical words as old. It appeared that participants did not experience false recollection for the critical words but they were more willing to call them “old” and they had difficulty distinguishing whether they had actually been studied. Key words: False memory, modality effect, signal detection theory, recollection, sensitivity, bias.

PS_3.046 - Episodic and semantic musical memory in elderly people

Pigliautile, M. ¹ , Nardo, D. ^{1, 2} & Olivetti Belardinelli, M. ^{1, 2}

1 Department of Psychology, Sapienza. University of Rome, Italy.
2 ECONA, Interuniversity Center for Research on Cognitive Processing in Natural and Artificial Systems. Rome, Italy.

The present study evaluates the role of salience and tonality of music on recognition memory in elderly non-musicians. A recognition memory task for unknown musical stimuli belonging to different categories [tonal/salient, tonal/non-salient, non-tonal/salient and non-tonal/non-salient] was administered to 42 subjects (mean age 75 ± 7.5). Correct and incorrect ‘remember’ (R) and ‘know’ (K) responses, respectively related to episodic and semantic memory according to Tulving’s model, and ‘no’ recognition responses (X) were analyzed. A comparison with a population of young subjects was performed too. Results show that saliency is a significant factor for correct R (episodic memory), whereas tonality is a significant factor for correct K (semantic memory). The number of times the ‘study list’ was listened to does not seem to substantially affect memory recognition. Elderly adults’ performances show similar trends as young subjects’ for correct R, K, and X. Viceversa, elderly subjects gave significantly more incorrect answers for R and X, while no difference between the two groups was found for incorrect answers related to semantic memory (X), confirming the acculturation value of tonality.

PS_3.047 - Effects of typeface on metamemory

Luna, K. & Oliveira, J.

School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal

Past research has shown that font size increases the judgments of learning that a word will be remembered at a later time, but that it does not affect memory performance in a recall test. This dissociation has been explained because participants erroneously consider that the subjective ease of processing a large word will be predictive of future ease of retrieval, even though the font size do not affect performance. Our aim was to test if another perceptual characteristic, namely boldface, could also lead to a misinterpretation of the ease of processing. A second objective was to examine if font size or boldface could affect another measure of metamemory, i.e., retrospective confidence. Participants read words in a small font, in a large font, and in a small font in boldface, and made judgments of learning. After a distractor task a recognition test and a confidence rating that the answer was correct was required. Results suggested that boldface words did not elicit the misinterpretation of the ease of processing elicited by large font words, and that retrospective confidence was not very sensitive to changes in the typeface.

PS_3.048 - Analyzing categorical and associational false memories with signal detection theory

Özkılıç, Y. & Tekman, H. G.

Psychology/Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Uludag University, Bursa, Turkey.

Signal Detection Theory parameters of false memory phenomena in DRM (Deese-Roediger-McDermott) word lists and category lists were examined. Typically, both types of word lists generated false memories; however, using DRM lists generates more of them. Participants studied lists composed of 15 words related to one critical word. In addition, they studied two unrelated word lists that were not related to either critical or related words. Bias, sensitivity and recollection values were calculated for the critical, related and unrelated words. Subjects rated their confidence that they had studied each word on a six-point scale in a recognition test. The results showed that bias, sensitivity and recollection parameters did not differ between the two kinds of lists. Only the bias values differed among the word types: Subjects indicated greater confidence that they had studied the critical words compared to the other types of word. This result suggests that participants did not experience false recollection for the critical words or had more difficulty distinguishing studied from nonstudied critical words but they used a more liberal criterion for these kinds of words at the test phase.

PS_3.049 - The failure of deactivating intentions: Aftereffects of completed intentions in the repeated prospective memory-cue paradigm

Walser, M. , Fischer, R. . & Goschke, T.

Technische Universität Dresden

Previous research has yielded conflicting findings with respect to aftereffects of completed intentions (e.g., inhibition, persisting activation). We used a newly developed experimental paradigm to investigate aftereffects of completed intentions on subsequent performance that required the maintenance and execution of new intentions. Participants performed a primary number categorization task and an additional prospective memory (PM) task, the execution of which was signaled by a specific PM cue. While the PM task changed in each block, the irrelevant PM cue of the previous PM task was occasionally repeated in the subsequent block. In a series of four experiments we demonstrated that performance in the primary task was substantially slowed for trials representing repeated PM cues compared to baseline trials (i.e., intention interference). These findings are interpreted as persisting intention activation once intentions are completed. Activation related to the previous PM task persists over some time and triggers the spontaneous retrieval of the old PM response.

PS_3.050 - The role of domain-general working memory in text reading: An eye tracking study

Tanaka, T. ^{1, 2} , Tanida, Y. ¹ , Sugimoto, M. ¹ , Tsunemi, K. ¹ , Shinoda, A. ³ , Yasuda, H. ³ , Kuzuguchi, A. ³ & Saito, S. ¹

1 Department of Cognitive Psychology in Education, Kyoto University. Kyoto, Japan.
2 Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Tokyo, Japan.
3 Graduate School of Education, Kyoto University. Kyoto, Japan.

Reading text requires the reconstruction of information that was degraded during sentence processing. This process of reconstruction involves relocating previously presented information. To explore the nature of this relocation process during reading and its relationship with verbal and spatial working memory (WM) capacity, we employed a "who-done-it" task with an eye-tracking technique. In our task, text information was available on a PC screen while participants answered questions such as "Who done it?" after reading a text. We recorded participants' eye movements while they performed this task and measured the distance between the fixation point immediately after reading each question and the location of the target word in the text. The mean distance was negatively correlated with both verbal and spatial WM scores, and a partial correlation analysis indicated that the shared variance of verbal and spatial WM scores accounted for individual differences in the distances between fixation points. These results suggest that domain-general WM capacity underpins the relocation processes during text reading.

PS_3.051 - Memory for press advertisements: influence of thematic congruence, product interest and typicality

Martín-Luengo, B. ¹ , Luna, K. ² & Migueles, M. ¹

1 Faculty of Psychology, University of the Basque Country, Spain
2 School of Psychology, University of Minho, Portugal

Previous studies with radio and television advertisements showed an influence of the context in which they were embedded. We were interested in the influence of the context on memory for press advertisements. Specifically, we manipulated the congruency between the theme of the press article and the advertisement. We also studied the influence of the interest of the product advertised and the typicality of the elements of the advertisements. We expected better memory for congruent advertisements than for incongruent ones, and more hits and false alarms for the high typicality elements. Participants read two newspapers articles with advertisements embedded. After that, they completed a distractor task and finally a true/false recognition test with a confidence scale. There were more hits and false alarms with high than low typicality elements. There were no differences on accuracy (A') but participants were more conservative (B''D) with low than high typicality elements. Confidence was higher for hits for congruent advertisements. The confidence for the false alarms showed that confidence was higher for the interesting products embedded on congruent than on incongruent articles. Thematic congruence do not affect the memory of the press advertisements and schemata can explain the typicality influences.

PS_3.052 - Inhibition and Item-Method Directed Forgetting: Behavioral and ERP Studies

Cheng, S. ¹ , Lin, W. ¹ , Liu, I. ^{1, 2} , Hung, D. ¹ & Tzeng, O. J. ^{1, 3}

1 National Central University, Taiwan
2 Chung-Yuan Christian University, Taiwan
3 Academia Sinica, Taiwan

An obvious interpretation for the item-method directed forgetting effect emphasizes the different processing of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items during encoding. TBR items are well remembered because they receive elaborative rehearsals following the presentation of the Remember cue. It is however not yet clear whether TBF items are passively decayed or actively inhibited in response to a Forget cue. To address this issue, behavioral and ERP studies were conducted to examine the processing depths of TBR/TBF items and how active inhibition might be involved in item-method directed forgetting. The P200 and N400 waves were used to index the attention allocation and the semantic processing following the presentation of the Remember and Forget cues. We also examined the modulation of attention load on directed forgetting by incorporating a dual task to the item-method directed forgetting. The results suggest that forgetting is indeed effortful and demands active inhibition.

PS_3.053 - Retrieval-induced forgetting of positive vs. negative retrospective and prospective life experiences

Migueles, M. & García-Bajos, E.

University of the Basque Country

This study examines retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) using personal retrospective or prospective life experiences. In the study phase, following a variant of the Crovitz method, participants were given hints to produce autobiographical experiences of their past or to think in experiences that may occur in their future. In both conditions half of the life experiences were positive and the rest negative. In the retrieval practice phase participants retrieved half of the positive or negative experiences using cued recall or they retrieved capitals of the world (control groups). In the final phase the participants tried to recall all the experiences. Although there was a tendency to remember more positive than negative experiences, there were no significant differences in the recall of both types of experiences. In addition, there were no differences between remembering past or future events. Retrieval practice produced two main effects: facilitation for practiced experiences and inhibition for non-practiced experiences when compared to the control groups which performed no retrieval practice. An interesting aspect that may have practical implications is that selective retrieval practice leads to greater inhibition of negative than positive experiences.