The problem of differing false-alarm rates for the process dissociation procedure: Comment on Verfaellie and Treadwell (1993).

Results reported by M. Verfaellie and J. R. Treadwell (see record 1993-18420-001) contain an interesting paradox: Under standard study conditions in which Ss read words, amnesic patients and control Ss performed identically, both in terms of overall recognition hit rate and when the data were decomposed by L. L. Jacoby's (see record 1992-07943-001) process dissociation procedure into consciously controlled and automatic components of performance. One reason for this curious outcome is that false-alarm rates differed considerably between amnesic patients and control Ss, which is not taken into account in Verfaellie and Treadwell's application of the process dissociation procedure. Considered in this article are 3 possible reactions to the problem of false-alarm rates differing between S groups (or between experimental conditions) for the process dissociation procedure. A correction can be applied either (a) before the process dissociation procedure is used or (b) after the consciously controlled component has been estimated from the procedure. Alternatively, (c) data with this problem may simply be uninterpretable through analysis with the process dissociation procedure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The case against a criterion-shift account of false memory.

M. B. Miller and G. L. Wolford (see record 1999-13930-007) argued that the high false-alarm rate associated with critical lures in the Roediger-McDermott (H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, see record 1995-42833-001) paradigm results from a criterion shift and therefore does not reflect false memory. This conclusion, which is based on new data reported by Miller and Wolford, overlooks the fact that Ruediger and McDermott's false-memory account is as compatible with the new findings as the criterion-shift account is. Furthermore, a consideration of prior work concerned with investigating the conditions under which participants are and are not inclined to adjust the decision criterion suggests that the criterion-shift account of false memory is unlikely to be correct. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memories and statistical design theory: Comment on Miller and Wolford (1999) and Roediger and McDermott (1999).

In an analysis of H. L. Roediger and K. B. McDermott's (see record 1995-42833-001) false-memory paradigm, M. B. Miller and G. L. Wolford (see record 1999-13930-007) argued that falsely recognized items occur because a bias toward calling such items "old" is created by their membership in a studied category. This interpretation was contested by Roediger and McDermott (see record 2000-15248-006). The authors of this article approach this issue as a statistical decision problem and observe that an explanation of false memory based on stored strengths and one based on decision process can have identical implications for data. Problems with equivalent formal models of this type can frequently be resolved by looking at the effects of other variables on the fitted estimates. The authors illustrate this analysis by examining the effects of presentation duration on the parameter estimates produced by models that instantiate the 2 explanations. Although the question remains open, the storage-based interpretation was found to be somewhat more plausible. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressive deficits in recognition: Dissociation of recollection and familiarity.

Dysphoric and nondysphoric students (48 women and 24 men) participated in an experiment that was designed to separate automatic and controlled uses of memory in a modified recognition paradigm. First, they judged the relation of target words to paired words. Later they made recognition decisions on target items alone or in the context of the original paired item. The use of L. L. Jacoby's (see record 1992-07943-001) process dissociation procedure revealed depressive deficits in estimates of recollection but not in estimates of familiarity. The paired test improved recollection for all Ss and showed a trend in the direction of increased familiarity. These outcomes support approaches to depressive cognition that emphasize impaired cognitive control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit false memory in the DRM paradigm: Effects of amnesia, encoding instructions, and encoding duration.

Recent studies with the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (Deese 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm have revealed that amnesic patients do not only show impaired veridical memory, but also diminished false memory for semantically related lure words. Due to the typically used explicit retrieval instructions, however, this finding may reflect problems at encoding, at recollection, or both. Therefore, the present experiments examined implicit as well as explicit false memory in patients suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome and controls. In Experiment 1, encoding instructions either focused on remembering individual list words, or on discovering semantic relationships among the words. In Experiment 2, different presentation durations were used. Results emphasize the distinction between automatic and intentional retrieval: Korsakoff patients’ veridical and false memory scores were diminished when explicit recollection was required, but not when memory was tested implicitly. Encoding manipulations only significantly affected veridical memory: Priming was reduced with thematic encoding, and explicit retrieval was facilitated when given more study time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Latent variable modeling of cognitive processes in true and false recognition of words: A developmental perspective.

The present study aimed at testing theoretical predictions of the fuzzy-trace theory about true and false recognition. The effects of semantic relatedness and study opportunity on true and false recognition of words from Deese, Roediger, McDermott lists (J. Deese, 1959; D. R. Read, 1996; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995) were evaluated in 7- to 12-year-old children (N = 151). Instead of a traditional analysis of variance, the authors used a relatively novel statistical analysis technique, latent class factor analysis, to test the hypotheses pertaining to the effect of semantic relatedness and study opportunity on children's true and false recognition given their low or high verbatim-trace and gist-trace level. The results showed that variation in true recognition of target words from semantically related and unrelated word lists that were either studied once or repeated could be explained well by variation in verbatim-trace and gist-trace level. Variation in false recognition of semantically related distractors also could be explained by variation in gist-trace level, but the recollection-rejection hypothesis was not confirmed. The variable age was positively but weakly related to gist-trace level, but no significant relationship was found between age and verbatim-trace level. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

More on recognition and recall in amnesics.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 15(3) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (see record 2008-10697-001). In this article, the authors failed to specify how the group of amnesics that they test in their article differed from the nonalcoholic amnesics tested in Hirst, Johnson, Kim, Phelps, Risse, and Volpe (1986). The pertinent statistics are given in the erratum. Additionally, in the last sentence on page 760, the degrees of freedom for the t test should be 8 instead of 10.] Hirst et al. (1986) reported that amnesic forced-choice recognition was relatively preserved when compared with amnesic recall. They equated normal recognition and amnesic recognition by extending exposure time for the amnesics and then comparing amnesic recall and normal recall. Amnesic recall was worse than normal recall, despite equated recognition. We conducted two experiments to extend that result. Experiment 1 established that the findings of Hirst et al. are not paradigm specific and hold when amnesic recognition and normal recognition are equated by increasing the retention interval for normals. In Experiment 2 we further established the generality of the result by examining yes–no recognition. Findings further specify the selective nature of the direct memory deficits in amnesics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

P300 latency, but not amplitude or topography, distinguishes between true and false recognition.

Two experiments are described in which the P300 component of the event-related potential was recorded during a modification of the Deese–Roediger–McDermott false-memory paradigm. P300 amplitudes and topographies were evaluated in both true recognition of previously presented (studied) words and in false recognition of associatively related, never presented (critical lure) words. P300 topography and amplitude did not appear to differ between true and false recognition. However, false recognition of critical lures produced substantially shorter P300 latencies than did the true recognition of studied words. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Wrestling with ambiguity—further reflections: Reply to Masson and Borowsky (1995) and Rueckl (1995).

As noted by S. Joordens and D. Besner (see record 1995-07873-001), a number of distributed models of word recognition encounter difficulties when processing words that have multiple meanings because of competition that occurs when the multiple meanings attempt to instantiate their patterns of activation across a semantic level of representation. This contrasts with humans' lack of difficulty in naming and lexical decision when processing ambiguous words in the absence of a manipulated context. Joordens and Besner therefore concluded that the processing of ambiguous words represents an interesting challenge for distributed models of word recognition. A number of critical issues highlighted in the commentaries by M. E. J. Masson and R. Borowsky (see record 1995-31413-001) and by J. G. Rueckl (see record 1995-31416-001) are addressed in the present article. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Remembering" words not presented in lists: relevance to the current recovered/false memory controversy

H.L. Roediger and K.B. McDermott (1995) found that when participants studied a list of words with a common but not presented associate, participants frequently falsely reported remembering the never presented associated word as part of the list. Roediger and McDermott suggest that this finding is generalizable to the current controversy surrounding contested memories of child abuse. The present authors urge caution in making such a generalization, arguing that there are critical differences between Roediger and McDermott's findings and contested memories of abuse.     

Test-induced priming impairs source monitoring accuracy in the DRM procedure.

Three experiments investigated the effects of test-induced priming (TIP) on false recognition in the Deese/Roediger–McDermott procedure (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, TIP significantly increased false recognition for participants who made old/new decisions at test but not for participants who made remember/know judgments or were given diagnostic information to help them avoid false recognition. In Experiment 2, a TIP effect was observed with old/new recognition but not when participants were required to remember whether study items were spoken by a male or a female speaker. In Experiment 3, false recognition increased when critical lures were preceded by 10 studied items but not when preceded by 5 studied and 5 unstudied items from the same list. These findings suggest that TIP increases false recognition by disrupting source monitoring processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired priming of new associations in amnesia.

We assessed priming of new associations in amnesic patients and healthy control subjects in a paradigm developed by P. Graf and D. L. Schacter (see record 1986-12203-001). Subjects were presented unrelated word pairs embedded in sentences (e.g., A BELL was hanging over the baby's CRADLE) and were asked to rate how well the sentences related the two words. Subjects were then given a word completion test. They were shown three-letter word stems and were asked to complete the stem with the first word that came to mind. In the same context condition, each word stem was presented together with the word that had appeared in the same sentence during study (e.g., BELL-CRA ). In the different context condition, each stem was presented together with a new word that had never been presented (e.g., APPLE-CRA ). Control subjects completed more words in the same context condition than in the different context condition. In contrast, amnesic patients did not complete any more words in the same context condition than in the different context condition. Indeed, across two experiments none of the amnesic patients exhibited consistent priming of new associations. Thus, although amnesic patients do exhibit entirely normal priming of preexisting memory representations, they do not appear to exhibit priming of new associations in this paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Double, double, toil and trouble: Pitfalls of suppositional inquiries of journal ratings.

Three recent comments in the September 1976 issue (Buss & McDermott; Levin & Kratochwill; Porter (see record 1990-57250-001; see record 1990-57248-001; and see record 1990-57249-001), attempting to deal with the difficult area of assessing journal "reputations," raised some interesting questions concerning our study reporting journal rankings (Koulack & Keselman, November 1975; see record 1976-24649-001). We are in agreement with Buss and McDermott (1976) that citations and rankings might not be measuring the same things, but we are in disagreement with Porter, who suggests that "fine ordering among journals is whimsical" (p. 675). In fact, as we suggest in our introduction and have demonstrated in the body of our article (Koulack & Keselman, 1975), journal rankings change as a function of type of work and area of interest. Perhaps Porter's (1976) findings might be a bit whimsical because of the procedure he used to obtain his correlations. Moreover, it is impossible to probe further because Porter does not present the rankings of the two journals chosen from the APA members' top 50, which appeared in either of the citation measures' top 50. Such data might provide some insight into the low correlations obtained between journal citations and rankings. For example, extremely low citation rankings on either citation index for these two journals, given their relatively high position in the APA membership rankings, would diminish the size of the correlation coefficients. The Levin and Kratochwill (1976) comment is somewhat annoying because it distorts a line from Shakespeare as well as misrepresents our presentation. They imply that (a) we thought our rankings represented a definitive approach to the journal rating problem, (b) we neglected to place emphasis on a table presented in the paper, and (c) respondents chose to ignore our instructions and in fact, rated journals on the basis of familiarity. In conclusion, we appreciate the fact that there are numerous ways of examining journal reputations (e.g., rankings by departmental chairpersons, rankings by APA membership, citations obtained from 77 psychology journals published in 1969, citations obtained from 3 psychology journals published from July 1973 to June 1975) and that each of them has potential value. However, comments that are not based on empirical investigation, such as those of Levin and Kratochwill (1976), are mere suppositions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rates of forgetting in organic amnesia following temporal lobe, diencephalic, or frontal lobe lesions.

Forgetting rates were examined in patients with diencephalic, temporal lobe, or frontal lesions. No significant differences were found in short-term forgetting of verbal and nonverbal material; in recognition memory for pictures, words, or designs over delays between 1 min and 20 or 30 min; or on a measure of explicit cued recall for words, calculated in terms of the process dissociation procedure. Significantly faster forgetting was found in the diencephalic and the temporal lobe groups in the free recall of pictures of objects, although there was no difference between these 2 groups. It is concluded that the major deficit in amnesic patients' memory processes is in the initial acquisition of information but that there is a subtler deficit in retention over specific delays, detectable only on measures of free recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Comment on summary report of journal operations": Comment on Roediger.

Comments on an article by H. L. Roediger III (see record 1990-58906-001) concerning the number of subscribers to APA journals. Roediger concluded that most APA members feel no need to keep up with the work in the primary journals. Blackman points out that many people keep up with journals by reading in university and hospital libraries, by sending for reprints of studies abstracted in Psychological Abstracts, and by other literature review methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic versus intentional uses of memory: Aging, attention, and control.

In 2 experiments, the authors used a process dissociation procedure by L. L. Jacoby (see record 1992-07943-001) to separately examine the effects of aging on automatic and consciously controlled memory processes. In Exp 1, a group of young adults in either a full-attention or divided-attention condition were compared with a group of elderly adults on a fame judgment task. Both age and divided attention had a detrimental effect on consciously controlled memory processing but left automatic processing intact. In Exp 2, the same age-related pattern was found using a more demanding forced-choice recognition paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is the connection between true and false memories? The differential roles of interitem associations in recall and recognition.

Veridical memory for presented list words and false memory for nonpresented but related items were tested using the Deese/Roediger and McDermott paradigm. The strength and density of preexisting connections among the list words, and from the list words to the critical items, were manipulated. The likelihood of producing false memories in free recall varied with the strength of connections from the list words to the critical items but was inversely related to the density of the interconnections among the list words. In contrast, veridical recall of list words was positively related to the density of the interconnections. A final recognition test showed that both false and veridical memories were more likely when the list words were more densely interconnected. The results are discussed in terms of an associative model of memory, Processing Implicit and Explicit Representations (PIER 2) that describes the influence of implicitly activated preexisting information on memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False perceptions of false memories.

We argue that the preceding comment by J. J. Freyd and D. H. Gleaves (see record 83:25318) on H. L. Roediger and K. B. McDermott's (see record 1995-42833-001) article contests claims that we never made. In this reply, we consider and rebut their arguments, defend our use of the term events, and consider the role of relatedness in producing false memories. In proposing a critical experiment indented to illuminate the debate about memory recovery in therapy, it is Freyd and Gleaves who generalize directly from a laboratory experiment to complicated events in therapy. However, our analysis of their proposed experiment finds it irrelevant to the development of false memories, either inside or outside the lab. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synesthesia and memory: Color congruency, von Restorff, and false memory effects.

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that, although their memory for word lists was superior overall, synesthetes did not exhibit typical color- or semantic-defined von Restorff isolation effects (von Restorff, 1933) compared with control participants. Moreover, our synesthetes exhibited a reduced Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory effect (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Taken as a whole, these findings are consistent with the idea that color-grapheme synesthesia can lead people to place a greater emphasis on item-specific processing and surface form characteristics of words in a list (e.g., the letters that make them up) relative to relational processing and more meaning-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of the various ratings of psychology journals.

Synthesizes the ratings of psychology journals conducted by A. R. Buss and J. R. McDermott (1976), D. Koulack and H. J. Keselman (see record 1976-24649-001), J. R. Levin and T. R. Kratochwill (1976), K. C. Mace and H. D. Warner (1973), and M. J. White and K. G. White (see record 1978-01848-001). Each ratings list provides information of a different sort, and they all underestimate the importance of specialty journals to psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)