Idiodynamic sets as determinants of children's false recognition errors.

Reports 2 experiments in which the object-referent and dimension-referent response sets identified from the word association data of children were used to investigate the basis for false recognition errors by kindergartners and by 2nd and 6th grade Ss (n = 32 each). Word association data from these Ss were consistent with previous findings, validating the developmental changes in the dominant dimensions of associative organization. The false recognition data involving object-referent associations paralleled the word association data, but the results for dimension-referent associations did not. Instead, kindergartners made more errors to dimension-referent than to object-referent associates, and there was a significant decrease in the number of errors to both types of associates with increasing age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

How level of processing really influences awareness in recognition memory.

Examined the effect of level of processing on awareness in recognition memory, in 3 experiments. In yes/no and 2-alternative forced-choice recognition tests, 64 young adults in UK reported 1 of 3 states of awareness when selecting each target: Remembering, knowing, or guessing. In Exps 1 and 2, Ss produced associates of the target words and recalled them after varying intervals of time. In Exp 3, the level of processing manipulation was replaced by a generate/read manipulation. In Exps 1 and 2, level of processing influenced remember responses but not know responses. In Exp 3, generating vs reading similarly influenced remember but not know responses. In each experiment, when Ss reported that they were guessing they showed no ability to discriminate targets from lures. Results show that remember/know findings generalize from yes/no to 2-alternative forced-choice recognition and that knowing is dissociable from guessing. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depth of processing and interference effects in the learning and remembering of sentences.

In 2 experiments with a total of 140 undergraduates, Ss who completed the last words of sentences they read learned more than Ss who simply read whole sentences. This facilitation was observed even with sentences that were almost always completed with the wrong words. However, proactive interference attributable to acquisition errors appeared on recall and recognition tests administered after a 1-wk interval. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The conscious control of thematic projection.

Conducted 2 experiments with undergraduate Ss (N = 118). In Session 1 of Exp I, one group was instructed to be honest in responding to the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), while another group was instructed to fake high need for achievement. In Session 2, instructions for the 2 groups were reversed. Results indicate that Ss could successfully fake the possession of need for achievement. In Session 1 of Exp II, all Ss were instructed to respond honestly to the TAT. In Session 2, Ss were instructed either to be honest again or to inhibit projections revealing their personalities. Test-retest reliability was lower for Ss who had faked responses in the 2nd session than for Ss who had been honest. In neither experiment were judges able to identify Ss who were faking. The findings that Ss can consciously introduce false projections and inhibit true projections have implications for the theory of projection (i.e., persons unconsciously project unconscious traits) and for the use of projective techniques for personality assessment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the variability of word associates.

15 Ss who scored high on the Taylor MA scale and 15 Ss who scored low on the MA scale were given a word associate task. The highly anxious Ss tended to have sets of word associates lower in intersubject variability than the nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are low in variability. Highly anxious Ss tended to give sets of word associates higher in intersubject variability than nonanxious Ss for stimulus words that elicited sets of word associates that are high in intersubject variability. A 2nd experiment reports data indicating a relationship between inter- and intrasubject variability of word associates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the next-in-line effect.

Studied the relationship between anxiety and the next-in-line effect in recall. Within each of 2 groups of 24 male and female university students, half the group took turns in reading a single word until an entire list of words had been read, and the other half merely listened. On a 2nd list of words the role of Ss was reversed. Compared to the listen control condition, the recall of Ss in the read condition was poorest for words read a short time before their own performance. This next-in-line effect was no greater for Ss classified on the basis of the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale as being highly anxious than for low-anxiety Ss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists.

Two experiments (modeled after J. Deese's 1959 study) revealed remarkable levels of false recall and false recognition in a list learning paradigm. In Exp 1, Ss studied lists of 12 words (e.g., bed, rest, awake); each list was composed of associates of 1 nonpresented word (e.g., sleep). On immediate free recall tests, the nonpresented associates were recalled 40% of the time and were later recognized with high confidence. In Exp 2, a false recall rate of 55% was obtained with an expanded set of lists, and on a later recognition test, Ss produced false alarms to these items at a rate comparable to the hit rate. The act of recall enhanced later remembering of both studied and nonstudied material. The results reveal a powerful illusion of memory: People remember events that never happened. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mediation and associative facilitation in neurotic, psychotic, and normal subjects.

The present investigation is a replication of previous work (see 30: 555; 27: 4925) utilizing Veterans Administration medical and psychiatric patients instead of college Ss. The previous findings indicated that associative relationship facilitates verbal learning. Ss learned 2 sets of syllable-word paired associates; ? of the pairs on the 2nd list had response terms which were associates of their responses to words on the 1st list. Although the responses of all Ss showed the effects of associative facilitation, this was more true for nonpsychotics. The results are discussed in terms of understanding the thinking of schizophrenics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical ambiguity and children's word recognition.

Conducted 2 experiments to examine the word recognition processes of 2nd, 4th, and 6th graders. In Exp I, 72 Ss named target words that were primed by words that had more than 1 meaning. Targets were related either to the more or less frequent sense of the ambiguous prime or were unrelated to it. Findings indicate that older Ss were more likely than younger Ss to restrict processing of ambiguous words to the most frequent meaning. While younger Ss showed approximately equal facilitation for words related to either meaning, regardless of each one's relative frequency, 6th graders apparently retrieved only the most frequent meaning. Exp II, with 36 Ss, was similar to Exp I but included neutral primes and varied the interval between presentation of prime and target. Results show that all groups showed automatic retrieval of both meanings of the ambiguous word. For 6th graders, however, this retrieval was followed by a 2nd stage, in which attention was allocated to the more frequent meaning, maintaining it, while the less frequent meaning was inhibited. Overall data indicate that older children use meaning frequency to narrow the amount of information kept active following word recognition. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sources of the attentional blink during rapid serial visual presentation: perceptual interference and retrieval competition

Observers watched for 1 or 2 colored words as targets presented in lists of distractor strings (10 items/s). Identification of 1 target (T1) temporarily reduced the accuracy of reporting a 2nd target (T2). This attentional blink (AB) effect was most pronounced when T1 and T2 occurred close together in time. Use of recognition tests (instead of recall) improved performance but did not eliminate the AB effect. The AB effect was found with both word and nonword distractors, a smaller AB effect was found with consonant string distractors, and the AB effect was substantially attenuated with strings of unfamiliar characters (a false font). Analyses of errors indicated that the 2nd target is frequently replaced or corrupted by the following distractor during the blink. The AB effect appears to result from both attentional and mnemonic processes.     

When true recognition suppresses false recognition: evidence from amnesic patients

False recognition occurs when people mistakenly claim that a novel item is familiar. After studying lists of semantically related words, healthy controls show extraordinarily high levels of false recognition to nonstudied lures that are semantic associates of study list words. In previous experiments, we found that both Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff amnesic patients show reduced levels of false recognition to semantic associates, implying that the medial temporal/diencephalic structures that are damaged in amnesic patients are involved in the encoding and/or retrieval of information that underlies false recognition. These data contrast with earlier results indicating greater false recognition in Korsakoff amnesics than in control subjects. The present experiment tests the hypothesis that greater or lesser false recognition of semantic associates in amnesic patients, relative to normal controls, can be demonstrated by creating conditions that are more or less conducive to allowing true recognition to suppress false recognition. With repeated presentation and testing of lists of semantic associates, control subjects and both Korsakoff and non-Korsakoff amnesics showed increasing levels of true recognition across trials. However, control subjects exhibited decreasing levels of false recognition across trials, whereas Korsakoff amnesic patients showed increases across trials and non-Korsakoff amnesics showed a fluctuating pattern. Consideration of signal detection analyses and differences between the two types of amnesic patients provides insight into how mechanisms of veridical episodic memory can be used to suppress false recognition.     

Visual masking by homonyms.

Words masked by their own homophones are more disrupted than words masked by unrelated control words. Conversely, words masked by their own associates are less disrupted than unrelated control words. This indicates that the association effect in masking cannot be due to response bias. A model to account for these results is proposed and was tested on 15 undergraduates. Results suggest that the facilitatory effect of masking by associates occurs in the perception of the target word, but the inhibitory effect of masking by homophones occurs in the attempted response or vocalization of the target words by the Ss. (French summary) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit processing in the cued recall of young and old adults.

Reports 2 cued recall experiments in which younger and older Ss studied target words varying in number of preexperimental associates. In Exp 1, targets were studied in either the absence or presence of meaning-related context cues, with recall always prompted by the cues. In the absence of context, words with smaller sets of associates were easier to recall than those with larger sets, but this effect was reduced for older Ss. The presence of a study context cue facilitated recall and eliminated the effect of associative set size for both ages. In Exp 2, targets were studied and tested in the presence of unrelated words. In this situation, words with smaller sets of associates were less likely to be recalled than words with larger sets; again the effect was reduced for older Ss. The results are interpreted as an age decrement in processing implicitly activated information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influences of intentional and unintentional forgetting on false memories.

In 2 experiments, we examined the interplay of 2 types of memory errors: forgetting and false memory--errors of omission and commission, respectively. We examined the effects of 2 manipulations known to inhibit retrieval of studied words--directed forgetting and part--list cuing--on the false recall of an unstudied "critical" word following study of its 15 strongest associates. Participants cued to forget the 1st of 2nd studied lists before studying the 2nd recalled fewer List 1 words but intruded the missing critical word more often than did participants cued to remember both lists. By contrast, providing some studied words as cues during recall reduced both recall of the remaining studied words and intrusions of the critical word. The results suggest that forgetting can increase or decrease false memories, depending on whether such forgetting reflects impaired access to an entire episode or retrieval competition among elements of an episode. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for the use of assembled phonology in accessing the meaning of printed words.

The role of assembled phonology in visual word recognition was investigated using a task in which participants judged whether 2 words (e.g., PILLOW–BEAD) were semantically related. Of primary interest was whether it would be more difficult to respond "no" to "false homophones" (e.g., BEAD) of words (BED) that are semantically related to target words than to orthographic controls (BEND). (BEAD is a false homophone of BED because –EAD can be pronounced /εd/.) In Experiment 1, there was an interference effect in the response time data, but not in the error data. These results were replicated in a 2nd experiment in which a parafoveal preview was provided for the 2nd word of the pair. A 3rd experiment ruled out explanations of the false homophone effect in terms of inconsistency in spelling-to-sound mappings or inadequate spelling knowledge. It is argued that assembled phonological representations activate meaning in visual word recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relations among reading ability, reading mode, and recognition memory.

Based on the Profiles Reading Test, 32 2nd graders were identified as poor and 32 as good readers. Ss were then tested individually for sentence memory. Results indicate that (a) the highest percentage of recognition errors occurred for true inference sentences, (b) good readers showed superior performance on false inference and false premise sentences, and (c) silent readers made more errors than oral readers. (French summary) (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

General and context-specific encoding: A life-span development study.

Examined general and context-specific encoding across the life span, using the same procedure for all ages. Ss included 2nd- and 5th-grade schoolchildren, college students, and individuals aged 65+ yrs. Ss were asked to generate a personal word association to each of 24 target items prior to a surprise cued-recall test. The cues were either the S-generated associates or category labels. Ss at all ages recalled more associate-cued than category-cued items. Using the college students' performance as a baseline, 2nd graders performed equally poorly with both types of cues; 5th graders performed relatively more poorly with category than associate cues; and the older Ss performed relatively more poorly with associate than with category cues. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of out-group cues in determining social identity.

Examined the role of out-group cues in determining social identity and guiding behavior in 2 experiments with 131 undergraduates. In Exp I, Ss were exposed to a cue either of an in-group (Ss' college), a relevant out-group (a rival college), or an irrelevant out-group (a baseball team). Ss examined a list of words and were later asked to recognize those they had seen from a larger list in which words related to the 3 groups were embedded. Results indicate that Ss made more false recognitions of in-group related words when a relevant out-group was salient than when an irrelevant out-group was salient. Exp II tested a behavioral implication of Exp I: Out-group salience increases adherence to an in-group norm. In the 1st phase of Exp II, Ss were divided into 2 groups and deliberated 2 civil suits. Ss' in-group favored the plaintiffs for both cases. Ss were divided into new groups for the 2nd phase, and the same procedure was followed. This time, however, the in-group favored the defendants. In the 3rd phase, Ss were exposed to a cue either of the out-group in Phase 1 or Phase 2. Ss' judgments for 2 new cases were biased in the direction of the norm of the in-group that was associated with the salient out-group. Ss favored the plaintiff (or defendant) when the 1st (or 2nd) out-group was salient. (14 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and feature-specific priming of familiar and novel stimuli.

English and Turkish words in 2 fonts were presented to young and elderly Ss, and memory was assessed directly with recognition tests and indirectly with reading time. Young and elderly Ss showed repetition priming on English words and showed larger priming effects when the study and test fonts were the same rather than different. Elderly Ss were impaired, however, on recognition of feature-specific information in comparison with young Ss. When Turkish words were shown, only young Ss evidenced priming, despite recognition performance above chance for both young and elderly Ss. A 2nd experiment replicated these findings with different materials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)