Phenomenal characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined autobiographical events.

Two studies explored potential bases for reality monitoring (M. K. Johnson and C. L. Raye [see PA, Vol 65:6694]) of naturally occurring autobiographical events. In Study 1, subjects rated phenomenal characteristics of recent and childhood memories. Compared with imagined events, perceived events were given higher ratings on several characteristics, including perceptual information, contextual information, and supporting memories. This was especially true for recent memories. In Study 2, subjects described how they knew autobiographical events had (or had not) happened. For perceived events, subjects were likely to mention perceptual and contextual details of the memory and to refer to other supporting memories. For imagined events, subjects were likely to engage in reasoning based on prior knowledge. The results are consistent with the idea that reality monitoring draws on differences in qualitative characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined events (Johnson & Raye, 1981) and augment findings from more controlled laboratory studies of complex events (A. G. Suengas and M. K. Johnson [see PA, Vol 76:14478]; M. K. Johnson and A. G. Suengas, in press). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Qualitative effects of rehearsal on memories for perceived and imagined complex events.

Three experiments explored the effects of rehearsal and the passage of time on qualitative characteristics of memories for perceived and imagined complex events. Subjects thought or talked about events, focusing on either the perceptual (e.g., colors, sounds) or apperceptive (e.g., thoughts, feelings) aspects of the events (Experiment 1). Thinking about apperceptive aspects of events decreased the salience of context and sensory characteristics of memories and made memories for perceived and imagined events seem more similar in the subjective amounts of thoughts and feelings included in the memories. When the aspects of events subjects thought about were unspecified, thinking about events primarily affected rated clarity (Experiment 2). The clarity of imagined events was more affected than was the clarity of perceived events by whether the memories had been rated previously (Experiments 1 & 3). Over 24 hrs, clarity and sensory ratings decreased more for imagined than for perceived events (Experiment 3). Implications for reality monitoring (M. K. Johnson and C. L. Raye [see PA, Vol 65:6694]) are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of memory strength in reality monitoring decisions: evidence from source attribution biases

Reality monitoring of verbal memories was compared with decisions about pictorial memories in this study. Experiment 1 showed an advantage in memory for imagined over perceived words and a bias to respond "perceived" on false alarms. Experiment 2 showed the opposite pattern: an advantage in memory for perceived pictures and a bias to respond "imagined" on false alarms. Participants attribute false alarms to whichever class of memories has the weakest trace strengths. The relative strength of memories of imagined and perceived objects was manipulated in Experiments 3 and 4, yielding changes in source attribution biases that were predicted by the strength heuristic. All 4 experiments generalize the mirror effect (an inverse relationship between patterns of hits and false alarms commonly found on recognition tests) to reality monitoring decisions. Results suggest that under some conditions differences between the strength of memories for perceived and imagined events, rather than differences in qualitative characteristics, are used to infer memory source.     

Cross-modal source monitoring confusions between perceived and imagined events.

Two experiments tested the prediction based on the source monitoring framework that imagination is most likely to lead to false memories when related perceived events have occurred. Consistent with this, people were more likely to falsely remember seeing events when the events had been both imagined as seen and actually heard than when they were just heard, just visually imagined, or imagined both visually and auditorily. Furthermore, when people considered potential sources for memories or more carefully evaluated features of remembered events, source errors were reduced. On average, misattributed ("false") memories differed in phenomenal qualities from true memories. Taken together, these findings show that as different qualities of mental experience flexibly enter into source attributions, qualities derived from related perceptual events are particularly likely to lead to false claims that imagined events were seen, even when the event involves a primary modality (auditory) different from the target event (visual). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time-course studies of reality monitoring and recognition.

Two studies used a response–signal procedure to explore the time course of source-monitoring judgments about perceived and imagined events. Ss judged whether probe words corresponded to pictures that had previously been seen or imagined or were new. Old–new recognition accuracy grew to significant levels before reality-monitoring accuracy, supporting the notion that source monitoring requires more of or a different type of information that does old–new recognition. Also, source identification accuracy developed more quickly for imagined items than for perceived items. This difference in time-course functions is consistent with the idea that memories for perceived and imagined events differ in the relative amounts of various types of information they include (M. K. Johnson and C. L. Raye; see record 1981-06694-001) and that these different types of information may revive or become available to source attribution mechanisms at different rates or may be differentially salient during reality monitoring. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comments on "Measuring memory for source: Some theoretical assumptions and technical limitations"

Three studies showed that information used in determining a target memory's source may be derived not only from the target event itself, but also from other nontarget events or memories. Subjects were more likely to claim that an imagined object was perceived when it physically resembled or was conceptually related to another specific item that was actually perceived, relative to when there was no physical resemblance or semantic relation. Furthermore, error rates for imagined items increased with the number of perceived items that they resembled. However, subjects' orienting task at encoding (perceptually biased or perceptually plus conceptually biased) did not systematically affect error rates. The results indicate that reality monitoring decisions about a target object are influenced by similar physical and conceptual information that was derived from other objects.     

Age-related deficits in reality monitoring of action memories.

The authors describe 3 theoretical accounts of age-related increases in falsely remembering that imagined actions were performed (A. K. Thomas & J. B. Bulevich, 2006). To investigate these accounts and further explore age-related changes in reality monitoring of action memories, the authors used a new paradigm in which actions were (a) imagined only, (b) actually performed, or (c) both imagined and performed. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to misremember the source of imagined-only actions, with older adults more often specifying that the action was imagined and also that it was performed. For both age groups, illusions that the actions were only performed decreased as repetitions of the imagined-only events increased. These patterns suggest that both older and younger adults use qualitative characteristics when making reality-monitoring judgments and that repeated imagination produces richer records of both sensory details and cognitive operations. However, sensory information derived from imagination appears to be more similar to that derived from performance for older adults than for younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in source forgetting: Effects on reality monitoring and on eyewitness testimony.

Age differences in memory for the source of memories were investigated using two different experimental paradigms. Experiment 1 used a reality monitoring paradigm. A series of actions were either performed, imagined, or watched, and subjects were later tested for their ability to recognize the actions and identify their origins. Elderly subjects made more false positive responses than did young subjects, and they made more source confusion errors, attributing actions to the wrong sources. Both new and imagined actions were most often misclassified as watched. Experiment 2 used an eyewitness testimony paradigm. After watching a film, subjects read a written version of the story. A recognition test showed that elderly subjects were more often misled by false information in the story than were the younger subjects, and were more confident that their erroneous responses were correct. The findings suggest that a decline in memory for sources may diminish the accuracy of elderly witnesses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reality monitoring.

People remember information from 2 basic sources: external (perceptual processes) and internal (processes such as reasoning, imagination, and thought). Of particular interest are the processes people use in deciding whether information initially had an external or an internal source, i.e., "reality monitoring." A working model of reality monitoring is proposed to account for both discrimination and confusion between memories for thoughts and memories for perceptions. Examples of questions the model addresses are: What types of information are more likely to be represented in memories of external events than in memories of internal events?; What assumptions do individuals have about their memory for their thoughts compared to their memory for their perceptions?; and How accurate are these assumptions? Research that demonstrates the usefulness of the model is summarized. (100 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reality Monitoring in Adults Reporting Repressed, Recovered, or Continuous Memories of Childhood Sexual Abuse.

People who report either repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may have deficits in reality monitoring--the process whereby one discriminates memories of percepts from memories of images. Using signal detection methods, the authors found that adults reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA were less able to discriminate between words they had seen from words they had imagined seeing than were adults reporting either never having forgotten their CSA or adults reporting no history of CSA. Relative deficits in the ability to discriminate percepts from images (i.e., low d') were apparent on only some tests. The groups did not differ in their criterion--response bias--for affirming having seen versus imagined stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dreams and reality monitoring.

Exp I tested the counterintuitive prediction that memories for one's own dreams should not be particularly easy to discriminate from memories for someone else's dreams. 10 pairs of undergraduate and graduate students reported dreams to each other that they had either dreamed, read, or made up the night before. On a test requiring them to discriminate events they had reported from those reported by their partner, Ss had more difficulty with real dreams than with dreams they read or made up. Data from 10 new pairs of Ss in Exp II provide evidence that real dreams do not simply produce overall weaker memories; the deficit for dreams was eliminated with more time to respond and with more detailed cues. In addition, Ss' ratings of various characteristics of their memories (e.g., vividness, personal relevance) indicated that dreams were not generally weaker or impoverished. Results are interpreted within the framework for reality monitoring described by M. K. Johnson and C. L. Raye (1981). A comparison of recognition and recall indicated that dreams may leave persisting memories that are difficult to access via free recall. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stereotypic biases in social decision making and memory: Testing process models of stereotype use.

Two information-processing mechanisms that could potentially contribute to judgmental discrimination against the members of stereotyped social groups were examined in 2 experiments, using a mock juror decision-making task. Both postulated mechanisms involve biased processing of judgment-relevant evidence. The interpretation hypothesis asserts that the activation of stereotypic concepts influences the perceived probative implications of other evidence. The selective processing hypothesis asserts that stereotype-consistent evidence is processed more extensively than is inconsistent evidence. Judgment and memory data from the 1st experiment supported the general notion that stereotype-based discrimination emerges from biased evidence processing. The specific pattern of results supported selective processing rather than interpretation biases as the critical process underlying observed judgmental discrimination. The 2nd experiment corroborated this conclusion by showing that a manipulation that prevents selective processing of the evidence effectively eliminated biases in judgments and recall pertaining to stereotyped targets. Implications for a general understanding of stereotyping and discrimination are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and source monitoring.

This experiment was designed to examine the ability of older and younger adults to remember the source of information. Three types of source monitoring tasks were investigated: discriminating between externally derived and internally generated memories, discriminating between two types of internally generated memories, and discriminating between two types of externally derived memories. Relative to younger adults, older adults had more difficulty discriminating between memories of the same class (external–external and internal–internal), but they did not have more difficulty discriminating between memories of different classes (external–internal). These findings indicate that the age-related difficulty in remembering the source of information should not be characterized as a general deficit. Factors that may account for age deficits in source monitoring are discussed drawing upon the Johnson–Raye (1981) reality monitoring framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The gradual threshold model of ambivalence: relating the positive and negative bases of attitudes to subjective ambivalence

Eighty subjects viewed and visually imagined upright or rotated alphanumeric characters and later judged whether test characters were previously seen or imagined (reality monitoring). Identification and test characters were presented verbally or visually. When characters were identified and tested verbally, source confusions (misjudging a seen character as "imagined" and vice-versa) were infrequent and were comparable for rotated and upright characters. When characters were identified and tested visually, source confusions were more frequent and were influenced by character rotation. Memories for imagined characters were especially susceptible to source confusion. Also source confusions for seen characters increased when characters were rotated. These results are consistent with the proposal that increasing sensory similarity between perceived and imagined items increases source confusion and that perceived rotation generates cognitive operations similar to those generated when the subject imagines a character rotated.     

Repression of emotionally tagged memories: The architecture of less complex emotions.

We asked subjects to recall memories of events that evoked feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and embarrassment. These memories evoked patterns of dominant and nondominant emotions. The dominant emotions evoked by the recalled events were no less intense for repressors than nonrepressors, but repressors' patterns of nondominant emotions were less intense than those of nonrepressors. The data suggested that for repressors the associative network of negative emotional memories may be more discrete and less complex than that for nonrepressors. The pattern of multivariate effects suggests that this repressive memorial architecture may serve the motive of isolating fear-associated memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Illusory correlation and the maintenance of stereotypic beliefs.

Investigated the role of cognitive processes in the maintenance of social stereotypes in 3 experiments with 73 male and 77 female high school and undergraduate students and adults. Ss read sets of sentences in which the members of different occupational groups were described by pairs of trait adjectives. In 2 experiments, the trait adjectives were either consistent (CT) with stereotypic beliefs about one of the occupational groups or unrelated to the group's stereotype; in the 3rd study, traits were either inconsistent (ICT) with or unrelated to a group's stereotype. Different correlational relationships between the traits and occupational groups were built into the sets of sentences, but, in each case, the CT or ICT traits described the members of each occupational group as often as matched traits unrelated to the groups' stereotypes. Ss estimated how frequently each of the trait adjectives had described members of each of the occupational groups. Each study revealed systematic biases in the Ss' judgments so that the perceived correlation between traits and occupations was more congruent with existing stereotypic beliefs than the actual correlation. Findings indicate a cognitive bias in the processing of new information about social groups that is mediated by existing stereotypes and that provides a basis for explaining the persistence of stereotypes in the absence of confirming evidence. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pseudomemory in hypnotized and task-motivated subjects.

Highly hypnotizable hypnotized (HYP; n?=?16) and task motivated (TM; n?=?13) Ss received pseudomemory suggestions (M. T. Orne, 1979). TM Ss reported being more awake and motivated than did HYP Ss and were more likely to pass the target noise suggestion. However, 69% of Ss in both conditions who passed the noise suggestion reported pseudomemories. Pseudomemory rate (69% for HYP Ss and 46% for TM Ss) was not reduced by informing Ss that they could distinguish reality and fantasy in a state of deep concentration. At final inquiry, after deep concentration, pseudomemories remained stable (75% for HYP Ss and 54% for TM Ss). As predicted, HYP Ss reported more unsuggested noises and more pseudomemories of novel noises than did TM Ss. Ss who reported pseudomemories were more confident in the accuracy of their memories than were Ss who reported that the suggested noises were imagined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition memory in depression.

Research suggests that the poor performance of depressed patients on memory tests reflects cautious response criteria rather than reduced accessibility of memories. Studies of recognition memory enable this issue to be addressed. The present experiment provides the first clear demonstration of a deficit in recognition memory in depression that is not explicable in terms of response bias. A subsidiary concern was to examine the effect of requiring subjects to vocalize words on presentation. This had no significant effects on "hits," but it interacted with depression on "false alarms," suggesting that discrepant claims in the literature regarding the effects of depression on false alarms may be attributable to procedural variations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for motor simulation in imagined locomotion.

A series of experiments examined the role of the motor system in imagined movement, finding a strong relationship between imagined walking performance and the biomechanical information available during actual walking. Experiments 1 through 4 established the finding that real and imagined locomotion differ in absolute walking time. We then tested whether executed actions could provide a basis for imagined walking rate using 2 approaches. Experiments 5 and 6 used a perceptual-motor recalibration paradigm, finding that after physically walking in a treadmill virtual reality environment, actors recalibrated the time to imagine walking to a previously viewed target. This finding mirrors previous perceptual-motor recalibration work measuring actual walking to previously viewed targets. Experiments 7 and 8 used a dual-task paradigm in which actions performed concurrently with imagined walking increased the similarity between real and imagined walking time, but only when they were biomechanically consistent with the act of walking. The striking influence of biomechanical information on imagined locomotion provides evidence for shared motor systems in imagined and executed movements and is also directly relevant to the mechanisms involved in egocentric spatial updating of environmental layout. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)