Attribution difficulty and memory for attribution-relevant information.

Compared the processing and retrieval of attribution-relevant information when the attributional inference is easy or difficult to make. Ss attributed behavioral events to the person or to the situation, based on several items of context information. Each context sentence implied either the person or the entity as causal agent. When the attributional inference was difficult to make (an equal number of context sentences implied actor and entity as the causal agent), Ss recalled more of the behavioral events, recalled more context sentences, and were less confident in their attributions than when the attributional inference was easy to make (most context sentences implied the same causal agent). Ss also recalled context information that was implicationally incongruent with the majority of the other context sentences with a higher probability than when that same information was implicationally congruent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Beyond the actor's traits: forming impressions of actors, targets, and relationships from social behaviors

Perceivers who observe social behaviors may form impressions not only of actors' traits but also of people as targets and of interpersonal relationships. In Study 1, Ss read about 4 individuals' behaviors under instructions to form actor-, target-, and relationship-based impressions. Ss then read additional behavioral information that they later tried to recall. Ss accurately perceived actor, target, and relationship effects in the presented information, and they better recalled subsequent behaviors that were consistent with all 3 types of impressions. In Study 2, Ss thought of 4 people they knew and judged how much each liked the other 3. These ratings revealed actor, target, and relationship effects as well as individual and dyadic reciprocity. Perceivers can form relatively accurate impressions of people as actors and as targets and accurate impressions of relationships between people, and these impressions influence memory for further behaviors.     

Encoding and retrieval operations in relation to age.

In 2 experiments, the memory performance of a total of 40 young (mean age 18 yrs) and 40 elderly (mean age 75 yrs) Ss was compared in a procedure that allowed testing of the target words twice, first for recognition and then for cued recall. Conventional analyses of the recall and recognition data gave results that echoed previous findings that (a) significant age differences were found in recall but not in recognition, and (b) the recall differences were minimized when the target items were recalled in the context of cues highly related to the target items. In accordance with contemporary theoretical conceptions of memory, a feasible interpretation of these results is that memory loss is due to a retrieval deficit. However, further analyses showed that both young and older Ss failed to recognize many words that they subsequently recalled, suggesting that some caution is necessary in interpreting overall recall and recognition memory performance. Possible differences in encoding and retrieval processes as a function of age are discussed. (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of expectancy timing and outcome consistency in expectancy-guided retrieval.

Two studies investigated how expectancy-timing and expectancy-outcome consistency affect expectancy-guided retrieval. Ss were given a student's grade report for later recall. During the retention interval, Ss' expectancies about the student's future performance (improve vs decline) were manipulated. The expectancy information was presented either at the beginning (T1), halfway through (T2), or at the end of the retention interval (T3). Ss then received outcome information, half consistent and half inconsistent with their expectancy. In both studies, T2 and T3 Ss showed evidence of expectancy-guided retrieval, recalling consistent information accurately but displaying expectancy-congruent distortion of inconsistent information. T1 Ss showed no evidence of expectancy-guided retrieval and accurately recalled both inconsistent and consistent information. Further analyses suggested that T1 Ss appeared to reprocess the original information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive sets, attribution, and social interaction.

Examined relationships among cognitive set variables, attribution, and behavior using 135 female undergraduates. Ss were given either positive-, negative-, or no-set information about the emotional health of a stimulus person prior to observing a videotaped social encounter. After viewing the tape, Ss were administered a free-response attribution measure or a distraction task. All Ss then engaged in actual social interaction with the stimulus person. Results indicate that (a) Ss receiving positive-set information wrote more positively valenced attributions and displayed more positive behavioral responses than did Ss receiving negative- and no-set information. (b) Ss who made attributions exhibited more pronounced behavioral responses as a function of the set manipulation than did those who did not make attributions. It is argued that the latter data reveal the important role of attribution in mediating the effects of set on behavior. Overall data are discussed as reflecting a control motivation in the production of attribution and behavior. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social explanation: The role of timing, set, and recall on subjective likelihood estimates.

471 undergraduates, selected for interest in and knowledge of college football, read information about an upcoming football game and explained a hypothetical victory by 1 team. Some Ss knew of the outcome to be explained prior to reading the information. Others learned of the explanation task only after reading the information. Of these latter Ss, some were given an initial recall set with which to approach the information; others were given an impression set. Results show that explaining a victory by a team biased judgments of what would happen, but only in the before- and the after-recall set conditions. In both cases, judgments were highly correlated with the kinds of facts recalled. In the after-impression set condition, judgments were not biased in the direction of the outcome explained, and the correlations between judgments and what was recalled were small. It is proposed that judgments may be based either on facts available in memory at the time of judgment (for before- and after-recall set conditions) or on the basis of previous summary impressions (after-impression set condition). Implications for issues of encoding vs retrieval effects and the evaluative judgment–recall relationship are discussed. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Time between events as a retrieval cue: Recall and the temporal similarity between the storage and retrieval intervals.

Examined the hypothesis that the time elapsing between events may be a potent cue that accompanies the storage and retrieval of memories. If so, it follows that as the retention interval increases, recall may either increase or decrease, depending on whether the retrieval interval is becoming more similar or less similar to the storage interval. Six experiments employing a runway were conducted, using a total of 102 naive male Holtzman rats as Ss. The target memory to be recalled in acquisition was measured in a subsequent extinction phase in all 6 experiments reported; faster extinction indicated poorer recall in acquisition. Consistent with the present hypothesis, it was found that regardless of whether the retention interval in extinction was long (10–20 min) or short (about 30 sec), resistance to extinction was greater when in acquisition the storage and retrieval intervals were alike (both 30 sec or 10–20 min) rather than different. Results rule out 4 alternative explanations to the present hypothesis: a temporal discrimination view, time tagging the memory of nonreward, generalization decrement occasioned by a change in retention interval from acquisition to extinction, and what was called the last-trial hypothesis. (26 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age and a divided attention task presented during encoding and retrieval on memory.

The present studies were designed to examine age differences in memory when attention was divided during encoding, retrieval, or at both times. In Experiment 1, Ss studied categorized words while performing a number-monitoring task during encoding, retrieval, or at both times. Older Ss' free recall and clustering performance declined more than that of young Ss when attention was divided at encoding, but there was no similar age interaction when divided attention occurred at retrieval. In Experiment 2, the task demands at retrieval were increased by using a fast-paced, cued-recall task. The results remained unchanged from Experiment 1. Again, an age interaction occurred with divided attention at encoding but not at retrieval. These results were unexpected, given the emphasis in the memory-aging literature on increased difficulty of retrieval by older adults. The findings pose difficulties for limited processing resource views of age differences in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding frame-of-reference training: The impact of training on the recall of performance information.

Extends research on the cognitive mechanisms underlying frame-of-reference (FOR) rater training by examining the impact of FOR training on the recall of performance information. It was hypothesized that the shared performance schema fostered by FOR training would serve as the basis for information processing, resulting in better recall for behavioral performance information as well as more accurate ratings of individual ratees. 174 FOR-trained Ss produced more accurate performance ratings, as measured by L. Cronbach's (1955) differential accuracy and differential elevation components, than did 142 control-trained Ss. FOR-trained Ss also recalled more behaviors, representing more performance dimensions, and exhibited less evaluative clustering and a larger relationship between memory and judgment. No differences were found between control and FOR Ss on measures of recognition accuracy. Implications for the evaluative judgment process are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goals in social information processing: The case of anticipated interaction.

Examined the role of anticipated-interaction instructions on memory for and organization of social information. In Study 1, Ss read and recalled information about a prospective partner (i.e., target) on a problem-solving task and about 4 other stimulus people. The results indicated that (a) Ss recalled more items about the target than the others, (b) the target was individuated from the others in memory, and (c) Ss were more accurate on a name–item matching task for the target than for the others. Study 2 compared anticipated interaction with several other processing goals (i.e., memory, impression formation, self-comparison, friend-comparison). Only anticipated-interaction and impression formation instructions led to higher levels of recall and more accurate matching performance for the target than for the others. However, the conditional probability data suggest that anticipated interaction led to higher levels of organization of target information than did any of the other conditions. Discussion considers information processing strategies that are possibly instigated by anticipated-interaction instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval failure in the presence of retrieval cues: A comparison of three age groups.

Cued recall of preteens, young adults, and senior adults (480 Ss) was compared under 7 conditions of practice. (Preteens were 11–12 yrs old; young adults were college students; senior adults had a mean age of 47.5 yrs.) The independent variable was the number of items in the list which began with the same letter of the alphabet; the number of items per alphabetic cue was 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, or 12. The interaction between age and the number of items per cue was not significant, thus permitting the inference that retrieval failure due to the number of items per cue was invariant with age. This result is discussed in terms of cue overload, and the suggestion is offered that cue overload may result from information lost when memory traces carrying the same retrieval information interact and are recoded. Further analyses pursued the nature and locus of the items not recalled by preteens and senior adults, and the judgment is made that the retrieval failure in these 2 age groups, although comparable in quantity, is probably different in quality. Also reported is the finding that, under free-recall conditions, senior adults were able to recall as well as young adults, and this result was related to the greater opportunity for meaningful organization in free recall than in cued-alphabetic recall. (French summary) (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misanthropic person memory.

Three experiments examined memory for behaviors associated with attributional information. A baseline established in Experiment 1, using behaviors unaccompanied by attributions, indicated that expectancy-inconsistent behaviors were better recalled than consistent ones. Experiment 2 linked these same behaviors to dispositional or situational attributions. After reconceptualizing the results, it was shown that negative dispositionally attributed behaviors and positive situationally attributed behaviors were best recalled, suggesting that there is a negativity bias in person memory for behaviors that are accompanied by attributions. Experiment 3, using a different procedure, served as a replication of this misanthropic memory effect and demonstrated that the effect was only slightly altered by reducing the processing time allocated for this task. The findings were discussed in terms of their implications for expectancy-driven information processing and also with regard to the types of impressions people may form from attributed behavioral information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age, gender, and individual differences in memory failure appraisal.

Young adults (22 men and 24 women) and older adults (24 men and 24 women) rated 12 gender-neutral vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very-long-term memory failures. Vignette target persons were young (aged 21–32 yrs) or older (aged 65–75 yrs) men or women. Ss of both age and gender groups used a double standard: Failures of older targets of both genders were rated as signifying greater mental difficulty than failures of young targets; failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and attention. Young Ss judged very-long-term failures more harshly than did older Ss. Ss' objective memory performance, self-rated memory failure frequency, memory failure discomfort, and depression made little difference in their target person ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)