The nature of self-referent encoding: The contributions of elaborative and organizational processes.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 55(6) of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (see record 2008-10705-001). The word case should have been deleted from the first sentence of the left-hand column of page 9. The sentence should read, "Here, self-reference produced recall almost identical to that found for the definition task."] A number of investigators have demonstrated that relating information to the self (self-referent encoding) produces better recall than structural or semantic encoding of the same material. The mechanisms responsible for this self-referent recall advantage, however, still are not well understood. Some have proposed an elaborative processing explanation (e.g., Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977), whereas others have argued for an organizational processing interpretation (e.g., Klein & Kihlstrom, 1986). We present a paradigm for clarifying the respective contributions of these two processes to the recall of material encoded self-referentially. Our findings suggest that both elaborative and organizational processes are involved, but which process plays the larger role in recall depends on the material being judged. We discuss the implications of a dual-processing explanation of self-referent encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences": Correction to Winter and Uleman.

Reports an error in "When are social judgments made? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences" by Laraine Winter and James S. Uleman (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1984[Aug], Vol 47[2], 237-252). There are errors in the labeling of Figure 1 on p. 244. The ordinate percentages should be three times greater than indicated. In addition, the algebraic formula in the note for Table 2 on p. 245 is incorrect. The correct ordinate percentages and the correct algebraic formula are provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-01259-001.) Adapted E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson's (see record 2005-09647-002) encoding specificity paradigm for 2 recall experiments with 153 undergraduates to investigate whether Ss would make trait inferences without intentions or instructions at the encoding stage of processing behavioral information. Under memory instructions only, Ss read sentences describing people performing actions that implied traits. Later, Ss recalled each sentence under 1 of 3 cuing conditions: a dispositional cue (e.g., generous); a strong, nondispositional semantic associate to an important sentence word; or no cue. Results show that recall was best when cued by the disposition words. Ss were unaware of having made trait inferences. Interpreted in terms of encoding specificity, findings indicate that Ss unintentionally made trait inferences at encoding. It is suggested that attributions are made spontaneously, as part of the routine comprehension of social events. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"How automatic are social judgments?" Correction to Winter, Uleman, and Cunniff.

Reports an error in "How automatic are social judgments" by Laraine Winter, James S. Uleman and Cathryn Cunniff (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1985[Oct], Vol 49[4], 904-917). There are errors in the labeling of the ordinates of the figures. The correct labeling is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1986-03720-001.) Adapted the encoding-specificity paradigm developed by D. Thomson and E. Tulving (see record 1971-03487-001) to test 3 operational indicants of automatism (absence of intention, of interference from other mental activity, and of awareness). Recruited for a digit-recall study, 95 undergraduate students read sentences describing actions during the retention interval of either an easy or a difficult digit-recall task. Later, sentence recall was cued by (a) disposition cues, (b) strong semantic associates to the sentence actor, or (c) words representing the gist of the sentence, or (d) sentence recall was not cued. Awareness was measured immediately after the last sentence was read. Disposition-cued recall was higher than (b) or (d) and was unaffected by digit recall difficulty. Awareness of making dispositional inferences was only weakly correlated with disposition-cued recall. Results suggest that disposition inferences occurred at encoding, without intention, without interference by differential drain on processing capacity, and with little awareness. Thus, making dispositional inferences seems to be largely, but not entirely, automatic. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Repeated testing: A technique for assessing the roles of elaborative and organizational processing in the representation of social knowledge.

A new technique for evaluating the roles of elaborative and organizational processing in the representation of social information is described. Although these concepts have found increasing application in theories of social knowledge, most investigations of elaboration and organization have relied on measures that can lead to interpretive ambiguities. Two studies show how analysis of the item-gain and item-loss components of multitrial free recall provides a means for assessing the contributions of elaborative and organizational processing while avoiding many of the problems found with existing measures. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Picture memory: Recognizing added and deleted details.

When people are presented simple and complex pictures and then tested in a same–changed recognition test with a simple or complex form of each, d′ is greater for the simple than the complex picture (Pezdek & Chen, 1982). The results of three experiments confirm the robustness of this "asymmetric confusability effect" and test a model of the processes underlying this effect. According to the model, pictures are schematically encoded such that the memory representation of both simple and complex pictures is similar to the simple form of each. In Experiment 1, a sentence was presented that described the central schema in the picture prior to subjects' viewing each picture. This manipulation exaggerated the asymmetric confusability effect; schematic processing thus underlies the effect. Results of Experiment 2 refute the hypothesis that the effect results from subjects erroneously anticipating a recall test rather than a recognition test. Furthermore, although some of the nonschematic elaborative information in complex pictures is stored in memory, it is difficult to retrieve to verify that something is missing when complex presentation pictures are changed to simple test pictures (Experiment 3). Thus, although people are able to distinguish large sets of old pictures from new distractor pictures, their ability to detect missing elaborative visual details is more limited. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relation of ERP components to complex memory processing

The relation between various ERP components generated during encoding of a word and its subsequent recall were investigated using a "rote" serial-order and an "elaborative" category memory task. Words (flashed separately) were time-locked to EEG recordings from 21 cortical sites. ERP components from the five subjects having the highest recall scores were compared to the five lowest scoring subjects. Results based on the P200 peak amplitude data as well as the N400 and late positive component peak amplitude and latency data suggest that anterior and posterior distributional differences are elicited during encoding of words for rote and elaborative memory tasks. Furthermore, strong individual differences in these patterns were found as a function of task. A tentative argument was made that the obtained anterior and posterior differences may index different word feature selection and encoding processes, which are differentially utilized by high and low recallers.     

"Levels of processing, encoding specificity, elaboration, and CHARM": Correction to Eich.

Reports an error in "Levels of processing, encoding specificity, elaboration, and CHARM" by Janet M. Eich (Psychological Review, 1985[Jan], Vol 92[1], 1-38). Equation 5 on page 11 was incorrect. The correct equation is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1985-13697-001.) A model of cued recall called CHARM (composite holographic associative recall model) is applied to several issues that have been investigated within the depth-of-processing framework. It is shown that, given some straightforward, empirically testable assumptions about the representations of the to-be-remembered items themselves, CHARM can account for the main effect of depth of processing, the problem of the negatives, encoding–specificity interactions, and both facilitative and inhibitory effects of elaboration. The CHARM model is extended to encompass some depth-of-processing effects found in recognition memory. The highly interactive associative, storage, and retrieval mechanisms in the CHARM model are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prepassage questions: The influence of structural importance.

Compared the effects of prepassage questions quizzing information of different structural importance on 104 college students' memory for expository prose passages. In conditions in which information from a high-level passage unit was quizzed by the question, indirect recall (i.e., recall of nonquizzed information) was greater than recall in both low-level and no-question conditions. The low-question condition exceeded the no-question condition only when the analysis was limited to recall of superordinate information from the subtopic cluster containing the quizzed unit. Results indicate that questions that direct Ss' attention to material at the top of the organizational structure facilitate the effective encoding of the central organizational idea within the passage segment. A significant interaction was also found between Ss' Vocabulary Ability and Question Condition. The facilitative effect of high questions declined with increasing vocabulary ability. This interaction is consistent with the view that high- and low-ability people differ in their tendency to use the superordinate organizational structure of the passage and thus in their tendency to benefit from processing aids such as adjunct questions. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-reference versus desirability ratings and memory for traits.

Processing trait adjectives by encoding them in reference to the self usually facilitates recall for those words, compared with other types of semantic processing. On the basis of data from a between-Ss design, T. J. Ferguson et al (see record 1983-24943-001) proposed that this effect occurs because self-referent encoding is equivalent to rating traits for their desirability since both engage affective evaluations. It is argued that self-reference effects are better studied in within-Ss designs so that the context is similar for different types of processing. The present study, with 17 Ss, used a within-Ss design and revealed that memory was better after encoding traits in terms of self-reference than after rating traits in terms of desirability. Thus, in this type of task, self-reference consistently surpasses most forms of semantic processing, although a satisfactory explanation for this effect requires additional research. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of item-specific and relational information on hypermnesic recall.

The role of encoding conditions in producing hypermnesia (increased recall over successive trials) was examined by manipulating the availability of item-specific and relational information at encoding. Our findings demonstrate that encodings providing item-specific information (e.g., elaborative encodings) produce hypermnesia by facilitating the recovery of new items over trials, whereas encodings providing relational information (e.g., organizational encodings) produce hypermnesia by protecting against the loss of previously recalled items. Thus, the effects of encodings on hypermnesia may be understood by considering the type of trace information they make available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elaboration, organization, and the self-reference effect in memory.

Conducted 5 experiments with 272 undergraduates that challenged the interpretation of the self-reference effect that proposes that self-reference produces a more elaborate memory trace than semantic encoding by demonstrating that self-referent and semantic encodings produce virtually identical free recall levels if they are first equated for the amount of organization they encourage. Exp I attempted to replicate the findings of T. B. Rogers et al (see record 1979-25246-001) by comparing self-referent, semantic, and structural encoding tasks and examining cluster differences between these encoding tasks during free recall. The experiments that followed orthogonally varied organization and the encoding task. Overall results lead to the following conclusions: Organization, not elaboration, is responsible for the superior recall performance obtained when information is encoded self-referentially. Organization is not a necessary component of self-referent encoding and can be orthogonally varied within self-referent and semantic encoding tasks. How a single-factor theory based on organization can account for many of the self-referent recall findings reported in the literature is discussed. (92 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Temporal encoding in fear conditioning revealed through associative reflex facilitation": Correction to Lindquist and Brown (2004).

Reports an error in "Temporal Encoding in Fear Conditioning Revealed Through Associative Reflex Facilitation" by Derick H. Lindquist and Thomas H. Brown (Behavioral Neuroscience, 2004[Apr], Vol 118[2], 395-402). The article contained several errors. On page 396, second paragraph, the sentence beginning on line 6 should read as follows: "Having a stable baseline is critical for studies of reflex facilitation because the experimental designs invariably entail repetitive CR testing, if only to achieve reasonable statistical power (see Choi et al., 2001b; Lindquist & Brown, 2004)." On page 400, the first heading should read as follows: "Comparison of New and Old Reflex Facilitation Procedures." On page 400, the first sentence under the abovementioned heading should read as follows: "We decided not to use the original measure of reflex facilitation, developed by J. S. Brown et al. (1951), because it suffers from severe interpretational limitations, elaborated in detail elsewhere (Choi et al., 2001b; Leaton & Cranney, 1990; Lindquist & Brown, 2004)." (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2004-12681-016.) Temporal encoding in Pavlovian fear conditioning was examined through conditional facilitation of the short-latency (Rl) component of the rat eyeblink reflex. Rats were fear-conditioned to a tone conditional stimulus (CS) with either a 3- or 9-s interstimulus interval (ISI) between CS onset and the onset of the grid-shock unconditional stimulus (US). Rl facilitation was tested over 2 days, in counterbalanced order, at a latency of 3 s and 9 s from CS onset. CS-produced Rl facilitation, the conditional response (CR), was 3-4 times larger when the test latency equaled the conditioning ISI. These results, coupled with the known neurophysiology of Rl facilitation, suggest that this CR could disclose differences in the time course of CS-generated output from the amygdala when driven by cortical versus subcortical CS-CR pathways. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"More on recognition and recall in amnesics": Correction to Hirst, Johnson, Phelps, and Volpe (1988).

Reports an error in "More on recognition and recall in amnesics" by William Hirst, Marcia K. Johnson, Elizabeth A. Phelps and Bruce T. Volpe (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1988[Oct], Vol 14[4], 758-762). 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. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1989-16104-001.) 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)     

"Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review": Correction to Marks and Miller.

Reports an error in "Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect: An empirical and theoretical review" by Gary Marks and Norman Miller (Psychological Bulletin, 1987[Jul], Vol 102[1], 72-90). The block quotation on page 73 should be attributed to Crocker (1981). The two sentences immediately preceding this quotation should read: "Friendship groups typically exhibit a high degree of internal similarity with respect to members' beliefs, attitudes, values, and interests. Crocker (1981) reported the following:". (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1987-31255-001.) Ten years of research on the false-consensus effect (Ross, Greene, & House, 1977) and related biases in social perception (e.g., assumed similarity and overestimation of consensus) are examined in the light of four general theoretical perspectives: (a) selective exposure and cognitive availability, (b) salience and focus of attention, (c) logical information processing, and (d) motivational processes. The findings indicate that these biases are influenced by a host of variables and that no single explanation can account for the range of data. Instead, each theoretical perspective appears to have its own domain of application, albeit with some degree of overlap into other domains. The data further suggest that two or more specific mechanisms may operate simultaneously or in concert to produce assumed similarity and false-consensus effects. Discussion focuses on identifying the process or sets of processes operating in specific situations. We identify several gaps in the knowledge of mediating relationships and suggest directions for future research. We also discuss issues related to definition and measurement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Wilhite.

Reports an error in the article, "Prepassage Questions: The Influence of Structural Importance," by Stephen C. Wilhite (Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol 75(2) Apr 1983, 234-244.) An error appears in Table 1 on page 238. Under the heading Within Subject, the fourth entry should read "A × C" (not "A × D").(The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1983-24964-001.) Compared the effects of prepassage questions quizzing information of different structural importance on 104 college students' memory for expository prose passages. In conditions in which information from a high-level passage unit was quizzed by the question, indirect recall (i.e., recall of nonquizzed information) was greater than recall in both low-level and no-question conditions. The low-question condition exceeded the no-question condition only when the analysis was limited to recall of superordinate information from the subtopic cluster containing the quizzed unit. Results indicate that questions that direct Ss' attention to material at the top of the organizational structure facilitate the effective encoding of the central organizational idea within the passage segment. A significant interaction was also found between Ss' Vocabulary Ability and Question Condition. The facilitative effect of high questions declined with increasing vocabulary ability. This interaction is consistent with the view that high- and low-ability people differ in their tendency to use the superordinate organizational structure of the passage and thus in their tendency to benefit from processing aids such as adjunct questions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cue strength as a moderator of the testing effect: The benefits of elaborative retrieval.

The current study explored the elaborative retrieval hypothesis as an explanation for the testing effect: the tendency for a memory test to enhance retention more than restudying. In particular, the retrieval process during testing may activate elaborative information related to the target response, thereby increasing the chances that activation of any of this information will facilitate later retrieval of the target. In a test of this view, participants learned cue–target pairs, which were strongly associated (e.g., Toast: Bread) or weakly associated (e.g., Basket: Bread), through either a cued recall test (Toast: _____) or a restudy opportunity (Toast: Bread). A final test requiring free recall of the targets revealed that tested items were retained better than restudied items, and although strong cues facilitated recall of tested items initially, items recalled from weak cues were retained better over time, such that this advantage was eliminated or reversed at the time of the final test. Restudied items were retained at similar rates on the final test regardless of the strength of the cue–target relationship. These results indicate that the activation of elaborative information—which would occur to a greater extent during testing than restudying—may be one mechanism that underlies the testing effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Goal-directed memory: The role of cognitive control in older adults' emotional memory.

The present study revealed that older adults recruit cognitive control processes to strengthen positive and diminish negative information in memory. In Experiment 1, older adults engaged in more elaborative processing when retrieving positive memories than they did when retrieving negative memories. In Experiment 2, older adults who did well on tasks involving cognitive control were more likely than those doing poorly to favor positive pictures in memory. In Experiment 3, older adults who were distracted during memory encoding no longer favored positive over negative pictures in their later recall, revealing that older adults use cognitive resources to implement emotional goals during encoding. In contrast, younger adults showed no signs of using cognitive control to make their memories more positive, indicating that, for them, emotion regulation goals are not chronically activated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognizing: The judgment of previous occurrence.

Several suggestions for a class of theories of recognition memory have been proposed during the past decade. These models address predictions about judgments of prior occurrence of an event, not the identification of what it is. The history and current status of one of these models is discussed. The model postulates the detection of familiarity and the utilization of retrieval mechanisms as additive and separate processes. The phenomenal experience of familiarity is assigned to intraevent organizational integrative processes; retrieval depends on interevent elaborative processes. Other current theoretical options are described, and relevant supportive data from the literature are reviewed. New tests of the model involving both free recall and word pair paradigms are presented. The dual process model is extended to the word frequency effect and to the recognition difficulties of amnesic patients. (68 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Recall of childhood trauma: A prospective study of women's memories of child sexual abuse": Correction.

Reports an error the original article by L. Meyer Williams (Journal of Consulting and Counseling Psychology, 1994[Dec], 62[6], 1167–2176). On page 1172, the sentence in line 9 should read "There is a tendency for the women who were subjected to more force to recall the abuse.' (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1995-21692-001). One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question "Do people actually forget traumatic events such as child sexual abuse, and if so, how common is such forgetting?' A large proportion of the women (38%) did not recall the abuse that had been reported 17 years earlier. Women who were younger at the time of the abuse and those who were molested by someone they knew were more likely to have no recall of the abuse. The implications for research and practice are discussed. Long periods with no memory of abuse should not be regarded as evidence that the abuse did not occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)