Source-monitoring training facilitates preschoolers' eyewitness memory performance.

Preschool children are more susceptible to misleading postevent information than are older children and adults. One reason for young children's suggestibility is their failure to monitor the source of their memories, as in, for example, discriminating whether an event was seen live versus on television. The authors investigated whether source-monitoring training would decrease preschoolers' suggestibility. Thirty-six 3-4-year-olds observed target live and video events and were then given source-monitoring or recognition (control) training on nontarget events. Following training, all children answered 24 misleading and nonmisleading target-event questions. Children given source-monitoring training were more accurate than control group children in response to misleading and nonmisleading yes-no questions and in response to nonmisleading, open-ended questions. Implications for strategy development, dual representation, and child witness interviewing are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective in aging.

In this study, the authors examined the effects of aging on autobiographical memory in 180 participants by means of a new method designed to assess across 5 lifetime periods the nature of memories-that is, specificity and spontaneity--and the phenomenal experience of remembering--that is, self-perspective and autonoetic consciousness--via the field/observer and remember/know paradigms respectively. Age-related differences were found for the specificity and spontaneity of memories and the phenomenal experience of remembering. There was an increase in observer and know responses with age, but a decrease in field and remember responses and in the ability to justify them by recalling sensory-perceptive, affective, or spatiotemporal specific details. This pattern confirms the existence of a semantic-episodic dissociation in autobiographical memory in aging. Moreover, the data support the view that older participants can subjectively "travel back in time" to relive personal events in the most distant past better than those in the recent past. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory in the euthymic phase of recurrent depression.

The authors investigated autobiographical memory specificity in subjects who formerly had depression. In 122 euthymic patients with at least two previous major depressive episodes, memory specificity was significantly impaired compared to matched control participants but not related to residual symptoms and illness characteristics, was not differentially affected by cognitive therapy, and was also not predictive of relapse/recurrence during the 2-year follow-up. However, memory specificity was associated with age, education, and immediate and delayed memory recall. The results suggest that memory specificity may reflect a global cognitive impairment that remains in patients who (formerly) had depression but does not constitute a trait marker for vulnerability for relapse/recurrence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory specificity and emotional disorder.

The authors review research showing that when recalling autobiographical events, many emotionally disturbed patients summarize categories of events rather than retrieving a single episode. The mechanisms underlying such overgeneral memory are examined, with a focus on M. A. Conway and C. W. Pleydell-Pearce's (2000) hierarchical search model of personal event retrieval. An elaboration of this model is proposed to account for overgeneral memory, focusing on how memory search can be affected by (a) capture and rumination processes, when mnemonic information used in retrieval activates ruminative thinking; (b) functional avoidance, when episodic material threatens to cause affective disturbance; and (c) impairment in executive capacity and control that limits an individual's ability to remain focused on retrieval in the face of distraction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific study of witness memory: Implications for public and legal policy.

The legal system relies heavily on human memory. Crime investigations, criminal trials, and many civil trials depend on memory to reconstruct critical events from the past. Over the last 20 years or so, psychologists have developed a specific research literature on witness testimony. This research has been directed primarily at eyewitnesses, such as victims or bystanders to a criminal event. This issue of Psychology, Public Policy, and Law is devoted to the potential contributions of the scientific study of witness testimony to public policy and legal issues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Multiple confidence estimates as indices of eyewitness memory.

Eyewitness identification decisions are vulnerable to various influences on witnesses' decision criteria that contribute to false identifications of innocent suspects and failures to choose perpetrators. An alternative procedure using confidence estimates to assess the degree of match between novel and previously viewed faces was investigated. Classification algorithms were applied to participants' confidence data to determine when a confidence value or pattern of confidence values indicated a positive response. Experiment 1 compared confidence group classification accuracy with a binary decision control group's accuracy on a standard old-new face recognition task and found superior accuracy for the confidence group for target-absent trials but not for target-present trials. Experiment 2 used a face mini-lineup task and found reduced target-present accuracy offset by large gains in target-absent accuracy. Using a standard lineup paradigm, Experiments 3 and 4 also found improved classification accuracy for target-absent lineups and, with a more sophisticated algorithm, for target-present lineups. This demonstrates the accessibility of evidence for recognition memory decisions and points to a more sensitive index of memory quality than is afforded by binary decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory phenomenology and content mediate attachment style and psychological distress.

In 2 studies, the present research tested the phenomenology and content of autobiographical memory as distinct mediators between attachment avoidance and anxiety and depressive symptoms. In Study 1, participants (N = 454) completed measures of attachment and depressive symptoms in 1 session and retrieved and rated 2 self-defining memories of romantic relationships in a separate session. In Study 2, participants (N = 534) were primed with attachment security, attachment insecurity, or a control prime and then retrieved and rated a self-defining relationship memory. Memory phenomenology, specifically memory coherence and emotional intensity, mediated the association between attachment avoidance and depressive symptoms, whereas the negative affective content of the memory mediated the association between attachment anxiety and depressive symptoms. Priming attachment security led to retrieval of a more coherent relationship memory, whereas insecurity led to the retrieval of a more incoherent relationship memory. Discussion focuses on the construction and recollection of memories as underlying mechanisms of adult attachment and psychological distress, the importance of memory coherence, and the implications for counseling research and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory specificity and affect regulation: An experimental approach.

This study investigated J. M. G. Williams's (1996) affect-regulation hypothesis that level of specificity of autobiographical memory (AM) is used to minimize negative affect. It was found that a negative event leads to more reports of subjective stress in high- as compared with low-specific participants. Also, afterward, high-specific participants rated their unprompted memories for the event as more unpleasant. The results indicate that, relative to high specificity, being less specific in the retrieval of AMs is associated with less affective impact of a negative event. Results are discussed within the affect-regulation model. It is suggested that future research take a more functional perspective on AM specificity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the study of autobiographical memory: Thinking back about life across the life span.

By combining a life perspective with a life span perspective, the authors present a basic framework for extending the study of autobiographical memory. The life perspective suggests not only the consideration of individual episodes of memory but how they are strung together into a life. The life span perspective takes into account the chronological age and life context of individuals and how these factors might affect abilities and motivations related to the use of autobiographical memory. The authors discuss how these 2 perspectives are combined to yield a useful framework for studying autobiographical memory and present 2 examples of work done using this framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory in schizophrenia: An examination of the distribution of memories.

Patients with schizophrenia display numerous memory impairments. Examination of autobiographical memory distribution across the life span can constrain theories of how schizophrenia affects memory. Previously, schizophrenic patients were shown to produce fewer memories from early adulthood than from childhood or the recent past (A. Feinstein, T. E. Goldberg, B. Nowlin, & D. R. Weinberger, 1998), this temporal paucity corresponding with illness onset. The current study examined this issue further using a different (noncued) method. Age-matched schizophrenic patients (n = 21) and controls (n = 21) were to freely generate 50 episodes, after which they dated these memories. Patients generated fewer memories than did controls, especially from the recent decade. When the overall lower production of memories was controlled for, the groups displayed equivalent recency effects. It was concluded that patients' paucity of memories generated from the recent decade reflects encoding or acquisition problems, which may be associated with the illness period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misinformation effects in eyewitness memory: The presence and absence of memory impairment as a function of warning and misinformation accessibility.

The authors report 5 experiments investigating how exposure to misleading postevent information affects people's ability to remember details from a witnessed event. In each experiment the authors tested memory using the modified opposition test, which was designed to isolate retrieval-blocking effects. The findings indicate that retrieval blocking occurs regardless of whether the misleading information is presented before or after the witnessed event. In addition, when people are warned immediately about the presence of misleading information, they can counteract retrieval-blocking effects but only if the misinformation is relatively low in accessibility. The authors discuss the findings in terms of the retrieval-blocking hypothesis and a hypothetical suppression mechanism that can counteract retrieval-blocking effects in some circumstances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical elaboration reduces memory distortion: Cognitive operations and the distinctiveness heuristic.

Retrieval monitoring enhances episodic memory accuracy. For instance, false recognition is reduced when participants base their decisions on more distinctive recollections, a retrieval monitoring process called the distinctiveness heuristic. The experiments reported here tested the hypothesis that autobiographical elaboration during study (i.e., generating autobiographical memories in response to cue words) would lead to more distinctive recollections than other item-specific encoding tasks, enhancing retrieval monitoring accuracy at test. Consistent with this hypothesis, false recognition was less likely when participants had to search their memory for previous autobiographical elaborations, compared to previous semantic judgments. These false recognition effects were dissociated from true recognition effects across four experiments, implicating a recollection-based monitoring process that was independent from familiarity-based processes. Separately obtained subjective measures provided converging evidence for this conclusion. The cognitive operations engaged during autobiographical elaboration can lead to distinctive recollections, making them less prone to memory distortion than other types of deep or semantic encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Special issue introduction: Psychology, politics, and public policy.

As evidenced by the eclecticism of this collection of essays, the history of psychology is ripe with possibilities for additional research into the interplay of politics and public policy on the development of the discipline and its practice. After all, as this collection makes clear, a more complete rendering of the history of psychology must make sense of the profession’s longstanding immersion in politics and public policy—indeed, of its being as much a political and policymaking project as an intellectual one. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory specificity after manipulating retrieval cues in adults reporting childhood sexual abuse.

Traumatized samples have relative difficulty in generating specific autobiographical memories on a cue word task, compared to nonexposed controls. Simultaneously, trauma is associated with highly specific intrusive trauma memories in day-to-day life. Possibly, day-to-day intrusions and memories generated to cue words rely on different retrieval processes, with the former dependent on close associations between retrieval cues and specific memory representations (direct retrieval), and the latter on iterative retrieval cycles through a hierarchical memory system (generative retrieval). This study investigated this distinction using two versions of the cue word task, designed to promote generative and direct retrieval, respectively, in participants with or without a history of child sexual abuse (CSA). The data demonstrated that CSA participants were less specific than nonabused controls to generative retrieval cues, but this difference disappeared with direct retrieval cues. This interaction was stronger in CSA participants with relatively greater posttraumatic stress and remained significant when participants with past or current major depressive disorder were excluded and also when only those participants with corroborated CSA were included. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

New perspectives on autobiographical memory: The integration of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning.

Researchers from diverse psychological subdisciplines have increasingly turned their attention to the storied aspect of human thought. Narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning are 2 forms of this conscious thought. Narrative processing is the tendency to create thought units that use vivid imagery, sequential plots, characters, and salient goals. Autobiographical reasoning consists of interpreting and evaluating remembered experiences. Both forms of thought are discussed in D. P. McAdams's (see record 2001-06545-002) personality theory and D. B. Pillemer's (see record 2001-06545-003) cognitive research. S. Bluck and T. Habermas (see record 2001-06545-004) highlight developmental aspects of narrative processing and autobiographical reasoning, particularly in adolescent identity formation. U. M. Staudinger (see record 2001-06545-005) illustrates how autobiographical reasoning about memories and life stories serves as a springboard for wisdom at different stages of the life cycle. Implications for integrating subdisciplines of psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Proactive interference, accessibility bias, and process dissociations: Valid subject reports of memory.

Proactive interference was assessed with a variant of the process-dissociation procedure, which separates effects of habit (accessibility bias) and recollection (discriminability). In three cued-recall experiments, proactive interference was shown to be an effect of bias rather than an effect on actual remembering. Divided attention, age, and study duration selectively influenced the recollection parameter, whereas training probability selectively influenced the habit parameter. Furthermore, in Experiments 2 and 3, subjective reports of remembering were highly correlated with, and nearly identical to, objective estimates of recollection gained from the process-dissociation procedure. The authors discuss the relevance of the results to theories of proactive interference and argue that older adults' greater susceptibility to interference effects is sometimes caused by an inability to recollect rather than by an inability to inhibit a preponderant response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Violent children: Bridging development, intervention, and public policy.

Childhood violence is a major public health and social policy concern in the United States. Scientists and policymakers alike have increasingly turned their attention to the causes of childhood violence and the extent to which its course can be modified through well-planned preventive interventions. However, it is not apparent that policymakers draw upon basic research findings in formulating their priorities and policies, nor is it apparent that developmental scientists incorporate policy considerations and prevention findings into their research frameworks and designs. The goal of this special issue on violent children is to begin to bridge the gaps among basic developmental science, prevention science, and public policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

University involvement in public policy deliberation: An example.

Recently, there has been a significant growth in the number of public policy centers on academic campuses across the country, but questions have emerged about how successful the academics, researchers, and professionals in those institutions are in influencing public policy and improving policymakers' deliberations. Finding out what information policymakers request, need, and obtain in order to inform them and improve their decision making is crucial. A variety of skills are needed in order to get involved in the state or national legislative processes that are designed to improve the quality of life in the community. Unfortunately, even when there is strong research and empirical evidence to show the way, it remains difficult to get sound, evidence-based policy passed and implemented. This article discusses how public policy centers inside universities can assist in fostering communication and understanding between policymakers and researchers and improve the policymaking process and subsequent policy decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Introduction and comment on the special section: Health psychology and public policy.

Health psychology is highly relevant to public policy. However, in the past, the journal, Health Psychology, has not devoted a significant number of pages to policy issues. This special section of Health Psychology introduces several issues relevant to policy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social pressure in public and private situations.

"Fifty-two groups of two were set up experimentally, containing one genuine S and one confederate. The S received standard sets of written messages, in what was ostensibly a discussion of the merits of a picture. The Ss manifested more social influence when their final opinion was stated in 'public' to the confederate, than when stated in 'private.' It was predicted that more influence would occur when the messages had a 'rejecting' tone than when they were 'accepting.' This did not occur; various explanations are advanced. Perceived rejection was greater when rejecting messages were received. This effect was most marked in the 'private' condition." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)