S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Saturday Noon Posters 4076–4082
(4076)
Does Traveling Backward in Time Induce Forgetting of the Present?
COLLEEN M. KELLEY & CARISSA A. ZIMMERMAN, Florida
State University, & PETER F. DELANEY & LILI SAHAKYAN, University
of North Carolina, Greensboro—A number of theories explain
forgetting over time as due to ongoing changes in context that reduce
accessibility to memories. Most experimental manipulations of context
involve physical cues, whether they are list-wide, such as location,
or item specific, such as color or voice. Sahakyan and Kelley
(2002) manipulated mental context by asking participants to think
about their parents’ home after studying a list of words and before
studying a second list. This change of mental context reduced memory
for the first list. The present work asks whether mentally traveling
farther back in time creates a larger context change than does
thinking back to a more recent time, analogous to the greater changes
in context that underlie a longer delay in forgetting curves.
(4077)
Can We Forget by Doing Nothing? The Role of Forgetting Strategies
in Directed Forgetting. NATHANIEL L. FOSTER & LILI SAHAK-
YAN, University of North Carolina, Greensboro (sponsored by Edward
J. Wisniewski)—There has been no systematic investigation of
how different “forgetting strategies” that people adopt in order to forget
unwanted information influence the success of intentional forgetting.
The reported study examined how forgetting strategies affect the
recall of strong versus weak items in the list-method directed forgetting
paradigm. Item strength was manipulated by embedding the itemmethod
directed forgetting procedure within each of the two study
lists—that is, by cuing participants to either remember or forget each
item immediately after it was presented. Half of the participants were
then instructed to forget the entire list 1 before learning list 2. The results
indicate that strategic processes influence directed forgetting,
with active forgetting strategies leading to greater directed forgetting
than do passive strategies. Furthermore, active forgetting strategies
lead to equivalent forgetting of strong and weak items, whereas passive
strategies primarily influence forgetting of strong items. Implications
for the directed forgetting theories are discussed.
(4078)
Effects of Encoding Strategy on Retrieval-Induced Forgetting and
Inhibition. PAUL LADNY & KELLY M. GOEDERT, Seton Hall University
(sponsored by Kelly M. Goedert)—Current research in the
field of forgetting indicates that interference may arise during recall
due to competition between memories. To reduce interference, an inhibitory
mechanism may impair the undesired interfering memories
so that the desired memory can be retrieved. This phenomenon is
known as retrieval-induced forgetting. The present study explored the
use of encoding strategy on within-category retrieval-induced forgetting
and cross-category inhibition during recall and recognition by explicitly
instructing participants to study similar exemplars together. A
postexperiment questionnaire also assessed how participants encoded
the category–exemplar pairs. Even though an effect of cross-category
inhibition was observed, within-category retrieval-induced forgetting
was not found. These results suggest that a similarity encoding strategy
can limit, but does not eliminate, the inhibitory effect.
• MODELING MEMORY •
(4079)
Two Dimensions Are Not Better Than One: STREAK and Unidimensional
Signal Detection Models of Remember/Know Performance.
JEFFREY J. STARNS & ROGER RATCLIFF, Ohio State University
(sponsored by Mark A. Pitt)—The STREAK model of remember/know
(RK) performance yields estimates of both global (dx) and specific
(dy) memory strengths, corresponding to familiarity and recollection.
This distinguishes STREAK from traditional signal detection models
that accommodate RK data with a single strength dimension and the
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familiar strength estimate d′. We compared these models by evaluating
the correlation of strength estimates from an RK test to subsequent
associative recognition performance. Simulations showed that, when
data are generated from the processes assumed by STREAK, dy correlates
much more highly with associative recognition than either dx
or d′. Contradicting this prediction, results showed that the dy estimates
produced by STREAK were no more predictive of associative
recognition performance than either dx estimates from this model or
d′ estimates from a unidimensional model. Moreover, the unidimensional
model fit better than STREAK for the majority of participants.
(4080)
Mimicry in Models of Remember–Know Judgments. ANDREW L.
COHEN, CAREN M. ROTELLO, & NEIL A. MACMILLAN, University
of Massachusetts, Amherst—Current competing models of
remember–know judgments are based on very different underlying assumptions,
but are often difficult to distinguish empirically. One
source of this ambiguity is model mimicry: Each model is flexible enough
to fit many data sets generated by its competitors. We used a simulation
technique to assess the relative flexibility of the process-pure, dualprocess,
one-dimensional, and STREAK models of remember–know
judgments. Each model’s flexibility was evaluated against data from
simulated individual “subjects” and data averaged across simulated
“subjects,” in three commonly used remember–know paradigms.
Using the simulation results to reevaluate past modeling results in
light of model flexibility, we find that the one-dimensional signal detection
model is generally to be preferred. We also conclude that some
empirical paradigms are ill-suited for distinguishing among the models.
For example, under certain conditions, it is particularly difficult
to distinguish the one-dimensional and dual-process models in the
old/new + remember/know paradigm.
(4081)
Toward a Complete Decision Model of Item and Source Recognition.
MICHAEL J. HAUTUS, University of Auckland, & NEIL A. MACMIL-
LAN & CAREN M. ROTELLO, University of Massachusetts, Amherst—
In a recognition memory test, subjects may be asked to decide whether
a test item is old or new (item recognition) or to decide which source
might have presented it for study (source identification). Confidencerating-based
ROC curves for these tasks are quite different, leading
to the inference of different decision processes. However, a complete
account of the judgments requires a single model that can be fit to the
entire data set. In the style of Banks (2000), we postulate a detectiontheoretic
decision space whose dimensions are item strength and the
relative strength of the two sources. The model implements optimal
decision boundaries but nonoptimal allocation of attention, and accounts
for existing data without assuming any threshold processes.
(4082)
A Comparison of Single- and Dual-Process Models of Retrieval
Experiences. LUTZ CÜPPER, EDGAR ERDFELDER, & MONIKA
UNDORF, University of Mannheim (sponsored by Edgar Erdfelder)—
The results of recent studies that compared single- and dual-process
models for the remember–know (RK) or remember–know–guess (RKG)
paradigm pose a challenge to dual-process models. However, these
studies often focused on selected dual-process models and singleprocess
competitors. We conducted a model selection study that
aimed at comparing several dual-process models (DPSD, four-states,
SAC, STREAK) with each other and with a single-process signaldetection
model. The models were evaluated with regard to their construct
validity and their descriptive adequacy on the basis of 46 RKG
experiments from 32 publications. Although the models’ construct validity
was assessed by means of likelihood-ratio testing, both likelihoodratio
testing and AIC differences were employed to quantify their descriptive
adequacy. Our results were in favor of some dual-process
models, whereas other dual-process models performed worse than the
single-process model.