S1 (FriAM 1-65) - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 4111–4116 Saturday Noon
tal, ROBYN WESTMACOTT, Hospital for Sick Children, & MORRIS
MOSCOVITCH, Rotman Research Institute, University of Toronto—
Recently there has been interest in how episodic memory aids and
contributes to performance on semantic tasks. We investigated the
contribution of recollection on a categorization task. Participants were
asked to categorize names of famous people to their proper field (e.g.,
arts, sports, politics, etc.) and were presented with two choices. Participants
were faster and more accurate when they had a personal
memory associated with a famous name than when they did not, even
though the names were matched for familiarity and the number of
facts associated with them. fMRI data revealed that left medial temporal
lobe activation during categorization was greater for famous
names that evoked a personal memory relative to the famous names
that were correctly categorized but had no personal memories associated
with them. Although autobiographical episodic memories are not
necessary in order complete the task, recollection of episodic content
appears to be invoked when available.
(4111)
Careful Inspection of Memory Reduces Recognition Memory Accuracy.
J. THADEUS MEEKS, University of Georgia, GABRIEL I.
COOK, Claremont McKenna College, & ARLO CLARK-FOOS, GENE
A. BREWER, & RICHARD L. MARSH, University of Georgia—Intuitively,
if one inspects memory more closely, one should be more accurate
in reporting the results of that inspection. We addressed this
issue by comparing conditions in which people had to discriminate remembering
from knowing when they claimed an item was old with
their rationales for claiming that new items were new. In the latter
case, we asked whether items lacked familiarity, whether they would
have been remembered if studied, or whether a recall-to-reject strategy
was being employed. In comparison with standard recognition
memory, both of the more detailed inspection strategies resulted in
worse recognition memory performance. The result was replicated
using 3 old response options and 3 new options compared with standard
recognition memory, and it even replicated in a sequential judgment
condition too. One possibility for this counterintuitive result is
that maintaining many qualitative response options in working memory
actually acts as a cognitive load and reduces performance.
(4112)
Giving a More Specific Warning Increases Errors Learned From
Fiction. LISA K. FAZIO, SAMUEL SCHNUR, & ELIZABETH J.
MARSH, Duke University (sponsored by Elizabeth J. Marsh)—Readers
learn both true and false information from fictional stories (Marsh,
Meade, & Roediger, 2003). Warning readers that a story may contain
errors does not reduce suggestibility. Suggestibility is only reduced
when readers evaluate each individual sentence for errors. Sentenceby-sentence
evaluation likely teaches readers what kinds of errors are
embedded in the story, whereas the general warning could be interpreted
in many different ways (e.g., that the overall premise of the story
is fictional). We created a more specific warning that highlighted the
type of error embedded in our stories. In the trial-by-trial monitoring
condition, the more specific warning increased the detection of errors
but did not affect later suggestibility. Control subjects suffered with a
specific warning, producing more misinformation on the final test. The
specific warning presumably increased attention to the story errors,
leading to their fluent retrieval later, with negative consequences.
(4113)
Recognition of Details Never Experienced: The Effects of Encoding
and Age. ROBYN E. HOLLIDAY, University of Kent, & CHARLES J.
BRAINERD & VALERIE F. REYNA, Cornell University—Childnormed
lists of categorical items were used to investigate whether encoding
list items as pictures or whole words or word fragments would
affect 7-, 11-, and 13-year-olds’ recognition of studied words (targets)
and meaning-related unpresented words (critical lures). Children
studied one block of three lists as pictures, one block of three lists as
whole words (read condition), and one block of three lists as word
121
fragments (self-generate condition). In all three encoding conditions,
the to-be-studied item was first presented for 2 sec as a word in black
lowercase letters. This word was then replaced by a picture, or the
whole word (read condition), or a word fragment (self-generate condition).
Each block was followed by a recognition test of whole words
under repeated measures conjoint recognition retrieval instructions
(verbatim, gist, verbatim + gist). The encodings were manipulated
within participants. False recognition of critical lures increased with
age, but the age increase was reduced when lists were encoded as pictures.
Findings are discussed in relation to fuzzy-trace theory and the
distinctiveness heuristic.
(4114)
Effects of Bilingualism on Recollection and Familiarity. ZOFIA
WODNIECKA, York University and Rotman Research Institute, FER-
GUS I. M. CRAIK, Rotman Research Institute, & ELLEN BIALYSTOK,
York University—We examined the effects of bilingualism on recollection
and familiarity in younger and older adults. Previous work has
shown that bilingualism enhances executive functions and offsets agerelated
decline in cognitive control. Since recollection requires executive
control to a greater extent than does familiarity, which is mostly
an automatic process, we predicted that bilingualism would enhance
recollection but would have little effect on familiarity. Younger and
older adult monolinguals and bilinguals studied items (words, abstract
objects, and faces) and then performed both an inclusion recognition
test (in which they responded “yes” to both studied and new items repeated
once after various lags) and an exclusion recognition test (in
which they responded “yes” only to the studied items). In general,
bilingual younger and older adults showed higher levels of recollection
than their monolingual counterparts. These results extend the relationship
between bilingualism and executive control to processes accompanying
retrieval of information from memory.
(4115)
Recollection and Familiarity for Public Events in Neurologically
Intact Older Adults and Brain-Damaged Patients. RALUCA
PETRICAN & MORRIS MOSCOVITCH, University of Toronto—
Despite extensive investigations of laboratory-acquired memories,
there is a dearth of research on memories formed in real-life settings.
We used the remember–know paradigm to investigate changes in recollection
and familiarity of public events ranging across the life span
of two groups of neurologically intact older adults (old-old, 74–85;
young-old, 58–69) and patients with medial and anterior temporal lesions.
First, in neurologically intact participants, recollection rates decreased
linearly as a function of time elapsed since the event occurred,
at a significantly higher rate than the corresponding decrease in familiarity.
Second, consistent with the age-related semanticization hypothesis,
across decades, old-old participants exhibited lower recollection
(but not familiarity) rates relative to young-old participants.
Finally, medial temporal lesions severely and disproportionately impaired
recollection relative to familiarity, whereas anterior lateral temporal
damage left intact recollective rates. We discuss the present results
in the context of neuroanatomical and process-oriented theories
of memory “aging.”
(4116)
On the Nature and Timing of Perceptual and Conceptual Familiarity
in Recognition Memory: A Comparison Between an Event-
Related Potentials and a Speed–Accuracy Trade-Off Study.
ANGELA BOLDINI & SALVADOR ALGARABEL, University of
Valencia, & ANTONIO IBANYEZ & TERESA BAJO, University of
Granada—Although early dual process theories of recognition memory
(RM) claimed that familiarity is mainly perceptually based, later studies
showed that familiarity can also be semantically based. An eventrelated
potentials (ERPs) study was carried out to investigate electrophysiological
correlates and timings of perceptually based and
conceptually based familiarity processes in RM. Subjects were presented
with categorized pictures at study, whereas perceptual/semantic sim-