Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Thursday Evening Posters 1050–1056
be participants in a memory experiment. Experimenters had devised
three types of events to work into conversations during the reunions:
(1) true events, (2) false events consistent with the personalities of residents
and/or with hall events schemata, and (3) false events inconsistent
with personalities and events. A questionnaire was administered
to participants 3 days after the reunion. Events discussed at the
reunion were listed, and subjects responded whether they remembered
the event (exactly, slightly differently, or were not there but remembered
hearing about it at the time) or did not remember the event. The
results revealed that 94% of the true events were remembered, as were
78% of the false consistent and 38% of the false inconsistent events.
These results are discussed with respect to schema consistency. Elaboration
of false information by students during reunion conversations
is also addressed.
(1050)
False Associations of Actors With Actions as a Result of Mugshot
Viewing. ALAN W. KERSTEN, JULIE L. EARLES, ELISSA KLEIN,
& FARRIN JONAS, Florida Atlantic University—This research investigated
whether viewing a person’s photo in the context of questioning
about a particular action leads to a specific association between that person
and that action or to a more general feeling of familiarity for the
person. Participants saw video clips involving 75 different actors performing
75 different actions. Participants then viewed mugshots of individual
actors and were asked whether each such actor had performed
a particular action. One week later, participants were tested for recognition
of the video clips. The critical test items involved an actor seen
at encoding performing an action that had been performed by a different
actor at encoding. Participants were particularly likely to falsely recognize
such items if a picture of the actor in the test item had been presented
along with a question about the action in the test item, suggesting
a specific association between that actor and action.
(1051)
Multiple Culprits: An Examination of Familiarity and Recollection
in Eyewitness Identification. DEBRA L. TOWER & SCOTT
GRONLUND, University of Oklahoma—An ongoing debate concerns
whether accurate eyewitness identification is automatic and based on
familiarity or whether recollection is involved. Although some research
has shown that quick identifications tend to be more accurate than those
with a longer latency, other research refutes this. Our experiments used
multiple culprits at encoding to test the premise of automaticity. If the
target face “pops out,” it should do so regardless of the number of culprits
originally viewed. Instead, we found a shift in peak differentiation
dependent on the number of faces seen at encoding, contrary to a reliance
on automaticity. Subsequent experiments tested for a contribution
of recollection by including associative information and controlling
the total number of faces encoded by presenting several categories
of faces within a trial. The results point to a complex interplay between
familiarity and recollection in eyewitness identification that is not captured
by a dichotomy between these two constructs.
• METACOMPREHENSION •
(1052)
The Effect of Perceived and Actual Retention Intervals on
Judgments-of-Learning. MICHAEL J. MCGUIRE, ANGELA M. BUR-
RELL, & GWENDOLYN M. MEINECKE, Washburn University—
Will students factor in “forgetting over time” when making judgmentsof-learning
(JOLs)? Two experiments were conducted to see whether
duration of retention interval affects JOLs for word pairs. For both experiments,
participants studied word pairs, made JOLs, and then received
a cued-recall test. In Experiment 1, participants made JOLs for
one of three ‘perceived’ retention intervals: 15 min, 24 h, or 1 week.
Participants, however, always received their test approximately 15 min
after study. In Experiment 2, participants made JOLs for one of two
“actual” retention intervals: 48 h or 1 week. The procedure was similar
to that of Experiment 1, except that participants returned after 48 h
59
or 1 week to receive a test of the studied materials. Retention interval
had little effect on JOL resolution, but not so for JOL magnitude. Further
results are discussed in the context of a two-factor theory underlying
metacognitive judgments.
(1053)
When Do Judgments of Learning Show Overconfidence With Task
Practice? CHRISTOPHER HERTZOG, Georgia Institute of Technology,
& DAYNA R. TOURON, Appalachian State University—Previous
research (Koriat, Sheffer, & Ma’ayan, 2002) has indicated that individuals’
judgments of learning (JOLs) become increasingly underconfident
with practice (UWP) after multiple study–test trials for
paired associate (PA) recall. Research by Touron and Hertzog (2004)
found overconfidence in JOLs for PA recall after transfer from an associative
recognition task to PA recall. We report results from two experiments
evaluating whether the shift in memory test format explains
the divergent outcomes. In the second experiment, participants completed
study–test trials in four conditions: (1) recognition then recall,
(2) recall then recognition, (3) recognition throughout, or (4) recall
throughout. Results suggest that participants fail to account for the
possible effects of transfer to different test conditions, overgeneralizing
from accurate performance monitoring from one study–test outcome
to scale JOLs collected in the next study trial. Failure to anticipate
learning contributes to but does not account for the UWP effect.
(1054)
Overestimation of Associative Memory for Identical Items. ALAN
D. CASTEL, DAVID P. MCCABE, & HENRY L. ROEDIGER III,
Washington University—The present study examined the influence of
associative strength and item similarity on judgments of learning
(JOLs) in a cued recall task. We hypothesized that item similarity
would cause a foresight bias, such that participants would overestimate
recall of identical pairs (scale–scale) compared to strong associates
(weight–scale) or unrelated pairs (mask–scale). In Experiment
1, JOLs for identical word pairs were higher than for related and
unrelated pairs, but later cued recall of identical items was lower than
recall of related pairs. In Experiment 2, the effect of encoding fluency
(inferred from self-paced study time) was examined, and a similar
pattern of results was obtained, with identical pairs receiving the least
amount of study time. We conclude that overconfidence for identical
pairs reflects a reliance on perceived item similarity and encoding fluency
when making JOLs during study, despite associative strength
being a better predictor of later retrieval.
(1055)
Effects of Proactive Interference and Release From PI on Judgments
of Learning. MICHAEL DIAZ & AARON S. BENJAMIN, University
of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign—Judgments of learning (JOLs) typically
underestimate the memorial consequences of “extrinsic” manipulations
of learning, such as repetition, study time, or depth of processing.
A recent example is the underconfidence-with-practice effect,
in which the repetition of cue–target pairs leads to smaller increases in
JOLs than in recall across study–test trials—thus leading to increasing
underconfidence across trials. We used a proactive interference paradigm
in which the repetition of cues but not targets led to a decrease
in recall across trials. Contrary to the usual pattern of underestimation,
JOLs decreased either an appropriate or a greater amount with repetition
than did recall performance. Most impressively, JOLs continued
to decrease on a final trial on which the introduction of new cues and
consequent release from proactive interference led to a substantial increase
in recall performance. These results suggest that metacognizers’
naive theories of remembering and forgetting do not appropriately
reflect the influence of cue-specific interference.
(1056)
Metacognitive Monitoring in Skill Acquisition: The Effect of Expertise
Level. ANIQUE B. H. DE BRUIN, REMY M. J. P. RIKERS,
HENK G. SCHMIDT, & INGMAR H. A. FRANKEN, Erasmus Uni-