Abstracts 2005 - The Psychonomic Society

Posters 3030–3035 Friday Evening
University of Tamagawa, & NOBUO OHTA, Tokyo University of Social
Welfare—Raw scores on intelligence tests have been rising at a
fast rate, especially for older adults. One explanation is that increases
in intelligence parallel increases in educational attainment. In Study 1,
we searched for studies reporting WAIS–R Vocabulary raw scores
from January 1986 to December 2003 and plotted raw scores by publication
year. From the 1960s, verbal intelligence scores for older
adults have risen sharply, until reaching test ceilings in the 1990s. In
contrast, scores for younger adults have risen only minimally and have
begun to decline. In Study 2, we confirmed substantial verbal intelligence
declines in young adults over the last decade. In combination,
VIQ score trajectories mimic the trajectories of educational attainment
by the two age groups, combined with anecdotal evidence of decline
in education quality. These results suggest that the days of the
Flynn effect, at least for verbal intelligence, may be over: it’s all downhill
from here.
(3030)
Adult Age Differences in Episodic and Semantic Retrieval: A Diffusion
Model Analysis. JULIA SPANIOL & DAVID J. MADDEN,
Duke University Medical Center, ANDREAS VOSS, Albert-Ludwigs-
Universität Freiburg, & SARA E. MOORE, Duke University Medical
Center—This study investigated adult age differences in episodic and
semantic long-term memory retrieval, as a test of the hypothesis of
specific age-related decline in context memory. In Experiment 1,
old–new recognition served as an episodic retrieval task, and living/
nonliving decisions served as a semantic retrieval task. Older adults
were slower and had lower episodic accuracy than did younger adults.
Fits of the diffusion model (Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases
in the length of nondecisional response time components for
both episodic and semantic retrieval. There was also an age-related
decrease in the rate of accumulation of decision-driving information
(drift rate) for episodic retrieval, but not for semantic retrieval. A substantial
portion of the age-related variance in episodic drift rate was
shared with perceptual–motor speed. A second experiment contrasted
episodic and semantic retrieval mechanisms, using a more contextdependent
episodic task (source memory judgments).
(3031)
The Influence of Age and Sport Expertise on Memory for Visual,
Verbal, and Enacted Information. CLARE MACMAHON, KATINKA
DIJKSTRA, & MINE MISIRLISOY, Florida State University—Subjectperformed
tasks (SPTs), such as the action of waving, are recalled better
than verbal instructions (“wave”) and show smaller age-related differences
(Bäckman, 1985). This study assessed whether previous experience
with certain motor actions further facilitate or attenuate the
SPT effect. Forty-eight older and younger experienced golfers and 48
older and younger control participants were compared in their memory
for golf-related (e.g., “putt to the hole”) and non–golf-related
(e.g., “turn on the lamp”) items. Items were presented verbally (read
aloud) or visually (video clip) or were subject performed. Preliminary
findings show an interaction between information type and expertise
in retention. Specifically, experienced golfers remember more golfrelated
information than do controls. As well, older adults demonstrate
smaller declines in delayed retention for golf-related information than
do younger adults. These findings support the idea that experienced
golfers develop elaborate perceptual–motor knowledge specific to
their area of expertise (Starkes, Cullen, & MacMahon, 2004).
• AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY •
(3032)
Verifiable Autobiographical Memory: Recall of Lies. STEPHANIE A.
BERGER, College of Mount St. Vincent—This diary study of autobiographical
memory examined the accuracy with which students recalled
their own lies. Students submitted each lie they had told every
day for 7 days to a confidential online diary. Along with each lie, they
92
also recorded the reason for the lie and completed subjective rating
scales, including the seriousness of the lie, the amount of advanced
planning before telling the lie, and their feelings about the lie. Participants
recalled .81 of all lies on an unexpected cued-recall test that
was completed in the lab 2 weeks after the last lie had been submitted.
Significant differences between the characteristics of the lies that
were recalled and of those that were not provide evidence of the functional
nature of autobiographical memory.
(3033)
Remembrance of French Things Past. LILLIAN H. PARK & JOHN F.
KIHLSTROM, University of California, Berkeley—Two experiments
with French–English bilinguals investigated the relationship between
language and memory. When subjects were asked to write in French,
they retrieved more memories from the period in their lives when they
spoke French; when they wrote in English, they retrieved more memories
from the period in which English dominated their speech. Autobiographical
memories narrated in a different language from that in
which the events had been experienced did not have fewer details than
did those told in the same language. Autobiographical memories that
were narrated in the same language in which the event had been experienced
were more expressive and emotional than those narrated in
the other language. Bilingual speakers retrieved and preferred to remember
autobiographical memories in the same language in which
the event had been experienced. Language acquisition history and habitual
use of the two languages affected the strength of these language
effects.
(3034)
The Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory: Effects of
Age and Culture. STEVE M. J. JANSSEN & JEROEN G. W. RAAIJ-
MAKERS, University of Amsterdam—We investigated the age distribution
of autobiographical memories with the Galton–Crovitz cuing
method through the Internet. Participants from different countries,
such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, the U.K., and
the U.S., were presented with 10 cue words. They were asked to recall
personal memories that were associated to the cue words and to
date these personal events. We were able to remove the recency effect
from the empirical age distributions with a method that allows separate
estimation of memory encoding and forgetting. We found strong
evidence for a “reminiscence bump” in all subpopulations at all ages.
People stored more events (or they store events better) between the
ages of 10 and 20 years. However, we also found that the reminiscence
bump becomes more pronounced as participants become older. Events
that occurred between the ages of 10 and 20 years are recalled more
often, making them even more persistent.
(3035)
The Specificity and Organization of Autobiographical Memory.
MATTHEW D. SCHULKIND, Amherst College, TAMARA A. RAH-
HAL, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, & MEGAN R. KLEIN &
SAMANTHA R. LACHER, Amherst College—Younger adult subjects
were asked to describe autobiographical events in response to cue narratives
that varied in terms of general life period, emotional valence,
and theme. Sixty percent of the subjects’ narratives described specific,
on-one-day events, and nearly 40% described specific episodes
within such events. As well, the subjects’ narratives matched the cue
narratives in terms of theme and valence more often than they
matched them in terms of general life period. These data contradict
previous research showing that people tend to report general events
spanning several days, rather than specific events that occurred on a
single day. The data also contradict theories arguing that autobiographical
knowledge is organized hierarchically, with general life periods
anchoring the top of the hierarchy. Therefore, current theories
must be altered to account for the fact that retrieval cues/conditions
influence both the way autobiographical knowledge is accessed and
the specificity of the events retrieved from memory.