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Dual-process theories of retrieval suggest that controlled and automatic processing contribute to memory performance. Free recall tests are often considered pure measures of recollection, assessing only the controlled process. We report two experiments demonstrating that automatic processes also influence free recall. Experiment 1 used inclusion and exclusion tasks to estimate recollection and automaticity in free recall, adopting a new variant of the process dissociation procedure. Dividing attention during study selectively reduced the recollection estimate but did not affect the automatic component. In Experiment 2, we replicated the results of Experiment 1, and subjects additionally reported remember-know-guess judgments during recall in the inclusion condition. In the latter task, dividing attention during study reduced remember judgments for studied items, but know responses were unaffected. Results from both methods indicated that free recall is partly driven by automatic processes. Thus, we conclude that retrieval in free recall tests is not driven solely by conscious recollection (or remembering) but also by automatic influences of the same sort believed to drive priming on implicit memory tests. Sometimes items come to mind without volition in free recall.

Participants between the ages of 18 and 80 were tested on a complex working memory span task that was administered either using a typical experimenter-paced method or using a method in which the processing component was presented at a fixed, limited-pace presentation rate. Path analyses revealed that even after controlling for individual differences in general processing speed, the limited-pace task predicted unique variance in episodic memory, executive functioning, and fluid intelligence, whereas the experimenter-paced task did not. For the experimenter-paced task, slower responses on the processing component of the task were associated with better recall, but only when individual differences in processing speed were controlled. These findings suggest that metacognitive control of response times affects recall from working memory span tasks, as well as the relationship between span task recall and high-level cognition. These results support resource-sharing explanations of working memory and suggest that limiting processing times using computer pacing of complex span tasks can be an effective way to efficiently measure working memory capacity.

Odors are notoriously difficult to identify, yet an odor can often lead to a sense of recognition, despite an inability to identify it. In the present study, we examined this phenomenon using the recognition-without-identification paradigm. Participants studied either odor names alone or odor names that were accompanied by scratch-and-sniff stickers containing their corresponding scents. At test, the participants were presented with blank scratch-and-sniff stickers, half of which corresponded to items that were studied and half of which did not. The participants attempted to identify each test odor, as well as to rate the likelihood that it corresponded to a studied item. In addition, the participants indicated whether they were in a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state for a given odor's name. Odor recognition without identification was found, but only when the participants had actually smelled the test odor at study; it was not found when the participants only studied odor names and were then tested with odors, suggesting that this effect is an episode-specific, perceptually driven phenomenon. Despite this difference, an overall TOT-attribution effect, whereby recognition ratings were higher during TOT states than during non-TOT states, was shown across conditions.

The characteristics of response time (RT) distributions beyond measures of central tendency were explored in 3 attention tasks across groups of young adults, healthy older adults, and individuals with very mild dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT).Participants were administered computerized Stroop, Simon, and switching tasks, along with psychometric tasks that tap various cognitive abilities and a standard personality inventory (NEO-FFI). Ex-Gaussian (and Vincentile) analyses were used to capture the characteristics of the RT distributions for each participant across the 3 tasks, which afforded 3 components: mu and sigma (mean and standard deviation of the modal portion of the distribution) and tau (the positive tail of the distribution).The results indicated that across all 3 attention tasks, healthy aging produced large changes in the central tendency mu parameter of the distribution along with some change in sigma and tau (mean etap(2) = .17, .08, and .04, respectively). In contrast, early stage DAT primarily produced an increase in the tau component (mean etap(2) = .06). tau was also correlated with the psychometric measures of episodic/semantic memory, working memory, and processing speed, and with the personality traits of neuroticism and conscientiousness. Structural equation modeling indicated a unique relation between a latent tau construct (-.90), as opposed to sigma (-.09) and mu constructs (.24), with working memory measures.The results suggest a critical role of attentional control systems in discriminating healthy aging from early stage DAT and the utility of RT distribution analyses to better specify the nature of such change.

Attentional control has been conceptualized as executive functioning by neuropsychologists and as working memory capacity by experimental psychologists. We examined the relationship between these constructs using a factor analytic approach in an adult life span sample. Several tests of working memory capacity and executive function were administered to more than 200 subjects between 18 and 90 years of age, along with tests of processing speed and episodic memory. The correlation between working memory capacity and executive functioning constructs was very strong (r = .97), but correlations between these constructs and processing speed were considerably weaker (rs approximately .79). Controlling for working memory capacity and executive function eliminated age effects on episodic memory, and working memory capacity and executive function accounted for variance in episodic memory beyond that accounted for by processing speed. We conclude that tests of working memory capacity and executive function share a common underlying executive attention component that is strongly predictive of higher level cognition.

The Wisconsin Card Sort Task (WCST) is a commonly used neuropsychological test of executive or frontal lobe functioning. Traditional behavioral measures from the task (e.g., perseverative errors) distinguish healthy controls from clinical populations, but such measures can be difficult to interpret. In an attempt to supplement traditional measures, we developed and tested a family of sequential learning models that allowed for estimation of processes at the individual subject level in the WCST. Testing the model with substance dependent individuals and healthy controls, the model parameters significantly predicted group membership even when controlling for traditional behavioral measures from the task. Substance dependence was associated with a) slower attention shifting following punished trials and b) reduced decision consistency. Results suggest that model parameters may offer both incremental content validity and incremental predictive validity.

The finding that new items are judged as remembered in the remember-know paradigm presents a challenge to traditional process and systems accounts of memory. In three experiments, we demonstrated that false remember responses can be caused by misattributing recollection to a context other than the study list. In Experiments 1 and 2, false remember responses to distractors that were unrelated to studied words increased if they were encountered in a "preexposure" phase a few minutes or even a few days prior to the studied list. A third experiment demonstrated that remember responses to preexposed distractors increased when they were encoded in a manner similar to studied items, despite the more similar items being of weaker overall memory strength. We propose a source misattribution account of false remembering to explain these data, suggesting that all remember judgments reflect conscious recollection of contextual details, but false remember judgments are partly the result of recollection of details from an extralist context (i.e., from a source other than the study list).

Selecting what is important to remember, attending to this information, and then later recalling it can be thought of in terms of the strategic control of attention and the efficient use of memory. In order to examine whether aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD) influenced this ability, the present study used a selectivity task, where studied items were worth various point values and participants were asked to maximize the value of the items they recalled. Relative to younger adults (N=35) and healthy older adults (N=109), individuals with very mild AD (N=41) and mild AD (N=13) showed impairments in the strategic and efficient encoding and recall of high value items. Although individuals with AD recalled more high value items than low value items, they did not efficiently maximize memory performance (as measured by a selectivity index) relative to healthy older adults. Performance on complex working memory span tasks was related to the recall of the high value items but not low value items. This pattern suggests that relative to healthy aging, AD leads to impairments in strategic control at encoding and value-directed remembering.

Four experiments examined subjective experience during retrieval in the DRM false memory paradigm [Deese, J. (1959). On the prediction of occurrence of particular verbal intrusions in immediate recall. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 58 , 17–22; Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (1995). Creating false memories: Remembering words not presented in lists. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21 , 803–814]. Subjects studied lists of related words that were associated with critical non-presented words and then took a recognition test in which they made judgments about their experience of each test item. We tested the prediction from [Whittlesea, B. W. A. (2002). False memory and the discrepancy–attribution hypothesis: The prototype-familiarity illusion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131 , 96–115] discrepancy–attribution hypothesis that subjects experience critical lures as surprising, and that the experience of surprise leads them to call the lures old. We found that subjects were not surprised when they encountered critical lures on a recognition test and, in fact, they reported that they expected to see critical lures more than they expected to see words that they had actually studied. When subjects did experience words as surprising, they called the words new, not old. The results support the idea that false memories in the DRM paradigm occur when critical lures are activated in memory and fluently processed on a test, leading subjects to experience critical lures in much the same way that they experience words they actually studied. The results do not support the idea that false memories are surprising, as stated by the discrepancy–attribution hypothesis.

The current study examined delayed recall of items that had been processed during simple and complex span tasks. Three experiments were reported showing that despite more items being recalled initially from a simple span task (i.e., word span) than a complex span task (i.e., operation span), on a delayed recall test more items were recalled that had initially been processed during the complex span task. This delayed recall advantage for items processed during complex span tasks persisted when subjects were encouraged to process the items deeply during the initial span task (Experiment 2), and when initial recall during the span task was precluded (Experiment 3). The covert retrieval model explains these data as being the result of subjects maintaining items in working memory during complex span tasks by covertly retrieving them during the processing phases of the tasks. These covert retrieval attempts provide distributed practice retrieving items from long-term memory, creating effective retrieval cues for later delayed recall that are not created during simple span tasks. The covert retrieval model was supported by data showing that words presented in earlier serial positions during operation span, which had the greatest likelihood of being covertly retrieved, were most likely to be recalled on the delayed recall test. These data support the notion that complex working memory span tasks share considerable processing overlap with episodic memory tasks.

The relation between subjects' predicted and actual memory performance is a central issue in the domain of metacognition. In the present study, we examined the influence of item similarity and associative strength on judgments of learning (JOLs) in a cued recall task. We hypothesized that encoding fluency would cause a foresight bias, so that subjects would overestimate recall of identical pairs (scale-scale), as compared with strong associates (weight-scale) or unrelated pairs (mask-scale). In Experiment 1, JOLs for identical word pairs were higher than those for related and unrelated pairs, but later recall of identical pairs 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 subjects spending the least amount of time studying identical pairs. We conclude that overconfidence for identical pairs reflects an assessment of item similarity when JOLs are made, despite associative strength being a better predictor of later retrieval.

We examined the effect of item-specific and relational encoding instructions on false recognition in two experiments in which the DRM paradigm was used (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Type of encoding (item-specific or relational) was manipulated between subjects in Experiment 1 and within subjects in Experiment 2. Decision-based explanations (e.g., the distinctiveness heuristic) predict reductions in false recognition in between-subjects designs, but not in within-subjects designs, because they are conceptualized as global shifts in decision criteria. Memory-based explanations predict reductions in false recognition in both designs, resulting from enhanced recollection of item-specific details. False recognition was reduced following item-specific encoding instructions in both experiments, favoring a memory-based explanation. These results suggest that providing unique cues for the retrieval of individual studied items results in enhanced discrimination between those studied items and critical lures. Conversely, enhancing the similarity of studied items results in poor discrimination among items within a particular list theme. These results are discussed in terms of the item-specific/ relational framework (Hunt & McDaniel, 1993).

In the present experiments , we examined adult age differences in the ability to suppress false memories, using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Participants studied lists of words (e.g.,bed, rest, awake, etc.), each related to a nonpresented critical lure word (e.g.,sleep). Typically, recognition tests reveal false alarms to critical lures at rates comparable to those for hits for studied words. In two experiments, separate groups of young and older adults were unwarned about the false memory effect, warned before studying the lists, or warned after study and before test. Lists were presented at either a slow rate (4 sec/word) or a faster rate (2 sec/word). Young adults were better able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when warned about the DRM effect either before study or after study but before retrieval, and their performance improved with a slower presentation rate. Older adults were able to discriminate between studied words and critical lures when given warnings before study, but not when given warnings after study but before retrieval. Performance on a working memory capacity measure predicted false recognition following study and retrieval warnings. The results suggest that effective use of warnings to reduce false memories is contingent on the quality and type of encoded information, as well as on whether that information is accessed at retrieval. Furthermore, discriminating between similar sources of activation is dependent on working memory capacity, which declines with advancing age.

The McCabe effect (McCabe, Journal of Memory and Language 58:480-494, 2008) refers to an advantage in episodic memory (EM) retrieval for memoranda studied in complex span versus simple span tasks, particularly for memoranda presented in earlier serial positions. This finding has been attributed to the necessity to refresh memoranda during complex span tasks that, in turn, promotes content-context binding in working memory (WM). Several frameworks have conceptualized WM as being embedded in long-term memory. Thus, refreshing may be less efficient when memoranda are not well-established in long-term semantic memory (SM). To investigate this, we presented words and nonwords in simple and complex span trials in order to manipulate the long-term semantic representations of the memoranda with the requirement to refresh the memoranda during WM. A recognition test was administered that required participants to make a remember-know decision for each memorandum recognized as old. The results replicated the McCabe effect, but only for words, and the beneficial effect of refreshing opportunities was exclusive to recollection. These results extend previous research by indicating that the predictive relationship between WM refreshing and long-term EM is specific to recollection and, furthermore, moderated by representations in long-term SM. This supports the predictions of WM frameworks that espouse the importance of refreshing in content-context binding, but also those that view WM as being an activated subset of and, therefore, constrained by the contents of long-term memory.

Three experiments are reported that addressed the nature of processing in working memory by investigating patterns of delayed cued recall and free recall of items initially studied during complex and simple span tasks. In Experiment 1, items initially studied during a complex span task (i.e., operation span) were more likely to be recalled after a delay in response to temporal-contextual cues, relative to items from subspan and supraspan list lengths in a simple span task (i.e., word span). In Experiment 2, items initially studied during operation span were more likely to be recalled from neighboring serial positions during delayed free recall than were items studied during word span trials. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the number of attentional refreshing opportunities strongly predicts episodic memory performance, regardless of whether the information is presented in a spaced or massed format in a modified operation span task. The results indicate that the content-context bindings created during complex span trials reflect attentional refreshing opportunities that are used to maintain items in working memory.

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.

Recent research has suggested that our memory systems are especially tuned to process information according to its survival relevance, and that inducing problems of "ancestral priorities" faced by our ancestors should lead to optimal recall performance (Nairne & Pandeirada, Cognitive Psychology, 2010). The present study investigated the specificity of this idea by comparing an ancestor-consistent scenario and a modern survival scenario that involved threats that were encountered by human ancestors (e.g., predators) or threats from fictitious creatures (i.e., zombies). Participants read one of four survival scenarios in which the environment and the explicit threat were either consistent or inconsistent with ancestrally based problems (i.e., grasslands-predators, grasslands-zombies, city-attackers, city-zombies), or they rated words for pleasantness. After rating words based on their survival relevance (or pleasantness), the participants performed a free recall task. All survival scenarios led to better recall than did pleasantness ratings, but recall was greater when zombies were the threat, as compared to predators or attackers. Recall did not differ for the modern (i.e., city) and ancestral (i.e., grasslands) scenarios. These recall differences persisted when valence and arousal ratings for the scenarios were statistically controlled as well. These data challenge the specificity of ancestral priorities in survival-processing advantages in memory.

This paper proposes a way to apply process-dissociation to sequence learning in addition and extension to the approach used by Destrebecqz and Cleeremans (2001). Participants were trained on two sequences separated from each other by a short break. Following training, participants self-reported their knowledge of the sequences. A recognition test was then performed which required discrimination of two trained sequences, either under the instructions to call any sequence encountered in the experiment “old” (the inclusion condition), or only sequence fragments from one half of the experiment “old” (the exclusion condition). The recognition test elicited automatic and controlled process estimates using the process dissociation procedure, and suggested both processes were involved. Examining the underlying processes supporting performance may provide more information on the fundamental aspects of the implicit and explicit constructs than has been attainable through awareness testing.

In 1985 Tulving introduced the remember–know procedure, whereby subjects are asked to distinguish between memories that involve retrieval of contextual details (remembering) and memories that do not (knowing). Several studies have been reported showing age-related declines in remember hits, which has typically been interpreted as supporting dual-process theories of cognitive aging that align remembering with a recollection process and knowing with a familiarity process. Less attention has been paid to remember false alarms, or their relation to age. We reviewed the literature examining aging and remember/know judgments and show that age-related increases in remember false alarms, i.e., false remembering, are as reliable as age-related decreases in remember hits, i.e., veridical remembering. Moreover, a meta-analysis showed that the age effect size for remember hits and false alarms are similar, and larger than age effects on know hits and false alarms. We also show that the neuropsychological correlates of remember hits and false alarms differ. Neuropsychological tests of medial-temporal lobe functioning were related to remember hits, but tests of frontal-lobe functioning and age were not. By contrast, age and frontal-lobe functioning predicted unique variance in remember false alarms, but MTL functioning did not. We discuss various explanations for these findings and conclude that any comprehensive explanation of recollective experience will need to account for the processes underlying both remember hits and false alarms.

Two experiments examined inadvertent plagiarism in young and older adults. Young and older adults took turns generating category exemplars in small groups, and after a short retention interval recall was tested and subjects were asked to generate new exemplars (i.e., exemplars not initially generated). When asked to generate new exemplars, older adults were more likely to repeat exemplars that had been generated earlier by others (i.e., generate-new plagiarism). When asked to recall the exemplars they had generated earlier, older adults were more likely to claim that they had generated exemplars that had been generated by others (i.e., recall-own plagiarism), and were also more likely to falsely recall exemplars that had not been generated at all. There were no age differences in confidence for items that were plagiarized on the generate-new task. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that age differences in generate-new plagiarism and false recall were entirely mediated by measures of episodic recall and working memory capacity. We conclude that inadvertent plagiarism errors result from the failure of systematic decision processes, and that controlled attention is important for avoiding memory errors.

Curiously, studies using the remember/know paradigm to measure recollective experience show that people often vividly remember events that never occurred, a phenomenon referred to as illusory recollection. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that false remember responses in the converging associates, or Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, reflect accurate memory for the study episode, rather than false recollection of critical lures. To test this hypothesis, we used standard remember instructions that emphasized recollection of the study context by allowing participants to use memory of surrounding list items as evidence for recollection, or we used modified instructions that did not include memory for surrounding list items as a basis for recollection. Results showed that, as compared with the standard instruction condition, the modified instructions selectively reduced reports of false remember responses to critical lures, but did not affect remember responses to studied items. By contrast, remember responses to critical lures were unaffected by an instruction condition that excluded the use of voice information as evidence for remembering. These results suggest that remember responses to falsely recognized items are driven partly by retrieval of studied items, rather than illusory recollection of the critical lures themselves. They further point to the importance of instructions in influencing subjective reports.