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The standard temporal order of events used in studies of eyewitness suggestibility was reversed: Misled subjects were given verbal suggestions about a visual scene before witnessing it. As in the standard procedure, the subjects were later tested on memory of the visual scene. A suggestibility effect was obtained with this reversed procedure, even though the verbal information could not “update” the target memory because no memory of the visual scene existed when the misleading suggestions were given.

In two experiments, the number of times subjects saw and generated words was varied, and then half the subjects were asked to judge presentation frequency and half were asked to judge generation frequency. People were more sensitive to the relative frequency of internally generated, compared with externally generated, events. Also, judgments of internal events were less affected by whether or not the subjects were given a restricted range of numbers for their judgments, and internally generated events produced more confusion in estimating external event frequency than vice versa. The results are discussed in terms of potential differences in the characteristics of memory representations originating in external, compared with internal, events and the way these might interact with the judgment process.

Throughout the relatively brief period since the invention of the modern Romantic concept of childhood in the nineteenth century (Aries, 1962, cited in Kessen, 1979), and throughout the even briefer history of the science of psychology, the idea of young children serving as eyewitnesses in courts of law has run counter to our notions of children’s capabilities (Goodman, 1984). Now, in the mid-1980s, children’s competency as eyewitnesses has become an important issue, as children more and more frequently are the victims of reported crimes and as psychologists become increasingly concerned with conducting research and constructing theory within “ecologically valid” contexts and constraints (e.g., Bahrick & Karis, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1977; Neisser, 1976, 1982, 1985).

There have been several notable recent trends in the area of learning and memory. Problems with the episodic/semantic distinction have become more apparent, and new efforts have been made (exemplar models, distributed-memory models) to represent general knowledge without assuming a separate semantic system. Less emphasis is being placed on stable, prestored prototypes and more emphasis on a flexible memory system that provides the basis for a multitude of categories or frames of reference, derived on the spot as tasks demand. There is increasing acceptance of the idea that mental models are constructed and stored in memory in addition to, rather than instead of, memorial representations that are more closely tied to perceptions. This gives rise to questions concerning the conditions that permit inferences to be drawn and mental models to be constructed, and to questions concerning the similarities and differences in the nature of the representations in memory of perceived and generated information and in their functions. There has also been a swing from interest in deliberate strategies to interest in automatic, unconscious (even mechanistic!) processes, reflecting an appreciation that certain situations (e.g. recognition, frequency judgements, savings in indirect tasks, aspects of skill acquisition, etc) seem not to depend much on the products of strategic, effortful or reflective processes. There is a lively interest in relations among memory measures and attempts to characterize memory representations and/or processes that could give rise to dissociations among measures. Whether the pattern of results reflects the operation of functional subsystems of memory and, if so, what the "modules" are is far from clear. This issue has been fueled by work with amnesics and has contributed to a revival of interaction between researchers studying learning and memory in humans and those studying learning and memory in animals. Thus, neuroscience rivals computer science as a source of interdisciplinary stimulation. Research on topics such as memory for spatial location, the relation between memory and affect, and autobiographical memory reminds us that general theories of memory based on studies of verbal materials alone are limited. Investigating how people remember complex natural events should provide us with a larger set of memory phenomena to explain and consequently insight into a wider range of memory principles or a deeper understanding of the ones we already accept (e.g. the role of repetition, encoding specificity), including their functional significance for human behavior.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

As John Locke pointed out, there are at least two sources of the contents of the mind: events that occur in the world and events that originate in the mind. Memory, as a record of experience, should contain information from both sources. The present studies investigated memory for the frequency of externally and internally generated events. Individual items were presented to subjects varying numbers of times and tested varying numbers of times. Later, subjects were asked to estimate the frequency of both types of events. Experiment 1 showed that internally generated events influenced the judged frequency of externally generated events and vice versa. The first of these was called the IFE effect and the second the IFI effect. Experiment 2 indicated that the IFE effect was greater when tests consisted of overt, as compared to covert, recall trials. The results were discussed in terms of a model for storing and using occurrence information which would account for both our ability to discriminate between and our tendency to confuse internally and externally generated memory representations.

Publisher Summary This chapter describes a general approach to memory in the form of a model of memory called a “multiple-entry, modular memory system” (MEM). The model proposes that the multiple functions that memory serves are accomplished by several interacting but distinguishable subsystems. This model tries to resolve or clarify a number of issues—for example, the controversy between the trace and constructive theories of memory, the role of attention in establishing long-term memories, and the relations among various measures of memory. MEM provides a framework for generating new hypotheses about a number of other areas—for example, the relation between memory and emotion, the relation between specific autobiographical memories and general knowledge, and the problem of characterizing memory disorders. A malfunction in the reflection system would tend to result in a disconnection between memories and personal identity such as is found in amnesics. Different memory tasks draw differentially on different subsystems in MEM; hence, an entry not revealed by one memory task may be revealed by another.

Subjects learned a list of paired associates and reported the elaborators actually used during learning. They also generated “second-choice” elaborators. Both first- and second-choice elaborators were classified as stimulus-related or response-related and given to independent groups of new subjects to use in learning a list of pairs. Over a 1-week retention interval, stimulus-related elaborators produced better retention than did response-related elaborators. There was also some indication that first-choice elaborators were superior to second-choice elaborators.

The ability of an anterograde amnesic C.S. to learn a second language is assessed. First, her claim that she learned Italian while amnesic was examined in a series of formal tests of Italian. Second, C.S. and her husband were tutored in French and her acquisition was compared to that of her husband's. Third, C.S.'s ability to learn other kinds of verbal material with practice was investigated. The implications of C.S.'s apparent ability to learn a second language in the presence of a severe deficit for memory for other kinds of verbal material is discussed.

In four experiments the conditions under which frequency judgments reflect the relative frequency of complex perceptual events were explored. Subjects viewed a series of 4 x 4 grids each containing seven items, which were letters and numbers in one of four typefaces. Later judgments of the relative frequency with which particular letters appeared in particular typefaces were unaffected by a warning about an upcoming frequency judgment task, but were affected by both the time available for processing the stimuli and the nature of the cover task subjects engaged in while viewing the grids. Frequency judgments were poor when exposure durations were less than 2 s and when the cover task directed subjects' attention merely to the locations of the items within the grids. Frequency judgments improved when the cover task directed subjects' attention to the identity of the stimuli, especially to the conjunction of letter and typeface. The results suggest that frequency estimation of complex stimuli may be possible only for stimuli that have been processed as phenomenal objects.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses some of the contributions made by listeners while comprehending and remembering. The ability to understand linguistic symbols is based not only on the comprehender's knowledge of his language but also on his general knowledge of the world. Much of the extralinguistic knowledge affecting comprehension and memory may come from visually presented information. The chapter presents a number of studies that illustrate some of the interplay between linguistic inputs and extralinguistic knowledge. It highlights various implications of these studies with respect to the problem of characterizing the thought processes involved in comprehending language, and of characterizing the role of comprehension factors in learning and memory. The results of the studies reported do not dictate a detailed model of comprehension, but they suggest a general orientation toward the problem of linguistic comprehension that places it squarely within the domain of cognitive psychology, and that generates questions for future research. The aspects of the comprehension process may involve mental operations on knowledge structures and the realization of the implications of these operations. Information about the consequences of such operations—rather than information only about the input itself—may be necessary for comprehending subsequent inputs and may be an important part of what is available in memory tasks.

Recent studies have shown systematic choice-supportive memory for past choices, wherein people tend to overattribute positive features to options they chose and negative features to unchosen options (Mather & Johnson, 2000; Mather, Shafir, & Johnson, 2000). In contrast, the present experiments showed no choice-supportive memory bias for assigned options. Rather than having a general motivation to recall the chosen or the assigned option in a more positive light, people appear to be influenced by heuristics that vary with context: In recalling past choices, people expect the chosen option to contain more positive and fewer negative features than do its competitors. In recalling past assignments, in contrast, people expect the assigned option to be remembered better than the unassigned alternatives. This vividness heuristic leads to systematic misattribution of new features to unassigned alternatives, but not in a manner supportive of the assigned option. Some implications of these findings are discussed.

In each of the three experiments, a reality monitoring task required subjects to discriminate between words they generated and words presented by an experimenter. Each of the experiments included a manipulation designed to affect the amount of external control over what the subject generated, with the expectation that the more a response is determined by external cues, the less the memory will include information about cognitive operations that took place when the memory was established. In general, increasing cognitive operations increased accuracy of reality monitoring. In addition, when subjects falsely recognized new items as old, they were much more likely to attribute the items to external sources than to internal sources. These findings were discussed primarily in terms of the role that cognitive operations preserved in memory may play in identifying the origin of information in memory. A comparison of memory for the occurrence of experimenterpresented and subject-generated items, regardless of correct identification of origin, extended the generation effect found by Slamecka and Graf in 1978 to information only covertly generated by the subject (Experiment 1), and to retention intervals as long as 10 days (Experiment 2). The results of Experiment 3 suggested that the generation effect may not necessarily appear in situations in which what is generated is essentially a meaningful response to what is perceived.

The present experiments compared people's abilities to make decisions about the origin of their memories. Experiment 1 demonstrated that 6-year-olds were as good as 17-year-olds in discriminating memories originating from what they said earlier (self-generations) from memories of what another person said earlier (external presentations). However, in both experiments 1 and 2, 6-year-olds were not as good at discriminating what they had said earlier from what they had only thought. The possibility that younger children simply have more difficulty distinguishing between memories originating from the same class, internal or external, was ruled out because 6-year-olds performed as well as 9-year-olds when differentiating between memories from 2 external sources (experiment 2). Nor could their difficulty be attributed to a general problem in distinguishing memories for their thoughts from any other class of memories because they were at no disadvantage in discriminating their earlier thoughts (words they imagined themselves saying) from words someone else said (experiment 2). Our findings suggest that some distinctions, self versus other, emerge as cues in memory sooner than other distinctions, thoughts versus actions.