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The font size effect is a metamemory illusion in which larger-font items produce higher judgments of learning (JOLs) but not better memory, relative to smaller-font items. We conducted meta-analyses to determine what is currently known about how font size affects JOLs and memory accuracy. In addition, we implemented both univariate and multivariate meta-regressions to isolate the moderators of JOL effects and memory effects. The results revealed a small-to-moderate effect of font size on JOLs. There was also a small but significant effect of font size on memory. This suggests that JOLs and memory accuracy both increase with font size, rather than being completely dissociated. Moreover, JOL-memory dissociation only occurred when font size ranged between very small and intermediate. Our working explanation is that the memory effects of font size are tied to (dis)fluency, but its JOL effects are not. Some boundary conditions were identified for font size effects on both JOLs and memory. Specifically, larger font sizes only reliably increased both JOLs and memory accuracy (a) when font sizes ranged from intermediate to very large, (b) when study materials were unrelated word lists, (c) when JOLs were solicited immediately after encoding, and (d) when study time was relatively brief.The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11409-021-09287-3.

Contemporary theories of decision-making are compared with respect to their predictions about the judgments that are hypothesized to underlie risky choice framing effects. Specifically, we compare predictions of psychophysical models, such as prospect theory, to the cognitive representational approach of fuzzy-trace theory in which the presence or absence of zero is key to framing effects. Three experiments implemented a high-power design in which many framing problems were administered to participants, who rated the attractiveness of either the certain or risky options. Experiments also varied whether truncation manipulations were within-subjects or between-subjects and whether both options were present. Violations of both strong and weak rationality were clearly observed in attractiveness ratings of options. However, truncation effects showed that these violations were conditional on the form of the decision problem. Truncation effects that involved adding or subtracting zero-that should not matter in almost all decision theories-showed that such rationality violations were attenuated when zero was deleted, but were amplified when zero was emphasized, per predictions of fuzzy-trace theory. This is the first such demonstration using attractiveness ratings of certain and risky options. Ratings also revealed that framing effects are inherently comparative: The attractiveness of a given option is a function of zero versus nonzero contrasts both within and between options. Indeed, we observed a losing-nothing-is-better effect that violates attribute framing and prospect theory such that a probability of losing nothing was rated as substantially better than a probability of gaining nothing, in accord with fuzzy-trace theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

We removed a key uncertainty in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) illusion. The mean backward associative strength (MBAS) of DRM lists is the best-known predictor of this illusion, but it is confounded with semantic relations between lists and critical distractors. Thus, it is unclear whether associative relations, semantic relations, or both foment the illusion. In Experiment 1, we developed a tool for investigating this question-a normed pool of materials in which subjects rated the gist strength of 120 DRM lists that varied widely in MBAS. This produced a mean gist strength (MGS) statistic for each list, which allowed MGS and MBAS to be manipulated factorially. In Experiment 2, we conducted the first MGS (high vs. low) × MBAS (high vs. low) factorial study of the DRM illusion. To measure how MGS and MBAS affect underlying retrieval processes, we implemented a conjoint recognition design. For raw memory performance, MGS affected both true and false recognition of critical distractors, and it affected both true and false recognition of list words. MBAS did not affect true or false recognition of list words or true recognition of critical distractors. With false recognition of critical distractors, it had a reliable effect in one condition when MGS was low, but it had no effect in another condition. At the level of retrieval processes, increasing MGS increased the familiarity of critical distractors' semantic content, and it also increased the familiarity of list words' semantic content. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

False memory has been a flourishing research area for decades, and recently there has been considerable interest in how emotional content affects it. Literature reviews have noted a lack of normed materials that vary in emotional valence and arousal as a factor that contributes to the mixed findings on emotion-false memory effects. We report a pool of normed materials of this sort, the Cornell/Cortland Emotional Lists (CEL). This is a Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) type list pool in which words' mean valence and arousal ratings are factorially manipulated across 32 lists. These lists' levels of mean backward associative strength (MBAS) are all high enough to induce significant levels of false memory. The lists were normed by administering them to 228 subjects at three different universities, all of whom responded to recall and recognition tests for the lists. The norming data revealed that false recall and false recognition were higher for negative lists than for positive lists, whereas true recall and true recognition were higher for positive lists than for negative lists. In addition, high arousal strengthened the valence effects on both true and false recall. These results indicate that the CEL lists are useful tozols for emotion-false memory research.

The conjoint-recognition model (CRM) implements fuzzy-trace theory's opponent process conception of false memory. Within the family of measurement models that separate the memory effects of recollection and familiarity, CRM is the only one that accomplishes this for false as well as true memory. We assembled a corpus of 537 sets of conjoint-recognition data, with estimates of CRM's parameters plus goodness-of-fit statistics being available for all the data sets. This corpus was used to conduct a meta-analysis of CRM's underlying process assumptions by pitting two theoretical interpretations of the model against each other: (a) the original interpretation, which assumes that its retrieval parameters tap a single recollection process (verbatim retrieval) and a single familiarity process (gist retrieval), and (b) the dual-recollection interpretation, which assumes that its parameters also tap a second recollection process (context retrieval). The two interpretations generate a series of differential predictions that fall into three groups-namely, predictions about invariant relations among parameters, about the structure of CRM's parameter space, and about the location of individual parameters within the space. When these predictions were evaluated with the corpus, the results converged on the dual-recollection interpretation. The results also resolved a long-standing uncertainty about whether the familiarity process for true memory is semantically or perceptually driven. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) provides well-researched scientific principles that explain worrisome forms of false memory in the law. False memories are of great legal concern because memory reports are frequently the evidence that determines guilt/innocence and are sometimes the only evidence that crimes have been committed. FTT’s principles reveal errors in commonsense theories that jurors use to judge the credibility of witnesses’ memory reports. This science versus commonsense disconnect is salient in cases involving child witnesses, eyewitness identifications, and confessions. The consequences of this disconnect for justice could be ameliorated by a simple change in federal rules of evidence.

The emotional valence of target information has been a centerpiece of recent false memory research, but in most experiments, it has been confounded with emotional arousal. We sought to clarify the results of such research by identifying a shared mathematical relation between valence and arousal ratings in commonly administered normed materials. That relation was then used to (a) decide whether arousal as well as valence influences false memory when they are confounded and to (b) determine whether semantic properties that are known to affect false memory covary with valence and arousal ratings. In Study 1, we identified a quadratic relation between valence and arousal ratings of words and pictures that has 2 key properties: Arousal increases more rapidly as function of negative valence than positive valence, and hence, a given level of negative valence is more arousing than the same level of positive valence. This quadratic function predicts that if arousal as well as valence affects false memory when they are confounded, false memory data must have certain fine-grained properties. In Study 2, those properties were absent from norming data for the Cornell-Cortland Emotional Word Lists, indicating that valence but not arousal affects false memory in those norms. In Study 3, we tested fuzzy-trace theory's explanation of that pattern: that valence ratings are positively related to semantic properties that are known to increase false memory, but arousal ratings are not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

We implemented a new approach to measuring the relative speeds of different cognitive processes, one that extends multinomial models of memory and reasoning from discrete decisions to latencies. We applied it to the dual-process prediction that familiarity is faster than recollection. Relative to prior work on this prediction, the advantages of the new approach are that it jointly measures specific retrieval processes and their latencies, provides separate sets of latency-retrieval parameters for list items and related distractors, and supplies latency parameters for bias processes as well as retrieval processes. Six experiments were conducted using a design (conjoint recognition) in which subjects make traditional old/new decisions about probes, plus two other types of decisions (New but similar to old items? Old or new but similar to old items?). The relative speeds of context recollection, target recollection, familiarity, and bias processes were measured for old list items and for related distractors. Four patterns emerged in all experiments: (a) The speed of recollection did not differ from the speed of familiarity for list items. (b) The speed ordering was context recollection > target recollection = familiarity for related distractors. (c) Bias processes were slower than recollection and familiarity for both list items and related distractors. (d) Bias processes were faster in conditions in which list items were to be accepted than in conditions in which they were to be rejected. Overall, the results suggest that the relative speeds of different retrieval and bias processes are emergent properties of the efficiency of different retrieval cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

OBJECTIVE In the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), cognitive function was tracked across multiple years by a comprehensive neuropsychological battery. In this study, we examined the latent structure of the ADNI battery and evaluated the invariance of that structure among diagnostic groups and over time. METHOD We used exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses to investigate the invariance of the ADNI battery's latent factor structure among three diagnostic groups (healthy controls, patients with mild cognitive impairment, patients with Alzheimer's disease) over a 2-year interval (baseline, 6 months, 12 months, 24 months). RESULTS The results revealed a five-factor structure for the ADNI battery (memory, visuospatial processing, attention, language, executive function). This structure displayed configural invariance but not weak, strong, or strict invariance across the three diagnostic groups. Longitudinally, configural, weak, strong, and strict invariance were all established within each diagnostic group, except that strict invariance was rejected in healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS The ADNI battery assesses the same cognitive abilities in the three diagnostic groups, but test scores do not calibrate to these abilities equally in the respective groups, making certain statistics (e.g., factor scores) noncomparable between groups. Within each group, the latent structure and the numerical relations between individual tests and underlying factors remained invariant over 2 years, suggesting that this battery is a reliable tool for tracking longitudinal changes in specific cognitive abilities within individual diagnostic groups. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

False memories typically share semantic or surface features with actual experiences, sometimes both. However, it is unclear whether false memories that are rooted in semantic versus surface resemblance obey the same laws. The Deese/Roediger/McDermott (DRM) illusion offers an attractive testbed for comparing semantic and surface false memories under closely matched conditions, owing to parallel semantic and phonological versions of the illusion. We review three lines of evidence in which semantic and phonological DRM illusions have been compared: (a) studies in which the two illusions were tracked in populations with different semantic or surface memory abilities; (b) studies that investigated the effects of manipulations that target semantic content or surface content or both; and (c) studies that examined hybrid forms of the illusion in which there was both semantic and surface resemblance between false memories and actual experiences. The three lines of evidence showed that semantic and phonological DRM illusions display dissociative patterns in most instances, indicating that they are two distinct types of false memories. The two major theories of the DRM illusion, fuzzy-trace theory and the activation/monitoring framework, have different views of the underlying mechanisms for the semantic and phonological illusions. We discuss the implications of this literature for the two theories.

The emotional ambiguity hypothesis introduced the principle that uncertainty about items' valence determines how emotional content affects memory and other psychological processes. It was formulated to explain why correlations between the perceived valence and arousal of memory items range from weak to unreliable, but it also makes novel predictions. Although data are consistent with those predictions, the hypothesis does not provide a process model of how valence ambiguity causes the valence-arousal relation to fluctuate. We tested 2 such models-a quantitative one, which assumes that increasing ambiguity lowers the reliability of valence judgments, and a categorical/quantitative one, which assumes that increasing ambiguity restricts the range of valence judgments. These models predict different mathematical relations between measures of ambiguity and intensity for valence and other semantic attributes (e.g., arousal, concreteness, familiarity, imagery, meaningfulness). In Experiments 1-3, tests of those predictions favored the categorical/quantitative model-showing that ambiguity is an inverted-U function for valence and other attributes. Experiments 4 and 5 were designed to investigate whether the memory effects of valence ambiguity are similar to the known effects of valence intensity. In both experiments, recall improved when ambiguity was increased, as well as when intensity was increased. A mathematical model revealed that increases in ambiguity produced large increases in items' familiarity, whereas increases in intensity produced smaller increases in both recollection and familiarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Deep distortions are a new family of memory biases that comprise one of the two basic varieties of false memory. The first and older variety, surface distortions, are specific item or source memories that are erroneous because the events did not happen. The new variety, deep distortions, are emergent properties of multiple specific memories. They are relations among such memories that are false because they violate objective logical rules that real-world events must obey. I discuss four deep distortions for which substantial data have accumulated: overdistribution, super-overdistribution, non-additivity, and impossible conjunctions. These phenomena violate four axioms of classical probability (numerical bound, universal event, additivity, and countable additivity) and two rules that follow from them (empty set and monotonicity). Their psychological significance lies in four facts about them: (a) They demonstrate that although events in the real world are compensatory, our memories of them are not; (b) they establish that we persistently over remember experience; (c) they reveal that surface distortions are by-products of deep distortions; and (d) they pose the theoretical conundrum of how the structure of memory could so thoroughly misrepresent the objective structure of the events we are remembering.

We report the 1st example of a true complementarity effect in memory development-a situation in which memory for the same event simultaneously becomes more and less accurate between early childhood and adulthood. We investigated this paradoxical effect because fuzzy-trace theory predicts that it can occur in paradigms that produce developmental reversals in false memory, which are circumstances in which adults are more likely than children to remember new events as old. The complementarity prediction is this: If subjects separately judge whether those same events are new but similar to old ones, adults will be more accurate than children, even though adults are less accurate when they judge whether the items are old. We report 4 experiments in which children (6- and 10-year-olds), adolescents (14-year-olds), and adults encoded the modal developmental reversal materials: Deese-Roediger-McDermott lists. Then, they responded to memory tests on which half the subjects judged whether test items were old and half judged whether the same items were new-similar. The paradoxical complementarity effect was detected in all experiments: The tendency to falsely remember new-similar items as being old increased with development, but so did the tendency to correctly remember them as being new-similar. (PsycINFO Database Record

Valence and arousal are core dimensions of emotion, but the relation between them has eluded scientific consensus. The emotional-ambiguity hypothesis is the first new model of this relation to appear in some years. It introduces the novel principle that the relation between valence and arousal is controlled by a variable that is not traditionally measured: the uncertainty of perceived valence. A comprehensive evaluation of this principle was conducted using publicly available emotional word and emotional picture databases. There was compelling support for the hypothesis in both types of databases and for both positive and negative valence: The strength of the relation between perceived arousal and perceived positivity or negativity decreased linearly as valence perceptions became more ambiguous. These results explain some puzzling facts about the valence–arousal relation that figure prominently in literature reviews, and they provide a solution to the problem of how to remove arousal confounds from valence effects.

The bureaucratization of psychological science exacts intellectual costs that go beyond the sheer amount of time that is drained away from creative scientific activity. Additional administrative hurdles are now being generated in an attempt to ensure the replicability of psychological effects. A cognitive analysis of those hurdles shows that impairment of scientific creativity is a foreseeable consequence, owing to their frequent verbatim-processing focus and the negative emotional context in which they are embedded. We consider whether it is possible to enhance replicability without increasing bureaucratic obstacles and to enhance scientific creativity in the presence of such obstacles.

For some years, the DRM illusion has been the most widely studied form of false memory. The consensus theoretical interpretation is that the illusion is a reality reversal, in which certain new words (critical distractors) are remembered as though they are old list words rather than as what they are-new words that are similar to old ones. This reality-reversal interpretation is supported by compelling lines of evidence, but prior experiments are limited by the fact that their memory tests only asked whether test items were old. We removed that limitation by also asking whether test items were new-similar. This more comprehensive methodology revealed that list words and critical distractors are remembered quite differently. Memory for list words is compensatory: They are remembered as old at high rates and remembered as new-similar at very low rates. In contrast, memory for critical distractors is complementary: They are remembered as both old and new-similar at high rates, which means that the DRM procedure induces a complementarity illusion rather than a reality reversal. The conjoint recognition model explains complementarity as a function of three retrieval processes (semantic familiarity, target recollection, and context recollection), and it predicts that complementarity can be driven up or down by varying the mix of those processes. Our experiments generated data on that prediction and introduced a convenient statistic, the complementarity ratio, which measures (a) the level of complementarity in memory performance and (b) whether its direction is reality-consistent or reality-reversed. (PsycINFO Database Record

The emotional ambiguity hypothesis posits that as items are encoded, people process the ambiguity as well as the intensity of their valence. The hypothesis predicts three signature effects, all of which have been reported: ambiguity-driven declines in valence-arousal correlations, a quadratic law relating perceived valence to valence ambiguity, and improvements in episodic memory as a function of increases in valence ambiguity. After reviewing evidence on these effects, we evaluated fuzzy-trace theory’s proposal that the ambiguity hypothesis should apply to a broad range of semantic attributes other than valence (e.g., categorization, concreteness, meaningfulness). According to that proposal, all three effects should be observed for other attributes. They are. In Experiment 1, ambiguity-driven reductions in attribute correlations were identified for seven other attributes. In Experiment 2, 16 other attributes obeyed the quadratic law. In Experiments 3–5, three other attributes displayed ambiguity-driven improvements in recall. It appears that people process the ambiguity as well as the intensity of many semantic attributes, and hence, the memory effects of such attributes can be due to either or both.

Recollection rejection is traditionally defined as using verbatim traces of old items' presentations to reject new similar test cues, in old/new recognition (e.g., rejecting that couch is old by retrieving verbatim traces of sofa's presentation). We broaden this conceptualization to include (a) old as well as new similar test cues, (b) using verbatim traces for acceptance as well as rejection, and (c) using illusory verbatim traces of unpresented items (phantom recollection) as well as actual verbatim traces (true recollection). The expanded model describes how true recollection and phantom recollection generate memory decisions by creating matches and mismatches between comparisons of test cues to the content of retrieved verbatim traces versus comparisons of test cues to the content of test questions. This model generates a series of predictions about verbatim editing. Some are intuitive, such as the prection that performance will be more accurate for old cues than for new similar ones. Others are counterintuitive and conflict with an alternative model, such as correct rejections are easier than hits and that correct rejection rates will be more stable over time than hit rates. Meta-analyses of a corpus of conjoint recognition data sets provided support for the model's predictions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Overdistribution is a form of memory distortion in which an event is remembered as belonging to too many episodic states, states that are logically or empirically incompatible with each other. We investigated a response formatting method of suppressing 2 basic types of overdistribution, disjunction and conjunction illusions, which parallel some classic illusions in the judgment and decision making literature. In this method, subjects respond to memory probes by rating their confidence that test cues belong to specific episodic states (e.g., presented on List 1, presented on List 2), rather than by making the usual categorical judgments about those states. The central prediction, which was derived from the task calibration principle of fuzzy-trace theory, was that confidence ratings should reduce overdistribution by diminishing subjects' reliance on noncompensatory gist memories. The data of 3 experiments agreed with that prediction. In Experiment 1, there were reliable disjunction illusions with categorical judgments but not with confidence ratings. In Experiment 2, both response formats produced reliable disjunction illusions, but those for confidence ratings were much smaller than those for categorical judgments. In Experiment 3, there were reliable conjunction illusions with categorical judgments but not with confidence ratings. Apropos of recent controversies over confidence-accuracy correlations in memory, such correlations were positive for hits, negative for correct rejections, and the 2 types of correlations were of equal magnitude. (PsycINFO Database Record

It has recently been found that episodic memory displays analogues of the well-known disjunction and conjunction fallacies of probability judgement. The aim of the present research was, for the first time, to study these memory fallacies together under the same conditions, and test theoretical predictions about the reasons for each. The focus was on predictions about the influence of semantic gist, target versus context recollection, and proactive versus retroactive interference. Disjunction and conjunction fallacies increased in conditions in which subjects were able to form semantic connections among list words. In addition, disjunction fallacies were increased by manipulations that minimised proactive interference, whereas conjunction fallacies were increased by manipulations that minimised retroactive interference. That pattern suggests that disjunction fallacies are more dependent on target recollection, whereas conjunction fallacies are more dependent on context recollection.

Fuzzy-trace theory posits independent verbatim and gist memory processes, a distinction that has implications for such applied topics as eyewitness testimony. This distinction between precise, literal verbatim memory and meaning-based, intuitive gist accounts for memory paradoxes including dissociations between true and false memory, false memories outlasting true memories, and developmental increases in false memory. We provide an overview of fuzzy-trace theory, and, using mathematical modeling, also present results demonstrating verbatim and gist memory in true and false recognition of narrative sentences and inferences. Results supported fuzzy-trace theory's dual-process view of memory: verbatim memory was relied on to reject meaning-consistent, but unpresented, sentences (via recollection rejection). However, verbatim memory was often not retrieved, and gist memory supported acceptance of these sentences (via similarity judgment and phantom recollection). Thus, mathematical models of words can be extended to explain memory for complex stimuli, such as narratives, the kind of memory interrogated in law.

There is a long tradition of norming words and other materials for various descriptive properties (e.g., concreteness, emotional valence, imagery, meaningfulness), which allows those properties to be manipulated in memory experiments. We introduce a new approach to norming, in which measurement models are used to norm the underlying retrieval processes that memory items trigger. We report two worked examples of this approach, for the most commonly administered items in false memory experiments: DRM lists. In one project, 36 lists that had been previously normed for their levels of true and false memory were normed for their levels of 3 retrieval processes that control false memory (recollection rejection, phantom recollection, and semantic familiarity) and 3 parallel processes that control true memory (true recollection, erroneous recollection rejection, and semantic familiarity). In the other project, 72 new DRM lists, whose associative and semantic strengths had been systematically varied, were normed for the same retrieval processes. Together, these norms provide maximum likelihood estimates of all 6 retrieval processes for all 108 lists. Analyses of those estimates revealed that list differences in the three false memory processes are mutually dissociated, as are list differences in the three true memory processes. Thus, investigators can vary each retrieval process, without confounding it with other processes, by merely selecting appropriate groups of lists. That allows simple List × Treatment designs to be used to pinpoint the retrieval processes that are responsible for the effects of important memory manipulations (e.g., delay, divided attention, encoding instructions, repetition).

Complementarity is a paradoxical phenomenon in which memory for incompatible reality states (e.g., old vs. new) violates basic logical constraints: Subjects remember certain groups of items as belonging to both of two incompatible states at reliable levels. The theoretical principle that predicts this phenomenon, non-compensatory gist memory, also predicts a more stringent form in which individual items are successively remembered as belonging to each of two incompatible states. In the present experiments, we investigated this within-item form of complementarity and evaluated an alternative theoretical explanation that relies on a selective retrieval principle. The experiments provided evidence of robust within-item complementarity, for both old items and new items that were semantically related to old ones. Logical incompatibility constrained memory for different reality states to only a limited degree. Our experiments provided no support for the selective retrieval explanation of complementarity. That account predicts several effects, some for judgment probabilities and others for latencies, none of which was observed. Thus, non-compensatory gist memory proved to be the more satisfactory of the two explanations.

In this chapter, the author begins with a synopsis of the basic paradigm that has been used in his experiments and continues with a description of some elementary working-memory concepts. He provides some experiments on probability judgment that converged on retrieval failure as the major source of reasoning errors. The author discusses a simple stochastic model that guided an earlier series of experiments. The aim of this first model was to provide independent estimates of two types of working-memory failures in children’s mental arithmetic, namely, breakdowns on the input side and breakdowns in transforming stored traces into numerical outputs. The author presents an experimental results. He summarizes findings from previous studies in which the simplified model was applied to protocols of kindergarten and first-grade children. The author also provides some additional experiments in which the expanded model was applied to protocols of children from the same age range.

This chapter discusses two topics which are especially relevant to the problem of just how modifiable cognitive development is. The first is the series of laboratory-style learning experiments in which investigators have sought to teach conceptual skills from Piaget's stages to children who do not yet possess them. The second is a group of experimental preschool curricula in which early-childhood educators have attempted to implement Piaget's ideas about the relationship between learning and development. Piaget wrote many papers on education during his life, some of them as early as the 1930s. From these articles, as well as from the theory itself, educators have isolated several recommendations that might be implemented in a variety of ways. The chapter focuses on the specific recommendations that most educators regard as uncontroversial. For convenience, they are discussed under three headings: readiness recommendations; recommendations about what to teach; and recommendations about teaching methods.

Recent research on the overdistribution principle implies that episodic memory is infected by conjunction illusions. These are instances in which an item that was presented in a single context (e.g., List 1) is falsely remembered as having been presented in multiple contexts (e.g., List 1 and List 2). Robust conjunction illusions were detected in source-monitoring designs in which conjunctive probes ("Was bagpipe presented on List 1 and List 2?") were added to the traditional nonconjunctive probes ("Was bagpipe presented on List 1?"). In Experiment 1, the levels of those illusions were comparable to what would be expected on the basis of results from prior overdistribution experiments. In Experiments 2 and 3, conjunction illusions were neither eliminated nor reduced by a manipulation that should have had such effects if the illusions are by-products of subjective differences in retrieved memory support. Also, conjunction illusions sometimes rose to the level of conjunction fallacies: In certain conditions, subjects thought that items were more likely to have occurred in all the presentation contexts than in any single context, which is impossible. Two general approaches to explaining overdistribution, representational accounts and retrieval accounts, are considered.

A half-century ago, at the dawn of the all-or-none learning era, Estes showed that finite Markov chains supply a tractable, comprehensive framework for discrete-change data of the sort that he envisioned for shifts in conditioning states in stimulus sampling theory. Shortly thereafter, such data rapidly accumulated in many spheres of human learning and animal conditioning, and Estes’ work stimulated vigorous development of Markov models to handle them. A key outcome was that the data of the workhorse paradigms of episodic memory, recognition and recall, proved to be one- and two-stage Markovian, respectively, to close approximations. Subsequently, Markov modeling of recognition and recall all but disappeared from the literature, but it is now reemerging in the wake of dual-process conceptions of episodic memory. In recall, in particular, Markov models are being used to measure two retrieval operations (direct access and reconstruction) and a slave familiarity operation. In the present paper, we develop this family of models and present the requisite machinery for fit evaluation and significance testing. Results are reviewed from selected experiments in which the recall models were used to understand dual memory processes.

False memories are generally viewed as “dumb,” in the sense of being caused by deficient processing, but recent psychological research has shown that elaboration and inferences can result in “smart” false memories. These “smart” false memories are explained by fuzzy-trace theory (FTT), which assumes that they derive from comprehension of the meaning of experience. FTT predicts that “smart” false memories should be positively correlated with measured levels of Need for Cognition (NFC). In three experiments we find those higher in NFC are more likely to elaborate and infer information from advertising that causes them to create “smart” false memories.

Classic research that was initiated in response to heavy reliance on children’s evidence in certain types of criminal cases showed that the incidence of false memories declines steadily between childhood and young adulthood. This developmental decline pattern became the centerpiece of much expert testimony, and it has been treated as settled science in court rulings. It is not settled science. A large number of studies have recently appeared on developmental reversals, an opposite pattern in which false memories for events that preserve the gist of experience increase dramatically between early childhood and young adulthood. Developmental reversals challenge the forensic principle that children’s evidence is inherently more infected with false memories than adults’ evidence.

The authors investigated the effects of valence and arousal on memory using a dual-process model that quantifies recollective and nonrecollective components of recall without relying on metacognitive judgments to separate them. The results showed that valenced words increased reconstruction (a component of nonrecollective retrieval) relative to neutral words. In addition, the authors found that positive valence increased recollective retrieval in comparison to negative valence, whereas negative valence increased nonrecollective retrieval relative to positive valence. The latter effect, however, depended on arousal: It was reliable only when arousal was high. The present findings supported the notion that emotional valence is a conceptual gist because it affected nonrecollective retrieval and because subjects' recall protocols were clustered by valence. The results challenge the hypothesis that valence affects only recollection, and they clarify previous inconsistent findings about the effects of emotion on memory accuracy and brain activity.

False memories are influenced by a variety of factors, but emotion is a variable of special significance, for theoretical and practical reasons. Interestingly, emotion's effects on false memory depend on whether it is embedded in the content of to-be-remembered events or in our moods, where mood is an aspect of the context in which events are encoded. We sketch the theoretical basis for this content-context dissociation and then review accumulated evidence that content and context effects are indeed different. Paradoxically, we find that in experiments on spontaneous and implanted false memories, negatively valenced content foments distortion, but negatively valenced moods protect against it. In addition, correlational data show that enduring negative natural moods (e.g., depression) foment false memory. Current opponent-process models of false memory, such as fuzzy-trace theory, are able to explain the content-context dissociation: Variations in emotional content primarily affect memory for the gist of events, whereas variations in emotional context primarily affect memory for events' exact verbatim form. Important questions remain about how these effects are modulated by variations in memory tests and in arousal. Promising methods of tackling those questions are outlined, especially designs that separate the gist and verbatim influences of emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record

In prior work on how true and false memory are influenced by emotion, valence and arousal have often been conflated. Thus, it is difficult to say which specific effects are caused by valence and which are caused by arousal. In the present research, we used a picture-memory paradigm that allowed emotional valence to be manipulated with arousal held constant. Negatively valenced pictures elevated both true and false memory, relative to positive and neutral pictures. Conjoint recognition modeling revealed that negative valence (a) reduced erroneous suppression of true memories and (b) increased the familiarity of the semantic content of both true and false memories. Overall, negative valence impaired the verbatim side of episodic memory but enhanced the gist side, and these effects persisted even after a week-long delay. (PsycINFO Database Record

Semantic false memories are confounded with a second type of error, over-distribution, in which items are attributed to contradictory episodic states. Over-distribution errors have proved to be more common than false memories when the two are disentangled. We investigated whether over-distribution is prevalent in another classic false memory paradigm: source monitoring. It is. Conventional false memory responses (source misattributions) were predominantly over-distribution errors, but unlike semantic false memory, over-distribution also accounted for more than half of true memory responses (correct source attributions). Experimental control of over-distribution was achieved via a series of manipulations that affected either recollection of contextual details or item memory (concreteness, frequency, list-order, number of presentation contexts, and individual differences in verbatim memory). A theoretical model was used to analyze the data (conjoint process dissociation) that predicts that predicts that (a) over-distribution is directly proportional to item memory but inversely proportional to recollection and (b) item memory is not a necessary precondition for recollection of contextual details. The results were consistent with both predictions.

A developmental reversal in false memory is the counterintuitive phenomenon of higher levels of false memory in older children, adolescents, and adults than in younger children. The ability of verbatim memory to suppress this age trend in false memory was evaluated using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Seven and 11-year-old children studied DRM lists either in a standard condition (whole words) that normally produces high levels of false memory or in an alternative condition that should enhance verbatim memory (word fragments). Half the children took 1 recognition test, and the other half took 3 recognition tests. In the single-test condition, the typical age difference in false memory was found for the word condition (higher false memory for 11-year-olds than for 7-year-olds), but in the word fragment condition false memory was lower in the older children. In the word condition, false memory increased over successive recognition tests. Our findings are consistent with 2 principles of fuzzy-trace theory's explanation of false memories: (a) reliance on verbatim rather than gist memory causes such errors to decline with age, and (b) repeated testing increases reliance on gist memory in older children and adults who spontaneously connect meaning across events.

The present research examined the influence of prior knowledge on children’s free recall, cued recall, recognition memory, and source memory judgments for a series of similar real-life events. Forty children (5–12 years old) attended 4 thematic birthday parties and were later interviewed about the events that transpired during the parties using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development protocol. Of the events, half were generic in that they could have occurred at any birthday party, and half were specific to the theme of the party. Older children demonstrated more evidence of using gist-based information to guide their memory performance than did younger children. However, younger children were able to use global gist to inform their source memory judgments, qualifying past word-learning research.

We studied the extent to which subjective ratings of memory phenomenology discriminate true- and false-memory responses, and whether degree of gist-based processing influences false memory and phenomenology, in a classic forensic task, the Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale (GSS). Participants heard a narrative of a robbery followed by suggestive questions about the content of the narrative. They were asked to rate the items they recognized as studied using the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire (MCQ). Consistent with studies of word lists, there were phenomenological differences between true and false memory responses: memory phenomenology was richer for true than for false memories, which supports opponent-process accounts of false memory such as fuzzy-trace theory. Thus, phenomenology is a useful means for differentiating experienced from non-experienced events in forensic contexts. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Language: en

One of the most extensively investigated topics in the adult memory literature, dual memory processes, has had virtually no impact on the study of early memory development. The authors remove the key obstacles to such research by formulating a trichotomous theory of recall that combines the traditional dual processes of recollection and familiarity with a reconstruction process. The theory is then embedded in a hidden Markov model that measures all 3 processes with low-burden tasks that are appropriate for even young children. These techniques are applied to a large corpus of developmental studies of recall, yielding stable findings about the emergence of dual memory processes between childhood and young adulthood and generating tests of many theoretical predictions. The techniques are extended to the study of healthy aging and to the memory sequelae of common forms of neurocognitive impairment, resulting in a theoretical framework that is unified over 4 major domains of memory research: early development, mainstream adult research, aging, and neurocognitive impairment. The techniques are also extended to recognition, creating a unified dual process framework for recall and recognition.

We studied the semantic properties of a class of illusions, of which the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm is the most prominent example, in which subjects falsely remember words that are associates of studied words. We analyzed DRM materials for 16 dimensions of semantic content and assessed the ability of these dimensions to predict interlist variability in false memory. For the more general class of illusions, we analyzed pairs of presented and unpresented words that varied in associative strength for the presence of these same 16 semantic properties. DRM materials proved to be exceptionally rich in meaning, as indexed by these semantic properties. Variability in false recall, false recognition, and backward associative strength loaded on a single semantic factor (familiarity/meaningfulness), whereas variability in true recall loaded on a quite different factor (imagery/concreteness). For word association generally, 15 semantic properties varied reliably with forward or backward association between words. Implications for semantic versus associative processing in this class of illusions, for dual-process theories, and for semantic properties of word associations are discussed.

In studies of children's false memories of word lists, it has been found that false alarms are stable over long-term retention intervals (persistence effect), that the stability of false alarms can equal or exceed that of hits, that earlier memory tests increase the frequency of hits on later tests (true-memory inoculation effect), that earlier memory tests increase the frequency of false alarms on later tests (false-memory creation effect), and that test-induced increases in false alarms can equal or exceed increases for hits. We studied these phenomena in 6-, 8-, and 11-year-olds and in adults using short narratives about everyday objects and events. All of the phenomena were detected at all ages, but levels of spontaneous memory falsification were much higher than for word lists and patterns of developmental change were somewhat different. Important new findings were that the persistence effect and the false-memory creation effect were greatest for statements that would be regarded as factually incorrect reports of events in sworn testimony and that, like suggestive questioning, interviews that involve nonsuggestive recognition questions may nevertheless taint children's memories.

When recognition probes seem familiar but their presentation cannot be recollected, dual-process models predict that they will be attributed to too many presentation contexts—most dramatically, to multiple contexts that are mutually contradictory. This is the phenomenon of episodic over-distribution. In the conjoint-recognition and process-dissociation paradigms, attributions to two contradictory contexts can be measured: (a) presented and not presented (conjoint recognition) and (b) presented on List 1 only and presented on List 2 only. Consistent with dual-process models but inconsistent with one-process models, analyses of over 100 sets of conjoint-recognition data revealed that attribution of probes to the first contradictory combination was virtually universal. Across the data corpus, 18% of true-memory probes (studied targets) and 13% of false-memory probes (related distractors) were judged to have been both presented and not presented. Likewise, episodic over-distribution was detected in follow-up analyses of process-dissociation data sets, where an average of 39% of target probes were judged to have been presented on List 1 only and to have been presented on List 2 only.

“Numeracy,” so-called on analogy with literacy, is essential for making health and other social judgments in everyday life [Reyna, V. F., & Brainerd, C. J. (in press). The importance of mathematics in health and human judgment: Numeracy, risk communication, and medical decision making. Learning and Individual Differences .]. Recent research on numeracy in health decision making has shown that many adults fail to solve simple ratio and decimal problems, concepts that are prerequisites for understanding health-relevant risk communications. In addition, adults exhibit a ratio bias, in which higher frequencies bias probability judgments, and denominator neglect, described by Reyna and Brainerd (e.g., [Reyna, V. F. (1991). Class inclusion, the conjunction fallacy, and other cognitive illusions. Developmental Review, 11 , 317–336.; Reyna, V. F., & Brainerd, C. J. (1994). The origins of probability judgment: A review of data and theories. In G. Wright & P. Ayton (Eds.), Subjective probability . (pp. 239–272). New York: Wiley.]) and independently by Epstein (e.g., [Epstein, S. (1994). Integration of the cognitive and psychodynamic unconscious. American Psychologist, 49, 709–724.]). Along with research in education and cognitive development, this work demonstrates that adults have difficulty with a broad range of ratio concepts, including fractions, proportions, risks and probabilities. The psychological mechanisms underlying this difficulty are characterized using dual-processes approaches such as fuzzy-trace theory, simple and effective interventions are described that eliminate common problem-solving errors, and implications for the effective use of numerical information in risk communication are discussed.