Metacognition and False Recognition in Alzheimer's Disease: Further Exploration of the Distinctiveness Heuristic.

The distinctiveness heuristic is a response mode in which participants expect to remember vivid details of an experience and make recognition decisions on the basis of this metacognitive expectation. The authors examined whether the distinctiveness heuristic could be engaged to reduce false recognition in a repetition-lag paradigm in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Patients with AD were able to use the distinctiveness heuristic--though not selectively--and thus they showed reduction of both true and false recognition. The authors suggest that patients with AD can engage in decision strategies on the basis of the metacognitive expectation associated with use of the distinctiveness heuristic, but the patients' episodic memory impairment limits both the scope and effectiveness of such strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False recognition of pictures versus words in Alzheimer's disease: The distinctiveness heuristic.

False recognition of semantic associates can be reduced when older adults also study pictures representing each associate. D. L. Schacter, L. Israel, and C. Racine (1999) attributed this reduction to the operation of a distinctiveness heuristic: a response mode in which participants demand access to detailed recollections to support a positive recognition decision. The authors examined patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (AD) and older adults with this paradigm. Half of the participants studied pictures and auditory words; the other half studied visual and auditory words. Older adults who studied pictures were able to reduce their false alarms compared with those who studied words only. AD patients who studied pictures were unable to reduce their false alarms compared with those who studied words only and, in fact, exhibited trends toward greater false recognition. Implications for understanding semantic memory in AD patients are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and strategic retrieval processes: Reducing false memories with a distinctiveness heuristic.

The authors show that a strategic retrieval process--the distinctiveness heuristic--is a powerful mechanism for reducing false memories in the elderly. Individuals studied words, pictures, or both types of items and then completed a recognition test on which the studied items appeared once, whereas the new words appeared twice. After studying either pictures only or a mixture of pictures and words, both younger and older adults falsely recognized fewer repeated new words than did participants who studied words. Studying pictures provided a basis for using a distinctiveness heuristic during the recognition test: Individuals inferred that the absence of memory for picture information indicates that an item is "new." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical elaboration reduces memory distortion: Cognitive operations and the distinctiveness heuristic.

Retrieval monitoring enhances episodic memory accuracy. For instance, false recognition is reduced when participants base their decisions on more distinctive recollections, a retrieval monitoring process called the distinctiveness heuristic. The experiments reported here tested the hypothesis that autobiographical elaboration during study (i.e., generating autobiographical memories in response to cue words) would lead to more distinctive recollections than other item-specific encoding tasks, enhancing retrieval monitoring accuracy at test. Consistent with this hypothesis, false recognition was less likely when participants had to search their memory for previous autobiographical elaborations, compared to previous semantic judgments. These false recognition effects were dissociated from true recognition effects across four experiments, implicating a recollection-based monitoring process that was independent from familiarity-based processes. Separately obtained subjective measures provided converging evidence for this conclusion. The cognitive operations engaged during autobiographical elaboration can lead to distinctive recollections, making them less prone to memory distortion than other types of deep or semantic encoding. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollections of things schematic: Room schemas revisited.

In 2 experiments, the authors examined the effects of schemas on the subjective experience of remembering. Participants entered a room that was set up to look like a graduate student's office under intentional or incidental learning conditions. They later took a recognition memory test that included making remember-know judgments. In Experiment 1, they were tested during the same session; in Experiment 2 they were tested either during the same session or after a 48-hr delay. Consistent with the authors' predictions, memory for atypical objects was especially likely to be experienced in the remember sense. In addition, false remember judgments rose dramatically after the 48-hr delay, especially for participants in the incidental learning condition. Results are discussed in terms of schema theory, fuzzy-trace theory, and the distinctiveness heuristic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

True memory, false memory, and subjective recollection deficits after focal parietal lobe lesions.

Objective: There is mounting evidence that the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) plays an important role in episodic memory. We previously found that patients with PPC damage exhibit retrieval-related episodic memory deficits. Here we assess whether parietal lobe damage affects episodic memory on a different task: the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false-memory paradigm. Methods: Two patients with bilateral PPC damage and a group of matched controls were tested. In Experiment 1, the task was to remember words; in Experiment 2 the task was to remember pictures of common objects. Prior studies have shown that normal participants have high levels of false memory to words, low levels to pictures. Results: The patients exhibited significantly lower levels of false memory to words. One patient showed significantly elevated levels of false memory to pictures. The patients' false memories were accompanied by reduced levels of recollection, as tested by a Remember/Know procedure. Conclusions: PPC damage causes decreased levels of false memories and an abnormal Remember/Know profile. Their false memory rate is similar to the rate exhibited by patients with medial temporal lobe damage. These results support the view that portions of the PPC play a critical role in objective and subjective aspects of recollection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why Distinctive Information Reduces False Memories: Evidence for Both Impoverished Relational-Encoding and Distinctiveness Heuristic Accounts.

Two accounts explain why studying pictures reduces false memories within the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (J. Deese, 1959; H. L. Roediger & K. B. McDermott, 1995). The impoverished relational-encoding account suggests that studying pictures interferes with the encoding of relational information, which is the primary basis for false memories in this paradigm. Alternatively, the distinctiveness heuristic assumes that critical lures are actively withheld by the use of a retrieval strategy. When participants were given inclusion recall instructions to report studied items as well as related items, they still reported critical lures less often after picture encoding than they did after word encoding. As the impoverished relational-encoding account suggests, critical lures appear less likely to come to mind after picture encoding than they do after word encoding. However, the results from a postrecall recognition test provide evidence in favor of the distinctiveness heuristic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Failure to find the picture superiority effect in implicit conceptual memory tests.

According to the transfer appropriate processing framework (H. L. Roediger, M. S. Weldon, & B. A. Challis, 1989), if pictures engage more conceptual processing than words, then they should produce more priming on implicit conceptual tests. Experiments 1 and 2 did not find any significant advantage of pictures on the implicit category production or word association tests. When these tests were given as explicit cued-recall tests in Experiment 3, pictures were recalled better than words, producing a dissociation and indicating that the materials were sensitive to differences in picture and word processing. In Experiments 4 and 5, the implicit tests showed level-of-processing effects indicating that they were sensitive to differences in conceptual processing. Therefore, it is hypothesized that (a) conceptual processing plays a minor role, if any, in superior picture recall and that visual distinctiveness is a more important factor; and (b) distinctiveness is more important in intentional than incidental retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding modality can affect memory accuracy via retrieval orientation.

Research indicates that false memory is lower following visual than auditory study, potentially because visual information is more distinctive. In the present study we tested the extent to which retrieval orientation can cause a modality effect on memory accuracy. Participants studied unrelated words in different modalities, followed by criterial recollection tests that selectively oriented retrieval toward one study modality at a time. Memory errors were lower when oriented toward visual than toward auditory information, thereby generalizing the modality effect to an explicit source memory task. Moreover, these effects persisted independent of the test presentation modality, indicating that retrieval orientation overrode the potential cuing properties of the test stimulus. An independent manipulation check confirmed that visual recollections were subjectively experienced as more distinctive than auditory recollections. These results suggest that retrieval orientation is sufficient to cause a modality effect on memory accuracy by focusing monitoring processes on the recollection of studied features that are diagnostic of prior presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recollection-based prospective metamemory judgments are more accurate than those based on confidence: Judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKS).

Five experiments were conducted to examine whether the nature of the information that is monitored during prospective metamemory judgments affected the relative accuracy of those judgments. We compared item-by-item judgments of learning (JOLs), which involved participants determining how confident they were that they would remember studied items, with judgments of remembering and knowing (JORKs), which involved participants determining whether studied items would later be accompanied by contextual details (i.e., remembering) or would not (i.e., knowing). JORKs were more accurate than JOLs when remember–know or confidence judgments were made at test and when cued recall was the outcome measure, but not for yes–no recognition. We conclude that the accuracy of metamemory judgments depends on the nature of the information monitored during study and test and that metamemory monitoring can be improved if participants are asked to base their judgments on contextual details rather than on confidence. These data support the contention that metamemory decisions can be based on qualitatively distinct cues, rather than an overall memory strength signal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Direct comparison of two implicit memory tests: Word fragment and word stem completion.

In 3 experiments, the implicit memory tests of word fragment and word stem completion showed comparable effects over several variables: Study of words produced more priming than did study of pictures; no levels-of-processing effect occurred for words; more priming was obtained from pictures when Ss imaged the pictures' names than when they rated them for pleasantness; and forgetting rates were generally similar for the tests. A different pattern of results for the first 3 variables occurred under explicit test conditions with the same word fragments or word stems as cues. It is concluded that the 2 implicit tests are measuring a similar form of perceptual memory. Furthermore, it is argued that both tests are truly implicit because they meet the D. L. Schacter et al (1989) retrieval intentionality criterion: Levels of processing of words have a powerful effect on explicit versions of the tests but no effect on implicit versions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive memory: Survival processing enhances retention.

The authors investigated the idea that memory systems might have evolved to help us remember fitness-relevant information--specifically, information relevant to survival. In 4 incidental learning experiments, people were asked to rate common nouns for their survival relevance (e.g., in securing food, water, or protection from predators); in control conditions, the same words were rated for pleasantness, relevance to moving to a foreign land, or personal relevance. In surprise retention tests, participants consistently showed the best memory when words were rated for survival; the survival advantage held across recall, recognition, and for both within-subject and between-subjects designs. These findings suggest that memory systems are "tuned" to remember information that is processed for fitness, perhaps as a result of survival advantages accrued in the past. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging can spare recollection-based retrieval monitoring: The importance of event distinctiveness.

The authors investigated two retrieval-monitoring processes. Subjects studied red words and pictures and then decided whether test words had been studied in red font (red word test) or as pictures (picture test). Memory confusions were lower on the picture test than on the red word test, implicating a distinctiveness heuristic. Memory confusions also were lower when study formats were mutually exclusive (the same item was never studied as both a red word and a picture), compared with a nonexclusive condition, implicating a recall-to-reject process. When the to-be-recollected events were pictures, older adults used each monitoring strategy as effectively as did younger adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective qualities of memories associated with the picture superiority effect in schizophrenia.

Patients with schizophrenia (n=24) matched with 24 normal subjects were presented with both words and pictures. On a recognition memory task, they were asked to give remember, know, or guess responses to items that were recognized on the basis of conscious recollection, familiarity, or guessing, respectively. Compared with normal subjects, patients exhibited a lower picture superiority effect selectively related to remember responses. Unlike normal subjects, they did not exhibit any word superiority effect in relation to guess responses; this explains why the overall picture superiority effect appeared to be intact. These results emphasize the need to take into account the subjective states of awareness when analyzing memory impairments in schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Similarities and differences between working memory and long-term memory: Evidence from the levels-of-processing span task.

Two experiments compared the effects of depth of processing on working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) using a levels-of-processing (LOP) span task, a newly developed WM span procedure that involves processing to-be-remembered words based on their visual, phonological, or semantic characteristics. Depth of processing had minimal effect on WM tests, yet subsequent memory for the same items on delayed tests showed the typical benefits of semantic processing. Although the difference in LOP effects demonstrates a dissociation between WM and LTM, we also found that the retrieval practice provided by recalling words on the WM task benefited long-term retention, especially for words initially recalled from supraspan lists. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that WM span tasks involve retrieval from secondary memory, but the LOP dissociation suggests the processes engaged by WM and LTM tests may differ. Therefore, similarities and differences between WM and LTM depend on the extent to which retrieval from secondary memory is involved and whether there is a match (or mismatch) between initial processing and subsequent retrieval, consistent with transfer-appropriate-processing theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual distinctiveness supports detailed visual long-term memory for real-world objects.

Humans have a massive capacity to store detailed information in visual long-term memory. The present studies explored the fidelity of these visual long-term memory representations and examined how conceptual and perceptual features of object categories support this capacity. Observers viewed 2,800 object images with a different number of exemplars presented from each category. At test, observers indicated which of 2 exemplars they had previously studied. Memory performance was high and remained quite high (82% accuracy) with 16 exemplars from a category in memory, demonstrating a large memory capacity for object exemplars. However, memory performance decreased as more exemplars were held in memory, implying systematic categorical interference. Object categories with conceptually distinctive exemplars showed less interference in memory as the number of exemplars increased. Interference in memory was not predicted by the perceptual distinctiveness of exemplars from an object category, though these perceptual measures predicted visual search rates for an object target among exemplars. These data provide evidence that observers' capacity to remember visual information in long-term memory depends more on conceptual structure than perceptual distinctiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting of emotional words.

Emotional material may induce processing limitations affecting memory performance. In the present study, the authors investigated how the emotional content of words influences the degree to which participants can be directed to forget them. In Experiment 1, the authors found that negative-valence words were recalled better when participants were told to forget them than when they were told to remember them. This effect was only obtained when a study-list of negative words was presented after the cue to remember or forget the first list. The effect was correlated with negative mood as assessed by the PANAS. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2, in which the induction of negative arousal by a mild stressor abolished the directed forgetting of words when the following study list was comprised of negative words. These results support the idea that directed forgetting relies on cognitive control processes that may be disrupted by negative emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Using what we know: Consequences of intentionally retrieving gist versus item-specific information.

The effect of a prior gist-based versus item-specific retrieval orientation on recognition of objects and words was examined. Prior item-specific retrieval increased item-specific recognition of episodically related but not previously tested objects relative to both conceptual- and perceptual-gist retrieval. An item-specific retrieval advantage also was found when the stimuli were words (synonyms) rather than objects but not when participants overtly named objects during gist-based recognition testing, which suggests that they did not always label objects under general gist-retrieval instructions. Unlike verbal overshadowing, labeling objects during recognition attenuated (but did not eliminate) test- and interference-related forgetting. A full understanding of how retrieval affects subsequent memory, even for events or facts that are not themselves retrieved, must take into account the specificity with which that retrieval occurs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired priming on the general knowledge task in amnesia.

The status of priming on the general knowledge test was examined in amnesia. Twenty amnesic and 20 control participants studied words (e.g., CHEETAH) under semantic and nonsemantic encoding conditions and attempted to answer general knowledge questions (e.g., "What is the fastest animal on earth"?) under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions. The measure of memory was how many more test questions participants answered correctly using studied than nonstudied words. Amnesic patients showed impaired memory under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions. Control participants showed equal memory under implicit and explicit retrieval instructions, a result indicating that they engaged in explicit retrieval in both instruction conditions. General-knowledge priming appears to involve explicit retrieval that depends on medial-temporal and diencephalic regions damaged in amnesia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Feeling of knowing in episodic memory following moderate to severe closed-head injury.

The ability to accurately monitor one's memory is a metacognitive process that is important in everyday life. The authors examined episodic memory feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings in 21 moderate to severe closed-head injury (CHI) participants (more than 1 year postinjury) and 21 controls. Participants studied 36 critical cue-target word pairs. Following a brief delay, they were asked to recall the target that corresponded to a given cue. Confidence ratings were made for recalled words, and FOK judgments were made for nonrecalled words in terms of the likelihood of recognizing the target word on a subsequent recognition test. CHI participants demonstrated less accurate recall but accurate ability to judge their recall performance (retrospective memory monitoring). They also demonstrated intact FOK judgments when providing binary judgments but demonstrated difficulties making finer discriminations on an ordinal scale (prospective memory monitoring). These findings suggest that memory monitoring is not a unitary construct. It is proposed that CHI participants may display intact memory monitoring when predictions are based on familiarity assessment but not when continued probing for additional episodic information is required. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)