Mixed in a World of Truth and Lies: List Composition Moderates the Effects of a Lie Fabrication Manipulation on Memory and Metamemory.

This study assessed metamemory and its role in actual episodic memory performance in 26 patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and 27 healthy controls. Metamemory knowledge and memory beliefs were assessed using the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood. Episodic memory performance was investigated with the Remember/Know paradigm. Subjective sleepiness was evaluated. Patients underwent a polysomnographic assessment. In contrast to the control group's more stable memory beliefs, patients self-assessed their memory as declining across time, and felt more anxious about their memory. There was only a modest difference between patients' self-perceptions of their memory capacities and those of the control group, but patients' actual memory performance was strongly disturbed. While the later was significantly correlated with severity of obstructive sleep apnea, scores on the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood scales were not correlated with physiological measures, subjective sleepiness, or episodic memory performance. Obstructive sleep apnea may affect prefrontal cortex functioning and hence the ability to assess one's own memory impairment.

This study assessed metamemory and its role in actual episodic memory performance in 26 patients with obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and 27 healthy controls. Metamemory knowledge and memory beliefs were assessed using the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood. Episodic memory performance was investigated with the Remember/Know paradigm. Subjective sleepiness was evaluated. Patients underwent a polysomnographic assessment. In contrast to the control group's more stable memory beliefs, patients self-assessed their memory as declining across time, and felt more anxious about their memory. There was only a modest difference between patients' self-perceptions of their memory capacities and those of the control group, but patients' actual memory performance was strongly disturbed. While the latter was significantly correlated with severity of obstructive sleep apnea, scores on the Metamemory Inventory in Adulthood scales were not correlated with physiological measures, subjective sleepiness, or episodic memory performance. Obstructive sleep apnea may affect prefrontal cortex functioning and hence the ability to assess one's own memory impairment.

Following Mummendey & Simon's (1991) taxonomy of social discrimination, a distinction was made between two forms of discriminatory behaviour such that either positive or negative stimuli may be allocated to or taken away from group members differentially. We argue that an extrapolation of findings from the positive domain to the largely neglected negative domain is unjustified, and hypothesize a ‘positive—negative asymmetry of social discrimination’ whereby in‐group favouritism for negative stimuli is less probable than discrimination in terms of positive stimuli. First, in two parallel experiments, this hypothesis was tested in the realm of evaluations of group products. The two experiments differed in their operationalization of the valence of the judgement dimensions: in Expt 1a both , positive and negative, attributes were given (‘mixed lists’), whereas in Expt 1b either positive or negative attributes were used for evaluations (‘pure lists’). Whereas with ‘mixed lists' there was no significant in‐group bias, with ‘pure lists' the hypothesized asymmetry was confirmed. These differing results were interpreted in terms of a norm enhancement hypothesis: the possibility of discriminating via negative stimuli enhances a fairness norm. A second vignette study, using descriptions of the first experiment's setting, yielded considerable support for this normative theoretical interpretation.

Using 5 experiments, the authors explored the dependency of spacing effects on rehearsal patterns. Encouraging rehearsal borrowing produced opposing effects on mixed lists (containing both spaced and massed repetitions) and pure lists (containing only one or the other), magnifying spacing effects on mixed lists but diminishing spacing effects on pure lists. Rehearsing with borrowing produced large spacing effects on mixed lists but not on pure lists for both free recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2). In contrast, rehearsing only the currently visible item produced spacing effects on both mixed lists and pure lists in free recall (Experiment 3) and recognition (Experiment 4). Experiment 5 demonstrated these effects using a fully within-subjects design. Rehearse-aloud protocols showed that rehearsal borrowing redistributed study from massed to spaced items on mixed lists, especially during massed presentations.

The perceptual fluency hypothesis proposes that items that are easier to perceive at study will be given higher memorability ratings, as compared with less fluent items. However, prior research has examined this metamemorial cue primarily using mixed-list designs. Furthermore, certain memory effects are moderated by the design (mixed list vs. pure list) used to present stimuli. The present study utilized mixed as well as pure lists to assess whether judgments of learning based on perceptual fluency are relative or absolute and whether people are sensitive to differences in recall produced by variation in list composition. Using font size and generation manipulations, Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the effect of perceptual fluency on metamemory is relative in nature, occurring only in mixed lists. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that metamemory is insensitive to the effect of list composition on recall. These findings are consistent with the assumptions of Koriat's (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 126: 349-370, 1997) cue-utilization framework, that JOLs reflect a comparative process and are insensitive to cues pertaining to conditions of learning.

The current study investigated the joint contribution of visual and auditory disfluencies, or distortions, to actual and predicted memory performance with naturalistic, multi-modal materials through three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants watched food recipe clips containing visual and auditory information that were either fully intact or else distorted in one or both of the two modalities. They were asked to remember these for a later memory test and made memory predictions after each clip. Participants produced lower memory predictions for distorted auditory and visual information than intact ones. However, these perceptual distortions revealed no actual memory differences across encoding conditions, expanding the metacognitive illusion of perceptual disfluency for static, single-word materials to naturalistic, dynamic, multi-modal materials. Experiment 3 provided naïve participants with a hypothetical scenario about the experimental paradigm used in Experiment 1, revealing lower memory predictions for distorted than intact information in both modalities. Theoretically, these results imply that both in-the-moment experiences and a priori beliefs may contribute to the perceptual disfluency illusion. From an applied perspective, the study suggests that when audio-visual distortions occur, individuals might use this information to predict their memory performance, even when it does not factor into actual memory performance.

We apply the item-order theory of list composition effects in free recall to the orthographic distinctiveness effect. The item-order account assumes that orthographically distinct items advantage item-specific encoding in both mixed and pure lists, but at the expense of exploiting relational information present in the list. Experiment 1 replicated the typical free recall advantage of orthographically distinct items in mixed lists and the elimination of that advantage in pure lists. Supporting the item-order account, recognition performances indicated that orthographically distinct items received greater item-specific encoding than did orthographically common items in mixed and pure lists (Experiments 1 and 2). Furthermore, order memory (input-output correspondence and sequential contiguity effects) was evident in recall of pure unstructured common lists, but not in recall of unstructured distinct lists (Experiment 1). These combined patterns, although not anticipated by prevailing views, are consistent with an item-order account.

In the present study, we investigated the role of list composition in the testing effect. Across three experiments, participants learned items through study and initial testing or study and restudy. List composition was manipulated, such that tested and restudied items appeared either intermixed in the same lists (mixed lists) or in separate lists (pure lists). In Experiment 1, half of the participants received mixed lists and half received pure lists. In Experiment 2, all participants were given both mixed and pure lists. Experiment 3 followed Erlebacher's (Psychological Bulletin, 84, 212-219, 1977) method, such that mixed lists, pure tested lists, and pure restudied lists were given to independent groups. Across all three experiments, the final recall results revealed significant testing effects for both mixed and pure lists, with no reliable difference in the magnitude of the testing advantage across list designs. This finding suggests that the testing effect is not subject to a key boundary condition-list design-that impacts other memory phenomena, including the generation effect.

Memorability studies have revealed a limitation in our ability to accurately judge which images are memorable. Conversely, metacognitive research suggests that individuals can utilize cues to reliably assess their memory performance. Here, we investigated two important stimulus cues potentially underlying subjective memorability, and their relation to actual memory performance. Participants encoded 200 real-world object images while providing Judgements of Learning (JOLs), in which they estimated the likelihood of remembering each image. Subsequently, they completed an old/new memory recognition test on these stimuli. All stimuli were priorly rated by an independent group of participants for their perceived meaningfulness and visual complexity. Results indicated that participants' metacognitive judgements exhibited a relatively good resolution, allowing them to distinguish well-remembered from less-remembered images. Furthermore, analyses conducted at the image level demonstrated that JOLs significantly predicted memory performance, with the meaningfulness of the images emerging as a crucial factor associated with JOLs of both participants and their actual memory performance. The visual complexity factor was correlated only with the actual memory performance. Collectively, these findings suggest that memory performance is closely associated with the meaning of objects. Critically, individuals possess a subjective sense of images' memorability, which is at least partially mediated by perceived meaningfulness.

List effect in apraxia assessment

Providing judgments of learning (JOLs) at study tends to produce reactive effects on recall of cue-target word pairs. This reactivity generally produces memory improvements (i.e., positive reactivity) but only for related word pairs. For unrelated pairs, reactivity is typically not observed. Researchers have primarily investigated reactivity using study lists that contain at least two distinct pair types (i.e., related vs. unrelated pairs). Using these mixed lists, reactivity may occur because participants use distinguishing pair characteristics to inform their study goals (i.e., prioritizing related vs. unrelated pairs). The present study examined whether detection of separate pair types within mixed lists is a requisite for reactivity to occur. Experiment 1replicated previous work showing that in mixed lists, JOLs produced positive reactivity on related pairs but are nonreactive on unrelated pairs. Importantly, Experiment 1also found that these patterns extended to pure lists, in which only one pair type is presented. Experiments 2and 3then extended these patterns to backward and symmetrical paired associates. Finally, across experiments, reactivity patterns reported for JOLs extended to frequency of co-occurrence judgments across pair and list types. Our findings that reactivity patterns consistently emerge using pure lists supports a cue-strengthening account of reactivity.

Although the production effect is well-established in undergraduates, limited research has examined this effect in children. The primary goal of the current study was to replicate the production effect in preschoolers. In Experiment 1, one group studied all items silently or aloud (pure lists) and another group studied half of the items silently and said half aloud (mixed lists). At recall, the production effect was present in mixed lists but not in pure lists. The results suggest that the effect in mixed lists was due to both a benefit for produced items and a cost to silent items. Experiments 2 and 3 examined whether preschoolers were aware of the benefits of production. The results were mixed and indicate that task difficulty may impact whether production benefits memory. When the metacognitive task was easier (Experiment 3), the production effect replicated. Preschoolers' judgments indicated they believe that production leads to better memory, but they were overconfident. The current results demonstrate that (1) young children can use production to improve memory when instructed, even before they spontaneously use it, (2) they believe production can benefit memory, and (3) task difficulty may account for discrepancies in prior work examining the production effect in children.

In this study, we report evidence that neural activity reflecting the encoding of emotionally neutral information in memory is reduced when neutral and emotional stimuli are intermixed during encoding. Specifically, participants studied emotional and neutral pictures organized in mixed lists (in which emotional and neutral pictures were intermixed) or in pure lists (only-neutral or only-emotional pictures) and performed a recall test. To estimate encoding efficiency, we used the Dm effect, measured with event-related potentials. Recall for neutral items was lower in mixed compared to pure lists and posterior Dm activity for neutral items was reduced in mixed lists, whereas it remained robust in pure lists. These findings might be caused by an asymmetrical competition for attentional and working memory resources between emotional and neutral information, which could be a major determinant of emotional memory effects.

The SAM (search of associative memory) model provides a unified account of accuracy effects, assuming that retrieval is a cue-dependent two-stage process of sampling and recovery, which depends on the strength of items relative to all others and on that item associated with the sampling trace, respectively. On the other hand, the relative strength model uniquely provides latency predictions, assuming that recall latency is determined solely by relative strength (similar to the sampling rule in SAM): Latency should remain unchanged for strong and weak items in pure lists, but will be shorter for strong items than for weak items in mixed lists. To test the predictions, the present study examined accuracy and latency distributions, which were fit with the ex-Gaussian, using item repetition as a means of strengthening. Massed versus spaced repetitions were used where repetitions were either cue-target pairs or cue alone. When repetitions were spaced in mixed lists, accuracy and latency both increased with cue-target repetitions, relative to cue-only repetitions, and slow recall for cue-target repetitions was due to initially nonretrievable items. However, even after successful recall on a pretest, cue-target repetitions led to an increase in latency in pure lists. These findings are difficult to reconcile with relative-strength explanations of latency. They indeed suggest that (1) separate traces are created for each repetition, (2) memory traces are updated if the item is retrieved (otherwise, new traces are stored), and (3) recovery plays a role in latency, which are discussed with the distinction between sampling and recovery of SAM.

The authors report 2 experiments that compare the recall of long and short words in pure and mixed lists. In pure lists, long words were much more poorly remembered than short words. In mixed lists, this word-length effect was abolished and both the long and short words were recalled as well as short words in pure lists. These findings contradict current models that seek to explain the word-length effect in terms of item-based effects such as difficulty in assembling items, or in terms of list-based accounts of rehearsal speed. An alternative explanation, drawing on ideas of item complexity and item distinctiveness, is proposed.