Responsibility Attitude and Stimulus Valence in Relation to Recognition and Confidence in Recognition of Words

Kallia Manoussaki

doi:10.4236/psych.2015.69114

Abstract

Perceived responsibility may have significant cognitive consequences for both clinical and non-clinical groups. Under conditions of increased responsibility, individuals have been found to show a positive memory bias, but also a decline in metamemory for salient stimuli. Stimulus salience enhances retrieval by means of directive attention, but may actually impede metamemory, especially among anxious populations. It has been suggested that for OCD patients and nonclinical participants with OCD symptoms, progressive exposure to emotionally salient stimuli worsens confidence in memory, while having no effect in memory accuracy. Perceived responsibility is associated with a positive memory bias for negative stimuli with reduced memory confidence. The current study investigated the possible association in a healthy population among responsibility, measured by the Responsibility Attitude Scale (RAS), recognition and confidence in recognition of words that varied in valence. 85 healthy participants were administered the RAS prior to taking part in a word recognition task. Results indicated that responsibility attitude did not predict memory accuracy or memory confidence for negatively, positively or neutrally valenced words. Furthermore, word valence had no effect on memory confidence but did have a significant effect on memory accuracy. Implications for future research point towards the utilisation of responsibility-relevant stimuli.

Highlights

Inflated responsibility has been defined as “the belief that one has pivotal power to provoke or prevent subjec-How to cite this paper: Manoussaki, K. (2015)
The overall data indicated that responsibility scores did not predict recognition or confidence on recognition of the words
In line with the study’s hypothesis, responsibility attitude as measured by the Responsibility Attitude Scale (RAS) was not found to be a predictor for word recognition, irrespective of word valence

Summary

Introduction

Inflated responsibility has been defined as “the belief that one has pivotal power to provoke or prevent subjec-How to cite this paper: Manoussaki, K. (2015). K. Manoussaki tively crucial negative outcomes” (Salkovskis, Rachman, Ladouceur, & Freeston, 1992), which may be related to situations or to other persons and may have practical or moral consequences (Salkovskis, 1996). Manoussaki tively crucial negative outcomes” (Salkovskis, Rachman, Ladouceur, & Freeston, 1992), which may be related to situations or to other persons and may have practical or moral consequences (Salkovskis, 1996) It is associated with anxiety, most notably in relation to obsessive compulsive disorder, where it is found to be significantly worse compared to anxious and non-anxious controls (Cougle, Lee, & Salkovskis, 2007). There has been a difference in the way that responsibility has been understood and defined in psychological literature. The current study assesses whether responsibility attitude, conceptualised in this way, affects memory function, recognition and confidence in recognition

Objectives

Results

Conclusion