ABSTRACT The criminal justice system continues to obtain eyewitness confidence verbally (in the eyewitness’s own words). Because verbal confidence statements are challenging to interpret, eyewitnesses could provide scale ratings after verbal judgments or vice versa – if the confidence-accuracy relationship is maintained when both are obtained. Participants watched two videos and then viewed a target-present and target-absent lineups for the targets. After each lineup, participants provided confidence verbally (in their own words) and then numerically (0-100%) or numerically and then verbally. Asking eyewitnesses to provide confidence verbally and numerically did not negatively impact the confidence-accuracy relationship, regardless of order. However, the numeric values eyewitnesses provided when using similar own-word confidence judgments varied. We caution that the usefulness of verbal confidence to postdict identification accuracy hinges on a systematic approach to its interpretation.

ABSTRACT Many social factors influence decisions to approach or avoid social targets, but less research has directly investigated the impact of cognitive factors, such as memory, on such social decisions. Recent work has shown that social episodic memory (i.e., memory for specific details associated with specific social targets based on prior experiences) can influence subsequent approach/avoidance decisions. The goal of the current study is to investigate the influence of social episodic memory strength (i.e., comparing stronger versus weaker memory representations) on approach/avoidance decisions. In this investigation, participants viewed social targets represented by a face image and a trait-implying behaviour and formed positive or negative impressions of targets viewed twice (double presentation) or once (single presentation). Participants then completed two different memory measures (impression memory, behavior memory) followed by an approach/avoidance decision task. By presenting some targets twice and others once, this allowed us to compare stronger (double presentation) versus weaker (single presentation) social episodic memory representations on subsequent social decisions. Results showed support for the role of memory in approach/avoidance decisions (regardless of memory strength), where correct memory for targets associated with positive impressions induced approach decisions, whereas correct memory for targets associated with negative impressions induced avoidance decisions. Importantly, results further showed stronger impact of social episodic memory on decisions for targets seen twice relative to once, suggesting that stronger social episodic memory representations have a larger effect on approach/avoidance judgments. These findings add to a growing body of work suggesting that memory plays an essential role in social decision-making.

ABSTRACT The present study examined the association between acculturation orientations and the phenomenological and episodic characteristics of autobiographical memories of Syrian adult migrants in Türkiye. Moreover, the role of language in this association was investigated. Each participant received three instructions: recalling a pre-migration memory, a post-migration memory, and projecting an autobiographical future event. Participants then rated the general phenomenological and episodic characteristics of each memory, as well as the episodic characteristics of autobiographical future projection. Results revealed that host cultural orientation was positively associated with all characteristics of post-migration memories, as well as with the episodic characteristic of autobiographical future projection. The interaction pattern of acculturation orientations showed that the separation strategy was positively associated with post-migration autobiographical memory variables. No statistically significant associations were found between language and autobiographical memory variables. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to examine migrants’ autobiographical memory characteristics across different life periods by measuring acculturation. Overall, the findings suggest that the adaptiveness of different acculturation strategies for autobiographical memory recall may be highly dependent on the sociocultural context of the host country. The findings indicate new conceptualizations in migrants’ autobiographical memory research and address gaps in the existing literature.

ABSTRACT Organising information is an efficient way to improve episodic memory performance. When the information is not semantically related to each other, individuals can self-organize this information. This spontaneous subjective organisation involves important working memory (WM) resources and is negatively affected by aging, potentially because it also relies on associative memory. Here, we examined whether such subjective organisation involves associative processes, whether this relation is explained by WM capacity, and whether this relationship differs with age. We tested 40 young (non-students) adults and 40 older adults on two memory tasks: one allowing for subjective organisation to be implemented and another accounting for associative memory processes. These participants also performed three different WM tasks to compute a WM capacity index. Whilst reporting classical age-related effects on recall, recognition and WM performance, we found that both associative memory and WM are related to subjective organisation in both young and older adults. However, between these two factors, WM capacity was the main factor explaining subjective performance in both age groups, though to a greater extent in young adults. These results confirm the central role of WM in episodic memory, particularly in explaining the age-related decline of this function.

ABSTRACT In two experiments, we examined whether individual differences in bilingual language proficiency predict immediate serial recall in a language-specific manner. A total of 96 French-English bilinguals completed an immediate serial recall task involving 40 lists of 6 words, followed by the LexTALE lexical decision task in both French and English to index lexical knowledge continuously. Experiment 1 used visually presented word lists and included both pure-language lists and alternating-language lists; Experiment 2 replicated the same design with auditory presentation. Across experiments, LexTALE scores reliably predicted recall accuracy for words presented in the corresponding language, such that participants with stronger lexical knowledge in a given language recalled more items from that language. This language-specific proficiency–recall relation held across list contexts and generalised across visual and auditory modalities. The findings support accounts in which immediate serial recall is constrained by the strength of language-specific long-term lexical representations that support retrieval during short-term remembering.

ABSTRACT While emotional arousal and negative valence both alter episodic memory, their contributions to different facets of temporal memory remain unclear. Here, we examined two components of temporal memory – relative order and distance estimations – from aversive and neutral movie clips, allowing us to query more naturalistic forms of emotional memory. Overall, relative order was enhanced, and distance estimations were modestly compressed for aversive versus neutral movie clips. However, these two forms of temporal memory were associated differentially with arousal and valence. Negative valence exclusively drove enhancements in relative order, while temporal compression was jointly shaped by arousal and negative valence. Finally, greater temporal distance expansion predicted enhanced relative order discrimination, suggesting participants relied on relative novelty rather than associative chaining to resolve temporal sequences. Together, these findings indicate that arousal and valence make dissociable and interacting contributions to temporal memory for naturalistic events.

ABSTRACT Adults who allege childhood abuse often provide rich, detailed accounts, and many triers-of-fact treat those details as signs of reliability. Yet equating detail with reliability sits uneasily with what we know about memory. Adults’ memories for unusual or traumatic events are typically sparse, detail fades with time, and when adults recall childhood, they draw on memories encoded with immature cognitive tools. Moreover, children themselves seldom report these specific details when interviewed soon after events. If adults later provide more detail about childhood events than children do at the time, the source of that detail becomes uncertain. Across two studies, we asked adults (Studies 1 and 2) and children (Study 2) to recall a childhood injury. During free recall, both groups recalled few legally-relevant details – though adults reported more than children, despite considerable retention intervals. Probing questions narrowed this gap, but adults were more likely than children to answer certain questions, provided more detail in many of their responses, and used verbal hedges and speculative language more frequently. These findings fit with the idea that highly detailed accounts of childhood events likely reflect later reconstruction rather than particularly durable memory – a crucial insight for both autobiographical memory theory and triers-of-fact in the courtroom.

ABSTRACT The present study investigates how the emotional closure status of autobiographical memories (open vs. closed) influences the frequency and phenomenology of involuntary autobiographical memories (IAMs), and how these processes are further shaped by individual differences in the need for emotional closure. Participants (N = 226) completed a laboratory-based vigilance task designed to capture spontaneous thoughts, including IAMs, with probe questions assessing their occurrence and characteristics. Each reported memory was classified by participants as open or closed, and participants additionally completed the Need for Emotional Closure Scale (NECS). Results showed that closed memories were reported more frequently than open memories during spontaneous retrieval. In terms of phenomenology, open IAMs were rated as more emotionally intense and more important than closed IAMs, while no differences emerged in their valence. Notably, NECS interacted with closure status for valence, showing that individuals with higher emotional closure needs evaluated open IAMs more negatively than closed IAMs. We discuss the findings with a focus on the role of emotional closure in shaping spontaneous remembering, as well as the motivational and cognitive factors underlying the recurrence of autobiographical memories.

ABSTRACT Beginners are often overconfident when judging their performance at a new skill. Why? One possibility is beginners draw on early experiences of fluency when recalling their past – and predicting their future – performance. We addressed this possibility in two experiments comprising three phases. First, we gave people a key piece of information: that many kanji, the Japanese language characters, look like their translation. Second, everyone guessed the translations of a series of kanji, ordered either from easiest (looks like its meaning) to hardest (looks nothing like its meaning), or the opposite. Third, everyone rated how well they performed translating those kanji, and predicted how well they would do in future scenarios requiring skill in kanji. We found people who translated easy kanji first thought they performed better guessing the translations, and were more confident in their ability at hypothetical future scenarios requiring reading kanji, such as understanding a recipe. Our findings extend our understanding of beginners’ overconfidence, and have implications for teaching.

ABSTRACT Providing Judgments of Learning (JOLs) for cue-target pairs at study often improves recall for related pairs versus a silent reading control task, a pattern termed JOL reactivity. While reactivity patterns have been found consistently using a variety of stimuli and test types, they appear to only occur when participants are explicitly instructed to provide JOLs. Whether JOL reactivity can carry over to cue-target pairs when JOLs are not directly applied is unclear. We evaluated this possibility by comparing cued-recall between two study-test blocks. In two experiments, participants either provided JOLs on both blocks or only in the first block with instructions to provide covert JOLs on the second block. Although JOL reactivity was found with explicit JOLs in the first block, it did not carry over to covert JOLs in the second block (Experiment 1), nor did reactivity carry over when participants were frequently reminded to make covert JOLs (Experiment 2). Reactivity therefore appears to be a byproduct of overtly provided judgments.