Memory Bias Research Articles

Improving access to psychological intervention in low-middle income settings: Results from a waitlist-controlled, proof-of-concept trial of the MemFlex intervention for trauma-exposed Afghan youth.

Low-intensity interventions targeting a range of mental health issues offer a scalable approach for young trauma survivors in low-middle income countries. Here, we present results from a proof-of-concept, randomized, waitlist-controlled trial evaluating MemFlex, an autobiographical memory-based intervention, for trauma-exposed Afghan youth residing in Iran. MemFlex seeks to reduce the negative and overgeneral memory biases which maintain and predict poor mental health. Young people aged 12-18 years (N = 40) with parents who had experienced forced migration from Afghanistan were recruited from high schools in Karaj City in Iran. All had experienced a traumatic event in the last year. Participants were randomized to receive four weeks of a group-based delivery of MemFlex or Waitlist. Our primary cognitive outcome was autobiographical memory flexibility, that is, the ability to deliberately retrieve any memory type on demand. Primary clinical outcome was emotional distress, measured on the Farsi version of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist. Results indicated that MemFlex participants demonstrated large effect sizes for pre-to-post improvement in memory flexibility (d = 2.04) and emotional distress (d = 1.23). These improvements were significantly larger than Waitlist (ds < .49), and were maintained at three-month follow-up. Positive benefits were observed for completion of MemFlex, and future comparison against an active intervention appears warranted. Further evaluation of MemFlex in this context may offer a low-cost, and low-resource intervention to improve access to psychological intervention for young migrants in low-middle income countries.

Parental narrative style moderates the relation between pain-related attention and memory biases in youth with chronic pain.

Negatively biased pain memories robustly predict maladaptive pain outcomes in children. Both attention bias to pain and parental narrative style have been linked with the development of these negative biases, with previous studies indicating that how parents talk to their child about the pain might buffer the influence of children's attention bias to pain on the development of such negatively biased pain memories. This study investigated the moderating role of parental narrative style in the relation between pain-related attention and memory biases in a pediatric chronic pain sample who underwent a cold pressor task. Participants were 85 youth-parent dyads who reminisced about youth's painful event. Eye-tracking technology was used to assess youth's attention bias to pain information, whereas youth's pain-related memories were elicited 1 month later through telephone interview. Results indicated that a parental narrative style using less repetitive yes-no questions, more emotion words, and less fear words buffered the influence of high levels of youth's attention bias to pain in the development of negatively biased pain memories. Opposite effects were observed for youth with low levels of attention bias to pain. Current findings corroborate earlier results on parental reminiscing in the context of pain (memories) but stress the importance of matching narrative style with child characteristics, such as child attention bias to pain, in the development of negatively biased pain memories. Future avenues for parent-child reminiscing and clinical implications for pediatric chronic pain are discussed.

Mothers' negative focus during memory‐sharing conversations is linked to negative interpretation and memory biases in young children

AbstractParent‐guided reminiscing helps children learn how to interpret and recollect personal experiences. These interpretive abilities are important because many experiences are ambiguous, and a tendency toward negative interpretation is associated with emotional disorders. Here, we explore whether naturally‐occurring variations in parent‐guided reminiscing are associated with children's interpretation and recall of novel ambiguous events. Mothers and their children (aged 5–6 years) reminisced about three shared negative events. Next, children were read several stories that described ambiguous social situations and were asked to invent endings that involved making an inference about motives of others in the stories. Later, children were asked questions to elicit story recall. Mothers who used more negative terms during reminiscing had children who were more likely to invent negative story endings and distort story recall negatively. Thus, mothers who frame memory‐sharing conversations with children negatively might put them at risk for developing negative interpretation and memory biases.

Memory biases for gender-typed images in a gender-diverse group of children.

Self-socialization accounts of gender development suggest that children attend more to people of their own gender, activities associated with their own gender and stereotype-consistent examples in their environment. Evidence comes from research showing children's memory biases for such stimuli. This study sought to replicate these memory biases in 367 6- to 11-year-old transgender, cisgender and nonbinary children. Children were shown stereotype-consistent and counter-stereotypical images related to feminine- and masculine-typed activities performed by girls/women or boys/men. Results showed that transgender and cisgender children showed better recall for activities related to their own gender than the other gender. Neither group showed better recall for own-gender characters, and transgender children better recalled other-gender characters. None of the three groups better recalled stereotype-consistent than counter-stereotypical images in probed recall, although all groups showed better recall for counter-stereotypical than stereotype-consistent images in free recall. These findings provide partial support for self-socialization accounts of gender development.

A natural language model to automate scoring of autobiographical memories

Biases in the retrieval of personal, autobiographical memories are a core feature of multiple mental health disorders, and are associated with poor clinical prognosis. However, current assessments of memory bias are either reliant on human scoring, restricting their administration in clinical settings, or when computerized, are only able to identify one memory type. Here, we developed a natural language model able to classify text-based memories as one of five different autobiographical memory types (specific, categoric, extended, semantic associate, omission), allowing easy assessment of a wider range of memory biases, including reduced memory specificity and impaired memory flexibility. Our model was trained on 17,632 text-based, human-scored memories obtained from individuals with and without experience of memory bias and mental health challenges, which was then tested on a dataset of 5880 memories. We used 20-fold cross-validation setup, and the model was fine-tuned over BERT. Relative to benchmarking and an existing support vector model, our model achieved high accuracy (95.7%) and precision (91.0%). We provide an open-source version of the model which is able to be used without further coding, by those with no coding experience, to facilitate the assessment of autobiographical memory bias in clinical settings, and aid implementation of memory-based interventions within treatment services.

Biased memory retrieval in the service of shared reality with an audience: The role of cognitive accessibility.

After communicators have tuned a message about a target person's behaviors to their audience's attitude, their recall of the target's behaviors is often evaluatively consistent with their audience's attitude. This audience-congruent recall bias has been explained as the result of the communicators' creation of a shared reality with the audience, which helps communicators to achieve epistemic needs for confident judgments and knowledge. Drawing on the "Relevance Of A Representation" (ROAR) model of cognitive accessibility from motivational truth relevance, we argue that shared reality increases the accessibility of information consistent (vs. inconsistent) with the audience's attitude. We tested this prediction with a novel reaction time task in three experiments employing the saying-is-believing paradigm. Faster reactions to audience-consistent (vs. audience-inconsistent) information were found for trait information but not for behavioral information. Thus, an audience-congruent accessibility bias emerged at the level at which impressions and judgments of other persons are typically organized. Consistent with a shared-reality account, the audience-consistent accessibility bias correlated with experienced shared reality with the audience about the target person and with epistemic trust in the audience. These findings support the view that the creation of shared reality with an audience triggers a basic cognitive mechanism that facilitates the retrieval of audience-congruent (vs. audience-incongruent) trait information about a target person. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Biased Memory Retrieval in the Service of Shared Reality With an Audience: The Role of Cognitive Accessibility

Supplemental Material for Biased Memory Retrieval in the Service of Shared Reality With an Audience: The Role of Cognitive Accessibility

The retrieval of neutral and positive autobiographical memories: a pilot study

Background Several studies have shown that the retrieval of positive memories may play a role in emotional regulation. However, it is unclear whether the effects of neutral and positive autobiographical memories differ. There is a need to confirm that genuinely neutral autobiographical memories can be retrieved without bias in response to a prompt to recall neutral memories. Methods In this pilot study, using “home” and “study” as cue words, we investigated whether participants were able to retrieve appropriate autobiographical memories when asked to recall a limited number of neutral or positive memories. Results Although participants were asked to recall neutral autobiographical memories, they tended to recall positive memories. Conclusions Our results support the concept of positive memory bias and suggest that future work should consider combining neutral and positive autobiographical memories, namely by asking participants to recall neutral–positive memories.

Unlocking the past: efficacy of guided self-compassion and benefit-focused online interventions for managing negative personal memories

ABSTRACT Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p < .001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p < .019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed.

The self-bias in working memory: the favorability of self-referential stimuli in resource allocation

ABSTRACT Self-representations guide and shape our thoughts and behaviour. People usually exhibit inherent biases in perception, attention, and memory to favour the information associated with themselves over that associated with others. The present study explored the phenomenon of self-bias in working memory (WM), specifically how self-referential processing impacts WM precision. Four precision-based experiments were conducted to assess the recall precision of self-referential items and items associated with other social agents. The findings revealed a robust self-prioritisation effect in WM precision, wherein self-referential items were recalled with greater precision than items associated with other social agents. Additionally, increased precision for self-referential items did not decrease the precision for simultaneously remembered items. This effect was limited by the total amount of WM resources and not influenced by a perceptual distractor. The inherent self-bias in WM can serve as a proxy to access the role self-representation in goal-oriented cognitive processing, providing a means of exploring the interaction between self-reference and high-level cognitive function.

Seeing oneself as an unattractive loser: Similar interpretation and memory biases in adolescents with anorexia nervosa and adolescents with depression or anxiety.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is characterised by dysfunctional cognitive biases but these have rarely been investigated in adolescents with AN. The present study systematically assessed cognitive biases in adolescents with AN and addressed the questions of content-specificity (i.e., do biases occur only for eating disorder-related information?) and disorder-specificity (i.e., are biases unique to individuals with AN?). Cognitive biases on three information processing levels (attention, interpretation, memory) and for two types of information content (eating disorder-related, non-eating disorder-related) were assessed within a single experimental paradigm based on the Scrambled Sentences Task. 12-18-year-old adolescents with AN (n=40) were compared to a healthy (HC; n=40) and a clinical (girls with depression and/or anxiety disorders; CC; n=34) control group. Both clinical groups (AN and CC) showed pronounced negative interpretation and memory biases compared to the HC group, for both disorder-related and non-disorder-related information. Attention biases could not be analysed. The results support the hypothesis that adolescents with AN show negative cognitive biases but these were not limited to disorder-related information. Adolescents with depression and/or anxiety disorders showed similar biases, suggesting them to be transdiagnostic phenomena. Important implications for cognitive-behavioural theories of AN, subsequent cognitive bias modification studies in AN, as well as clinical practice are discussed.

Understanding vote transfers in two-round elections without resorting to declared data. The contribution of ecological inference, consolidated with factual information from a case study of the 2014 municipal elections in Montpellier

In electoral sociology, the analysis of vote transfers has traditionally depended on individual data obtained from surveys. Because such data suffer from a significant amount of declaration and memory bias, replacing them with the electoral statistics available down to polling station level may be advantageous. Recent developments in models of ecological inference allow us to use these aggregated data to establish estimates of vote transfers while minimising the risk of ecological error. Nonetheless, the reliability of ecological inference models for estimating vote transfers has thus far received little attention in the form of empirical evaluations. The purpose of the present article is to cast light on this blind spot by analysing a model for predicting electoral volatility in a two-round election, namely the municipal election held in Montpellier in 2014. What makes this approach original is its use of observed information – the proportion of non-voters in both rounds – first to compare this data with the estimates produced by the model and then to integrate it as a modelling parameter to measure its impact on estimated vote allocation. This analysis reveals that the initial model's results are relatively reliable regarding the known parameter, although they slightly overestimate its amplitude and underestimate its variability. The model that integrates information regarding the proportion of consistent non-voters yields estimates close to those obtained using the “raw” model. In terms of interpretative capacity, the value added by integrating this additional information is, therefore, slight. However, integrating the information does make it possible to establish narrower density intervals, reducing the uncertainty associated with the interpretation of the other parameters, particularly proportions associated with candidates who received few votes in the first round.

A study on the influence of a single bout of moderate-intensity exercise on processing bias towards emotional information of individuals with high psychosocial stress levels

To explore the impact of a single bout of moderate-intensity exercise on cognitive bias of individuals with high psychosocial stress levels. 42 college students with high stress levels were recruited and divided into a exercise group (N = 21) and a no-exercise group (N = 21). The psychological and behavioral characteristics were studied using word-face stroop task, memory bias task, and interpretion bias task. College students with high psychosocial stress levels have attention bias, memory bias, and Interpretion bias towards negative emotional information, and a single bout of moderate-intensity exercise can increase attention bias towards neutral and positive emotional information, and memory bias towards neutral emotional information, interpretation bias towdrds positive emotional information. A single bout of moderate-intensity exercise can increase the positive cognitive bias towards emotional information, which is beneficial for regulating psychosocial stress levels.

Attention and Interpretation Bias Modification Transfers to Memory Bias: Testing the Combined Cognitive Bias Hypothesis

PurposeThis study delves into the combined cognitive bias hypothesis in depression, exploring the interaction between negative attention, interpretation and memory biases. We aimed to assess whether modifying attention and interpretation bias would lead to congruent changes in memory bias, and to what extend and depth this causal effect can be.MethodNinety-nine undergraduates underwent either a positive (PT) or negative (NT) four-day attention and interpretation bias training. A set of well-established post-training assessments including free recall, recognition, autobiographic memory, and self-reference encoding tasks were used to evaluate memory bias. Affective states were measured pre- and post-training.ResultsCompared to PT, participants in NT correctly retrieved more negative trained stimuli, and falsely recognized more negative synonyms of trained terms. NT also exhibited an enhanced retrieval of negative autobiographical memory. No significant differences were found between NT and PT in self-referential encoding and retrieval bias, or affective states.DiscussionThe results suggested an extensive and strong transfer effect from attention and interpretation bias modification to different facets of memory bias, being found in retrieving trained emotional stimuli, in memory intrusion of negative synonyms, and in autobiographic memory recall. The findings underscored the causality between three biases, supporting the combined cognitive bias hypothesis. It might also suggest an effective new approach to modify memory bias via attention and interpretation bias training.

Positive affect and heart rate variability: a dynamic analysis

Traditional survey methods can provide noisy data arising from recall, memory and other biases. Technological advances (particularly in neuroscience) are opening new ways of monitoring physiological processes through non-intrusive means. Such dense continuous data provide new and fruitful avenues for complementing self-reported data with a better understanding of human dynamics and human interactions. In this study, we use a survey to collect positive affect (feelings) data from more than 300 individuals over a period of 24 h, and at the same time, map their core activities (5000 recorded activities in total) with measurements of their heart rate variability (HRV). Our results indicate a robust correlation between the HRV measurements and self-reported affect. By drawing on the neuroscience and wellbeing literature we show that dynamic HRV results are what we expect for positive affect, particularly when performing activities like sleep, travel, work, exercise and eating. This research provides new insights into how to collect HRV data, model and interpret it.

Intrarelationships between suboptimal health status and anxiety symptoms: A network analysis

BackgroundSuboptimal health status is a global public health concern of worldwide academic interest, which is an intermediate health status between health and illness. The purpose of the survey is to investigate the relationship between anxiety statuses and suboptimal health status and to identify the central symptoms and bridge symptoms. MethodsThis study recruited 26,010 participants aged <60 from a cross-sectional study in China in 2022. General Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) and suboptimal health status short form (SHSQ-9) were used to quantify the levels of anxiety and suboptimal health symptoms, respectively. The network analysis method by the R program was used to judge the central and bridge symptoms. The Network Comparison Test (NCT) was used to investigate the network differences by gender, place of residence, and age in the population. ResultsIn this survey, the prevalence of anxiety symptoms, SHS, and comorbidities was 50.7 %, 54.8 %, and 38.5 %, respectively. “Decreased responsiveness”, “Shortness of breath”, “Uncontrollable worry” were the nodes with the highest expected influence. “Irritable”, “Exhausted” were the two symptom nodes with the highest expected bridge influence in the network. There were significant differences in network structure among different subgroup networks. LimitationsUnable to study the causal relationship and dynamic changes among variables. Anxiety and sub-health were self-rated and may be limited by memory bias. ConclusionsInterventions targeting central symptoms and bridge nodes may be expected to improve suboptimal health status and anxiety in Chinese residents. Researchers can build symptom networks for different populations to capture symptom relationships.

Disorder-specific versus transdiagnostic cognitive mechanisms in anxiety and depression: Machine-learning-based prediction of symptom severity

IntroductionPsychiatric evaluation of anxiety and depression is currently based on self-reported symptoms and their classification into discrete disorders. Yet the substantial overlap between these disorders as well as their within-disorder heterogeneity may contribute to the mediocre success rates of treatments. The proposed research examines a new framework for diagnosis that is based on alterations in underlying cognitive mechanisms. In line with the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) approach, the current study directly compares disorder-specific and transdiagnostic cognitive patterns in predicting the severity of anxiety and depression symptoms. MethodsThe sample included 237 individuals exhibiting differing levels of anxiety and depression symptoms, as measured by the STAI-T and BDI-II. Random Forest regressors were used to analyze their performance on a battery of six computerized cognitive-behavioral tests targeting selective and spatial attention, expectancy, interpretation, memory, and cognitive control biases. ResultsUnique anxiety-specific biases were found, as well as shared anxious-depressed bias patterns. These cognitive biases exhibited relatively high fitting rates when predicting symptom severity (questionnaire scores common range 0–60, MAE = 6.03, RMSE = 7.53). Interpretation and expectancy biases exhibited the highest association with symptoms, above all other individual biases. LimitationsAlthough internal validation methods were applied, models may suffer from potential overfitting due to sample size limitations. ConclusionIn the context of the ongoing dispute regarding symptom-centered versus transdiagnostic approaches, the current study provides a unique comparison of these two views, yielding a novel intermediate approach. The results support the use of mechanism-based dimensional diagnosis for adding precision and objectivity to future psychiatric evaluations.

Cardinal bias interacts with the stimulus history bias in orientation working memory.

Reports in a visual working memory(WM) task exhibit biases related to the categorical structure of the stimulus space (e.g., cardinal bias) as well as biases related to previously seen stumuli (e.g., serial bias). While these biases are common and can occur simultaneously, the extent to which they interact in WM remains unknown. In the present study, I used orientation delayed estimation tasks known to produce both cardinal and serial biases and found that the serial bias systematically varied based on the relative positions of the cardinal axis and the preceding stimulus in orientation space. When they were positioned in a way that generated cardinal and serial biases in the same direction (i.e., on the same side of the target orientation), reports for the target orientation exhibited a regular repulsive serial bias. However, when their positions resulted in the biases in the opposite directions (i.e., on the opposite side of the target orientation), no serial bias occurred. This absence of serial bias was replicated in a follow-up experiment where the locations of the stimulus orientation and the response probe were completely randomized, suggesting that the interaction occurs independently from location-based response preparation processes. Together, these results demonstrate that the prior stimulus and the cardinal axis impose interactive impact on the processing of new stimulus, producing differential patterns of serial bias depending on the specific stimulus being processed. These findings place significant implications on computational models addressing the nature of the stimulus history effect and its underlying mechanisms.

Effect of interactive exergame training on physical fitness and executive function among men with substance use disorder in rehabilitation center

BackgroundSubstance use disorder (SUD) is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive or difficult to control despite harmful consequences. Researchers have found treatments to help people recover from SUD and lead productive lives. Exercise therapies have been approved to be effective on executive function, physical fitness, and cravings in men with SUD. Exergaming, which involves physical activity through interactive video games, has attracted considerable interest due to its ability to provide a fun and engaging aerobic workout while stimulating cognitive functions. However, despite its popularity in recreational settings and its potential to promote physical fitness and cognitive well-being, the use of exergaming as a therapeutic modality for SUD remains relatively underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the effects of exergame on physical fitness and executive function in men with SUD. MethodsThe 44 compulsory men in a rehabilitation center (mean age = 39.7 ± 9.2 years) were divided to either an exergame training (ET) or a control group. The ET group underwent a moderate-intensity (65%–75% of maximum heart rate) exergame training intervention (Fitness Boxing 2 & Super Mario Party) for 50 min thrice weekly during a 12-week period. The control group maintained their original lifestyle in the rehabilitation center. Before and after the intervention, participants were evaluated for drug craving, executive function (working memory and attention bias), and physical fitness (blood biochemical, choice reaction time, and BMI et al.). ResultsThe exergame training group showed a significantly positive effect in drug craving and attention bias score, relative to the control group (drug craving: F = 4.374, p = 0.043, d = − 0.51; attention bias score: F = 4.832, p = 0.034, d = − 0.357). No significant effect has been found in other variables (p > 0.05). ConclusionThe 12-week interactive exergame training can effectively reduce drug craving and improve executive function in men with SUD in drug rehabilitation centers. This training may offer a new and alternative exercise treatment against SUD. Exercise treatment approaches tailored to men with SUD may lead to continued recovery in health and lower the risk of returning to substance use.

How Cognitive Biases Influence Problematic Research Methods Practices

A growing body of academic research addresses issues related to questionable choices and errors in the use of research methods in published business research. These problematic research method practices (PRMPs) may be purposeful or unconscious, but they reduce the rigor of academic research and can harm the accumulation of scientific knowledge. Yet, absent from much of this literature is a theoretically grounded approach to understanding why these problematic practices occur. Prior scholars have summarized specific types of PRMPs, but attributions about their causes are primarily limited to research lack of motivation or poor doctoral education. While these may certainly be at play, the current manuscript proposes that the deeper psychological phenomenon of cognitive bias is a likely explanation. Cognitive biases occur when human cognition produces an outcome that is systematically distorted from objective reality (Haselton, Nettle, and Murray, 2016). More colloquially, cognitive biases are systematic errors that humans make when they are faced with perceiving, remembering, and understanding information. These unintentional biases are particularly likely when that information is voluminous and ambiguous. Cognitive biases are explained by two theories—heuristic theory and fuzzy trace theory. Heuristic theory suggests that humans default to using mental shortcuts as a means to make decisions more efficiently (Chaiken and Ledgerwood, 2012). Further, fuzzy trace theory explains how memory and reasoning can be flawed (Reyna and Brainerd, 1995). Because of the limitations of the human mind, heuristic theory and fuzzy trace theory act to create unintentional cognitive biases. The current manuscript argues that the cognitive biases of source confusion, gist memory, repetition effects, bandwagon effects, and confirmation bias are mostly subconscious means by which researchers make errors in research methods use. We argue that these biases are not a useful part of the didactic approach to research, but are rather mental shortcuts that can limit researcher effectiveness. Next, specific PRMPs are addressed: reliance on methodological myths and urban legends, errors in citations, use of questionable research practices, and inappropriate use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and technology in research. Finally, there are a number of insights and recommendations derived from research on cognitive biases to assist scholars in promoting research methods best practices. In particular, researchers can combat cognitive biases by recognizing what they are and by providing more transparency about research methods use in their articles. Incentives for authors and reviewers may reduce the impact of cognitive biases on PRMPs. Editors should create and share clear guidelines on the use of AI in research. In summary, this manuscript addresses those critical issues, fills a gap in current research regarding why PRMPs occur, and provides researchers with key insights to effectively combat cognitive biases.