Cryptomnesia Research Articles

Examining the Differences Between Digital and Traditional Sources of Unconscious Plagiarism

Examining the Differences Between Digital and Traditional Sources of Unconscious Plagiarism

Memory for the source of solutions in remote associate tasks: The role of generation effect and the Aha!-experience

The aim of the current work is to study the role of the Aha!-experience in remembering the source of solutions, either self-generated or externally presented. In memory studies there are specific source-monitoring errors, which occur whenever a participant claims to have generated an idea that was derived from different sources (unconscious plagiarism). Several previous studies have shown that experiencing the feeling of Aha! during either problem-solving or the presentation of the correct solutions can have a beneficial relationship to the subsequent recall of the material with the processing of which it was associated. However, studies of the Aha!-experience on the source monitoring task (self-generated solutions vs presented solutions) have not been conducted. In the authors’ study, the hypothesis that the feeling of Aha!, associated with the task being solved, can affect source-monitoring accuracy. During the first stage of the experiment, participants (80 people) had to solve Compound Remote Associates Task items and to estimate whether they had a feeling of Aha!, when either generating the solution or being presented with it in case they failed to generate it. At the second stage, conducted a week later, participants had to recall if the solution was generated by themselves or just presented. The results confirm the generation effect, which manifests itself in successfully recalling problems for which a solution was found (sufficient generation) compared to problems with no-solutions found (fail-to-generate). Participants quite accurately recognized the source of the solution a week later, attributing generated solutions to themselves, while attributing fail-to-generate solutions to the presented ones. However, the authors did not find any additional impact of the Aha!-experience on the problem’s recognition, nor on the sourcemonitoring task performance. In the conclusion of the article, the contradictions of different experimental data concerning the influence of the Aha!-experience on long-term memory and further areas of research is discussed.

Giving and stealing ideas in memory: Source errors in recall are influenced by both early-selection and late-correction retrieval processes

Abstract Previous studies of unconscious plagiarism have asked participants to recall their own ideas from a previous group-problem solving session, and have typically reported that people mistakenly include a partner’s responses when trying to recall their own. To date, there has been little research looking at the propensity to include one’s own responses when trying to recall a partner’s previous contribution to the group. Experiment 1 demonstrated that people make both kinds of source-error during recall, but source errors are more common in the recall-partner task. This pattern was replicated in Experiments 2a and 2b with source-errors and intrusions increasing over a delay. Experiment 3 used an extended version of each recall task, in which participants reported all items that came to mind, whilst indicating which responses were goal-relevant. The tendency for source-errors to occur more for the recall-partner task was shown to be a function of both idea availability and output monitoring, whereas the tendency for source-errors to increase over a delay was shown to be due solely to output monitoring. Thus, unconscious plagiarism errors are one instantiation of the more general problem of source-specified recall, which is influenced jointly by processes at generation and output monitoring.

Copying machines

Although there is a large body of scholarly literature on musical copyright, very little of this work explores in a sustained and direct way the role of copyright in regulating musical memory. This paper conceptualizes sound recording as a mnemonic technology and analyzes the manner in which copyright law attempts to manage the impact of this technology on legal concepts of musical memory and authorial subjectivity. The paper analyzes the case law on “cryptomnesia” or unconscious plagiarism in the United States and Canada wherein defendants claimed not to have access to the original work and therefore could not have copied it. These contested similarities highlight the dispersion of memory and creativity across a heterogeneous network that includes composers, musicians, and producers but also institutions and machines, and leads to the present difficulty of recentering the authorial subject in legal discourses and practices. In this way, late twentieth century legal disputes over unconscious plagiarism anticipate contemporary anxieties about the entanglement of creative and consumer subjectivities with digital techniques in recent litigation campaigns against mash-up remixing, peer-to-peer file sharing, and other popular practices of online music reproduction. Then as now, copyright acts as a site for disciplining and normalising certain modes of listening to and remembering sound recordings which in turn help smooth over tensions in the field of capitalist music (re)production.

Social influences on unconscious plagiarism and anti-plagiarism

People are more likely to unconsciously plagiarise ideas from a same-sex partner than a different-sex partner, and more likely to unconsciously plagiarise if recalling alone rather than in the presence of their partner [Macrae, C. N., Bodenhausen, G. V., & Calvini, G. (1999). Contexts of cryptomnesia: May the source be with you. Social Cognition, 17, 273–297. doi:10.1521/soco.1999.17.3.273]. Two sets of experiments explore these phenomena, using extensions of the standard unconscious plagiarism paradigm. In Experiment 1A participants worked together in same- or different-sex dyads before trying to recall their own ideas or their partner's ideas. More source errors were evident for same-sex dyads (Experiment 1A), but this effect was absent when participants recalled from both sources simultaneously (Experiment 1B). In Experiment 2A, participants recalled ideas from a single source either alone or in the presence of the partner, using an extended-recall task. Partner presence did not affect the availability of ideas, but did reduce the propensity to report them as task compliant, relative to a partner-present condition. Simultaneous recall from both sources removed this social effect (Experiment 2B). Thus social influences on unconscious plagiarism are apparent, but are influenced by the salience of the alternate source at retrieval.

Coping with copying

If somebody spends several decades in the world of scientific publishing as author, referee and editor, it is difficult to evade certain ethical issues. Researchers are fallible humans, after all, not free of vices like vanity, envy or jealousy. The range is wide from slightly tendentious selection among data to rudely falsified results, from distrait overlooking relevant results of concurrent groups, through cryptomnesia, ‘‘an unconscious plagiarism in which creative ideas expressed as new are actually unrecalled memories of another’s idea’’ (Garfield 1985, p. 407) to straight plagiarism. The definition of plagiarism enjoys a variety of ranges. In the Oxford dictionary, plagiarism is ‘‘the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own’’. It clearly implies a voluntary act of cheating and dishonesty. For the Webster dictionary, plagiarism is ‘‘the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person’’. The difference between the two definitions is subtle but real: In Webster’s sentence, the interpretation may include an act of negligence or simply an accidental omission. Although not equally unethical, both circumstances are serious offences and constitute copyright infringements.

Unconscious plagiarism and withdrawal of the manuscript under consideration

Unconscious plagiarism and withdrawal of the manuscript under consideration

Unconscious Plagiarism in Recall: Attribution to the Self, but not for Self-Relevant Reasons

Previous research has shown that if people improve other’s ideas, they subsequently unconsciously plagiarise them at a dramatically higher rate than if they imagine them, or simply hear them again. It has been claimed that this occurs because improvement resembles the process of generation, and that these are confused during retrieval. However, an alternate possibility is tested here: plagiarism may increases because improvement increases personal relevance of the ideas. Two studies were conducted in which there was an initial generation phase, followed by an elaboration phase in which participants imagined the previous ideas, improved them for their own use, or improved them for an older adult’s use. One week later, participants attempted to recall their own ideas, and generated new solutions to the previous problems. In both studies, improvement of doubled the rate of subsequent plagiarism in the recall own task, but this effect was not mediated by whether people improved ideas for their own use, of for use by someone else. Improvement had no effect on plagiarism in the generate-new task. These studies therefore rule out personal relevance, or personal semantics as the source of the improvement effect in unconscious plagiarism.

Accountability Reduces Unconscious Plagiarism

SummaryWe investigated how holding participants accountable for their responses affected unconscious plagiarism when solving a Boggle puzzle task (finding words in a 4 × 4 letter matrix). Both experimental and control participants (N = 60) generated puzzle solutions with a computer partner, recalled their own previously generated solutions, and then produced new solutions to the puzzles. Accountability was manipulated by telling participants in the experimental group before beginning the initial‐generation phase that at the end of the session, they would review their generated responses with the researcher (accountable participants). Accountable participants plagiarized less than control participants when generating words with the computer and generating new solutions on their own but not when they were attempting to recall words they initially generated. The data are discussed in terms of the leading theoretical explanation of unconscious plagiarism, the source‐monitoring framework. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Unconscious plagiarism and author’s request for withdrawal of his paper under consideration

Unconscious plagiarism and author’s request for withdrawal of his paper under consideration

No evidence of age-related increases in unconscious plagiarism during free recall

In three experiments younger and older participants took part in a group generation task prior to a delayed recall task. In each, participants were required to recall the items that they had generated, avoiding plagiarism errors. All studies showed the same pattern: older adults did not plagiarise their partners any more than younger adults did. However, older adults were more likely than younger adults to intrude with entirely novel items not previously generated by anyone. These findings stand in opposition to the single previous demonstration of age-related increases in plagiarism during recall.

Unconscious Plagiarism: Samuel Clemens Writes My Past

Research Article| January 01 2010 Unconscious Plagiarism: Samuel Clemens Writes My Past MICHAEL J. KISKIS MICHAEL J. KISKIS Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Mark Twain Annual (2010) 8 (1): 33–37. https://doi.org/10.2307/41582274 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation MICHAEL J. KISKIS; Unconscious Plagiarism: Samuel Clemens Writes My Past. The Mark Twain Annual 1 January 2010; 8 (1): 33–37. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41582274 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressThe Mark Twain Annual Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2010 Mark Twain Circle of America2010Mark Twain Circle of America Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Source credibility and idea improvement have independent effects on unconscious plagiarism errors in recall and generate-new tasks.

Unconscious plagiarism occurs when people try to generate new ideas or when they try to recall their own ideas from among a set generated by a group. In this study, the factors that independently influence these two forms of plagiarism error were examined. Participants initially generated solutions to real-world problems in 2 domains of knowledge in collaboration with a confederate presented as an expert in 1 domain. Subsequently, the participant generated improvements to half of the ideas from each person. Participants returned 1 day later to recall either their own ideas or their partner's ideas and to complete a generate-new task. A double dissociation was observed. Generate-new plagiarism was driven by partner expertise but not by idea improvement, whereas recall plagiarism was driven by improvement but not expertise. This improvement effect on recall plagiarism was seen for the recall-own but not the recall-partner task, suggesting that the increase in recall-own plagiarism is due to mistaken idea ownership, not source confusion.

Why do I always have the best ideas? The role of idea quality in unconscious plagiarism

Groups of individuals often work together to generate solutions to a problem. Subsequently, one member of the group can plagiarise another either by recalling that person's idea as their own (recall-own plagiarism), or by generating a novel solution that duplicates a previous idea (generate-new plagiarism). The current study examines the extent to which these forms of plagiarism are influenced by the quality of the ideas. Groups of participants initially generated ideas, prior to an elaboration phase in which idea quality was manipulated in two ways: participants received feedback on the quality of the ideas as rated by independent judges, and they generated improvements to a subset of the ideas. Unconscious plagiarism was measured in recall-own and generate-new tasks. For recall, idea improvement led to increased plagiarism, while for the generate-new task, the independent ratings influenced plagiarism. These data indicate that different source-judgement processes underlie the two forms of plagiarism, neither of which can be reduced simply to memory strength.

The effects of repeated idea elaboration on unconscious plagiarism

Unconscious plagiarism occurs in a recall task when someone presents someone else's idea as his or her own. Recent research has shown that the likelihood of such an error is inflated if the idea is improved during the retention interval, but not if it is imagined. Here, we explore the effects of repeating the elaboration phase during the retention interval. Participants in a group first generated alternate uses to common objects before elaborating the ideas either by imagining them or by improving them. This elaboration phase occurred once, twice, or not at all. Later, they attempted to recall their original ideas and generate new ideas. Repeated imagery did not inflate unconscious plagiarism on either task. In contrast, repeating the improvement phase increased plagiarism to dramatically high levels in the recall task. The latter effect might be particularly pertinent to real-world cases of plagiarism in which the ideas under dispute have been the subject of creative development over many occasions.

Whose idea was that? Source monitoring for idea ownership following elaboration

Unconscious plagiarism (UP) occurs when an individual claims a previously experienced idea as their own. Previous studies have explored the cognitive precursors of such errors by manipulating the ways that ideas are thought about between initial idea exposure and later test. While imagining other's ideas does not increase rates of UP relative to control on either a recall-own or generate-new task, improving others’ ideas substantially increases such errors in the recall-own task. This study explored the effects of elaboration on rates of UP when a source-monitoring test replaced the recall-own test. Plagiarism was again observed following idea improvement but not idea imagery even though participants engaged explicit source evaluation. Thus the probability of plagiarising another's idea appears linked to the generative nature of the idea processing performed.

The relationship of analogical distance to analogical function and preinventive structure: the case of engineering design

Analogy was studied in real-world engineering design, using the in vivo method. Analogizing was found to occur frequently, entailing a roughly equal amount of within- and between-domain analogies. In partial support for theories of unconscious plagiarism (Brown & Murphy, 1989; Marsh, Landau, & Hicks, 1996) and Ward's (1994) path-of-least-resistance model, it was found that the reference to exemplars (in the form of prototypes) significantly reduced the number of between-domain analogies between source and target, as compared with using sketches or no external representational systems. Analogy served three functions in relation to novel design concepts: identifying problems, solving problems, and explaining concepts. Problem identifying analogies were mainly within domain, explanatory analogies were mainly between domain, and problem-solving analogies were a mixture of within- and between-domain analogies.

When elaboration leads to appropriation: Unconscious plagiarism in a creative task

Brown and Murphy's (1989) three-stage paradigm (generation, recall-own, generate-new) was used to assess the effects of participant elaboration on rates of unconscious plagiarism in two experiments using a creative task. Following the generation phase, participants imagined and rated a quarter of the ideas (imagery elaboration), generated improvements to another quarter (generative elaboration), and listened to a quarter of the ideas again without elaboration, with the remaining ideas acting as control. A week later, participants attempted to recall their own ideas, and generate new solutions to the same cues. In Experiment 1 both forms of elaboration equally increased correct recall, and decreased plagiarism in the generate-new task. However, generative elaboration led to significantly greater plagiarism in the recall-own task, but imagery elaboration did not. Participants in Experiment 2 were encouraged not to plagiarise by means of a financial incentive. However, they showed the same pattern as seen in Experiment 1. Therefore, contrary to a simple strength account, the probability of a person plagiarising another's ideas is linked to the particular nature of the elaboration carried out on that idea, rather than its familiarity.

Could Feynman Have Said This?

Could Feynman Have Said This?

The Credibility of a Source Influences the Rate of Unconscious Plagiarism

Three experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between the credibility of information and later unconscious plagiarism of that information. In each experiment, ideas concerning ways to reduce traffic accidents were presented from a more credible source (traffic planners) and a less credible source (college freshmen). After a distractor task, participants were asked to generate novel ways to reduce traffic accidents. In Experiments 1 and 2, unconscious plagiarism of ideas presented from the more credible source was greater than from the less credible source. In neither experiment was explicit memory for ideas from each source different in tests of source monitoring or free recall. However, the difference in unconscious plagiarism was eliminated in Experiment 3 by having participants generate the implications of ideas at study. The results are discussed in terms of the explicit factors that affect the incidence of unconscious plagiarism.