Andrew L. Betz

Social memory in everyday life: Recall of self-events and other-events.

A self- and other-diary method was used to investigate the factors affecting memory for different aspects of real-world events

The use of partial temporal information in dating personal events

The use of different types of partial temporal information is shown to affect dating accuracy and the distribution of errors in event dating. Several different types of partial temporal information are discussed, but three are highlighted by the data. Specifically, subjects’ dating error patterns suggest that they (1) use different types of within-week information, (2) use recalled event sequences, and (3) use boundary landmarks to report the dates of events. In general, these data suggest that although precise temporal information is sometimes represented in the memory trace for an event, more often the date-related information is inferred from other aspects of memory.

Self-events and other-events: Temporal dating and event memory

A diary methodology was used to assess factors related to temporal dating and cued recall of real-world events. In one diary, participants kept a record of unique personal autobiographical events. In a second diary, participants recorded unique events from the life of a friend or relation. At the time each event was recorded, participants rated the event’s pleasantness, person typicality, and degree of initial mental involvement in the event. At the end of the academic quarter, participants provided a recall rating, a rehearsal rating, a date estimate, and a report of the strategy used to estimate the date for each event. Results of regression analyses indicated that both self-events and other-events were characterized by superior memory for person-atypical events. Furthermore, there was a positivity bias in recall for self-events, but there was a negativity bias in recall for other-events. Mediational analyses indicated that the self-event positivity bias was due to enhanced mental involvement when the events occurred, whereas the other-event negativity bias was due to subsequent event rehearsal. The date estimation results indicated that self-event dating was more accurate and evinced less telescoping than other-event dating. Furthermore, the accuracy of date estimates was substantially mediated by event memory. However, mediational differences between self-events and other-events did not emerge. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Ordering our world: An examination of time in autobiographical memory.

In two studies people judged the order in which two real-world events occurred. Ordering performance was better for events that were recent or widely separated in time. Ordering performance was also consistently related to predicted event memorability and to the amount of processing given to an event during encoding. Ordering performance was not consistently related to the person-typicality, pleasantness, or emotional intensity of the events, and was also not related to whether the two events judged came from the same thematic category. These results suggest that memory for event order is not entirely reconstructed from event content. We suggest that the self-concept may sometimes serve as an implicit timekeeper in autobiographical memory.

The Impact of Differing Memory Domains on Event-Dating Processes in Self and Proxy Reports

The subjective impression that many of us have when we attempt to provide accurate dates for autobiographical events is that it is a very difficult task. This personal subjective experience is corroborated by our observations of respondents in event-dating studies. These respondents often spontaneously express a great amount of dismay (sometimes quite vehemently) when they are asked to provide exact dates for their autobiographical events.

Cognitive Representation of Bipolar Survey Items

Cognitive psychology is concerned with how people mentally represent the objects and information that they encounter in their world. Survey instruments are one such class of objects. People do not just passively respond to survey questions as if they were looking up answers in a dictionary, but they actively form cognitive representations of the survey and its items. These representations, in turn, guide the respondent’s answers.

Raw conditional probabilities are a flawed index of associative strength: evidence from a multi-trait paradigm

Skowronski and Welbourne (1997) argue that raw conditional probabilities may be a flawed index of associative strength in reca ll, and may need to be corrected for chance before they can be safely interpreted. Three experiments examined this idea in the context of an experimental paradigm used by Hamilton, Driscoll and Worth (1989). Participants in this paradigm were asked to read items describing a social target. The items each pertained to one of several different trait concepts, or were irrelevant to those concepts. Participants later recalled the items. The data supported Skowronski and Welbournes conjecture. The raw conditional probabilities differed substantially from the chanceadjusted probabilities. The data from a second dependent measure, inter-item generation times, matched the pattern of adjusted conditional probabilities. In addition to their methodological implications, these results contradict the Complete Association Model of person representation proposed by Hamilton et al. Finally, these data raise the possibility that traditional associative models of person memory, which were based on raw conditional probabilities (e.g. Srull & Wyer, 1989), are flawed.

Overhead surgery or media hyperbole? An examination of manufacturing employment structure in high and low tech industries, 1983 and 1989

Abstract This study investigates changes in the occupational composition of the manufacturing work force between 1983 and 1989 in both high and low tech industries. Various media reported large-scale white collar reductions-in-force in many industries during this period. These reports suggest dramatic retrenchment of employment in many nonproduction or overhead occupations in both high tech and low tech manufacturing industries. This paper uses occupational employment by industry data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to assess the actual changes which have occurred in employment structure. In addition, the following propositions are examined using BLS occupational employment data : (1) Are there any differences in work force composition between high tech and low tech industries?; and (2) Have differential changes in employment structures occurred between high tech and low tech industries between 1983 and 1989?