Lisa Geraci

Conceptual fluency selectively influences knowing

Research shows that Remember and Know judgments are effective measures of recollective experience. This article shows that Know responses can be selectively affected by fluency of processing that is created using a conceptual manipulation. In a recognition test, studied and nonstudied words were preceded by semantically related or unrelated primes. Participants gave significantly more Know judgments to items with related primes than unrelated primes but Remember responses were unaffected. Know responses are discussed in terms of familiarity assumed to arise from fluency of processing which, in turn, may be created through various sources including conceptual processes.

Processing approaches to cognition: The impetus from the levels-of-processing framework

Processing approaches to cognition have a long history, from act psychology to the present, but perhaps their greatest boost was given by the success and dominance of the levels-of-processing framework. We review the history of processing approaches, and explore the influence of the levels-of-processing approach, the procedural approach advocated by Paul Kolers, and the transfer-appropriate processing framework. Processing approaches emphasise the procedures of mind and the idea that memory storage can be usefully conceptualised as residing in the same neural units that originally processed information at the time of encoding. Processing approaches emphasise the unity and interrelatedness of cognitive processes and maintain that they can be dissected into separate faculties only by neglecting the richness of mental life. We end by pointing to future directions for processing approaches.

Examining the basis for illusory recollection: The role of remember/know instructions

Curiously, studies using the remember/know paradigm to measure recollective experience show that people often vividly remember events that never occurred, a phenomenon referred to asillusory recollection. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that false remember responses in the converging associates, or Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, reflect accurate memory for the study episode, rather than false recollection of critical lures. To test this hypothesis, we used standard remember instructions that emphasized recollection of the study context by allowing participants to use memory of surrounding list items as evidence for recollection, or we used modified instructions that did not include memory for surrounding list items as a basis for recollection. Results showed that, as compared with the standard instruction condition, the modified instructions selectively reduced reports of false remember responses to critical lures, but did not affect remember responses to studied items. By contrast, remember responses to critical lures were unaffected by an instruction condition that excluded the use of voice information as evidence for remembering. These results suggest that remember responses to falsely recognized items are driven partly by retrieval of studied items, rather than illusory recollection of the critical lures themselves. They further point to the importance of instructions in influencing subjective reports.

The orthographic distinctiveness effect on direct and indirect tests of memory: delineating the awareness and processing requirements

Abstract We examined the processing and awareness requirements that mediate superior memory for distinct items in long-term memory by studying the effects of orthographic distinctiveness. Orthographically distinct words are remembered better than common words on the direct test of free recall but not on the indirect test of perceptual identification. These results suggest that the orthographic distinctiveness effect requires test awareness. But interestingly, this distinctiveness effect has also been reported in one indirect test, that of word fragment completion ( Hunt & Toth, 1990 ). We examined the locus of the orthographic distinctiveness effect in the indirect test of word fragment completion and the direct tests of word fragment cued recall and free recall and assessed the role of awareness (Experiment 1) and conceptual processes (Experiments 2a–2c) in mediating this effect. Our results support the proposal that the distinctiveness effect depends on direct reference to the study context and further specify that this effect is mediated, to a large extent, by comparative processes even when distinctiveness emerges from surface-level differences.

The influence of instructions and terminology on the accuracy of remember–know judgments

The remember-know paradigm is one of the most widely used procedures to examine the subjective experience associated with memory retrieval. We examined how the terminology and instructions used to describe the experiences of remembering and knowing affected remember-know judgments. In Experiment 1 we found that using neutral terms, i.e., Type A memory and Type B memory, to describe the experiences of remembering and knowing reduced remember false alarms for younger and older adults as compared to using the terms Remember and Know, thereby increasing overall memory accuracy in the neutral terminology condition. In Experiment 2 we found that using what we call source-specific remember-know instructions, which were intended to constrain remember judgments to recollective experiences arising only from the study context, reduced remember hits and false alarms, and increased know hits and false alarms. Based on these data and other considerations, we conclude that researchers should use neutral terminology and source-specific instructions to collect the most accurate reports of the experiences of remembering and knowing arising from the study context.

How Well Do the ADAS-cog and its Subscales Measure Cognitive Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s Disease?

Background/Aims: The Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-cognitive (ADAS-cog) is regularly used to assess cognitive dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) clinical trials. Yet, little is known about how the instrument and its subscales measure cognition across the spectrum of AD. The current investigation used item response theory (IRT) analyses to assess the measurement properties of the ADAS-cog across the range of cognitive dysfunction in AD. Methods: We used IRT-based analyses to establish the relationship between cognitive dysfunction and the probability of obtaining observed scores on each subscale and the test as a whole. Data were obtained from 1,087 patients with AD and amnestic mild cognitive impairment. Results: Results showed that the ADAS-cog and its subscales provide maximum information at moderate levels of cognitive dysfunction. Raw score differences toward the lower and higher ends of the scale corresponded to large differences in cognitive dysfunction, whereas raw score differences toward the middle of the scale corresponded to smaller differences. Conclusions: The utility of the ADAS-cog and its subscales is optimal in the moderate range of cognitive dysfunction, but raw score differences in that region correspond to relatively small differences in cognitive dysfunction. Implications for tracking and staging dementia and for clinical trials are discussed.

Aging 5 Years in 5 Minutes The Effect of Taking a Memory Test on Older Adults’ Subjective Age

How old one feels—one’s subjective age—has been shown to predict important psychological and health outcomes. The current studies examined the effect of taking a standard memory test on older adults’ subjective age. Study 1 showed that older adults felt older after taking a standard neuropsychological screening test and participating in a free-recall experiment than they felt at baseline. Study 2 showed that the effect was selective to older adults: Younger adults’ subjective age was not affected by participating in the memory experiment. Study 3 showed that the subjective-aging effect was specific to memory, as taking a vocabulary test for a similar amount of time did not affect older adults’ subjective age. Finally, Study 4 showed that simply expecting to take a memory test subjectively aged older adults. The results indicate that being in a memory-testing context affects older adults’ self-perception by making them feel older.

On interpreting the relationship between remember-know judgments and confidence: the role of instructions.

Two experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that the nature of the remember-know instructions given to participants influences whether these responses reflect different memory states or different degrees of memory confidence. Participants studied words and nonwords, a variable that has been shown to dissociate confidence from remember-know judgments and were given a set of published remember-know instructions that either emphasized know judgments as highly confident (Experiment 1) or as less confident (Experiment 2) states of recognition. Experiment 1 replicated the standard finding showing that remembering and knowing were differently influenced by the word-nonword variable, whereas confidence responses were not. By contrast, Experiment 2 showed a similar pattern of data for remember-know and sure-unsure responses, thus demonstrating the importance of the instructions for interpreting the relationship between remembering and knowing and confidence.

Are awareness questionnaires valid? Investigating the use of posttest questionnaires for assessing awareness in implicit memory tests

Two experiments—one employing a perceptual implicit memory test and the other a conceptual implicit memory test—investigated the validity of posttest questionnaires for determining the incidence of awareness in implicit memory tests. In both experiments, a condition in which none of the studied words could be used as test responses (i.e., the none-studied condition) was compared with a standard implicit test condition. Results showed that reports of awareness on the posttest questionnaire were much less frequent in the none-studied condition than in the standard condition. This was especially true after deep processing at study. In both experiments, 83% of the participants in the none-studied condition stated they were unaware even though there were strong demands for claiming awareness. Although there was a small bias in the questionnaire (i.e., 17% of the participants in the none-studied condition stated they were aware), overall, there was strong support for the validity of awareness questionnaires.

The influence of age on memory for distinctive events

We examined whether memory for distinctive events is influenced by aging. To do so, we used a semantic isolation paradigm in which people show superior memory for a word when it is presented in a list of items from a different semantic category (e.g., the word table is presented in a list of all bird exemplars) as compared with when the same word (table) is presented in a list of unrelated words. Results showed that both younger and older adults demonstrated an isolation effect in memory, although older adults showed a numerically smaller isolation effect than did younger adults. Results suggest that in contrast with previous findings (Cimbalo & Brink, 1982), older adults can take advantage of this type of distinctiveness to aid memory performance.