Memory & cognition
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Within the context of an interactive anagram-solving task, the present studies tested predictions about the role of cognitive anticipation in both source and item memory. After working in pairs to solve anagram problems, participants were surprised by a source-monitoring test focused on the source of solutions (self vs. partner, Experiment 1) or a standard recognition test focused on the solutions themselves (Experiment 2). With the intention of affecting the opportunity to anticipate partners' solutions, two variables were manipulated: anagram difficulty (easy vs. hard) and the delaybetween the presentation of an anagram problem and theprompt tha t designated one member of each pair as the anagram solver. ⋯ Generation-effect failures were observed in item memory. However, these failures reflected increases in item memory for partners' responses rather than decreases in memory for self-generated ones. These studies suggest that when opportunities to anticipate partners' responses are available, self-generative activities may be associated with both self-and partner-generated items, influencing the expression of the generation effect.
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Extant research shows that people use retrieval ease, a feeling-based cue, to judge how well they remember life periods. Extending this approach, we investigated the role of retrieval ease in memory judgments for single events. ⋯ In Experiment 2, this ease-of-retrieval effect was found to interact with the shocking character of the remembered event: There was no effect when the event was highly shocking (i.e., learning about the attacks of September 11, 2001), whereas an effect was found when the event was experienced as less shocking (due either to increased distance to "9/11" or to the nonshocking nature of the event itself). Memory vividness accounted for additional variance in memory judgments, indicating an independent contribution of content-based cues in judgments of event memories.
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Memory distortions sometimes serve a purpose: It may be in our interest to misremember some details of an event or to forget others altogether. The present work examines whether a similar phenomenon occurs for source attribution. ⋯ Experiment 2 showed that this wishful thinking effect depends on retrieval processes. Experiment 3 showed that under some circumstances, wishes concerning one event can produce systematic source memory errors for others.
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The representativeness heuristic has been invoked to explain two opposing expectations--that random sequences will exhibit positive recency (the hot hand fallacy) and that they will exhibit negative recency (the gambler's fallacy). We propose alternative accounts for these two expectations: (1) The hot hand fallacy arises from the experience of characteristic positive recency in serial fluctuations in human performance. (2) The gambler's fallacy results from the experience of characteristic negative recency in sequences of natural events, akin to sampling without replacement. ⋯ These findings fit our proposal but are problematic for the representativeness account. Experiment 2 demonstrates that sequence recency influences attributions that human performance or chance generated the sequence.
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In five experiments, we investigated the effects of voice congruency (same vs. different voices at study and at test) on remembering and knowing in recognition memory. With low- and medium-frequency three- or four-syllable words, a voice congruency effect occurred only in remembering. ⋯ With nonwords and divided attention at study, the voice congruency effect transferred almost completely from remembering to knowing. By showing a transfer of effects from remembering to knowing as encoding became more impoverished, these findings support a distinctiveness/fluency account of remembering and knowing as well as the theory that remembering and knowing indicate retrieval of events from episodic and semantic memory systems, respectively.