Biomedical subjects

Bruce W A Whittlesea

Publications and source records attributed to Bruce W A Whittlesea.

10 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Remembering after a perception of discrepancy: out with the old, in with the two.

A surprising validation of expectation experienced during a recognition test induces the perception of discrepancy and a feeling of familiarity. The authors investigated whether that perception also affects memory performance when it is experienced in the original encounter with a stimulus. Target words were presented in a study phase, half in a context thought to induce the perception of discrepancy. In a subsequent recognition test, that earlier experience increased the accuracy of subjects' discrimination. However, when the subsequent task required a once-versus-twice judgment, that experience caused an illusion of reoccurrence for words presented once. The authors concluded that a perception of discrepancy in an initial encounter may be a valuable aid to later recognition but can also cause systematic memory errors under some circumstances.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

False memory following rapidly presented lists: the element of surprise.

This article examines a false memory phenomenon, the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) effect, consisting of high false alarms for a prototype word (e.g., SLEEP) following a study list consisting of its associates (NIGHT, DREAM, etc.). This false recognition is thought to occur because prototypes, although not presented within a study list, are highly activated by their semantic association with words that are in the list. The authors present an alternative explanation of the effect, based on the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis. According to that account, false (and true) familiarity results when a comparison between expectations and outcomes within a processing episode causes surprise. Experiment 1 replicates the DRM effect. Experiment 2 shows that a similar effect can occur when participants are shown lists of unrelated words and are then surprised by a recognition target. Experiments 3 and 4 show that the DRM effect itself is abolished when participants are prevented from being surprised by prototypes presented as recognition targets. It is proposed that the DRM effect is best understood through the principles of construction, evaluation, and attribution.

Humans↗

PubMed2005

Repetition blindness in rapid lists: activation and inhibition versus construction and attribution.

The authors examine the repetition blindness effect--the failure to report one of the occurrences of a word presented twice in a rapid list. This phenomenon has been ascribed to inhibitory processes that prevent immediate tokenization of the 2nd occurrence of a repeated word. The authors present several kinds of evidence against that account, including observations that repetition blindness (a) does not occur when repetitions are not embedded in a list of familiar orthographic units, (b) is alleviated by precuing the subject with the identity of the word that may repeat within a rapid list, and (c) can be caused by cues presented after the list, when the opportunity for inhibition has passed. It is proposed that repetition blindness can better be understood through the principles of construction and attribution.

Attitude↗

PubMed2005

Selective and nonselective transfer: positive and negative priming in a multiple-task environment.

Processing of a probe stimulus can be affected either positively or negatively by presenting a related stimulus immediately before it. According to structural accounts, such effects occur because processing of the prime activates or inhibits the mental representation of the probe before it is presented. In contrast, transfer-appropriate processing accounts suggest that success in processing a probe depends on resources made available by earlier experiences of related stimuli. The authors manipulated the similarity between the prime and probe on color, lexical status, and orthographic structure, requiring either lexical decision or color identification on each. The authors observed a complex pattern of positive and negative transfer that cannot easily be explained through activation-inhibition of mental structures. Instead, that pattern provides evidence in favor of transfer-appropriate processing.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Seeing double: levels of processing can cause false memory.

Ordinarily, deeper levels of processing in a study session increase the accuracy of later remembering. We modified the standard levels-of-processing procedure by presenting items either once or twice in the study phase, each item being the subject of a semantic, phonemic, or graphemic question. At test, the subjects judged the frequency with which each word had occurred in the study phase. Deeper processing during encoding increased accuracy in judging twice-presented items. However, it also caused an illusion of repetition for items presented only once. The result underlines the importance of thinking of remembering as a process of evaluation and inference, rather than simple retrieval.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed2004

The perception of integrality: remembering through the validation of expectation.

Five experiments investigated the role of sentence context in influencing recognition decisions. Sentence stems were presented only in the study phase, only in the test phase, or in both; in addition, the coherence of the sentences was varied, such that terminal words were highly constrained by, merely consistent with, or actually incongruous with their stems. These stimulus combinations produced 4 unique patterns of response. These patterns are difficult to explain through encoding and retrieval alone; they seem also to require an understanding of the principles by which people react subjectively to their own processing. The results are discussed in terms of the differential effects of definite expectations developed in past experiences versus indefinite expectations developed in the moment of remembering.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2003

Long-term semantic transfer: an overlapping-operations account.

Semantic priming is usually a short-lived effect. However, it is also usually investigated using undemanding tasks, such as naming or lexical decision. We instead required subjects to perform category verification. We observed semantically mediated transfer occurring at an average lag of 90 intervening trials. We also observed that this priming was specific to the stimulus properties made salient in prime and probe displays and the particular task demanded in those displays. We interpret the results within an overlapping-operations framework, based on the work of Kolers (e.g., 1976).

Humans↗

PubMed2002

False memory and the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: the prototype-familiarity illusion.

According to the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis (B. W. A. Whittlesea & L. D. Williams, 1998), people experience a feeling of familiarity when they perceive their processing to be surprising, but for an indefinite reason. This hypothesis has been successful in explaining several illusions of familiarity. Here, it is applied to the prototype-familiarity effect, an illusion of remembering that occurs when people are shown prototype words after studying lists of associates. The experiments showed that studying associates enhances semantic, but not perceptual, processing of prototypes. They also showed that claims of recognizing prototypes can be modified by presenting them in predictive or incongruous contexts at test. The evidence suggests that the effect results from an evaluation process that monitors the coherence of processing.

Association↗

PubMed2002

Two routes to remembering (and another to remembering not).

In this article, the author presents evidence about 2 mechanisms of remembering that occur when target stimuli are presented in meaningful contexts. One occurs when the context has been seen previously; the other occurs when the context is new in the test. Both appear to result from the construction of expectations and evaluation of outcomes, but the former appears to depend on the formation of definite expectations, whereas the latter appears to depend on indefinite expectations. These 2 routes to remembering are affected by different factors and cause dissociated patterns of remembering. They also have differential significance for claims of clear recall versus a feeling of familiarity. The results are discussed in terms of the SCAPE framework of memory.

Humans↗

PubMed2002

Increasing confidence in remote autobiographical memory and general knowledge: extensions of the revelation effect.

In recognition tests, items presented in unusual ways (e.g., degraded, revealed in stages, or presented as anagrams) are often judged to be old more than are intact items. This revelation effect has been observed only in episodic judgments about the occurrence or frequency of relatively recent events. The present work extends the boundary conditions of this effect. In three experiments, subjects unscrambled anagrams in the context of answering questions about their childhood (e.g., broke a dwniwo playing ball) or while answering questions pertaining to world knowledge (e.g.,fastest animal-elpraod). In each case, a revelation effect was observed: Solving an anagram increased confidence in remote autobiographical memories and in memory for world facts. These results contradict claims that the effect is an episodic memory phenomenon and challenge existing explanations of the revelation effect.

Attitude↗