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R A Bjork

Publications and source records attributed to R A Bjork.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1998

Predicting the future and reconstructing the past: a Bayesian characterization of the utility of subjective fluency.

The subjective sense of fluency with which an item can be perceived or remembered is proposed to be a vital cue in making decisions about the future memorability and the nature of our past experience with that stimulus. We first outline a number of cases in which such perceptual or retrieval fluency influences judgments both about our own future performance and our likely past experience, and then present a Bayesian analysis of how judgments of recognition--deciding whether or not a currently viewed item was studied at a particular point in the past--may incorporate information about the perceptual fluency of that item. Using a simple mathematical model, we then provide an interpretation of certain enigmatic phenomena in recognition memory.

Bayes Theorem↗
PubMed1998

The mismeasure of memory: when retrieval fluency is misleading as a metamnemonic index.

The experiments address the degree to which retrieval fluency--the case with which information is accessed from long-term memory--guides and occasionally misleads metamnemonic judgments. In each of 3 experiments, participants' predictions of their own future recall performance were examined under conditions in which probability or speed of retrieval at one time or on one task is known to be negatively related to retrieval probability on a later task. Participants' predictions reflected retrieval fluency on the initial task in each case, which led to striking mismatches between their predicted and actual performance on the later tasks. The results suggest that retrieval fluency is a potent but not necessarily reliable source of information for metacognitive judgments. Aspects of the results suggest that a basis on which better and poorer rememberers differ is the degree to which certain memory dynamics are understood, such as the fleeting nature of recency effects and the consequences of an initial retrieval. The results have pedagogical as well as theoretical implications, particularly with respect to the education of subjective assessments of ongoing learning.

Female↗
PubMed1996

Generation effects and the lack thereof: the role of transfer-appropriate processing.

We report two experiments designed to test a multifactor transfer-appropriate processing explanation of generation effects, and the lack thereof, in free recall and cued recall. The basic argument is that the act of generating a target enhances the processing of one or more possible types of information (e.g. target-specific information, cue-target relationships, or target-target relationships) and that subsequent retention tests will reveal an advantage (or disadvantage) of such generation (compared to a "read" control) to the degree that a test is sensitive to the information on which processing was focused during study. Across the two experiments, manipulations of identical stimulus materials forced subjects to process different types of information in order to generate targets, producing a striking reversal in the relative levels of free recall and cued recall for targets that had been generated vs. read, and lending strong support to the transfer-appropriate processing aspect of the proposed framework for explaining generation effects.

Association Learning↗
PubMed1994

Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory.

Three studies show that the retrieval process itself causes long-lasting forgetting. Ss studied 8 categories (e.g., Fruit). Half the members of half the categories were then repeatedly practiced through retrieval tests (e.g., Fruit Or_____). Category-cued recall of unpracticed members of practiced categories was impaired on a delayed test. Experiments 2 and 3 identified 2 significant features of this retrieval-induced forgetting: The impairment remains when output interference is controlled, suggesting a retrieval-based suppression that endures for 20 min or more, and the impairment appears restricted to high-frequency members. Low-frequency members show little impairment, even in the presence of strong, practiced competitors that might be expected to block access to those items. These findings suggest a critical role for suppression in models of retrieval inhibition and implicate the retrieval process itself in everyday forgetting.

Humans↗
PubMed1994

Intention and awareness in perceptual identification priming.

We show that inferences can be made about differences in retrieval intentionality between direct and indirect tests, even when those tests involve different physical cues. When the presence of old items was not mentioned (indirect test condition), we observed a crossed double dissociation between perceptual identification priming and recognition memory as a function of a manipulation of data-driven versus conceptually driven processing at encoding. When subjects were instructed to use their memory to help them identify test items (intentional retrieval condition), priming could be expressed as a monotonically increasing function of recognition memory performance. This reversed association (Dunn & Kirsner, 1988) between priming and recognition memory cannot be accommodated by a model that views intentional retrieval as common to the tests and attributes the crossed double dissociation to an intertest difference in physical cues and associated processes. A posttest questionnaire measure indicated that awareness of the presence of previously encountered items was ubiquitous among indirect test subjects. Crossed double dissociations between direct and indirect measures can therefore be ascribed to differences in retrieval intentionality but not necessarily to differences in subjective awareness of the past.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Composite models never (well, hardly ever) compromise: reply to Schooler and Tanaka (1991)

With respect to the influence of postevent information, Schooler and Tanaka (1991) made a useful distinction between composite recollections--in which subjects retrieve "items from both the original and the postevent sources" (p.97)--and compromise recollections--in which subjects retrieve" at least one feature that cannot be exclusively associated with either the original or the postevent sources, but which reflects some compromise between [the] two" (p.97). Schooler and Tanaka argued that only the latter constitutes good evidence for blend-memory representations of the CHARM-type. As it turns out, Schooler and Tanaka's intuitions (and Metcalfe & Bjork's, initially) are faulty. Compromise recall--defined as a preference for an intervening alternative over either of the actually presented alternatives--is not normally a prediction of CHARM and may not be a prediction of composite-trace models in general. Only under specialized conditions--a systematic displacement of the test alternatives or a systematic shift attributable to assimilation to prior semantic knowledge--will computer simulations of CHARM produce unimodal compromise recollection. Equally surprising is the fact that separate-trace models, under a different set of conditions, can predict compromise recollection.

Association Learning↗
PubMed1983

Disrupted retrieval in directed forgetting: a link with posthypnotic amnesia.

Certain reliable findings from research on directed forgetting seem difficult to accommodate in terms of the theoretical processes, such as selective rehearsal or storage differentiation, that have been put forward to account for directed-forgetting phenomena. Some kind of "missing mechanism" appears to be involved. In order to circumvent the methodological constraints that have limited the conclusions investigators could draw from past experiments, a new paradigm is introduced herein that includes a mixture of intentional and incidental learning. With this paradigm, a midlist instruction to forget the first half of a list was found to reduce later recall of the items learned incidentally as well as those learned intentionally. This result suggests that a cue to forget can lead to a disruption of retrieval processes as well as to the alteration of encoding processes postulated in prior theories. The results also provide a link between intentional forgetting and the literature on posthypnotic amnesia, in which disrupted retrieval has been implicated. With each of these procedures, the information that can be remembered is typically recalled out of order and often with limited recollection for when the information had been presented. It therefore was concluded here that retrieval inhibition plays a significant role in nonhypnotic as well as in hypnotic instances of directed forgetting. The usefulness of retrieval inhibition as a mechanism for memory updating was also discussed.

Amnesia↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Continuing influences of to-be-forgotten information.

In the present paper, we first argue that it is critical for humans to forget; that is, to have some means of preventing out-of-date information from interfering with the recall of current information. We then argue that the primary means of accomplishing such adaptive updating of human memory is retrieval inhibition: Information that is rendered out of date by new learning becomes less retrievable, but remains at essentially full strength in memory as indexed by other measures, such as recognition and word-fragment completion. We conclude with a speculation that certain unconscious influences of prior events may, in fact, be stronger if those events were to be forgotten rather than to be remembered.

Adult↗