Biomedical subjects

Silvia Mecklenbräuker

Publications and source records attributed to Silvia Mecklenbräuker.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Decomposing retrieval and integration in memory for actions: a multinomial modeling approach.

Typically, action phrases are recalled better if participants are asked to enact the phrases than if they are just asked to remember them. When investigating which processes constitute this enactment effect a difficulty is that observable effects in standard memory tests are ambiguous because such tests require several processes. In the present article, we introduce a multinomial model that decomposes observable memory performance into a retrieval parameter and a parameter concerning the item-specific processing and integration of an action phrase. These parameters are estimated from free recall and cued recall performance. The model fitted the data of two experiments designed to test it. Experiment 1 demonstrated the basic usefulness of the model by showing expected differences in the integration parameter in the absence of unexpected differences in the retrieval parameter. Experiment 2 extended the conditions under which the model is useful by showing expected differences in the retrieval parameter even in the presence of unexpected differences in the integration parameter. Together, these findings support our theoretical framework according to which enactment generally boosts integration of action phrases, but increases retrieval only for phrases with context cues.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Gender bias in fame judgments: implicit gender stereotyping or matching study phase fame?

Familiarized names are falsely judged famous more often than nonfamiliarized names. Banaji and Greenwald (1995) demonstrated a gender bias in this false fame effect, with the effect being larger for male than for female names. This effect was interpreted as reflecting the operation of a gender stereotype. However, the famous male names were, in fact, better known than the famous female names. Thus, the presence of more famous male names during study may have contributed to the observed male-famous association. If so, there should be no gender bias if the studied famous male and female names are equally famous, and a reversed gender bias should emerge if the famous female names are more famous than the male names. In two experiments, these predictions were corroborated. A "classical" gender bias was found only when the famous males were more famous than the famous females. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the gender bias in fame judgments, rather than showing implicit gender stereotyping in the sense of a transsituational judgment bias, reflects the fact that, in test, participants select a proportion of fame judgments to male and female names so that it matches the relative degree of fame of male and female names encountered during study.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2003

Age-related improvements in a conceptual implicit memory test.

The present study investigated developmental improvements in category exemplar generation priming in children from kindergarten to older elementary school age. The strength of categorical links for atypical exemplars increases in this age range, whereas category knowledge for typical exemplars remains relatively stable. Therefore, in comparison with older children, younger children should show less categorical-relational encoding and, thus, less priming for atypical items but not for typical items. This expectation was confirmed in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, picture versus word format at study dissociated implicit and explicit performance, indicating that the age-related increase in priming for atypical exemplars in Experiment 1 was not an artifact of explicit contamination. The findings suggest that developmental improvements in conceptual priming can be observed when the conceptual knowledge relevant for a given task improves over the age range tested.

Age Factors↗