Retrieval Processes

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Retrieval Processes

• Tuesday September 26th, 2006

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Signal Detection Theory

• Signal Baseline Noise
• Evidence that item was previously seen
• Familiarity
• Hits/Misses/False Alarms/Correct Rejections
• Importance of errors guessing

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Recognition Memory Test
Correct Answer Old New
Response
Old Hit FA New
Miss CR
FAFalse Alarm CRCorrect rejection
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Distributions for Signal Detection
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Processes Dissociation

• 2 processes?
• Recollection and Familiarity
• Mandler Butcher on the Bus
• Jacoby (1991)
• Automatic and intentional processes in
  recognition memory

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Evidence from amnesia
P L I _ _ _ _
ORANGE
Warrington Weiskrantz (1970)
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Evidence from normals
A _ _ A _ _ I N C _ A R _ T _ H _ O _ R E M _ Y S
_ _ R Y
Tulving, Schacter Stark (1982)
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False fame effect

• Study
• Read non-famous names aloud (e.g. Sebastian
  Weisdorf)
• Full attention
• Divided attention(digit detection)
• Test
• Fame judgements
• Old, non-famous (e.g. Sebastian Weisdorf)
• New, non-famous(e.g. Avril Zwickel)
• Famous(e.g. Christopher Wren)

Jacoby, Woloshyn, Kelley (1989)
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Retrieval routes

• Intentional
• Effortful
• Automatic
• Familiarity-based

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Naïve empiricism

• Intentional or explicit tests
• Recall, recognition
• Automatic or implicit tests
• Fragmented words, fragment completion, fame
  judgements.

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Process dissociation

• Intentional process
• Automatic process
• Typically, both contribute to successful
  retrieval
• Stronger claim Both contribute, but the
  contributions are independent.

Jacoby (1991)
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Process dissociation procedure

• Read a list of words List 1
• Hear a list of words List 2
• Two retrieval tests
• Both tests include List 1, List 2 and novel
  words.
• Inclusion test Respond old if word was on
  either list.
• Exclusion test Respond old only if word was on
  List 2.

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Inclusion test

• Inclusion test Respond old if word was on
  either list.
• Intentional (recollective) process will have a
  certain probability of concluding old for List
  1 words R
• Automatic process will also have a certain
  probability of concluding old for List 1 words
  A
• If either process concludes old, the subject
  will respond old
• P(old) R A RA (Laws of probability)

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Exclusion test

• Exclusion test Respond old only if word was on
  List 2.
• Subject will only respond old to List 1 words
  if two things happen
• The automatic process responds old due to a
  feeling of familiarity A
• The intentional process fails to recognise the
  word (if it had, it would recall it was from List
  1) (1-R)

P(old ) A(1-R)
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Dissociating the processes

• Inclusion P(old) R A RA
• Exclusion P(old) A(1-R)
• Inclusion Exclusion
• ( R A RA ) A (1 R)
• R A RA A RA
• R
• A Exclusion / (1-R)

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Process dissociation Evidence

• Read a list of words List 1
• Hear a list of words List 2
• Two retrieval tests
• Inclusion test P(old) 0.48
• Exclusion test P(old) 0.37
• R Inclusion Exclusion 0.11
• A Exclusion / (1-R) 0.37 / 0.89 0.42
• Intentional process should be eliminated by
  divided attention (digit task) R 0.
• Exclusion A(1-R) 0.42 (1-0) 0.42
• Actual data 0.43

Jacoby (1991)
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Interim summary

• R retrieval
• Retrieval is explicit
• Intentional
• Effortful
• Retrieval is conceptually-driven
• Retrieves episodic information
• Highly contextual
• Interference-prone (e.g. effect of delay).

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Interim summary

• A retrieval
• Retrieval is implicit
• Relatively automatic
• Relatively effortless.
• Retrieval is data-driven
• Retrieval can be based of a feeling of
  familiarity.
• Retrieves semantic information
• Relatively non-contextual
• Relatively robust to interference (e.g. effect of
  delay).

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Ironic effects of repetition

• Can get younger adults to perform like older
  adults by changing the duration of interval

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Paula

• I think that one of the most important factors in
  discriminating between intentional and
  unintentional memory (or recollection and
  facilitation) is to have subjects be unaware of
  the memory test they will be given. Would it
  work to have a two part experiment where the two
  sections are almost completely separate? Perhaps
  having subjects read a passage or two and have
  them answer opinion questions on the piece or
  have a passage with errors that they need to
  correct and then in the second part of the task
  maybe give them sentences or phrases and ask them
  if they were in the passage or have them fill in
  incomplete phrases from the passage. Could this
  work as an effective "factor-pure" test?

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Rob

• In Jacoby's Future Directions he discusses that,
  "the process dissociation procedures might be
  seen a way of 'correcting' for the influence of
  episodic memory on a n indirect test of memory".
  In assuming that there is a correction process
  does that not imply an order of events with sort
  of 'check point'. I think it would be interesting
  to devise a study in which recollection
  (intentional) and recognition (automatic) are
  compared in both time and order. There have been
  studies in which recognition memory was timed
  using fMRI and ERP (Henson, 1999 Duzel 2001).á
  However from what I can tell there have been no
  studies directly comparing the timing of these
  two uses of memory. An even more significant
  study would be one that analyzed the order of
  theses processes (if any).á This might suggest
  one of these systems acting as an internal
  'check' in order to improve accuracy.