Influence of dating formats on the telescoping effect and the distribution of autobiographical memor

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Influence of dating formats on the telescoping
effect and the distribution of autobiographical
memory

• Steve Janssen, Antonio Chessa, and Jaap Murre

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Overview

• Background experiments
• Dating formats
• Telescoping effect
• Expectations
• Results
• New experiment

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Autobiographical Memory Distribution

• Galton-Crovitz cueing method (Galton, 1879
  Crovitz Schiffman, 1974)
• Participants are given cue words, such as
  cotton. They have to describe the first memory
  about a personal event that comes to mind while
  inspecting each cue word. Then, the participants
  are asked to date the retrieved personal events.

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Two problems

• In which format should participants date these
  personal events (Calendar, age at event, relative
  time, or absolute time)?
• How accurate are these estimates? Is there a
  systematically dating error?

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Dating formats

• The effect of different formats on the
  telescoping effect was examined in two
  experiments.
• In the first experiment, 181 subjects could
  choose to date the events in the relative time
  format (e.g., 2 years ago) or in the absolute
  time format (e.g., December, 2001).
• In the second experiment, they were assigned to
  either the relative time (N 514) or the
  absolute time condition (N 1619).

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Telescoping effect

• The telescoping effect is the temporal
  displacement of an event (Thompson, et al.,
  1988).
• An event can be dated too remote (backward
  telescoping) or too recent (forward telescoping).

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Telescoping effect

• To assess the telescoping effect, after each cue
  word, participants had to date a news event, such
  as when Saddam Hussein was found by US soldiers
  in a hole in the ground in Iraq.

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Telescoping effect

• Loftus, et al. (1990)
• Rubin Baddeley (1989)
• Huttenlocher, et al. (1990)

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Expectations

• Rubin and Baddeley (1989) expect that recent
  events will be displaced backwards in time, while
  remote events will be displaced forward.
• Rubin (1982) would not expect any difference
  between the formats because the telescoping
  effect is caused by memory decay.
• However, in a personal communication he said
  that he would expect differences between the
  formats.

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Expectations

• Loftus, et al. (1990) argue that the absolute
  time format implies to the subjects that
  experimenter wants greater precision in dating
  than the relative time format implies.
• They would expect in Experiment II that the
  absolute time format will display less temporal
  displacement in both recent and remote events.
• When the formats are given simultaneously (e.g.,
  Exp. I), this precision-message is not conveyed.
  Then, the displacement for both formats is
  expected to be equal.

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Expectations

• Huttenlocher, et al. (1990) thought, like Rubin
  and Baddeley, that recent events will be
  displaced backwards in time, while remote events
  will be displaced forward in time (bounding
  effects).
• Furthermore, they would expect that the relative
  time format will lead to smaller errors in dating
  recent events, but also to larger errors in
  remote events, because of rounding processes.

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Expectations
personal communication difference between
formats
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Results News Events

• We found in both experiments backward
  telescoping for recent news events and forward
  telescoping for remote news events.
• The relative time format led in both experiments
  to smaller errors in dating recent events, but
  larger errors in remote events.
• The results supported the view that rounding and
  bounding processes cause telescoping
  (Huttenlocher et al., 1990).

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Experiment II
? relative time format absolute time format
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Results Personal Events

• Participants preferred to date recent personal
  events with the relative time format and remote
  personal events were rather dated with the
  absolute time format (Exp I).
• When they had to date events in the relative
  time format, they reported more recent personal
  events than when they had to date events in the
  absolute time format (Exp II).

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Experiment II
? relative time format absolute time format
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New Experiment

• In the first condition, participants (N 395)
  could choose between the absolute time format and
  the relative time format.
• The second condition was similar to the first
  condition, however the order of the formats was
  reversed for another 393 participants.

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Results

• We found that presentation order influenced
  preference.
• Furthermore, we found that people preferred to
  date recent and personal events in the absolute
  time format, while they preferred to date remote
  and news events in the relative time format.

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Absolute time format
Relative time format
A positive difference means that participants
more frequently dated the events with the
absolute time format.
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Steve Janssen

• s.m.j.janssen_at_uva.nl
• http//memory.uva.nl