Effects of repetition of mental operations on memory for occurrence and origin

Abstract

In two experiments, subjects read or generated items at both encoding and retrieval. At test, they were required to decide whether or not the targets were presented initially (recognition), and if so, whether they were initially read or generated (judgments of origin). Recognition for items that were initially generated was enhanced if they were once again generated at test in the same context, but not if they were generated at test without context. These results confirm that memory for occurrence is facilitated by repetition of the initial encoding operations at retrieval. Generating at test resulted in an increase in "generate" responses both for items that were initially generated and for items that were initially read. Overall, there was a decrease in the accuracy of origin discriminations. It is suggested that, when subjects generate at test, they are likely to mistakenly attribute these just-performed operations to be part of the memory trace for that item.Understanding the cogrutive operations, or mental processes, by which we perceive and imagine events is a central focus of cognitive psychology. More recently, it has been argued that repetition of cognitive operations is a critical determinant, or perhaps, the determinant of remembering (Kolers, 1975(Kolers, , 1979Kolers & Roediger, 1984). The focus of this paper is to examine further the effect of repetition of cognitive operations on memory for occurrence and to begin to explore the effects of repetition of cognitive operations on memory for the origin, or source, of a remembered event.Glisky and Rabinowitz (1985) reported that repetition of the same cognitive operations during retrieval as those that were performed during encoding resulted in an increase in recognition. We required subjects to read target words or generate words from word fragments (e.g., AL-OHO-). At test, they were again required to read or generate the words before making recognition decisions. In addition to the standard generation effect of better memory for the items presented as fragments (Slamecka & Graf, 1978), we observed what we called a specific generation enhancement effect. For those items that were initially generated, recognition performance was improved if they were generated again, rather than read, at test. There was no effect of reading or generating at test for those items that were initially read. We therefore argued that a complete account of the generation effect must include a specific processing component. Records of cognitive operations are stored as part of the memory trace of the stimulus event Kolers, 1975Kolers, , 1979Russo & Wisher, 1976). Repeating the same operations at test as those that were performed at encoding facilitates access to the memory trace of which those operations are a part. This view is supported by two additional findings. First, a generation enhancement effect was not observed when the letters that were missing from the target at retrieval were different from the letters missing at encoding (AL-OH-L). Thus, the generation enhancem...

Source Dimensions Are Retrieved Independently in Multidimensional Monitoring Tasks.

“…In light of this, source memory performance in our study was surprisingly cue independent, a result that echoes several other studies suggesting that source memory is relatively impervious to available retrieval cues (Craik & Kirsner, 1974;Kirsner, 1973;Rabinowitz, 1990). It will be interesting for future research to delineate the conditions in which cues have an effect on source memory and to reconcile the apparently limited role of cuing in source memory with models in which retrieval cues are major determinants of memory.…”

Reality monitoring of physically similar and conceptually related objects

“…Source misattribution errors in an eyewitness testimony paradigm increase with increased exposures to misleading postevent information (Zaragoza & Mitchell, 1996), and estimates of the number of times an item was physically presented increase not only with the number of actual presentations but also with the number of imagery trials (Johnson et aI., 1979;Johnson et aI., 1977; see also Rabinowitz, 1990). In the present study, however, the subjects do not experience the same item repeatedly.They experience the same sensory-structural features repeatedly by seeing and imagining different objects that resemble each other.…”

Generation Difficulty and Memory for Source

“…The problem remains for Experiment 1: The possibility that a positive generation effect for source memory in the hard condition was due to longer exposure time cannot be fully ruled out. However, it must be noted that there are reports in the literature in which presentation rate was controlled, and the effect was obtained Rabinowitz, 1989Rabinowitz, , 1990.…”