Internal reinstatement hides cuing effects in source memory tasks

Abstract

Reinstating source details at test often has no impact on source memory. We tested the proposition that participants internally reinstate source cues when such cues are not provided by the experimenter, thus making the external cues redundant. Participants studied words paired with either a male or a female face and were later asked to specify the gender of the face studied with each word. To disrupt the ability to internally reinstate sources, some participants saw eight male faces and eight female faces throughout the study list (multiple-face condition), making it difficult to determine which face should be internally reinstated for uncued test trials. Other participants saw only a single face for each gender (single-face condition), which should facilitate internal reinstatement. Across three experiments, participants in the multiple-face condition showed improved source discrimination when the studied faces were reinstated at test, as compared to uncued trials. In contrast, participants in the single-face condition showed no effect of the face cues. Moreover, the cuing effect for the multiple-face condition disappeared when the test structure facilitated internal reinstatement. Overall, the experiments support the contention that internal reinstatement is a natural part of source retrieval that can mask the effects of external cues.

Successful cuing of gender source memory does not improve location source memory

“…As discussed more fully in Starns and Hicks (2013), paradigms in which external reinstatement is used to cue source memory retrieval are often unsuccessful for one or both of two reasons. First, the cue can sometimes bias source responding, which confounds the ability to separate bias from a memory benefit.…”

“…The present study is a further attempt to explore crossdimension cuing with a new paradigm developed by Starns and Hicks (2013) that successfully produced withindimension cuing while controlling for response bias due to cuing. As discussed more fully in Starns and Hicks (2013), paradigms in which external reinstatement is used to cue source memory retrieval are often unsuccessful for one or both of two reasons.…”

“…Second, theoretically Starns and Hicks reasoned that source memory decisions already require internal reinstatement of source details to create an appropriate retrieval cue and that providing people with an external cue is often redundant (Bjork & Richardson-Klavehn, 1989;Murnane & Phelps, 1994;Smith, 1979). Starns and Hicks (2013) used a source cuing paradigm that emphasized the degree to which an external cue provides nonredundant information and also controlled for response bias. People studied words accompanied visually by male or female faces and made gender source memory decisions at retrieval.…”

“…We modified the Starns and Hicks (2013) single-face and multiple-face encoding conditions by presenting half of the word-face pairings on the left side of the computer monitor and half on the right. This was crossed factorially with the gender of the face presented with the words.…”

“…We employed a biascontrolled experimental method of source cuing at retrieval (Starns & Hicks, 2013) in an attempt to improve retrieval of location information indirectly by cuing gender information. Encoded words were situated on the left or right side of a computer monitor and associated with either a male or a female face.…”