Question format shifts bias away from the emphasised response in tests of recognition memory

Abstract

The question asked to interrogate memory has potential to influence response bias at retrieval, yet has not been systematically investigated. According to framing effects in the field of eyewitness testimony, retrieval cueing effects in cognitive psychology and the acquiescence bias in questionnaire responding, the question should establish a confirmatory bias. Conversely, according to findings from the rewarded decision-making literature involving mixed incentives, the question should establish a disconfirmatory bias. Across three experiments (ns = 90 [online], 29[laboratory] and 29 [laboratory]) we demonstrate a disconfirmatory bias -"old?" decreased old responding. This bias is underpinned by a goal-driven mechanism wherein participants seek to maximise emphasised response accuracy at the expense of frequency. Moreover, we demonstrate that disconfirmatory biases can be generated without explicit reference to the goal state. We conclude that subtle aspects of the test environment influence retrieval to a greater extent than has been previously considered.

Investigating the Prospective Sense of Agency: Effects of Processing Fluency, Stimulus Ambiguity, and Response Conflict

“…The d’ calculation was adjusted for instances of zero false alarms (Snodgrass and Corwin, 1988; Mill and O’Connor, 2014). JoAs and JoPs were quantified as a percentage of the VAS scale.…”

“…To characterize participants’ strategies, the response bias ( c ) measure from signal detection theory (Green and Swets, 1966) was used, with a correction for zero false alarms (Snodgrass and Corwin, 1988; Mill and O’Connor, 2014). Zero reflects an unbiased criterion, negative values reflect a liberal criterion, and positive values denote a conservative criterion.…”

Identification of the Discrepancies between Pharmacist and Patient Perception of the Pharmacist’s Role as an Advisor on Drug Therapy Based on Social Science Theory

“…This is a dummy question to check the consistency of the respondents' attitude in answering the questions. 7,8) Therefore, we decided not to include the results of this particular question in the analysis.…”

Investigating the Role of Assessment Method on Reports of Déjà Vu and Tip-of-the-Tongue States during Standard Recognition Tests

“…fluency of processing) in determining whether an item is familiar [ 22 ] or whether they are in a subjective mnemonic state such as TOT [ 21 ] and that people might experience a degree of uncertainty as to what exactly they are experiencing [ 23 ]. Additionally, a large body of literature has demonstrated that the way a question is framed can bias memory reports in eye-witness situations [ 24 ], and classic memory [ 6 ] and metamemory [ 25 ] tasks. If a participant is unsure of what she is experiencing and interprets being asked about experiencing déjà vu or TOT as indicative that she should be experiencing déjà vu or TOT, she may reinterpret her current state as that which she is asked about.…”

“…One worry is that self-reports are unreliable, and therefore contribute to results which are limited in their capacity to inform theories of subjective experiences and their prevalence. Experimental participants are not merely passive respondents; they are often motivated to confirm what they perceive as the experimental hypothesis [ 5 ] and try to be relevant by focusing their reports on what they believe the experimenter is interested in [ 6 , 7 ]. This is likely true for any experiment but it has also been suggested it might be a fundamental problem for research on subjective mnemonic experiences as a result of limitations in current methods [ 2 ].…”