Source confusion influences the effectiveness of the autobiographical IAT

Abstract

We examined the claim that the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) can detect concealed memories. Subjects read action statements (e.g., "break the toothpick") and either performed the action or completed math problems. They then imagined some of these actions and some new actions. Two weeks later, the subjects completed a memory test and then an aIAT in which they categorized true and false statements (e.g., "I am in front of the computer") and whether they had or had not performed actions from Session 1. For half of the subjects, the nonperformed statements were actions that they saw but did not perform; for the remaining subjects, these statements were actions that they saw and imagined but did not perform. Our results showed that the aIAT can distinguish between true autobiographical events (performed actions) and false events (nonperformed actions), but that it is less effective, the more that subjects remember performing actions that they did not really perform. Thus, the diagnosticity of the aIAT may be limited.

The autobiographical IAT: a review

“…Only a few experiments were conducted outside our laboratory (e.g., Hu and Rosenfeld, 2012; Hu et al, 2012; Takarangi et al, 2013) or in one associated laboratory (Lanciano et al, 2012). More studies from other laboratories are needed in order to better validate the technique and to determine a more reliable effect size, as some of the independent replications revealed lower effect sizes (Hu and Rosenfeld, 2012; Hu et al, 2012).…”

“…Importantly, in Table 1, we have also included data of five mock-crime experiments from two other laboratories (Hu and Rosenfeld, 2012; Hu et al, 2012; Takarangi et al, 2013). These data include preliminary aIATs administered to four groups of participants that were subsequently tested with a variety of manipulations between test and retest, and data on performed and non-performed actions.…”

“…It has been shown that false memories may stem from “source confusion” (Takarangi et al, 2013), which is defined as “the attribution of a specific memory to a particular source using heuristics that may lead to errors.” Takarangi et al (2013) reported an experiment aimed at verifying the aIAT diagnostic abilities in detecting whether an action was performed or not. After asking their participants to perform or not to perform an action, the authors further required them to imagine both performed and non-performed actions.…”

A call for policy guidance on psychometric testing in doping control in sport

“…Social scientists have also made attempts to use psychometric measures in lieu of analytical approaches in doping and beyond (Agosta & Sartori, 2013;Uvacsek et al, 2011). Despite the promising preliminary results, a wide range of limitations has been identified outside clinical application (Brand, Wolff, & Thieme, 2014;Takarangi, Strange, Shortland, & James, 2013;Vargo, Petróczi, Shah, & Naughton, 2014) that impedes the use of these methodologies in field settings.…”

“…With training in deception, one can fake the reaction-time based test -although doing so is less straightforward than manipulating questionnaire responses. More importantly, research outside doping (Hu, Chen, & Fu, 2012;Takarangi et al, 2013) A doping specific consideration for lie-detection is the complexity of doping, and its effect on the athlete"s doping mindset. The way athletes think about doping, and their cognitive consistency between feeling, thinking and doing (or not doing), has a profound effect on how they answer statements of the direct psychometric scale items and how they perform on response time-and/or physiological response-based tests.…”