The revelation effect for autobiographical memory: A mixture-model analysis

Revelation effect in metamemory

“…Thus, the increased familiarity for the revealed items appeared to be limited to the recall phase of the experiment (where the revelation manipulation occurred) and did not persist into the recognition task (cf. Bernstein et al, 2009).…”

The Revelation Effect Occurs Whether or Not Working Memory Is Occupied

“…After Westerman and Greene (1996) showed the indirect effect, many researchers confirmed the effect using various cognitive tasks: letter-counting tasks, memory span tests, synonym-generation tasks (Westerman & Greene, 1998), tasks of determining attractiveness ratings for inverted faces (Bornstein & Wilson, 2004), articulatory suppression tasks (Miura & Itoh, 2016), tasks of pressing arrow keys (Aßfalg, Currie, & Bernstein, 2017), revealed tasks (Bornstein & Neely, 2001;Westerman & Greene, 1998), numerical addition tasks (Leynes, Landau, Walker, & Addante, 2005;, and anagram tasks (Aßfalg, Currie et al, 2017;Aßfalg & Nadarevic, 2015;Azimian-Faridani & Wilding, 2004;Bernstein, Rudd, Erdfelder, Godfrey, & Loftus, 2009;Bernstein, Whittlesea, & Loftus, 2002;Cameron & Hockley, 2000;Kronlund & Bernstein, 2006;Major & Hockley, 2007;Miura & Itoh, 2016;Verde & Rotello, 2003Westerman, 2000;Westerman, Miller, & Lloyd, 2017;Young, Peynircioğlu, & Hohman, 2009). While it has been shown that various cognitive tasks cause the revelation effect, few studies have found tasks that do not cause the effect.…”

A word of warning: Instructions and feedback cannot prevent the revelation effect

“…The revelation effect is the increased probability to call a stimulus familiar, a choice preferable, or a statement true immediately following an intervening task compared to a condition without an intervening task (Bernstein, Rudd, Erdfelder, Godfrey, & Loftus, 2009;Bernstein, Whittlesea, & Loftus, 2002;Kronlund & Bernstein, 2006;Watkins & Peynircioglu, 1990). In recognition experiments, for example, participants are more likely to call a word (e.g., railroad) ''old'' after solving an anagram of that word (e.g., dirnopar -railroad) compared to a condition without anagrams.…”

“…Several authors argued that the revelation effect is the byproduct of a judgment heuristic based on processing fluency (Aßfalg & Bernstein, 2012;Bernstein et al, 2002Bernstein et al, , 2009Whittlesea & Williams, 2001). Fluency is the ease and speed of information processing and informs judgments of familiarity, truth, and attractiveness, among others (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009).…”