L9 - Inference and Metacognition

Question 1

Refresher: What are the two views regarding the basis for metacognitive judgements?

Answer 1

Direct Access View

Inferential View

Question 2

What are the problems with the direct access view?

Answer 2

Question 3

What are the implications of the inferential view?

Answer 3

There might be situations where you have meta-cognitive judgements and variables that can affect memory strength.

If they don’t co-vary that’s evidence against the direct access view. This is called the strong test of these views

Question 4

How did Koriat (1993) test whether we have direct access to our metacognitive judgements?

Answer 4

He predicted there should be a disocciation between memory strength and feeling of knowing judgements.

Free report of tetragrams in any order and made ‘feeling of knowing’ FOK judgements for items. They were also made to do recognition tests.

Question 5

What were the findings of the Koriat (1993) experiment regarding FOK judgements?

Answer 5

There was a dissociation between FOK judgements and memory performance.

• FOK judgements well-calibrated with recognition.*
• However, FOK judgements increased with the amount of information accessible regardless of the accuracy of that information.*
• FOK increased with no. of letters recalled.*

Question 6

Did the findings of the Koriat (1993) experiment regarding FOK judgements support the direct access view or the inferential view for metacognitive judgements?

Answer 6

Supported the inferntial view

There was evidence against the direct access view

Question 7

What cue were people using to report their FOK in the Koriat (1993) experiment regarding FOK judgements?

Answer 7

The amount of information they could recall.

Question 8

Is the amount of information you are able to recall about a particular topic a good cue to use for FOK judgements according to the results of Koriat (1993)?

Answer 8

Yes

Koriat (1993): It predicts performance, 88.8% of the reported letters were correct.

Sometimes however, it does lead us astray.

Question 9

The amount of information recalled is a cue for FOK.

What is the other cue according to Koriat’s experiment (1993)?

Answer 9

Ease of Access

Question 10

What is the ease of access cue described by Koriat?

Answer 10

Faster recall for items ((ease of access) tend to have higher FOK

FOK judgements increase with increasing ease of access

Question 11

As recall latency decreases, what happens to recall accuracy?

Answer 11

It increases

Faster recall when all letters recalled were correct

Question 12

Is ease of access diagnostic for accuracy of recall?

Answer 12

Yes

Recall if faster when all letters recalled were correct

Question 13

“FOK judgements are based on ___ information comes to mind”

Answer 13

Based on how information comes to mind

e.g. The availability heuristic in probability judgement

Question 14

What experiment did Metcalfe, Schwartz and Joaquim (1993) do to disprove the direct access view of metacognition?

Answer 14

Question 15

What hypothesis were made in the Metcalfe, Schwartz and Joaquim (1993) experiment?

Answer 15

Question 16

What was the methodology of the Metcalfe, Schwartz and Joaquim (1993) experiment?

Answer 16

Question 17

What were the results of the Metcalfe et al. (1993) experiment?

Answer 17

FOK did not track recognition memory performance

As predicted by the inferential view.

Question 18

What were the main 2 findings of the Lindsay and Kelley (1993) Fluency and Confidence experiment?

Answer 18

1) “illusion of knowing”: That you could get people to “false alarm” incorrect answers by giving them related answers which were incorrect.
* This is due to the fluency (ease) of which you could recall the information*
2) Prior exposure to information (independent of the accuracy of the answers) leads to
- higher rates of responding to those answers
- higher confidence in the answer
- decreased response latency

Question 19

In the Lindsay and Kelley (1993) Fluency and Confidence experiment was the ‘illusion of knowing’ effect reduced when participants were told the list contained related by incorrect answers

and/or

when told all the answers on the study list were correct?

Answer 19

No, still more likely to ‘false alarm’ and show decreased latency.

Effects were obtained even when told there were incorrect related answers.

Question 20

An increase in fluency (boosted fluency) is also known as

Answer 20

“Illusion of Knowing”

Belief in a memory that may not be there

Question 21

What is memory distortion?

Answer 21

Refers to a memory report that differs from what actually occurred.

Question 22

What impact did Elizabeth Loftus’ book ‘the myth of repressed memory’ have on public discourse?

Answer 22

It argued that memory distortion is very powerful and so it brought into question the validity of historic cases of child sexual abuse, where memories are from decades ago.

Question 23

What are misinformation effects?

Answer 23

New information produces systematic memory distortions.

Question 24

What are the two theories for the existence of misinformation effects?

Answer 24

Accessibility hypothesis

Memory replacement

Question 25

What is the accessibility hypothesis in regards to misinformation effects?

Answer 25

Every time we access a memory, the memory trace changes.

We can never completely remember a memory and it can change every time we remember it.

Definition in image

Question 26

What is memory replacement in regards to misinformation effects?

Answer 26

Question 27

What proportion of the population is most susceptible to memory distortion?

Answer 27

​20-25% of people are likely to be susceptible to memory distortion.

There is consistency with who is vulnerable to memory distortion.

Question 28

What is retrieval induced forgetting?

Answer 28

Misinformation dampens down information to other related details in the memory.

• Misinformation is thought of as being from the original event and replaces the original memory,*
• you also get other aspects of that event being forgotten.*

Question 29

What did Loftus and Pickrell (1995) show in their experiment about memory implantation?

Answer 29

People can produce complete accounts of things that never happened, yet they genuinly believe it happened.

They convinced 25% of people that they had been lost in a shopping mall when they were younger.

16% were convinced they had shaken hands with bugs bunny at a Disney Theme Park

Participants had false memories for impossible events.

Question 30

What did Loftus and Pickrell (1995) reveal about the connection between false memory and behaviour?

How did they do it?

Answer 30

People act and change their behaviour based on false memories

They induced a false memory that the participant got sick eating hard boiled eggs.

Then when asking participants what they would eat at a party questionnaire false memory group were less likely to eat hard boiled eggs.

Question 31

What is the three step recipe described by Mazzoni, Loftus and Kirsch (2001) for implanting a false memory?

Answer 31

Question 32

How did Mazzoni, Loftus and Kirsch convince people that the target event is plausible (step 1) in their memory implantation experiment.

Answer 32

They doctored photographs of the participants.

Question 33

How would you ‘convince people they experienced the target event’ (step 2 of the three step recipe)

Answer 33

Getting people to retrieve or attempt to retrieve information can help in their process of convincing them that the event actually occured.

While they are attempting to retrieve the memory you get the to reinterpret the memory.

e.g. ‘thats interesting, can you tell me more about that’ so that they create a full blown narrative of the event and it becomes their own story

Question 34

Step 2 of the three step recipe for memory implantation is referred to by Garry, Manning, Loftus and Sherman as?

Answer 34

Imagination Inflation

Question 35

What is Imagination Inflation?

Answer 35

If you imagine an event often enough it will inflate your confidence that the event actually occurred.

Question 36

What factors are involved with generating confidence about a imagination inflation?

Answer 36

Imagine event = inflated confidence that it occurred

More imagining = more confidence

e.g. ease of retrieval, metacognitive cue for hedging the accuracy of memories

More sensory modalities involved = more confidence

e.g. get them to talk about the sounds, sights, smells of the event to convince them of the memory.

Question 37

What did Garry Manning and Sherman’s (1996) show regarding confidence for imagination?

Answer 37

Confidence of the event happening can be massively increased when you have reimagining events (imagination inflation)

Scores that increased the most were the confidence scores when reimagining the event.

Question 38

What does memory implantation tell us about our metacognitive judgements?

Answer 38

Metacognitive judgements are based on a host of cues and clues that may lead us astray.

If you can boost Cue familiarity and Retrieval fluency you can produce false memories quite easily.

Question 39

What was Loftus criticised for in regards to recovered memories?

Answer 39

Loftus’ research suggested that recovered memories are unreliable

e.g. after living 20-30 years all of a sudden remember being sexually abused by someone in their family - not necessarily reliable.

Question 40

How are recovered memories (traumatic) usually retrieved?

What is this referred to?

Answer 40

They usually spontaneously pop into a persons head.

Repressed Memories: The notion is that they have repressed those memories.

Question 41

What did Loftus challenge about recovered memories?

Answer 41

Challenged the idea that memory repression is a real thing and that it is as common as we think it is.

We need to understand when these memories are reliable and when they’re unreliable.

Question 42

What is the evidence regarding recovered memories being long suppressed due to trauma?

Answer 42

Very thin, not much evidence.

Not much evidence to suggest that repression is a real phenomenon.

Question 43

What are the risk for using narrative therapy (where you use a narrative to rediscover lost memories) as a theraputic tool?

Answer 43

Theraputic techniques employed to recover memories can also create false memories.

It has all the features of the three step recipe for inducing false memories and therefore might do so.

Question 44

What is the forgot-it-all-along effect?

Answer 44

Remembering in a different context leads to belief that memories are ‘recovered’.

• You never had the cues there to retrieve the memory.*
• Doesn’t mean you repressed it but you didn’t have the environmental cues to recall the memory.*

Question 45

What is the primary factor that must be considered when deciding if a recovered memory might be false?

Answer 45

The source information of the memory or event

It is critical that you can make the inference of when, where, what happened. If you can’t get the source information you can’t be sure it occurred at all.

Question 46

What did Mazzoni and Kirsch (2002) show about autobiographical beliefs and how that effects false memories?

Answer 46

Autobiographical beliefs lower a preset memory criterion (SDT) and enhance recruitment of corroborating information in memory in order to support the false memory.