1 Overview of how to analyze memory tasks
Kerry Chalmers
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Abstract
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This research paper explores the analysis of human memory through the lens of the Choice Blindness phenomenon. It discusses the various components involved in understanding memory tasks, including the goals, cues, required information, learning opportunities, and potential sources of noise. The work aims to clarify how these elements interact during memory recall and the implications for understanding algorithmic-level theories of memory.
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Memory impairment is not sufficient for choice blindness to occur
Choice blindness refers to the phenomenon that people can be easily misled about the choices they made in the recent past. The aim of this study was to explore the cognitive mechanisms underlying choice blindness. Specifically, we tested whether memory impairment may account for choice blindness. A total of N = 88 participants provided sympathy ratings on 10-point scales for 20 female faces. Subsequently, participants motivated some of their ratings. However, on three trials, they were presented with sympathy ratings that deviated from their original ratings by three full scale points. On nearly 41% of the trials, participants failed to detect (i.e., were blind) the manipulation. After a short interval, participants were informed that some trials had been manipulated and were asked to recall their original ratings. Participants adopted the manipulated outcome in only 3% of the trials. Furthermore, the extent to which the original ratings were accurately remembered was not higher for detected as compared with non-detected trials. From a theoretical point of view our findings indicate that memory impairment does not fully account for blindness phenomena.
How choice blindness can help us understand face recognition
2017
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‘This Is the Person You Selected’: Eyewitnesses' Blindness for Their Own Facial Recognition Decisions
Applied Cognitive Psychology, 2014
The aim of the current research was to identify conditions under which choice blindness in facial recognition decisions occurs. In five experiments, participants watched four mock-crime videos and made choices that were either evaluative (Experiment 1) or absolute in nature (Experiments 2a-c and 3). When participants were subsequently asked to motivate their choice, they were sometimes presented with choices they had not made. For evaluative decisions, concurrent (27%) and retrospective blindness rates (21%) were relatively low compared with previous studies. For absolute decisions, choice-blindness rates varied, depending on when exposure to the manipulated outcome took place (immediate: concurrent 32-35%, retrospective 0-6% [Experiments 2a-c]; 48 hours' delay: concurrent 68%, retrospective 39% [Experiment 3]). We argue that blindness for facial recognition decisions is more likely for evaluative decisions and for longer intervals between decision and manipulation and also for conditions of increased task complexity, which we interpret in terms of ambiguity.
Using choice blindness to study decision making and introspection
Cognition–A smorgasbord, ed. P. Gärdenfors & A. …, 2008
Warnings to Counter Choice Blindness for Identification Decisions: Warnings Offer an Advantage in Time but Not in Rate of Detection
Frontiers in Psychology, 2018
Choice blindness for identification decisions refers to the inability of eyewitnesses to detect that an originally recognized target was swapped for a non-identified lineup member. The robustness of the effect calls for measures that can prevent or reduce the negative consequences of choice blindness manipulations. Here, we investigated whether pre-and post-warnings given to participants about the possibility of mistakes reduces choice blindness for identification decisions. Participants (N = 119) were presented with identifications they never made and were asked to justify those decisions. Either before or after the presentation of the manipulated identification outcome, participants were or were not warned about the possibility of mistakes in the identification process. Although warnings were not sufficient to reduce choice blindness for identification decisions they provided a time-related detection advantage. Pre-warned participants questioned the legitimacy of the manipulated outcome sooner (i.e., concurrent detection) than participants in other conditions. Hence, pre-warnings can help detect mistakes in the identification procedure at an earlier stage, before they contaminate the memory of the witness and other pieces of evidence. From a theoretical stance, our findings attest to the strength of self-suggestion and indicate that choice blindness effects are deeply rooted in cognition.
Illusions of face memory: Clarity breeds familiarity
Journal of Memory and Language, 2004
When people perform a recognition memory task, they may avail themselves of different forms of information. For example, they may recall specific learning episodes, or rely on general feelings of familiarity. Although subjective familiarity is often valid, it can make people vulnerable to memory illusions. Research using verbal materials has shown that ''old'' responses are often increased by enhancing perceptual fluency, as when selected words are shown with relatively higher contrast on a computer. Conversely, episodic memory can create an erroneous sense of perceptual advantages for recently studied words. In this investigation, symmetric fluency effects were tested in face memory, a domain that is often considered neurologically and psychologically unique. In eight experiments involving over 800 participants, we found consistent memorial and perceptual illusions-fluency created feelings of familiarity, and familiarity created feelings of fluency. In both directions, these effects were manifested as response biases, suggesting effects based on memorial and perceptual attributions.
The dissociations of confidence from accuracy in forced-choice recognition judgments
Journal of Memory and Language, 2021
Judgment of confidence in memory is likely to track memory accuracy if those factors shaping accuracy also shape confidence. In recognition memory, accuracy is determined by the relative level of evidence present for the target and that supporting the lures. As the discrepancy between targets and lures increases, so does the likelihood of correct responding. In contrast, this study shows that confidence can instead depend on the absolute evidence supporting the chosen target rather than the balance of evidence between targets and lures. In four experiments, using different types of forced-choice recognition tests, we demonstrate that generally manipulating the strength of evidence supporting targets affects confidence judgments but that varying the strength of evidence supporting lures creates robust confidence-accuracy dissociations, changing accuracy while not affecting confidence. Together, these data support an absolute account of confidence in forced-choice recognition and demonstrate that confidence-accuracy dissociations across recognition conditions are likely to be ubiquitous.
Simultaneous Versus Sequential Presentation in Testing Recognition Memory for Faces
The American Journal of Psychology, 2015
Three experiments examined the issue of whether faces could be better recognized in a simultaneous test format (2- alternative forced choice [2afc]) or a sequential test format (yes–no). all experiments showed that when target faces were present in the test, the simultaneous procedure led to superior performance (area under the roc curve), whether lures were high or low in similarity to the targets. However, when a target- absent condition was used in which no lures resembled the targets but the lures were similar to each other, the simultaneous procedure yielded higher false alarm rates (experiments 2 and 3) and worse overall performance (experiment 3). this pattern persisted even when we excluded responses that participants opted to withhold rather than volunteer. We conclude that for the basic recognition procedures used in these experiments, simultaneous presentation of alternatives (2afc) generally leads to better discriminability than does sequential presentation (yes–no) when...
The face-inversion effect as a deficit in the encoding of configural information: Direct evidence
Perception, 2000
Recollection and confidence in two-alternative forced choice episodic recognition.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2010
We used quantitative modeling of remember-know responses to investigate the processes underlying recognition memory for faces in the choice-similarity paradigm . Similarity between recognition test choices produces opposite effects on confidence and accuracy in this paradigm. We extended existing models of this double dissociation to account for remember-know responses, by adding a variable recollection criterion to Clark's (1997) single-process model and by adding graded recollection strength to Dobbins, Kroll, and Liu's (1998) dual-process model. Both models provided an accurate and comprehensive account of objective and subjective judgments in an experiment we conducted on memory for faces, and of data from Dobbins et al. on memory for natural scenes. Model selection techniques were used to refine these accounts, providing insight into the psychological processes proposed by each approach and into their implications for the relationship between recollection and confidence in two-alternative forced choice recognition.
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A Study on Choice Blindness
Humans are known for their intuition and split second decision making.
Choice blindness and the non-unitary nature of the human mind
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2011
Johansson, P., Hall, L., & Gärdenfors, P. (2011). Choice blindness and the nonunitary nature of the human mind. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(1), 28-29.
From change blindness to choice blindness
Psychologia, 2008
The phenomenon of change blindness has received a great deal of attention during the last decade, but very few experiments have examined the effects of the subjective importance of the visual stimuli under study. We have addressed this question in a series of studies by introducing choice as a critical variable in change detection (see . In the present study, participants were asked to choose which of two pictures they found more attractive. For stimuli we used both pairs of abstract patterns and female faces. Sometimes the pictures were switched during to choice procedure, leading to a reversal of the initial choice of the participants. Surprisingly, the subjects seldom noticed the switch, and in a post-test memory task, they also often remembered the manipulated choice as being their own. In combination with our previous findings, this result indicates that we often fail to notice changes in the world even if they have later consequences for our own actions.
Choice Blindness and Preference Change: You Will Like This Paper Better If You (Believe You) Chose to Read It!
2013
Choice blindness is the finding that participants both often fail to notice mismatches between their decisions and the outcome of their choice and, in addition, endorse the opposite of their chosen alternative. But do these preference reversals also carry over to future choices and ratings? To investigate this question, we gave participants the task of choosing which of a pair of faces they found most attractive. Unknown to them, we sometimes used a card trick to exchange one face for the other. Both decision theory and common sense strongly suggest that most people would easily notice such a radical change in the outcome of a choice. But that was not the case: no more than a third of the exchanges were detected by the participants. We also included a second round of choices using the same face pairs, and two stages of post-choice attractiveness ratings of the faces. This way we were able to measure preference strength both as choice consistency and by looking at measures of rating differences between chosen and rejected options. We found that the initially rejected faces were chosen more frequently in the second choice, and the perceived attractiveness of these faces was increased even in uncoupled individual ratings at the end of the experiment. This result is discussed in relation to Chen and Risen's recent criticism of the Free Choice Paradigm, as it shows that choices can affect future preferences.
How something can be said about telling more than we can know: On choice blindness and introspection
Consciousness and …, 2006
The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson's classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes (1977), is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness . Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116-119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis (LSA) to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports.
How something can be said about telling more than we can know: On choice blindness and introspection. Commentary and Authors' reply
Consciousness and …, 2006
The legacy of Nisbett and Wilson's classic article, Telling More Than We Can Know: Verbal Reports on Mental Processes (1977), is mixed. It is perhaps the most cited article in the recent history of consciousness studies, yet no empirical research program currently exists that continues the work presented in the article. To remedy this, we have introduced an experimental paradigm we call choice blindness . Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task. Science, 310(5745), 116-119.]. In the choice blindness paradigm participants fail to notice mismatches between their intended choice and the outcome they are presented with, while nevertheless offering introspectively derived reasons for why they chose the way they did. In this article, we use word-frequency and latent semantic analysis (LSA) to investigate a corpus of introspective reports collected within the choice blindness paradigm. We contrast the introspective reasons given in non-manipulated vs. manipulated trials, but find very few differences between these two groups of reports.
How Much Do We Really Care What We Pick? Pre-verbal and Verbal Investment in Choices Concerning Faces and Figures
Topoi
Every day we make choices, but our degree of investment in them differs, both in terms of pre-verbal experience and verbal justification. In an earlier experimental study, participants were asked to pick the more attractive one among two human faces, and among two abstract figures, and later to provide verbal motivations for these choices. They did not know that in some of the cases their choices were manipulated (i.e., they were asked to motivate the item they had not chosen). Against claims about our unreliability as conscious agents (Nisbett et al. in Psychol Rev 84:231–259, 2013; Johansson et al. in Science 310:116–119, 2005), the study found that in about half the cases the manipulations were detected. In the present study, we investigated whether varying degrees of choice investment could be an explanatory factor for such findings. We analysed the verbal justifications of the participants along a set of semantic categories, based on theoretical ideas from phenomenology and cog...
Individual Differences in Face Cognition: A Commentary on Logie
Journal of applied research in memory and cognition, 2018
Differentiating falsely recognizeD faces from incompletely remembereD faces 1
—this study describes an experimental method for determining whether people who recognize a face containing both some target features and some new features are falsely recognizing the face or whether they are incompletely remembering it. twenty min. after studying a target face either one time or a third time, 136 participants were instructed to examine six test faces similar to the target and to select two test faces sharing only target features and no unstudied features. the likelihood of selecting two test faces sharing four target features and no incorrect features was significantly greater than chance only for the 67 participants who studied the target three times. because the two faces selected as containing only target features did not share any unstudied features, they were not falsely recognized; instead, they were indicative of correct but incomplete memory for the thrice-studied target.
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