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Henkel, L. A. & Franklin, N. (1998). Reality monitoring of physically similar and conceptually related objects. Memory & Cognition, 26(4), 659-673. Purpose This paper focused on source monitoring, the process of determining the source of a particular memory. Experiences are encoded in a variety of ways and people do not always explicitly label them in their memory. Thus, accurately identifying the source of a memory can be challenging. Johnson and colleagues developed a source monitoring model positing that strategic judgment processes, which operate on the features of a memory, can aid in correct source identification for that memory. According to the model, a person determines the source of a memory for both objects and events by comparing the features of a specific memory to the typical features of similar perceived or imagined memories. However, these features can result in source attribution errors if an imagined memory contains features that are just as vivid and salient as a perceived memory. The features of an imagined memory become distinguished from its actual contents and as these features increase in similarity to the typical features of perceptually derived memories, the likelihood of source errors increases. The majority of the past research has focused on source errors made for a specific memory when it is compared to the average characteristics of previously encoded memories. The current study investigated the question of whether a judgment about a memory’s source was influenced by information contained in that specific memory as well as information contained in other specific memories. It also investigated if this pattern existed for both externally and internally generated memories. An imagined memory may contain very vivid perceptual information, but little cognitive information, which will increase the person’s chance of making an incorrect source judgment. For example, if a person is asked to imagine a lollipop, he/she will easily generate vivid perceptual information about its appearance. However, he/she will probably have very little information about the cognitive processes used to generate this memory. As a result, determining the source of this memory may be a difficult task. According to the source monitoring model, perceptual information can be used as a cue when making source judgments. Conceptual information may also serve this purpose. This information can be activated by the target event as well as from previously stored memories. The authors wanted to know if perceptual and/or conceptual information would act as a cue even if the information was not integrated with the specific target memory. They also wanted to know whether or not this information would influence a person’s source judgments. Together, the three experiments examined the role of both perceptual and conceptual information from non-target events on the memory source judgments for various objects. Experimental Work Experiment 1: Participants were presented with slides of common objects and their names. Half of these slides contained the black and white drawing of the object with its name printed at the bottom of the slide, while the other half just contained the name with no drawing. When presented with just a label, the participants were asked to imagine the object. The imagined items were either perceptually or conceptually related to a perceived item in that group of slides. While viewing the slides, the participants were given one of two tasks: a perceptual orienting task or a compound-orienting task. In the perceptual orienting task, participants had to estimate the amount of time it took to draw the perceived picture or the amount of time it would take to draw the imagined object. In the compound-orienting task, participants had to name the common function of the object. To ensure that individuals assigned to the compound-orienting condition actually generated images, they were also asked to rate how well their generated image depicted the object. To maintain consistency, participants were asked to rate the quality of the drawing when they were shown slides containing perceptual drawings. Two or three days after completion of the task, participants returned to take a recognition/source monitoring test. They were presented with names of objects on a computer screen and had to indicate if these objects had been previously presented pictures, imagined pictures, or new pictures. There were no significant differences in source errors between the perceptual and compound orienting tasks. The more a target memory physically resembled a previously perceived item, the higher the rate of source errors. Participants were more likely to make a source error (report actually perceiving an item) for imagined items if they had perceived a different object, containing similar perceptual features. Conceptual relatedness did not increase source errors as had been predicted. Experiment 2: This experiment was similar to experiment one, except the conceptual relationships between the objects were changed. The authors hypothesized that all types of conceptual information might not be the same, thus in this experiment they only used items which were conceptually related based on function. Participants were shown slides in the same fashion as experiment one, but the slides of the imagined and perceived items were related in one of four ways: physically similar and conceptually related, physically similar and conceptually unrelated, no physical similarity but conceptually related, or no physical similarity and no conceptual relation. Half of the subjects performed the perceptual orienting task and the other half performed the compound orienting task. Subjects returned two days after the completion of the first part to take a recognition/source monitoring test. As in the first experiment participants made more errors for physically similar items. Participants made more source errors for items paired with physically similar items in both the imagined and perceived conditions. In addition, error rates were higher for the imagined items, which were conceptually related to perceived items than for those that were conceptually unrelated. The highest error rates were found for the imagined objects that were both physically and conceptually similar to the perceived items. Overall subjects were more likely to claim that an imagined item had been previously perceived than a perceived item had been previously imagined. Experiment 3: In experiment three, the authors turned to a slightly different question and investigated if the number of source errors for imagined items would increase if the number of similar perceived items also increased. Only physical similarity, not conceptual relationships, was examined in this experiment. Participants were shown slides containing items, grouped in fours based on physical similarity. Half of the slides required the participants to imagine the item and the other half contained perceived items. There were four conditions for each imagined item: (1) the imagined item was similar to one perceived item, (2) the imagined item was similar to three perceived items, (3) the imagined item was similar to three imagined items but no perceived items, and (4) the imagined item was not similar to any other items. The experimental paradigm was identical to the first two experiments, except that all participants performed a perceptual orienting task. Two days after completion of the first part, participants returned to take a recognition/source monitoring test. Participants made the most source errors for imagined items that resembled three perceived items. Compared to the imagined items that resembled no other items, participants made more errors when the imagined item only resembled one perceived item. In addition the number of physically similarly perceived items were found to influence source errors. Conclusions These studies found that reality monitoring was affected by both the target memory itself and information from other specific memories. When making a source judgment, the features of a target memory are compared to the typical features of similar memories, but the features from other specific memories are also influential. The most influential factor found in these studies was physical resemblance. As previous research has shown, featural similarity serves as a cue for judging memory sources. The authors of these studies extended this research by demonstrating that not only do the features of the actual target memory affect source judgment, but also features that are not perceptually attached to the target are influential. Conceptual information was also found to affect source monitoring. Although other types of conceptual relationships were not significantly related to source errors, more research needs to be conducted to draw further conclusions. Discussion Questions: Past research supporting the source monitoring model has found similar patterns of results of both object and event source judgments. Could the paradigms used in this study be used to investigate events instead of objects? What changes would have to be made? Would you expect the same the findings? Is it possible that what the authors defined as conceptual similarity in the third experiment was not really conceptual similarity? Significant results were not found in experiment one in regards to the impact of conceptual similarity on source memory errors, yet in experiment three when conceptual similarity was defined by function, a significant trend was found. Maybe function is not considered the same as other conceptual variables? Maybe functional similarity is related to source memory errors and not conceptual similarity in general? |
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