No abstract

Past research on short-term memory decay has found that participants are more efficient at remembering information when the delay between stimuli presentation and recall is short as opposed to long. In the current study we used Potential Performance Theory (PPT) to identify the role that both random and systematic factors play in observed memory performance over a delay. We presented participants with a string of letters followed by either a 2-second or 16-second delay. Following the delay, participants were presented with a two alternative forced choice (2AFC) display where they were asked to determine whether the matching string was in the first or second display. The findings indicate that inconsistency is primarily responsible for the decrements in observed performance that can be seen over a time delay. Theoretical and practical applications are discussed.

Much research has differentiated between the effects of automation false alarms and misses on operator trust and subsequent behavior. Further research has demonstrated that trust is a multiple-process construct that mediates the relationship between automation errors and behavior. The purpose of the current study was to expand on this model by incorporating affect as a mediating variable between smoke detector errors and trust. This expanded model, which we refer to as the Affect-Trust model, is supported by two experiments. The experiments involved mediation analyses, which revealed that affect almost totally mediates the relationship between both types of smoke detector errors and trust.