Giving and stealing ideas in memory: Source errors in recall are influenced by both early-selection and late-correction retrieval processes

Abstract

Previous studies of unconscious plagiarism have asked participants to recall their own ideas from a previous group-problem solving session, and have typically reported that people mistakenly include a partner's responses when trying to recall their own. To date, there has been little research looking at the propensity to include one's own responses when trying to recall a partner's previous contribution to the group. Experiment 1 demonstrated that people make both kinds of source-error during recall, but source errors are more common in the recall-partner task. This pattern was replicated in Experiments 2a and 2b with sourceerrors and intrusions increasing over a delay. Experiment 3 used an extended version of each recall task, in which participants reported all items that came to mind, whilst indicating which responses were goal-relevant. The tendency for source-errors to occur more for the recall-partner task was shown to be a function of both idea availability and output monitoring, whereas the tendency for source-errors to increase over a delay was shown to be due solely to output monitoring. Thus, unconscious plagiarism errors are one instantiation of the more general problem of source-specified recall, which is influenced jointly by processes at generation and output monitoring.

Testing the Motor Simulation Account of Source Errors for Actions in Recall

“…However, there was no interaction between Task and Data type, F (1,33) = 1.03, MSe = 10.80, p = 0.32, = 0.030. In subsequent step-down analyses, we tested whether observed source errors were greater than predicted in each of the two retrieval tasks, that is, whether both the “donating” and “stealing” effects was observed ( Perfect et al, 2009 ; Hollins et al, 2016a , b ). Indeed, observed frequencies surpassed predicted frequencies in the Recall own task, t (17) = 3.92, p < 0.001, d av = 1.28 and in the Recall partner task, t (16) = 1.84, p = 0.042, d av = 0.59, both one-tailed.…”

“…Indeed, recent work has shown that people do not only “steal” their partner’s ideas, but also “donate” their own ideas. In Hollins et al (2016a) , participants alternated generating solutions to verbal fluency problems. Subsequently, when asked to recall their own ideas, participants showed the well-known unconscious plagiarism effect and included solutions generated by their partner.…”

“…Conceptually replicating the observation inflation effect in this novel recall paradigm will allow us to test two predictions of the motor simulation account of false memories of self-performance after observation. First, we know from unconscious plagiarism research that if asked to recall ideas, participants not only steal partner’s ideas but also give away own ideas to a partner ( Hollins et al, 2016a , b ). If source memory for actions conforms to the same rules, we would expect participants to commit source errors not only when they recall own actions, but to also commit them when they recall actions they observed their partner perform.…”

Intellectual theft: pitfalls and consequences of plagiarism

“…Unconscious plagiarism may occur when individuals make mistakes distinguishing their response from the response of others due to psychological errors involved in source recall (Hollins et al 2016). Authors may also be susceptible to unintentional plagiarism if work schedule demands and disorganized records coincide to confuse sources of information (Nicholls, 2014).…”

Is source information automatically available in working memory?

“…Most people, though, share the intuition that they will be able to remember the source of information that they have just encountered. Here we explore errors that challenge this intuition, demonstrating frequent source errors for information that was attended and used to perform a task moments before.The phenomenon of failing to remember the source of retrievable information has been variously labeled as source amnesia, source forgetting, source monitoring errors, source misattributions, source errors and so on (Mitchell & Johnson, 2009) and has been extensively studied (e.g., Glisky, Polster, & Routhieaux, 1995;Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993;Hollins, Lange, Berry, & Dennis, 2016;Maillet, & Rajah, 2016;Mitchell & Johnson, 2009;Mitchell, Johnson, Raye, & Greene, 2004;2006;Wilding & Rugg, 1996). Source memory is broadly defined as remembered information that specifies how an event was experienced, such as perceptual (e.g., col or, format of a stimulus), spatial-temporal, and affective details (Glisky et al, 1995;Johnson, et al, 1993).…”