Locus of the Moses Illusion: Imperfect encoding, retrieval, or match?

Reder, Lynne M.; Kusbit, Gail W.

doi:10.1016/0749-596x(91)90013-a

Cited by 124 publications

(201 citation statements)

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“…Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to L. M. Reder, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (e-mail: reder+@cmu.edu). This paper continues the line of research begun by Reder and Kusbit (1991), in which they concluded that the best explanation for the Moses illusion was imperfect matching ofqueries to memory. They arrived at this conclusion after investigating several alternate hypotheses.…”

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confidence: 58%

“…This paper continues the line of research begun by Reder and Kusbit (1991), in which they concluded that the best explanation for the Moses illusion was imperfect matching ofqueries to memory. They arrived at this conclusion after investigating several alternate hypotheses.…”

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confidence: 58%

“…Seventy-two pairs of questions like the Noah/Moses question were used, including 45 of the pairs listed in Reder and Kusbit (1991). Some of the earlier questions were discarded because they were outdated or because subjects could not answer the undistorted form.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some of the earlier questions were discarded because they were outdated or because subjects could not answer the undistorted form. Twenty-seven new pairs of questions were constructed according to the following criteria: The query tested common knowledge, the distorted term was semantically and syntactically similar to the term it replaced, and the distorted form ofthe question could not be answered literally (see Reder & Cleeremans, 1990;Reder & Kusbit, 1991).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Reder and Kusbit (1991) argued that the locus of the effect must be the existence of a partial-match process. Other research has suggested that this partial-match process operates at the word level and that, with adequate focus on the relevant word, the Moses illusion is greatly diminished.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Partial matching in the Moses illusion: Response bias not sensitivity

1996

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Previous research has demonstrated that people have enormous difficultyin detecting distortions in such questions as, "How many animals of each kind did Moses take in the Ark?" Reder and Kusbit (1991) argued that the locus of the effect must be the existence of a partial-match process. Other research has suggested that this partial-match process operates at the word level and that, with adequate focus on the relevant word, the Moses illusion is greatly diminished. The present experimental results argue that those conclusions were based on a shift in response criterion with no concomitant change in ability to detect distortions. Furthermore, the data suggest that the matching process operates below the word level, at the level of distinctive features.Understanding the nature of access to memory-how we parse questions, query memory, and decide that the requisite information has been found-is one of the central issues in understanding memory. An important premise in our work is that the matching process in memory must be a partial-matching process. This may not seem obvious until one considers, for example, that information is often not queried in exactly the same form as originally presented or encoded, and that people do not look exactly the same from one occasion to the next; thus, person recognition must be flexible. Given that we believe that the memory-match process must be a partial-match process, the questions become: How much must the memory probe overlap with the memory trace to be accepted as a match? What portions of the memory probe are used to match to memory?One fruitful approach to these questions is to look at instances in which this partial-matching system leads people astray. For example, when asked, "How many animals ofeach kind did Moses take in the Ark?" most people immediately respond with "Two." This confident answer comes even from those who know that Noah, not Moses, built the Ark (Erickson & Mattson, 1981). When a term in a sentence or question (the "critical" term) is replaced with a semantically similar but incorrect term (the "distorted" term), people sometimes respond as if this distortion were not present. This tendency to overlook distortions in statements is known as the Moses illusion. Studying when the Moses illusion occurs and what factors influence it can shed light on the underlying memory processes in question answering and text comprehension.The work reported here was sponsored by Grant BNS-8908030 from the National Science Foundation to L.M.R. and by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to E.N.K. We thank G. Kusbit for her assistance in conducting Experiments I and 3 and Jason Wyse for comments on the manuscript. Correspondence concerning this paper should be addressed to L. M. Reder, Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 (e-mail: reder+@cmu.edu). This paper continues the line of research begun by Reder and Kusbit (1991), in which they concluded that the best explanation for the Moses illusion was imperfect matching...

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confidence: 58%

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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