Reducing Memory Errors: The Distinctiveness Heuristic

Schacter, Daniel L.; Wiseman, Amy L.; Hunt, R. Reed; Worthen, James B.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195169669.003.0005

Cited by 51 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…2 These three kinds of autobiographical knowledge have been discovered to ''serve different functions, and [they] may even be mediated by different underlying brain systems''. 3 Obviously, this evidence strengthens Daniel Schacter's conclusion that memory, far from being a ''single or unitary faculty of the mind'', is in fact ''composed of a variety of distinct and dissociable processes and systems''. 4…”

Section: Individual and Collective Memorysupporting

confidence: 68%

“…Thus the novel, in its capacity of cultural memory, is both an expression of personal and of collective memory. 3. Hindsight Bias and Guilt: Julio Llamazares' Escenas de cine mudo In Escenas de cine mudo, the narrator flicks through a family photo album, telling the story of his youth (probably set, though it doesn't become clear, in the late fifties and early sixties) in a mining town called Olleros, where life for the miners is extremely hard and often quite short due to poverty and an unhealthy working environment.…”

Section: Fiona Schoutenmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Turning Photographs into a Silent Film

Schouten

2006

Neophilologus

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Nowadays, the term 'collective memory' is used frequently in (literary) research. It has become clear that while collective memory is something far more complicated than a simple adding up of individual memories, individual memories in their turn are never purely personal, but are always influenced by the social frame in which they take shape. The question is, where can one draw the line between individual and collective memory, and where does the individual self give way to a collective consciousness? In analyzing Escenas de cine mudo by Julio Llamazares, an attempt will be made to locate this place by focusing especially on the implied author. This 'consciousness' of the work emerges from a fictional world, but its values are the result of the social and cultural conditioning of the real author and (his contemporary) reader. As it turns out, the memory of a childhood during the Franco dictatorship is influenced by current views of the period in Spanish modern-day society. Collective memory changes and distorts both the image of the self and its individual memories.

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Section: Individual and Collective Memorysupporting

confidence: 68%

Section: Fiona Schoutenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Turning Photographs into a Silent Film

Schouten

2006

Neophilologus

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“…Our experiments suggest that participants are largely unaware of the benefits of distinctiveness and may believe that any activity benefits memory, although it would also be important to test this assertion using other forms of production (e.g., whispering vs. silent reading; see Forrin et al, in press) and other types of memory tests, such as recognition (see also Ozubko, Gopie, & MacLeod, 2012). This is an important finding, given that there are many other instances in which distinctiveness can improve memory performance (see Hunt, 2006, for a review), as well as reduce memory illusions (e.g., Dodson & Schacter, 2001;Gallo, Perlmutter, Moore, & Schacter, 2008;Schacter & Wiseman, 2006). Because distinctiveness is such a potent cue to enhance memory and to reduce errors, it is critical for learners to understand the conditions in which distinctiveness can and cannot enhance memory.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Predicting memory benefits in the production effect: the use and misuse of self-generated distinctive cues when making judgments of learning

2012

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The production effect occurs when reading a word aloud leads to better memory for the item, relative to words that are read silently. In the present study, we assessed the degree to which judgments of learning (JOLs) are sensitive to the production effect, to determine whether people are aware of how distinctive cues can enhance memory. If the act of saying a word aloud is used as a cue for later memorability, then JOLs should be sensitive to production. Experiment 1 demonstrated that this was the case, as participants provided higher JOLs for produced items than for those read silently. This pattern of JOLs was also evident when participants silently mouthed words (Exp. 2). In Experiment 3, participants instead made a nonunique response as the production component (saying "yes" instead of the word itself). JOLs were still higher under production, although memory performance did not differ from that in a silent condition. The results suggest that the presence of both specific and nonspecific selfgenerated cues is used to make metacognitive judgments, likely due to the high accessibility of this information, but that participants are not precisely aware of how distinctiveness enhances encoding and retrieval. Such findings have implications for how distinctiveness is perceived by learners and for what cues would appropriately be incorporated when predicting future memory performance.Keywords Metamemory . Memory . Production effect . Judgments of learning . DistinctivenessIt is often important to accurately assess one's own memory performance, a skill that has significant applied and theoretical implications for learning. To better understand how people monitor memory performance, researchers have examined predictions of memory performance and how the predictions then relate to actual memory performance. One way to assess this question is to ask people to make a judgment of learning (JOL) when studying information, indicating the likelihood that they will remember some bit of information on a future memory test. These predictions can then be compared with actual memory performance in order to assess the accuracy of the JOLs.

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“…This heuristic is used when a person expects to recollect detailed features for a class of events and, in the absence of such features, infers that a questionable event must not have occurred (Schacter et al, 1999; see Schacter & Wiseman, 2006, for a review; also see Strack & Bless, 1994, for similar ideas). For example, subjects can use perceptual features found in pictures as diagnostic criteria to help distinguish between items that were previously viewed as pictures and those that were not.…”

Section: The Distinctiveness Heuristicmentioning

confidence: 99%

Separating past and future autobiographical events in memory: Evidence for a reality monitoring asymmetry

McDonough

Gallo

2009

Memory & Cognition

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After thinking about the past and imagining the future, how do people separate these real and imagined events in memory? We had subjects engage in past and future autobiographical elaboration, then later take memory tests that required them to recollect these earlier generated events. In Experiment 1, testing memory for previously generated past or future autobiographical events led to fewer source memory confusions than did an elaborative control task, suggesting that the distinctive features of autobiographical elaboration improved subsequent retrieval monitoring accuracy. In Experiment 2, we directly compared retrieval monitoring accuracy for previously generated past and future autobiographical events and found that subjects made fewer source confusions when searching memory for future events. This asymmetry suggests that the features characterizing future elaborations (e.g., cognitive operations) were used more effectively during reality monitoring than were the features characterizing past elaborations (e.g., perceptual details), and has implications for future-oriented theories of memory.

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Reducing Memory Errors: The Distinctiveness Heuristic

Cited by 51 publications

References 59 publications

Turning Photographs into a Silent Film

Turning Photographs into a Silent Film

Predicting memory benefits in the production effect: the use and misuse of self-generated distinctive cues when making judgments of learning

Separating past and future autobiographical events in memory: Evidence for a reality monitoring asymmetry

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