Chapter 1. Memory for Names

1.1 Introduction

Jacoby and colleagues (1989) used lists of names to examine old-new effects in long-term memory. They found that exposure to recently viewed items influenced later decision-making.

1.2 Experiment Setup

1.3 Instructions

Study phase: You will need to press the space bar to start the experiment. At the beginning of each block, a fixation mark will appear. Please look at this mark. After a brief delay, a series of names will then be presented, one at a time, on the screen. Please pronounce each name out loud. You will be tested later on the accuracy of your pronunciation. Some names will appear only once, while others will appear multiple times.

1.4 Experiment

1.5 Results

1.6 Debriefing

Like Jacoby and colleagues (1989), we employed deception to avoid potential problems with participants memorizing the lists of names. We presented a list of names in the study phase that included famous and non-famous names. Names could be presented once or repeated four times. Testing for recognition accuracy could have occurred either immediately or after a 24 hour delay. During the test, participants were presented with the old (previous seen names) along with some new items. Participants had to judge if the names belonged to a famous person or not. When tested after a 24-hour delay participants were biased toward reporting old items as famous names, whether or not they were actually famous. This familiarity effect is common in the memory literature and is similar to the sleeper effect found in studies on judgment and decision making (Greenwald et al., 1986). Familiarly and sleeper effects can be overcome by explicitly telling participants to monitor the source of the information they receive. Explicit source monitoring helps participants to encode source information along with the name, which makes it easier to accurately recognize the origins of recently presented information.

References:

Jacoby, L. L., Kelley, C., Brown, J., & Jasechko, J. (1989). Becoming famous overnight: limits on the ability to avoid unconscious influences of the past, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(3), 326-338.

Greenwald, A. G., Pratkanis, A. R., Leippe, M. R., & Baumgardner, M. H. (1986). Under what conditions does theory obstruct research progress? Psychological Review, 93, 216-229.

Dywan, J., & Jacoby, L. (1990). Effects of aging on source monitoring: differences in susceptibility to false fame, Psychology and Aging, 5(3), 379-387.

1.7 Quiz