1. Norming retrieval processes.
- Author
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Brainerd, C.J., Bialer, D.M., and Chang, M.
- Subjects
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FALSE memory syndrome , *RECOGNITION (Psychology) - Abstract
• For many years, memory items have been normed for descriptive properties. • We described how models can create norms for the processes that memory items activate. • Two examples provide retrieval-process norms for false memory items. • The norms allow researchers to manipulate retrieval processes in recognition studies. There is a long tradition of norming words and other materials for various descriptive properties (e.g., concreteness, emotional valence, imagery, meaningfulness), which allows those properties to be manipulated in memory experiments. We introduce a new approach to norming, in which measurement models are used to norm the underlying retrieval processes that memory items trigger. We report two worked examples of this approach, for the most commonly administered items in false memory experiments: DRM lists. In one project, 36 lists that had been previously normed for their levels of true and false memory were normed for their levels of 3 retrieval processes that control false memory (recollection rejection, phantom recollection, and semantic familiarity) and 3 parallel processes that control true memory (true recollection, erroneous recollection rejection, and semantic familiarity). In the other project, 72 new DRM lists, whose associative and semantic strengths had been systematically varied, were normed for the same retrieval processes. Together, these norms provide maximum likelihood estimates of all 6 retrieval processes for all 108 lists. Analyses of those estimates revealed that list differences in the three false memory processes are mutually dissociated, as are list differences in the three true memory processes. Thus, investigators can vary each retrieval process, without confounding it with other processes, by merely selecting appropriate groups of lists. That allows simple List × Treatment designs to be used to pinpoint the retrieval processes that are responsible for the effects of important memory manipulations (e.g., delay, divided attention, encoding instructions, repetition). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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