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The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed., Krystian Barzykowski was supported by the French Government Scholarship (`Campus France'), the National Science Centre, Poland (UMO-2019/35/B/HS6/00528) and the Bekker programme from the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (no.: PPN/BEK/2019/1/00092/DEC/1). The Washington University in St. Louis collaboration (Dessenberger, Roediger, Tekin, and Uner) was supported by a grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to HLR. A. Taylor gratefully acknowledges support from The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

Evidence is mixed concerning whether delayed judgments of learning (JOLs) enhance learning and if so, whether their benefit is similar to retrieval practice. One potential explanation for the mixed findings is the truncated search hypothesis, which states that not all delayed JOLs lead to a full-blown covert retrieval attempt. In three paired-associate learning experiments, we examined the effect of delayed JOLs on later recall by comparing them to conditions of restudy, overt retrieval, and various other delayed JOL conditions. In Experiment 1, after an initial study phase, subjects either restudied word pairs, practiced overt retrieval, or made cue-only or cue-target delayed JOLs. In Experiments 2a and 2b, where conditions were manipulated within-subjects, subjects either restudied word pairs, practiced overt retrieval, made cue-only delayed JOLs, made cue-only delayed JOLs followed by a yes/no retrieval question or, in another condition, by an overt retrieval prompt. The final cued recall tests were delayed by two days. In Experiment 1, recall after cue-only delayed JOLs did not reliably differ from recall after overt retrieval or restudy. In Experiments 2a and 2b, delayed JOLs consistently produced poorer recall relative to overt retrieval. Furthermore, reaction times for delayed JOLs were shorter relative to delayed JOLs paired with overt retrieval prompts. We conclude that only some delayed JOLs elicit covert retrieval attempts, a pattern supporting the truncated search hypothesis. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11409-021-09260-0.

Abstract. Recent studies have shown that judgments of learning (JOLs) are reactive measures in paired-associate learning paradigms. However, evidence is scarce concerning whether JOLs are reactive in other paradigms. In old/new recognition experiments, we investigated the reactivity effects of JOLs in a levels-of-processing (LOP) paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, for each word, subjects saw a yes/no orienting question followed by the target word and a response. Then, they either did or did not make a JOL. The yes/no questions were about target words’ appearances, rhyming properties, or category memberships. In Experiment 3, for each word, subjects gave a pleasantness rating or counted the letter “e ”. Our results revealed that JOLs enhanced recognition across all orienting tasks in Experiments 1 and 2, and for the e-counting task in Experiment 3. This reactive effect was salient for shallow tasks, attenuating – but not eliminating – the LOP effect after making JOLs. We conclude that JOLs are reactive in LOP paradigms and subjects encode words more effectively when providing JOLs.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June, 2020, we asked over 4000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) have happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expect to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus, providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it is occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

Confidence-accuracy characteristic (CAC) plots were developed for use in eyewitness identification experiments, and previous findings show that high confidence indicates high accuracy in all studies of adults with an unbiased lineup. We apply CAC plots to standard

Police departments often use verbal confidence measures (highly confident, somewhat confident) with a small number of values, whereas psychologists measuring the confidence–accuracy relationship typically use numeric scales with a large range of values (20-point or 100-point scales). We compared verbal and verbal + numeric confidence scales for two different lineups, using either two or four levels of confidence. We found strong confidence–accuracy relationships that were unaffected by the nature of the scale at the highest level of confidence. High confidence corresponded to high accuracy with both two- and four-level scales, and the scale type (verbal only or verbal + numeric) did not matter. Police using a simple scale of “highly confident” and “somewhat confident” can, according to our results, rest assured that high confidence indicates high accuracy on a first identification from a lineup. In addition, our two lineups differed greatly in difficulty, yet the confidence–accuracy relationship was quite strong for both lineups, although somewhat lower for the more difficult lineup.

Levi et al. (2021) critique the concept of everyday amnesia (high confident misses) by arguing that these are simply due to criterion shifts within a signal detection framework. We agree that signal detection figures can be drawn to conceptualize the results, but we argue such efforts merely provide a re-description of the phenomenon without explaining it. For that, one would need a process theory. Signal detection theory represents an elegant framework for conceiving of issues in decision making, but not for explaining mechanisms underlying them. A signal detection figure can be created for any possible recognition memory result; any pair of hit rates and false alarm rates (and hence miss rates and correct rejection rates) is amenable to such a depiction. If we were to cast the issue we raised in terms of signal detection theory, we might ask: Why do some subjects place their most liberal criterion in such a way that they miss, with high confidence, items that they recently studied? Signal detection theory provides no answer.

Endel Tulving has provided unparalleled contributions to the study of human memory. We consider here his contributions to the study of recognition memory and celebrate his first article on recognition, a nearly forgotten but (we argue) essential paper from 1968. We next consider his distinction between remembering and knowing, its relation to confidence, and the implications of high levels of false remembering in the DRM paradigm for using phenomenal experiences as measures of memory. We next pivot to newer work, the use of confidence accuracy characteristic plots in analyzing standard recognition memory experiments. We argue they are quite useful in such research, as they are in eyewitness research. For example, we report that even with hundreds of items, high confidence in a response indicates high accuracy, just as it does in one-item eyewitness research. Finally, we argue that amnesia (rapid forgetting) occurs in all people (not just amnesic patients) for some of their experiences. We provide evidence from three experiments revealing that subjects who fail to recognize recently studied items (miss responses) do so with high confidence 15-20% of the time. Such high confidence misses constitute our definition of everyday amnesia that can occur even in college student populations.

The encoding–retrieval paradigm is instantiated when two (or more) conditions are manipulated during study (or encoding) and two or more types of tests are used to assess retention (retrieval tests). This type of experiment permits answers to two fundamental questions: Do effects of an encoding manipulation that occur on one test generalize across other tests? When encoding and retrieval conditions match on some dimension, does better performance occur than when they mismatch (in line with principles of encoding specificity and transfer-appropriate processing)? The encoding–retrieval paradigm is essential to progress in understanding memory.