A hybrid model of source monitoring in paired-associates learning.

Three source-monitoring models were tested using the data of Bellezza, Elek, and Zhang (2016), who presented word pairs with each word in 1 of 4 locations. Given 1 word as a cue, participants had to remember the other word as well as the 2 corresponding locations. Results included (a) locations of the cue and target words were identified equally well; (b) source identification of unrecalled words was above chance; (c) the correct identification of the cue word was positively correlated with that of the target word; and (d) the location of the cue word was frequently confused with the location of the target. Three multinomial processing-tree models were tested to explain these results: a word-code model, an event-code model, and a hybrid model. The hybrid model was able to fit the data from the 5 experimental conditions of Bellezza et al. data. The model also fit data both from an experiment using four background colors as the source attributes and from a validation experiment manipulating visual-imagery instructions. The parameter values of the hybrid model suggested that source performance using locations was based predominantly on a memory code labeled an event code that included a source axis describing the locations of the 2 words, whereas performance using color relied more on word codes that associated each word with its color. It appears that different source attributes draw upon different combinations of cognitive processes, but each process occurs within the framework of the hybrid model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The deliberation-without-attention effect: evidence for an artifactual interpretation.

Proponents of unconscious-thought theory assert that letting the unconscious "mull it over" can enhance decisions. In a series of recent studies, researchers demonstrated that participants whose attention was focused on solving a complex problem (i.e., those using conscious thought) made poorer choices, decisions, and judgments than participants whose attention was distracted from the problem (i.e., those purportedly using unconscious thought). We argue that this finding, rather than establishing the existence of a deliberation-without-attention effect, is explained more compellingly in terms of the well-established distinction between on-line and memory-based judgments. In Experiment 1, we reversed the recent finding by simply changing participants' on-line processing goal from impression formation to memorization. Experiment 2 provided a replication and further established that some cognitive effort appears necessary to produce both the original pattern of results and its reversal, suggesting that such judgments are ultimately a product of conscious, rather than unconscious, thinking.

Evaluation of six multinomial models of conscious and unconscious processes with the recall-recognition paradigm.

Six multinomial processing-tree models (W. H. Batchelder & D. M. Riefer, 1999), which include parameters representing conscious and unconscious memory processes, were tested using the recall-recognition paradigm. Data from 2 experiments were fit equally well by 3 of the 6 models. One model recognition was an extension of the generate-recognize model (L. L. Jacoby, 1998), and another was an extension of the non-high-threshold model (D. M. McBride & B. A. Dosher, 1999). The 3rd model was the source evaluation model (D. M. McBride & B. A. Dosher, 1999). Values of the parameters of 2 of these 3 models, excepting the non-high-threshold model, responded to experimental manipulations in accordance with the meaning of the parameters. The equivalence of models with regard to goodness-of-fit tests is discussed as is how experiments can be designed to demonstrate the superiority of one model over another. The potential usefulness of these models in the study of amnesia is considered.

Is Self-Esteem a Central Ingredient of the Self-Concept?

At each of two sessions a week apart, 101 college subjects produced open-ended lists of items in nine categories of self-knowledge and also completed scales that provided measures of self-esteem, private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness, and social anxiety. Analyses showed that subjects' productions of self-knowledge were invested with self-evaluation in two ways: (a) Positiveness of self-evaluation (self-esteem) was significantly correlated with numbers of affectively positive items produced (such as liked activities, good qualities, and names of friends), and (b) concern about evaluation of self by others (social anxiety) was associated significantly with both production of relatively few items of self-knowledge and repeated production of the same items on the two testing occasions. These findings suggest that self-esteem is a pervasive component of measured self-concept, even for measures that lack manifest esteem-related content.