Explaining Sad People's Memory Advantage for Faces

Sad people recognize faces more accurately than happy people (Hills et al., 2011). We devised four hypotheses for this finding that are tested between in the current study. The four hypotheses are: (1) sad people engage in more expert processing associated with face processing; (2) sad people are motivated to be more accurate than happy people in an attempt to repair their mood; (3) sad people have a defocused attentional strategy that allows more information about a face to be encoded; and (4) sad people scan more of the face than happy people leading to more facial features to be encoded. In Experiment 1, we found that dysphoria (sad mood often associated with depression) was not correlated with the face-inversion effect (a measure of expert processing) nor with response times but was correlated with defocused attention and recognition accuracy. Experiment 2 established that dysphoric participants detected changes made to more facial features than happy participants. In Experiment 3, using eye-tracking we found that sad-induced participants sampled more of the face whilst avoiding the eyes. Experiment 4 showed that sad-induced people demonstrated a smaller own-ethnicity bias. These results indicate that sad people show different attentional allocation to faces than happy and neutral people.

Aging, source memory, and the experience of "remembering"

In a previous study, we found source memory for perceptual features to differentiate between younger but not older adults' reports of recollective ("remember"; R) and "know" (K) experiences. In two experiments with younger (17-30 years) and older (64-81 years) participants, we examined whether memory for meaningful speaker sources would accompany older adults' recollective experience. Indeed, memory for male and female speakers (but not partial memory for gender; Experiment 1) as well as bound memory for speakers and their facial expressions (Experiment 2) distinguished between both younger and older adults' RK reports. Thus, memory for some sources forms a common basis for younger and older adults' retrieval experience. Nonetheless, older adults still showed lower objective source memory and lower subjective source-attribution confidence than younger adults when reporting recollective experiences, suggesting that source memory is less relevant to their retrieval experience than for younger adults.

Sad people are more accurate at face recognition than happy people

Mood has varied effects on cognitive performance including the accuracy of face recognition (Lundh & Ost, 1996). Three experiments are presented here that explored face recognition abilities in mood-induced participants. Experiment 1 demonstrated that happy-induced participants are less accurate and have a more conservative response bias than sad-induced participants in a face recognition task. Using a remember/know/guess procedure, Experiment 2 showed that sad-induced participants had more conscious recollections of faces than happy-induced participants. Additionally, sad-induced participants could recognise all faces accurately, whereas, happy- and neutral-induced participants recognised happy faces more accurately than sad faces. In Experiment 3, these effects were not observed when participants intentionally learnt the faces, rather than incidentally learnt the faces. It is suggested that happy-induced participants do not process faces as elaborately as sad-induced participants.

Signal Detection and Threshold Models of Source Memory

Recently, several authors claimed that the curvilinear shape of rating-based source memory receiver operating characteristics (ROCs) refutes threshold models. However, rating-based ROCs are not diagnostic to disprove threshold models. Furthermore, source memory ROC-analyses ignore influences of other processes like old-new-detection and old-new-response-tendencies, so direct estimation of parameters is preferable. Five source monitoring experiments with different response bias manipulations and materials were conducted. We fitted the Two High Threshold Multinomial Model of Source Monitoring by Bayen, Murnane, and Erdfelder (1996) and the Multivariate Signal Detection Model for Selection by DeCarlo (2003) . We also included rating-based ROCs. The results suggest that both models are at least equally valid as measurement tools which capture bias processes in the corresponding parameters, and they can perhaps be integrated theoretically.

Toward a complete decision model of item and source recognition: A discrete-state approach

In source-monitoring experiments, participants study items from two sources (A and B). At test, they are presented Source A items, Source B items, and new items. They are asked to decide whether a test item is old or new (item memory) and whether it is a Source A or a Source B item (source memory). Hautus, Macmillan, and Rotello (2008) developed models, couched in a bivariate signal detection framework, that account for item and source memory across several data sets collected in a confidence-rating response format. The present article enlarges the set of candidate models with a discrete-state model. The model is a straightforward extension of Bayen, Murnane, and Erdfelder's (1996) multinomial model of source discrimination to confidence ratings. On the basis of the evaluation criteria adopted by Hautus et al., it provides a better account of the data than do Hautus et al.'s models.

Multinomial Processing Tree Models

Multinomial processing tree (MPT) models have become popular in cognitive psychology in the past two decades. In contrast to general-purpose data analysis techniques, such as log-linear models or other generalized linear models, MPT models are substantively motivated stochastic models for categorical data. They are best described as tools (a) for measuring the cognitive processes that underlie human behavior in various tasks and (b) for testing the psychological assumptions on which these models are based. The present article provides a review of MPT models and their applications in psychology, focusing on recent trends and developments in the past 10 years. Our review is nontechnical in nature and primarily aims at informing readers about the scope and utility of MPT models in different branches of cognitive psychology.

Positive and negative generation effects in source monitoring

Research is mixed as to whether self-generation improves memory for the source of information. We propose the hypothesis that positive generation effects (better source memory for self-generated information) occur in reality-monitoring paradigms, while negative generation effects (better source memory for externally presented information) tend to occur in external source-monitoring paradigms. This hypothesis was tested in an experiment in which participants read or generated words, followed by a memory test for the source of each word (read or generated) and the word's colour. Meiser and Bröder's (2002) multinomial model for crossed source dimensions was used to analyse the data, showing that source memory for generation (reality monitoring) was superior for the generated words, while source memory for word colour (external source monitoring) was superior for the read words. The model also revealed the influence of strong response biases in the data, demonstrating the usefulness of formal modelling when examining generation effects in source monitoring.

Metacognitive inferences in source memory judgements: the role of perceived differences in item recognition

This research investigated the hypothesis that metacognitive inferences in source memory judgements are based on the recognition or nonrecognition of an event together with perceived or expected differences in the recognizability of events from different sources. The hypothesis was tested with a multinomial source-monitoring model that allowed separation of source-guessing tendencies for recognized and unrecognized items. Experiments 1A and 1B manipulated the number of item presentations as relevant source information and revealed differential guessing tendencies for recognized and unrecognized items, with a bias to attribute unrecognized items to the source associated with poor item recognition. Experiments 2A and 2B replicated the findings with a manipulation of presentation time and extended the analysis to subjective differences in item recognition. Experiments 3A and 3B used more natural source information by varying type of acoustic signal and demonstrated that subjective theories about differences in item recognition are sufficient to elicit differential source-guessing biases for recognized and unrecognized items. Together the findings provide new insights into the cognitive processes underlying source memory decisions, which involve episodic memory and reconstructive tendencies based on metacognitive beliefs and general world knowledge.

Measuring Source Memory

Abstract. The investigation of source monitoring (SM) as a special faculty of episodic memory has gained much attention in recent years. However, several measures of source memory have been used in research practice that show empirical and theoretical shortcomings: First, they often confound various cognitive processes like source memory, item memory and response bias, and second, they do not do justice to the multitude of processes involved in SM according to the framework of Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay (1993) . We therefore review model-based measurement approaches, focusing on multinomial models, and we distinguish between theorizing about source memory and the pragmatics of source memory measurement as two partly separate goals of research. Whereas signal detection models seem to be more adequate theories of the underlying source monitoring process, multinomial models have some pragmatic advantages that nevertheless recommend them as viable measurement tools.

Boundaries of the relation between conscious recollection and source memory for perceptual details

The relation between conscious recollection and source memory for perceptual details was investigated in three experiments that combined the remember-know paradigm with a multidimensional source monitoring test. Experiment 1 replicated that source memory for perceptual details is better in the case of "remember" than "know" judgments. Experiment 2 showed that the relation between "remember" judgments and source memory for perceptual details is diminished by a semantic orienting task during encoding. Experiment 3 demonstrated that "remember" judgments are related to enhanced source memory for specific and unique kinds of perceptual source information, whereas memory for incomplete and global perceptual source information does not differentiate between "remember" and "know" judgments. The results show that the attentional focus during encoding and the specificity of retrieved source information form boundary conditions for the use of source memory for perceptual details as a basis of "remember" judgments.

Utilization of covariation knowledge in source monitoring: no evidence for implicit processes

In three experiments, a "hidden covariation" (Lewicki, in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 12, 135-146, 1986) of nonsalient stimulus attributes and the source of stimulus information was established to test whether implicit knowledge about this correlation influences source memory judgments. The source monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, and Lindsay, in Psychological Bulletin, 114, 3-28, 1993) postulates heuristic and strategic judgment processes in source attributions. A multinomial model analysis disentangled memory and guessing processes. While there were large strategic guessing biases involving explicit knowledge in all experiments, there was no evidence for the use of implicit covariation knowledge. Only participants who were later able to verbalize the covariation had shown corresponding biases during the source memory test, suggesting that implicit covariation knowledge plays no prominent role in the reconstruction processes in source monitoring.

Defocused attention in depressed mood: evidence from source monitoring

The authors suggest that depressed mood is associated with a defocused mode of attention, allowing irrelevant information to be noticed and processed more than in nondepressed states. Working on a source monitoring task, subclinically depressed college students selected with the Beck Depression Inventory (A. T. Beck, 1967; D. Kammer, 1983) had better memory for irrelevant stimulus aspects than nondepressed control students. However, depressed students' performance on the relevant stimulus aspects was unimpaired. These results are in conflict with a capacity reduction view of depressed mood and support the hypothesized altered, defocused mode, in which attentional resources are more evenly allocated across various aspects of the materials. The results are discussed within the framework of adaptive functions of emotional states.