Gordon H. Bower

Bio: Gordon H. Bower is an academic researcher from Stanford University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Recall & Free recall. The author has an hindex of 74, co-authored 188 publications receiving 31399 citations. Previous affiliations of Gordon H. Bower include Yale University & University of Toronto.

Mood and memory

Abstract: This article describes experiments in which happy or sad moods were induced in subjects by hyp- notic suggestion to investigate the influence of emo- tions on memory and thinking. One result was that subjects exhibited mood-state-dependent memory in recall of word lists, personal experiences recorded in a daily diary, and childhood experiences; people recalled a greater percentage of those experiences that were affectively congruent with the mood they were in dur- ing recall. Second, emotion powerfully influenced such cognitive processes as free associations, imaginative fantasies, social perceptions, and snap judgments about others' personalities (e.g., angry subjects generated an- gry associates, told hostile stories, and were prone to find fault with others). Third, when the feeling-tone of a narrative agreed with the reader's emotion, the salience and memorability of events in that narrative were increased. Thus, sad readers attended more to sad material, identified with a sad character from a story, and recalled more about that character. An associative network theory is proposed to account for these several results. In this theory, an emotion serves as a memory unit that can enter into associations with coincident events. Activation of this emotion unit aids retrieval of events associated with it; it also primes emotional themata for use in free association, fantasies, and per- ceptual categorization.

Human Associative Memory

Abstract: Published in 1980, part of the Experimental Psychology series. This book proposes and tests a theory about human memory, about how a person encodes, retains, and retrieves information from memory. This edition contains two major parts. First is the historical analysis of associationism and its countertraditions. This still provides the framework that has been used to relate the current research to an important intellectual tradition. This is reproduced without comment from the original book; historical analyses do not need as rapid revision as theoretical analyses. The second part of the book reproduces the major components of the HAM theory.

Scripts in memory for text

Abstract: These experiments investigate people’s knowledge of routine activities (e.g., eating in a restaurant, visiting a dentist) and how that knowledge is organized and used to understand and remember narrative texts. We use the term script to refer to these action stereotypes. Two studies collected script norms: people described what goes on in detail during familiar activities. They largely agreed on the nature of the characters, props, actions, and the order of the actions. They also agreed on how to segment the low-level action sequences into constituent “scenes,” suggesting a hierarchical organization in memory of the activity. Other studies investigated memory for a text narrating actions from a script. Subjects tended to confuse in memory actions that were stated with unstated actions implied by the script. This tendency increased as more related script instances were studied. Subjects also preferred to recall script actions in their familiar order; a scrambled text that presented some script actions out of order tended to be recalled in canonical order. We also investigated whether the reading time for adjacent statements in a text varied with their distance apart in the underlying script. A statement at a one-step distance was read faster than one at a two- or three-step distance; statements in the second half of a script were read faster than those in the first half. A final experiment found that goal-relevant deviations from a script were remembered better than script actions. The role of script knowledge in text memory was discussed, as was the relation of scripts to schema memory in general.

From conditioning to category learning: an adaptive network model.

Abstract: We used adaptive network theory to extend the Rescorla-Wagner (1972) least mean squares (LMS) model of associative learning to phenomena of human learning and judgment. In three experiments subjects learned to categorize hypothetical patients with particular symptom patterns as having certain diseases. When one disease is far more likely than another, the model predicts that subjects will substantially overestimate the diagnosticity of the more valid symptom for the rare disease. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 provide clear support for this prediction in contradistinction to predictions from probability matching, exemplar retrieval, or simple prototype learning models. Experiment 3 contrasted the adaptive network model with one predicting pattern-probability matching when patients always had four symptoms (chosen from four opponent pairs) rather than the presence or absence of each of four symptoms, as in Experiment 1. The results again support the Rescorla-Wagner LMS learning rule as embedded within an adaptive network model.

Common method biases in behavioral research: a critical review of the literature and recommended remedies.

Abstract: Interest in the problem of method biases has a long history in the behavioral sciences. Despite this, a comprehensive summary of the potential sources of method biases and how to control for them does not exist. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which method biases influence behavioral research results, identify potential sources of method biases, discuss the cognitive processes through which method biases influence responses to measures, evaluate the many different procedural and statistical techniques that can be used to control method biases, and provide recommendations for how to select appropriate procedural and statistical remedies for different types of research settings.

Subjective Well-Being

Abstract: The literature on subjective well-being (SWB), including happiness, life satisfaction, and positive affect, is reviewed in three areas: measurement, causal factors, and theory. Psychometric data on single-item and multi-item subjective well-being scales are presented, and the measures are compared. Measuring various components of subjective well-being is discussed. In terms of causal influences, research findings on the demographic correlates of SWB are evaluated, as well as the findings on other influences such as health, social contact, activity, and personality. A number of theoretical approaches to happiness are presented and discussed: telic theories, associationistic models, activity theories, judgment approaches, and top-down versus bottom-up conceptions.

Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability

Abstract: This paper explores a judgmental heuristic in which a person evaluates the frequency of classes or the probability of events by availability, i.e., by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind. In general, availability is correlated with ecological frequency, but it is also affected by other factors. Consequently, the reliance on the availability heuristic leads to systematic biases. Such biases are demonstrated in the judged frequency of classes of words, of combinatorial outcomes, and of repeated events. The phenomenon of illusory correlation is explained as an availability bias. The effects of the availability of incidents and scenarios on subjective probability are discussed.

Levels of processing: A framework for memory research

Abstract: This paper briefly reviews the evidence for multistore theories of memory and points out some difficulties with the approach. An alternative framework for human memory research is then outlined in terms of depth or levels of processing. Some current data and arguments are reexamined in the light of this alternative framework and implications for further research considered.