Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.

/pdf/implicit-social-cognition-attitudes-self-esteem-and-2j32pp6h9o.pdf

Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self-Esteem, and Stereotypes.

A powerful way of improving one's memory for material is to be tested on that material. Tests enhance later retention more than additional study of the material, even when tests are given without feedback. This surpris- ing phenomenon is called the testing effect, and although it has been studied by cognitive psychologists sporadically over the years, today there is a renewed effort to learn why testing is effective and to apply testing in educational settings. In this article, we selectively review laboratory studies that reveal the power of testing in improving re- tention and then turn to studies that demonstrate the basic effects in educational settings. We also consider the related concepts of dynamic testing and formative assess- ment as other means of using tests to improve learning. Finally, we consider some negative consequences of testing that may occur in certain circumstances, though these negative effects are often small and do not cancel out the large positive effects of testing. Frequent testing in the classroom may boost educational achievement at all levels of education. In contemporary educational circles, the concept of testing has a dubious reputation, and many educators believe that testing is overemphasized in today's schools. By ''testing,'' most com- mentators mean using standardized tests to assess students. During the 20th century, the educational testing movement produced numerous assessment devices used throughout edu- cation systems in most countries, from prekindergarten through graduate school. However, in this review, we discuss primarily the kind of testing that occurs in classrooms or that students engage in while studying (self-testing). Some educators argue

http://memory.psych.purdue.edu/downloads/2006_Roediger_Karpicke_Review.pdf

The Power of Testing Memory: Basic Research and Implications for Educational Practice.

The Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) and PEBL Test Battery

Elements of episodic memory (Tulving 1983b) consists of three parts. Part I argues for the distinction between episodic and semantic memory as functionally separate albeit closely interacting systems. It begins with a review of the 1972 essay on the topic (Tulving 1972) and its shortcomings, presents a somewhat more complete characterization of the two forms of memory than the one that was possible in 1972, and proceeds to discuss empirical and theoretical reasons for a tentative acceptance of the functional distinction between the two systems and its possible extensions. Part II describes a framework for the study of episodic memory, dubbed General Abstract Processing System (GAPS). The basic unit in such study is an act of remembering. It begins with the witnessing of an event and ends with recollective experience of the event, with related memory performance, or both. The framework specifies a number of components (elements) of the act of remembering and their interrelations, classified under two broad categories of encoding and retrieval. Part III discusses experimental research under the label of “synergistic ecphory.” Ecphory is one of the central elements of retrieval; “synergistic” refers to the joint influence that the stored episodic information and the cognitively present retrieval information exert on the construction of the product of ecphory, the so-called ecphoric information. The concept of encoding specificity and the phenomenon of recognition failure of recallable words figure prominently in Part III. The final chapter of the book describes a model, named the synergistic ecphory model of retrieval, that relates qualitative characteristics of recollective experience and quantitative measures of memory performance in recall and recognition to the conjunction of episodic-memory traces and semantic-memory retrieval cues.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X0004440X

Précis of Elements of episodic memory..

https://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/personal/rik.henson/personal/Henson_CP_98.pdf

Short-term memory for serial order: the start-end model

In a previous clinical report, unusually fast decay of iconic memory was obtained from a subject who later developed Alzheimer's disease. By using the partial-report paradigm, iconic memory (a form of visual sensory memory) in a group of observers with mild cognitive impairments (MCI) was characterized and compared with that of young college-age adults and older controls. Relatively long stimulus exposures were used for all three groups to ensure that older observers could perceive the stimuli. A set of conventional neuropsychological tests assessed cognitive functions of the MCI and older control groups. We found that iconic memory decayed much faster for observers with MCI than for normal controls, old or young, although the two groups of older observers performed at equivalent levels in precue tests (assay of visibility) and tests cued at long delays (assay of short-term memory). The result suggests that fast decay of iconic memory might be a general characteristic of observers with MCI who are at much higher than average risk of developing Alzheimer's disease later in life.

/pdf/fast-decay-of-iconic-memory-in-observers-with-mild-cognitive-4yogi0zi14.pdf

Fast decay of iconic memory in observers with mild cognitive impairments.

The item recovery or reminiscence component of recall in RTT procedures was investigated in two free recall experiments. In the first, Erdelyi and Becker’s (1974) “hypermnesia” effect was found with pictures as the to-be-remembered material: total amount recalled increased over two successive test trials, and included a large reminiscence effect, with some 27% of previously unrecalled items appearing in the second test. The second experiment, with word lists, showed that the frequency of occurrence of new items was greater following a 12-min separation of two test trials than in two relatively massed tests. This kind of item recovery is relevant to models of output interference and retrieval limitations in free recall, and may be also related to spontaneous recovery effects.

/pdf/reminiscence-and-item-recovery-in-free-recall-3h6e0p03l9.pdf

Reminiscence and item recovery in free recall.

Perfect recall and total forgetting: A problem for models of short-term memory

Two different kinds of serial position curves are produced by immediate serial recall of supraspan lists. One is the regular bow-shaped curve, generally regarded as the standard shape. The other is a curve in which recall decreases from the first to about the third serial position, levels off at the fourth position, and then decreases more sharply at the fifth serial position. In many studies, this marked pattern suggests a discontinuity in the serial position curve. This article reviews studies producing each kind of curve, presents some analyses suggesting that a chunking process is involved in the production of the second kind of curve, and discusses the significance of the problem for studies of serial recall and order information.

/pdf/the-serial-position-curve-in-immediate-serial-recall-4kl6ie05qv.pdf

Stephen Madigan

Papers

Fast decay of iconic memory in observers with mild cognitive impairments.

Reminiscence and item recovery in free recall.

Perfect recall and total forgetting: A problem for models of short-term memory

The serial position curve in immediate serial recall

Immediate and delayed recall of words and pictures.