Otemon Gakuin University
Summary The present study
investigated the differences in
the attributes of episodes that participants remembered between
recalled words and non-recalled ones in incidental free recall.
Participants were asked to judge whether an episode came to mind when
each target word was presented in the orienting task phase, followed by
an unexpected free recall and rating phases. In the rating phase, they
were asked to rate the degree of three attributes, vividness,
pleasantness, and nostalgia, for each episode. Positive correlations
among the three attributes were observed for episodes of recalled words,
whereas for episodes of non-recalled words, they were not. These results
showed strong relationships among the
attributes of episodes that were
determinants of the effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration on
incidental recall regarding distinctiveness.
Elaboration in memory refers to adding more information to a target’s
trace (Jacoby & Craik, 1979). The newly added information could be of
many types, some of which, but not all, lead to effective elaboration.
Thus, effective elaboration could lead to better recall, and the quality
of the added information determines the effectiveness of elaboration.
Toyota (1984) reviewed the research on elaboration in memory and
indicated the contrast between the two types of elaboration. Semantic
elaboration refers to the addition of semantic information stored in
semantic memory and autobiographical elaboration stored in episodic
memory. The distinction between semantic and episodic memory is based on
Tulving’s (1972) proposal. Autobiographical elaboration was first
proposed by Warren, Chattin et al. (1983). Each target was
presented to the participant and asked to rate how long it had been
since its last visual contact with the object indicated by each target
on a temporal category scale (e.g., minutes, hours, day, week, month,
year), followed by a free recall test. The found “recency effect,”
namely target words rated in temporally recency position (e.g., minutes,
hours), were recalled more often than those in temporally primacy
position (e.g., month, year). They also showed that target words with
visual contact were recalled more often than were those with no visual
contact. When the participants remembered the visual contact with the
object indicated by the target word, they added autobiographical
information, namely, personal episodes. Therefore, they elaborated on
each target word using their episodes.
Toyota (1989) also replicated the “recency effect” using Kanjimaterials in Ex.1. He focuses on the determinants of the effectiveness
of autobiographical elaboration in Ex. 2 to 4. In the orienting task of
Ex.2, participants were asked to rate the number of episodes that came
to mind for each target word, followed by an incidental free recall
test. The targets rated as
eliciting many episodes were recalled more often than those that did
not. This result showed that the number of episodes elicited by a target
word determined the effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration. Ex.3
investigated whether the pleasantness of an episode determined the
effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration. The targets rated as
eliciting pleasant episodes were recalled more often than those that did
not. This result showed that the pleasantness of an episode elicited by
a target word was the determinant of the effectiveness of
autobiographical elaboration. In the orienting task of Ex. 4,
participants were asked to rate the vividness of an episode that came to
mind for each target word, followed by an incidental free recall test.
The targets rated to elicit vivid episodes were recalled more often
than those that were dull. This result showed that the vividness of an
episode elicited by a target word was the determinant of the
effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration. Episodes, including any
person (social memories), became more vivid than those not involving any
person (non-social memories). Toyota (2012) investigated the difference
in recall performance between target words associated with social
memories and those associated with non-social memories. The results
showed that targets with social memories were recalled more often than
those with non-social memories.
According to Hunt (2006), distinctiveness is a critical memory factor.
This result was interpreted in terms of distinctiveness. Namely,
episodes with social memories made targets more distinctive than those
with non-social memories. Therefore, the person’s information in an
episode determines the effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration.
McDonough and Gallo (2008) used the distinctive heuristic (Schacter et
al. 1999) to explain that autobiographical elaboration reduces false
recognition. “This heuristic is used when one correctly rejects an item
as having been studied in a target source because that item does not
bring to mind detailed recollections that would be expected if it had
been studied in that source”(p1430). Specifically, autobiographical
elaboration makes the target distinctive by adding personal episodes.
Thus, the target’s degree of distinctiveness determines the
effectiveness of autobiographical elaboration.
Although some attributes in an episode were identified as determinants
of the autobiographical elaboration’s effectiveness, the relationships
among these attributes, such as pleasantness and vividness, were not
clarified (Toyota, 1989). Cheung et al. (2018) has focused on nostalgia
in autobiographical memory functions and stressed the uniqueness of its
positive effect compared to rumination and counterfactual thinking.
Nostalgia is also assumed to be a critical attribute of effective
autobiographical elaboration. If so, targets with episodes involving
nostalgia would be recalled more often than those without nostalgia.
The present study examined the relationships among these attributes,
pleasantness, vividness, and nostalgia, using correlations between each
pair attribute to induce strong relationships. As an episode with
strong relationships among attributes would be more distinctive than
those with weak relationships, the former episode would be an effective
cue for retrieving the target associated with it. Thus, targets with
strong relationships among attributes are recalled more than those with
weak relationships. The present study also used Cronbach’s alpha to
index the strong relationships among attributes.
It was predicted that positive correlations among rating scores of these
attributes and higher alpha were observed in recalled targets.
Nevertheless, those correlations and alpha were not in non-recalled
targets. The purpose of the present study is to examine this prediction.
METHOD