Collective overclaiming is related to collective narcissism and numeracy.

When asked to estimate how much their state or nation has contributed to history, people typically provide unreasonably large estimates, claiming that their group has contributed much more to history than nongroup members would estimate, demonstrating collective overclaiming. Why does such overclaiming occur? In the current study we examined factors that might predict collective overclaiming. Participants from 12 U.S. states estimated how much their home state contributed to U.S. history, completed measures of collective narcissism and numeracy, and rated the importance of 60 specific historical events. There was a positive relationship between collective overclaiming and collective narcissism, a negative relationship between collective overclaiming and numeracy, and a positive relationship between collective overclaiming and the importance ratings of the specific events. Together, these results indicate that overclaiming is partially and positively related to collective narcissism and negatively related to people's ability to work with numbers. We conclude that collective overclaiming is likely determined by several factors, including the availability heuristic and ego protection mechanisms, in addition to collective narcissism and relative innumeracy.

Collective remembering and future forecasting during the COVID-19 pandemic: How the impact of COVID-19 affected the themes and phenomenology of global and national memories across 15 countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic created a unique set of circumstances in which to investigate collective memory and future simulations of events reported during the onset of a potentially historic event. Between early April and late June 2020, we asked over 4,000 individuals from 15 countries across four continents to report on remarkable (a) national and (b) global events that (i) had happened since the first cases of COVID-19 were reported, and (ii) they expected to happen in the future. Whereas themes of infections, lockdown, and politics dominated global and national past events in most countries, themes of economy, a second wave, and lockdown dominated future events. The themes and phenomenological characteristics of the events differed based on contextual group factors. First, across all conditions, the event themes differed to a small yet significant degree depending on the severity of the pandemic and stringency of governmental response at the national level. Second, participants reported national events as less negative and more vivid than global events, and group differences in emotional valence were largest for future events. This research demonstrates that even during the early stages of the pandemic, themes relating to its onset and course were shared across many countries, thus providing preliminary evidence for the emergence of collective memories of this event as it was occurring. Current findings provide a profile of past and future collective events from the early stages of the ongoing pandemic, and factors accounting for the consistencies and differences in event representations across 15 countries are discussed.

True-false tests enhance retention relative to rereading.

Testing with various formats enhances long-term retention of studied information; however, little is known whether true-false tests produce this benefit despite their frequent use in the classroom. We conducted four experiments to explore the retention benefits of true-false tests. College students read passages and reviewed them by answering true-false questions or by restudying correct information from the passages. They then took a criterial test 2 days later that consisted of short-answer questions (Experiments 1 and 2) or short-answer and true-false questions (Experiments 3 and 4). True-false tests enhanced retention compared to rereading correct statements and compared to typing those statements while rereading (the latter in a mini meta-analysis). Evaluating both true and false statements yielded a testing effect on short-answer criterial tests, whereas evaluating only true statements produced a testing effect on true-false criterial tests. Finally, a simple modification that asked students to correct statements they marked as false on true-false tests improved retention of those items when feedback was provided. True-false tests can be an effective and practical learning tool to improve students' retention of text material. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Can signal detection theory explain everyday amnesia (high confident misses)?

Levi et al. (2021) critique the concept of everyday amnesia (high confident misses) by arguing that these are simply due to criterion shifts within a signal detection framework. We agree that signal detection figures can be drawn to conceptualize the results, but we argue such efforts merely provide a re-description of the phenomenon without explaining it. For that, one would need a process theory. Signal detection theory represents an elegant framework for conceiving of issues in decision making, but not for explaining mechanisms underlying them. A signal detection figure can be created for any possible recognition memory result; any pair of hit rates and false alarm rates (and hence miss rates and correct rejection rates) is amenable to such a depiction. If we were to cast the issue we raised in terms of signal detection theory, we might ask: Why do some subjects place their most liberal criterion in such a way that they miss, with high confidence, items that they recently studied? Signal detection theory provides no answer.

Applying confidence accuracy characteristic plots to old/new recognition memory experiments.

Confidence-accuracy characteristic (CAC) plots were developed for use in eyewitness identification experiments, and previous findings show that high confidence indicates high accuracy in all studies of adults with an unbiased lineup. We apply CAC plots to standard old/new recognition memory data by calculating response-based and item-based accuracy, one using false alarms and the other using misses. We use both methods to examine the confidence-accuracy relationship for both correct old responses (hits) and new responses (correct rejections). We reanalysed three sets of published data using these methods and show that the method chosen, as well as the relation of lures to targets, determines the confidence-accuracy relation. Using response-based accuracy for hits, high confidence yields quite high accuracy, and this is generally true with the other methods, especially when lures are unrelated to targets. However, when analyzing correct rejections, the relationship between confidence and accuracy is less pronounced. When lures are semantically related to targets, the various CAC plots show different confidence-accuracy relations. The different methods of calculating CAC plots provide a useful tool in analyzing standard old/new recognition experiments. The results generally accord with unequal-variance signal detection models of recognition memory.

The effect of delayed judgments of learning on retention.

Evidence is mixed concerning whether delayed judgments of learning (JOLs) enhance learning and if so, whether their benefit is similar to retrieval practice. One potential explanation for the mixed findings is the truncated search hypothesis, which states that not all delayed JOLs lead to a full-blown covert retrieval attempt. In three paired-associate learning experiments, we examined the effect of delayed JOLs on later recall by comparing them to conditions of restudy, overt retrieval, and various other delayed JOL conditions. In Experiment 1, after an initial study phase, subjects either restudied word pairs, practiced overt retrieval, or made cue-only or cue-target delayed JOLs. In Experiments 2a and 2b, where conditions were manipulated within-subjects, subjects either restudied word pairs, practiced overt retrieval, made cue-only delayed JOLs, made cue-only delayed JOLs followed by a yes/no retrieval question or, in another condition, by an overt retrieval prompt. The final cued recall tests were delayed by two days. In Experiment 1, recall after cue-only delayed JOLs did not reliably differ from recall after overt retrieval or restudy. In Experiments 2a and 2b, delayed JOLs consistently produced poorer recall relative to overt retrieval. Furthermore, reaction times for delayed JOLs were shorter relative to delayed JOLs paired with overt retrieval prompts. We conclude that only some delayed JOLs elicit covert retrieval attempts, a pattern supporting the truncated search hypothesis. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11409-021-09260-0.

Recognition memory: Tulving's contributions and some new findings.

Endel Tulving has provided unparalleled contributions to the study of human memory. We consider here his contributions to the study of recognition memory and celebrate his first article on recognition, a nearly forgotten but (we argue) essential paper from 1968. We next consider his distinction between remembering and knowing, its relation to confidence, and the implications of high levels of false remembering in the DRM paradigm for using phenomenal experiences as measures of memory. We next pivot to newer work, the use of confidence accuracy characteristic plots in analyzing standard recognition memory experiments. We argue they are quite useful in such research, as they are in eyewitness research. For example, we report that even with hundreds of items, high confidence in a response indicates high accuracy, just as it does in one-item eyewitness research. Finally, we argue that amnesia (rapid forgetting) occurs in all people (not just amnesic patients) for some of their experiences. We provide evidence from three experiments revealing that subjects who fail to recognize recently studied items (miss responses) do so with high confidence 15-20% of the time. Such high confidence misses constitute our definition of everyday amnesia that can occur even in college student populations.

The relationship between confidence and accuracy with verbal and verbal + numeric confidence scales.

Police departments often use verbal confidence measures (highly confident, somewhat confident) with a small number of values, whereas psychologists measuring the confidence-accuracy relationship typically use numeric scales with a large range of values (20-point or 100-point scales). We compared verbal and verbal + numeric confidence scales for two different lineups, using either two or four levels of confidence. We found strong confidence-accuracy relationships that were unaffected by the nature of the scale at the highest level of confidence. High confidence corresponded to high accuracy with both two- and four-level scales, and the scale type (verbal only or verbal + numeric) did not matter. Police using a simple scale of "highly confident" and "somewhat confident" can, according to our results, rest assured that high confidence indicates high accuracy on a first identification from a lineup. In addition, our two lineups differed greatly in difficulty, yet the confidence-accuracy relationship was quite strong for both lineups, although somewhat lower for the more difficult lineup.

The range of confidence scales does not affect the relationship between confidence and accuracy in recognition memory.

Researchers use a wide range of confidence scales when measuring the relationship between confidence and accuracy in reports from memory, with the highest number usually representing the greatest confidence (e.g., 4-point, 20-point, and 100-point scales). The assumption seems to be that the range of the scale has little bearing on the confidence-accuracy relationship. In two old/new recognition experiments, we directly investigated this assumption using word lists (Experiment 1) and faces (Experiment 2) by employing 4-, 5-, 20-, and 100-point scales. Using confidence-accuracy characteristic (CAC) plots, we asked whether confidence ratings would yield similar CAC plots, indicating comparability in use of the scales. For the comparisons, we divided 100-point and 20-point scales into bins of either four or five and asked, for example, whether confidence ratings of 4, 16-20, and 76-100 would yield similar values. The results show that, for both types of material, the different scales yield similar CAC plots. Notably, when subjects express high confidence, regardless of which scale they use, they are likely to be very accurate (even though they studied 100 words and 50 faces in each list in 2 experiments). The scales seem convertible from one to the other, and choice of scale range probably does not affect research into the relationship between confidence and accuracy. High confidence indicates high accuracy in recognition in the present experiments.