The Locus of the Effects of Psychological Distance on Memory Specificity: Encoding or Retrieval?

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Live Poster Session: https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/98379758494

Sanni Zhang
Sanni Zhang

Sanni Zhang ’22 is a graduating senior who is double majoring in Psychology and Science in Society. Sanni is very intrigued by how digital technology use impacts our memory and self recognition. Her interests include cooking noodle soup, reading science fiction, and hiking. After Wesleyan, Sanni is going to pursue a graduate degree in Human Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon University.

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Augusta Burhans
Augusta Burhans

Augusta Claire Burhans ’23 is a Psychology major with a minor in African Studies. She is interested in studying psychopathology as well as self-biases in attention, memory and perception. After Wesleyan, she hopes to pursue either a further degree in clinical psychology or a joint degree in law and psychology. Outside of the lab, she runs for the Wesleyan Women’s Track and Field team and enjoys traveling.

Nina Eyres
Nina Eyres

Nina Eyres ’23 is a Psychology and Science in Society double major. She is especially interested in how one’s individualized biases and experiences can give rise to the manipulation of certain memories as a function of time. After her time at Wesleyan, Nina is interested in obtaining a law degree in field that employs research in cognitive psychology. Away from the lab, she can be found hiking, playing club soccer, and bragging about her dog back home.

Abstract:

Psychological distance refers to the degree to which a stimulus is removed from one’s immediate, direct experience. In our previous study, we found that psychological distance, when manipulated at encoding, influences memory specificity by producing a verbatim vs. gist memory advantage for psychologically proximal vs. distal stimuli, respectively. An important question that remains is whether the observed effects of psychological distance operate at encoding to affect the way information is initially encoded or at retrieval to affect the accessibility of different aspects of information already stored in memory. In the present follow-up study, we addressed this question by manipulating psychological distance after encoding but prior to memory retrieval. During encoding, participants made size judgments to object pictures. They then undertook a writing task in which the psychological distance manipulation was introduced (i.e. writing about one’s life tomorrow vs. a year later). Finally, in a surprise memory test, participants indicated whether each object was the same as the one they had seen before, similar, or new. Unlike in our previous study, we found no significant effect of psychological distance on memory specificity. Though preliminary, our findings suggest that the effects of psychological distance on memory are likely to operate at encoding, affecting what aspect of information is preferentially attended to and retained.

Keywords: psychological distance; memory; construal level; verbatim; gist

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