I. Week 1

A. Announcements

The assignment will be posted in two parts, although it will be handed in all at once at the beginning of the next section, as in the course handout.

B. Put on board for reference during the lecture

Methodological distinctions

Direct memory tests

Recall: Cued, free

Recognition ("new/old")

Indirect memory tests

e.g. better perception, perceived humor, etc.

Underlying process distinctions

Familiarity (feeling of familiarity without source)

Recollection

Generic, overall term: Retrieval

C. Content introduction (On overheads)

1. An unaware as well as an aware component in much of cognition: Controlled & automatic, analytic & nonanalytic.

Indirect tests with amnesics: Lose conscious. deliberate memory, but show an effect of single prior events on current performance ("you are the type who would like Miles Davis"; Klaperet’s pin; Whittlesea’s joke). Referred to as indirect memory tests because the person is not explicitly asked to remember anything.

Memory in normals: Commonly recognize someone, but can't get any more back... a feeling of familiarity without content. More extreme: Item from a previously seen list is later seen better, even when people say they don’t remember it being in this list.

Perception: T-scope -- often not experienced as seeing. Hard to differentiate between guessing and "really seeing." But, guesses are commonly above chance even when the subjects report "just guessing." Difference between forced choice and free report. Possible interest in the task: Speed reading, normal "fast" perception.

Categorization (naming, diagnosis): Hunches without rules.

Indirect tests that have different retention characteristics: Ability to read a word previously experienced in context stays more constant across time than does ability to recognize the word as having been experienced before.

"Sleeper effect:" A message is apparently more persuasive after a delay -- possibly when the source is forgotten.

? Subliminal advertising: Rumored to produce involuntary persuasion (for a follow-up, see Begg’s work on illusory belief).

D. How are they related to one another?

Possibly the "unaware" component is just a weak version of the more aware component, and, since it is essentially the same thing, it is of no special importance.

On the other hand, it might be that this unaware component represents a different kind of functioning, with its own characteristics, that supports performance under distinctly different conditions. Maybe we can be influenced "unconsciously" in a way that we can't fully control.

These questions raised interest in finding a way to separate them.

E. Problem: How do we get evidence that converges on this idea that there are two

different components. A common prior approach: Find circumstances under which only the "unaware" component was functioning. Aim: Prove that it is really there and that it influences behavior.

Maybe unconscious perception was characteristically fast and efficient: Maybe there is a speed of exposure that makes

Maybe if the person is distracted during initial exposure, then the presentation will affect processing without us being aware of it and without effective control over it.

? Sleep presentation

The problems with each of these approaches:

These require very special conditions. The more special they are, the more unlikely that these are conditions we normally experience.

Even so, there is always a way to question whether the presentation was "truly unconscious."

F. Jacoby's approach: Opposition procedure -- exclusion condition. Emphasize the process of discovery.

Fame (normal condition is inclusion)

Recognition memory (normal condition is inclusion)

G. Introduction to the experiment underlying the data set

Describe "Main Experiment" (as posted in the assignment).