Tag Archives: psychology

Recall at SARMAC 2015

Events, Research Update, , ,

On June 24-28 Recall researcher Dr Caterina Cinel attended SARMAC 2015, a biennial conference on applied memory and cognition. Researchers at the conference present work where psychological theories of memory and cognition are applied to real-word domains, such as law, education, advertising, politics, etc. At the conference, Caterina presented a poster showing the research carried out at Essex University in the last year on retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF). RIF is a well-studied phenomenon where retrieval practice of a subset of events can enhance their later recall, but can impair accessibility to related but unreviewed events. In seven experiments, Essex researchers C. Cinel and G. Ward show that we can manipulate factors that selectively amplify and/or attenuate the forgetting and enhancement of selected memories. However, whereas retrieval practice effects can be found with all stimuli, to date, evidence for RIF has been limited to semantic lab-based stimuli, while we found limited evidence of RIF with real-word, episodic stimuli.

The poster was very well received and during the presentation session many researchers have shown interest in our research and given valuable insight and comments.

International Conference presentations

Events,

Two presentations from the Essex researchers working on RECALL have been accepted at key international memory conferences.

Geoff Ward will be presenting this May at CEMS 2015 (Context and Episodic Memory Symposium) in Philadelphia some of the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) work from the RECALL grant. This conference is heavily theoretically driven, but includes work by Prof. Simon Dennis (University of Newcastle) who is presenting on experience-sampling in the wild, a line of research similar to the experience sampling (XPR) work that we are planning.

Caterina Cinel will give a presentation in June at SARMAC XI (Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition), in Victoria, BC, again about Retrieval Induced Forgetting in the real world. This conference is far more applied in outlook, and we are keen to see how our research is considered by those interested in such fields as eye-witness testimony, memory training, and the role of memory testing in education.

Recall-induced Forgetting and Intelligent Review

Research Update, ,

Suppose you could capture and process a synopsis of your day into an edited summary that you reviewed each night?

In Recall, we envisage an future in which technology can be used to help individuals actively maintain their memories through the review of recent experiences. For example, mobile devices, TV screens, heads-up displays and projectors could all be used as mechanisms for showing an “intelligent review” that summarised key events through video, email snippets, calendar events etc.

Recall researchers Geoff Ward and Caterina Cinel are beginning work on the intelligent review function of RECALL. What might we expect the mnemonic consequences to be of watching your daily synopsis on your later spontaneous ability to recall events from that day? Based on the laboratory phenomenon of retrieval–induced forgetting (RIF, see April 2014 post), one might expect increased access to the revised material but decreased access to related but not practiced events.

Continue reading Recall-induced Forgetting and Intelligent Review →

Recall-Induced Forgetting for Real-World Experiences

Research Update,

Recall researchers Geoff Ward and Caterina Cinel from the University of Essex are finishing a preliminary series of three psychology experiments for Recall examining whether a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (or RIF, see Anderson, Bjork & Bjork, 1994) which can be observed with words in the psychology laboratory will be likely to be found with images of autobiographical memories in the real world. Continue reading Recall-Induced Forgetting for Real-World Experiences →