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Influence of dating formats on the telescoping effect and the distribution of autobiographical memory

Influence of dating formats on the telescoping effect and the distribution of autobiographical memory. Steve Janssen, Antonio Chessa, and Jaap Murre. Overview. Background experiments Dating formats Telescoping effect Expectations Results New experiment.

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Influence of dating formats on the telescoping effect and the distribution of autobiographical memory

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  1. Influence of dating formats on the telescoping effect and the distribution of autobiographical memory Steve Janssen, Antonio Chessa, and Jaap Murre

  2. Overview • Background experiments • Dating formats • Telescoping effect • Expectations • Results • New experiment

  3. Autobiographical Memory Distribution Galton-Crovitz cueing method (Galton, 1879; Crovitz & Schiffman, 1974): Participants are given cue words, such as cotton. They have to describe the first memory about a personal event that comes to mind while inspecting each cue word. Then, the participants are asked to date the retrieved personal events.

  4. Two problems • In which format should participants date these personal events (Calendar, age at event, relative time, or absolute time)? • How accurate are these estimates? Is there a systematically dating error?

  5. Dating formats The effect of different formats on the telescoping effect was examined in two experiments. In the first experiment, 181 subjects could choose to date the events in the relative time format (e.g., “2 years ago”) or in the absolute time format (e.g., “December, 2001”). In the second experiment, they were assigned to either the relative time (N = 514) or the absolute time condition (N = 1619).

  6. Telescoping effect The telescoping effect is the temporal displacement of an event (Thompson, et al., 1988). An event can be dated too remote (backward telescoping) or too recent (forward telescoping).

  7. Telescoping effect To assess the telescoping effect, after each cue word, participants had to date a news event, such as when Saddam Hussein was found by US soldiers in a hole in the ground in Iraq.

  8. Telescoping effect • Loftus, et al. (1990) • Rubin & Baddeley (1989) • Huttenlocher, et al. (1990)

  9. Expectations Rubin and Baddeley (1989) expect that recent events will be displaced backwards in time, while remote events will be displaced forward. Rubin (1982) would not expect any difference between the formats because the telescoping effect is caused by memory decay. However, in a personal communication he said that he would expect differences between the formats.

  10. Expectations Loftus, et al. (1990) argue that the absolute time format implies to the subjects that experimenter wants greater precision in dating than the relative time format implies. They would expect in Experiment II that the absolute time format will display less temporal displacement in both recent and remote events. When the formats are given simultaneously (e.g., Exp. I), this precision-message is not conveyed. Then, the displacement for both formats is expected to be equal.

  11. Expectations Huttenlocher, et al. (1990) thought, like Rubin and Baddeley, that recent events will be displaced backwards in time, while remote events will be displaced forward in time (bounding effects). Furthermore, they would expect that the relative time format will lead to smaller errors in dating recent events, but also to larger errors in remote events, because of rounding processes.

  12. Expectations *personal communication: difference between formats

  13. Results News Events We found in both experiments backward telescoping for recent news events and forward telescoping for remote news events. The relative time format led in both experiments to smaller errors in dating recent events, but larger errors in remote events. The results supported the view that rounding and bounding processes cause telescoping (Huttenlocher et al., 1990).

  14. Experiment II ♦ relative time format absolute time format

  15. Results Personal Events Participants preferred to date recent personal events with the relative time format and remote personal events were rather dated with the absolute time format (Exp I). When they had to date events in the relative time format, they reported more recent personal events than when they had to date events in the absolute time format (Exp II).

  16. Experiment II ♦ relative time format absolute time format

  17. New Experiment In the first condition, participants (N = 395) could choose between the absolute time format and the relative time format. The second condition was similar to the first condition, however the order of the formats was reversed for another 393 participants.

  18. Results We found that presentation order influenced preference. Furthermore, we found that people preferred to date recent and personal events in the absolute time format, while they preferred to date remote and news events in the relative time format.

  19. Absolute time format Relative time format *A positive difference means that participants more frequently dated the events with the absolute time format.

  20. Steve Janssen s.m.j.janssen@uva.nl http://memory.uva.nl

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