Background The Self: Strongly influences cognition and behaviour [1,2,3]

1. Spontaneous But Not Effortless: The Ownership Effect in Recollective Recognition Is Affected by Divided Attention at Encoding. Mirjam Brady-Van den Bos¹, Martin A. Conway², & David J. Turk¹, ¹University of Aberdeen, UK ²University of Leeds, UK • Background • The Self: • Strongly influences cognition and behaviour [1,2,3] • Directs our attention [1] • Triggers elaboration of information[2,3] • Is this elaboration process effortful? • Results • 2 (Locus) x 3 (DA) x 2 (Ownership) mixed ANOVA for • Remember and Know responses • No significant effects for Know responses (all p’s > .1) • Remember responses (see graph): • Main effect of locus, F(1,54) = 5.323, p = .025, indicating • recollective recognition is more impaired by DA at study than • by DA at test • Interaction of locus x attention x ownership, F(2,54) = 4.950, • p = .011, reflecting: • Only self-owned item memory was negatively affected by • DA at study, but not memory for other-owned items • No DA: better memory for self-owned than for other- • owned items • Easy DA at study: ownership effect • Easy DA at test: no ownership effect ENCODING 0.5 s ISI 1.5 s 3 Ownership phase: 1.5 s to respond 8 • Shallower levels of processing (less semantic) are engaged • under Divided Attention (DA) conditions [4] • If elaboration in response to a self-cue is effortful, DA at • encoding may reduce self-memory biases • If self-memory biases are encoding-based, DA at retrieval • may leave self-memory biases intact TEST 2 s to respond 5 Yes or No If ‘yes’, RKG screen If ‘no’, next item appears R = Remember K = Know G = Guess • Current experiment • Participants: 60 undergraduate students (38 females, mean • age 18.9 years) • Stimuli: 144 pictures (72 targets, 72 distractors) of shopping • items for sale in large supermarket • Design • Ownership (within-subjects): Items were assigned either to • self or to another person • DA (between-subjects): • Easy DA: Report number of even digits after every 6th digit • Hard DA: Report sequence of last 6 digits • None: Ignore the digits • Locus: DA (Easy, Hard, None) either at encoding or at test • (between-subjects) • At both encoding and test, the DA task was linked to each • trial. A response deadline ensured similar conditions for • encoding and test. • Recognition Test • 2-step Remember-Know-Guess recognition task • Remember: recollective experience, elaborative memory • Know: strong sense of familiarity, intra-item memory Remember Hit rates (corrected for False-Alarm rate) • Discussion • DA mostly affects self-owned item memory at study: • self-cue induced elaboration requires effort • But elaboration still can take place with reduced resources • at study (ownership effect with Easy DA). Perhaps • self-elaboration is partially spontaneous? • What happens at test? Retrieval of the rich memory • representation of self-owned items requires effort References [1] Bredart et al. (2006). The Quarterly Journalof Experimental Psychology, 59, 46-52. [2] Symons & Johnson (1997) Psychological Bulletin, 121, 371-394. [3] Van den Bos et al. (2010). The Quarterly Journalof Experimental Psychology, 63, 1065-1071. [4] Anderson et al. (2000). Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12, 775-792. Contact: Mirjam Brady-Van den Bos, School of Psychology, Kings College, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, AB24 8UB. Email m.van.den.bos@abdn.ac.uk