When old/new recognition memory is tested with equal numbers of studied and non-studied items and no rewards or instructions that favour one response over the other, there is no obvious reason for response bias. In line with this, Canadian undergraduates have shown, on average, a neutral response bias when we tested them on recognition of common English words. By contrast, most subjects we have tested on recognition of richly detailed images have shown a conservative bias: they more often erred by missing a studied image than by judging a non-studied image as studied. Here, in an effort to better understand these materials-based bias effects (MBBEs), we examined changes in hit and false alarm (FA) rates (and in sensitivity and bias) from the first to fourth quartile of a recognition memory test in eight experiments in which undergraduates studied words and/or images of paintings. Response bias for images tended to increase across quartiles, whereas bias for words showed no consistent pattern across quartiles. This pattern could be described as an increase in the MBBE over the course of the test, but the underlying patterns for hits and FAs are not easily reconciled with this interpretation. Hit rates decreased over the course of the test for both materials types, with that decline tending to be steeper for images than words. For words, FA rates tended to increase across quartiles, whereas for paintings FA rates did not increase across quartiles. We discuss implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of the MBBE. / Graduate

A series of recognition memory experiments using masterwork paintings and words are reported in which participants were reliably conservative in endorsing images of paintings as “studied”. The current paper establishes the historical context of this materials-based bias effect (MBBE) and presents two new experiments aimed at characterizing the underlying mechanisms. Nine previous experiments are reviewed to illustrate the MBBE’s robustness to various encoding and test manipulations and the insufficiency of two prior hypotheses to account for its origins. Meta-analyses of response bias and sensitivity and analysis of these measures by test quartile are presented and discussed along with receiver operating characteristics and response time data for all of these experiments. In one new experiment, the response scale on the recognition test was modified to allow participants to choose from not only “studied” or “not studied” options, but also options indicating uncertainty due to the similarity among test items. The hypothesis that these similarity/confusability-related responses would be chosen more for paintings was not supported. A second new experiment aimed to better characterize the time course of the MBBE by implementing a 1-s respond deadline, which it was hypothesized would reduce the effect, but this hypothesis was also not supported. Results of all experiments are discussed in the context of unequal variance and dual process models of recognition memory. / Graduate / 0633 / 0623 / kmfallow@uvic.ca

<p>Cognitive theories claim that phobias involve unconscious processing and that anxious individuals search the environment for threatening stimuli and therefore detect them more rapidly. However, evidence for this is mixed and suggests that anxious individuals do not detect threat more accurately but are more liberal to report that they detected threat even if there was no actual threat (response bias). In this study, 55 women performed a detection task with pictures of snakes, spiders, and guns. The pictures were backward masked to reduce their visibility. Participants also filled in questionnaires that assessed their fear and disgust. As found in previous studies, detection performance did not correlate with fear. However, inconsistent with previous results, disgust sensitivity correlated with lower detection performance of snakes, and response biases varied with fear of spiders or snakes. These findings provide mixed support for notions of relationships between fear and disgust in threat detection.</p>

Cognitive theories claim that phobias involve unconscious processing and that anxious individuals search the environment for threatening stimuli and therefore detect them more rapidly. However, evidence for this is mixed and suggests that anxious individuals do not detect threat more accurately but are more liberal to report that they detected threat even if there was no actual threat (response bias). In this study, 55 women performed a detection task with pictures of snakes, spiders, and guns. The pictures were backward masked to reduce their visibility. Participants also filled in questionnaires that assessed their fear and disgust. As found in previous studies, detection performance did not correlate with fear. However, inconsistent with previous results, disgust sensitivity correlated with lower detection performance of snakes, and response biases varied with fear of spiders or snakes. These findings provide mixed support for notions of relationships between fear and disgust in threat detection.

Patients with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD) tend to exhibit impairments in in their episodic memory. In yes-no tests of recognition memory, patients with AD often display liberal response bias, a stronger tendency to recognize unstudied items as already-studied "old" items. Such tendency is believed to be related to false memory, which can decrease the quality of life in many AD patients. In this study, we analyzed the effect of different instructional manipulations within yes-no recognition memory task on response bias. Younger healthy adults, older healthy adults and one AD patient were evaluated for recognition memory performance and response bias in three different conditions of instructional manipulation. In each session separated by a week-long interval, participants were shown 120 words to study and 240 words, half of which were studied items, to be tested for recognition memory. Instructional manipulation was added in the testing phase of each condition. In one session, the participants were asked if the words were old, studied items; in another session, they were asked if the words were new, unstudied items; finally in the third session, participants were asked to identify if the words were either old or new. Our findings corroborated previous studies by observing liberal response bias in AD and moderately conservative response bias in health adults. We found that the instructional manipulations did not have a significant effect on response bias in either control group while the effect in the AD patient was inconclusive.

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No / The right hemisphere has often been viewed as having a dominant role in the processing of emotional information. Other evidence indicates that both hemispheres process emotional information but their involvement is valence specific, with the right hemisphere dealing with negative emotions and the left hemisphere preferentially processing positive emotions. This has been found under both restricted (Reuter-Lorenz & Davidson, 1981) and free viewing conditions (Jansari, Tranel, & Adolphs, 2000). It remains unclear whether the valence-specific laterality effect is also sex specific or is influenced by the handedness of participants. To explore this issue we repeated Jansari et al.'s free-viewing laterality task with 78 participants. We found a valence-specific laterality effect in women but not men, with women discriminating negative emotional expressions more accurately when the face was presented on the left-hand side and discriminating positive emotions more accurately when those faces were presented on the right-hand side. These results indicate that under free viewing conditions women are more lateralised for the processing of facial emotion than are men. Handedness did not affect the lateralised processing of facial emotion. Finally, participants demonstrated a response bias on control trials, where facial emotion did not differ between the faces. Participants selected the left-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was negative and the right-hand side more frequently when they believed the expression was positive. This response bias can cause a spurious valence-specific laterality effect which might have contributed to the conflicting findings within the literature.

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No / Surveys are a common method of data collection within health service research. An essential aspect of reporting survey research is ensuring that sufficient information is provided to enable readers to determine the validity and representativeness of research findings. Method This study reports a secondary analysis of survey research published in Radiography and Clinical Radiology between 2001 and 2010. The purpose of the study was to evaluate trends in response rates and establish how non-response bias was being addressed. Results Analysis of non-response bias was undertaken in 9.4% (n = 9/96) of studies. Where analysis was performed, strong reliance on demographic characteristics to determine sample representativeness was noted (n = 8/9; 88.9%). Conclusion The findings of this study suggest that non-response bias is not being adequately addressed within published imaging related survey research and more needs to be done to encourage a rigorous approach to the analysis and reporting of survey results.