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Metamemory and Eyewitness Memory: Will the Accessibility Heuristic be used to predict Memory for Details of a Complex Event?

Metamemory is a person’s knowledge about their own memory. Metamemory judgments are sometimes accurate and sometimes not. Eakin (2005) found a dissociation between metamemory predictions and memory performance under conditions of retroactive interference and attributed this dissociation to the accessibility heuristic. This study investigated whether the accessibility heuristic would be used to make metamemory predictions in the more complex context of the eyewitness memory paradigm. The results indicate that the accessibility heuristic was used to make metamamory predictions. Memory performance was better for control than misled critical items, but people predicted they would perform equally well in both conditions. It appears that in the less austere context of the eyewitness memory paradigm, the amount of information accessible for control and misled items was equal, and therefore, metamemory judgments were equal for control and misled items.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-4071
Date30 April 2011
CreatorsWebster, Kathryn Meredith
PublisherScholars Junction
Source SetsMississippi State University
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
SourceTheses and Dissertations

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