Evaluating the evidence for nonconscious processes in producing false memories:Reply to Gallo and Seamon

In response to the failure of Zeelenberg, Plomp, and Raaijmakers (2003) to replicate the results of Seamon, Luo, and Gallo (1998) regarding their purported finding of a reliable false memory effect in the absence of memory for the list items, Gallo and Seamon (2004) report a new experiment that they claim shows that conscious activation of a related lure during study is not necessary for its subsequent recognition. We critically evaluate their conclusion and argue that the evidence clearly shows that false recognition is critically dependent on the conscious recollection of one or more of the list items. Thus, this as well as the previous experiments show no evidence for nonconscious processes in producing false memories

Can false memories be created through nonconscious processes?

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 ms to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by J.G. Seamon, C.R. Luo and D.A. Gallo (1998). Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the

Flood risk perceptions applied to a spatial multi-criteria analysis in the Ebro Delta in Spain

The conventional method of risk analysis (with risk as a product of probability and consequences) does not allow for a pluralistic approach that includes the various risk perceptions of stakeholders or lay people within a community or region. In river basins, it is often an expert-based economic analysis of land use values that serves as the underlying estimation of costs. Intangibles such as nature development, biodiversity and cultural heritage are difficult to include in the calculation. Yet, local knowledge can be used to develop a realistic approach to outweighing tangibles and intangibles of land use values, as well as developing new approaches to risk management. This can be important to find appropriate solutions for the mitigation of risk. This presentation introduces a methodology that combines the virtues of three different methods used for risk analysis: the quantifiable conventional approach to risk, the taxonomic analysis of perceived risk and the analytical framework of a spatial multicriteria analysis. The combination of these methods is applied to the case study ’Ebro Delta’ in Spain as part of the European 6th framework project ’Floodsite’. The new approach using this combination is the incorporation of risk perceptions and its application and operationalisation in a multi-criteria analysis. Risk perception is derived from the psychometric paradigm that distinguishes a variety of risk characteristics. Due to a number of similarities among these risk perceptions all known risk characteristics can be condensed into three higher order risk characteristics - awareness, worry and preparedness. This reduction of risk characteristics enables scientists to employ them as weights in a multi-criteria analysis. Risk perception information has been collected with help of an on-site survey. The result is significant levels of ’worry’ and ’awareness’ of the flood risk with an increasing demand for ’preparedness’. Risk perception enters the multi-criteria analysis as complementary weights for the criteria risk and benefit. The results of the survey are applied to a set of scenarios representing both sea level rise and land subsidence for a time span of fifty years. Land use alternatives that are based upon the given scenarios have been presented to stakeholders and evaluated. For effective land use policy in flood prone areas it can be useful to compare land use alternatives based upon their performance with respect to risk and benefit. In this way the regional decision maker has been given an overview of preferences for handling risk. Even with limited resources a characteristic ’risk profile’ could be drawn that enables the decision maker to develop a suitable land use policy or at least provide a basis for further social learning processes

Does pizza prime coin? Perceptual priming in lexical decision and pronunciation.

In 6 experiments the authors investigated priming for perceptually related word pairs (i.e., words that refer to objects with the same shape such as pizza-coin), trying to replicate earlier findings by R. Schreuder et al (see record 1985-06198-001) while avoiding some of the methodological problems that were present in that study. University students participated in the experiments. Under standard conditions no perceptual priming was obtained. However, in all experiments priming for associated pairs was found. Only after activation tasks that focused on perceptual features was priming for perceptually related word pairs found in pronunciation. Perceptual priming was also obtained in lexical decision after activation tasks, but only when strong associates were not presented in the experiment. The results show that priming for perceptually related word pairs is not a general finding

Effect of plant domestication on the rhizosphere microbiome of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) .

Plant domestication was a pivotal achievement for human civilization and subsequent plant improvement increased crop productivity and quality. However, domestication also caused a strong reduction in the genetic diversity of modern cultivars compared to their wild relatives. It is known that plants rely, in part, on the rhizosphere microbial community for wreowth, development and tolerance to (a)biotic stresses. Hence, plant domestication events may have adversely affected the bacterial diversity of the rhizosphere of two wild relatives, three landraces and three modern cultivars of common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). These different lines belong to the Mesoamerican bean gene pool of Colombia and were selected amongst more than 37,000 accessions kept in the Genetic Resources Program of the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT, Colombia). The eight accessions were grown in both native and in agricultural soils collected in the province of Antioquia (Colombia). At different plant growth stages, DNA was extracted from rhizospheric soil and bacterial taxonomic diversity was analysed by metagenomic sequencing of the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA. Our Approach of going ?back to the roots? using native soils togheter with wild relatives provides new fundamental insights in host genotype-mediated recruitment of beneficial microbes and in the functional and metabolic potential of the rhizosphere microbiome of native soils and wild relatives of modern crop cultivars

REMI and ROUSE: Quantitative Models for Long-Term and Short-Term Priming in Perceptual Identification

The REM model originally developed for recognition memory (Shiffrin & Steyvers, 1997) has recently been extended to implicit memory phenomena observed during threshold identification of words. We discuss two REM models based on Bayesian principles: a model for long-term priming (REMI; Schooler, Shiffrin, & Raaijmakers, 1999), and a model for short-term priming (ROUSE; Huber, Shiffrin, Lyle, & Ruys, in press). Although the identification tasks are the same, the basis for priming differs in the two models. In both paradigms we ask whether prior study merely reflects a bias to interpret ambiguous information in a certain manner, or instead leads to more efficient encoding. The observation of a ‘both-primed benefit’ in two-alternative forced-choice paradigms appears to show that both processes are present. However, the REMI model illustrates that the both-primed benefit is not necessarily indicative of an increase in perceptual sensitivity but might be generated by a criterion bias. The ROUSE model demonstrates how the amount of attention paid to the prime, and the consequent effect upon decision making, may lead to the reversal of the normal short-term priming effect that is observed in certain conditions