The speed and the temporal aspects of item and source processing in source monitoring

Tanyaş, Hilal

PDF
Dissertation_HilalTanyas_library.pdf - Published
Download (3MB)

URN:	urn:nbn:de:bsz:180-madoc-653369
Document Type:	Doctoral dissertation
Year of publication:	2023
Place of publication:	Mannheim
University:	Universität Mannheim
Evaluator:	Bröder, Arndt
Date of oral examination:	19 September 2023
Publication language:	English
Institution:	Außerfakultäre Einrichtungen > Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences- CDSS (Social Sciences)
Subject:	150 Psychology
Keywords (English):	source monitoring , source memory , item memory , temporal sequence , mouse tracking , additive-factor method , diffusion model , multinomial modeling
Abstract:	The act of remembering does not solely include recognizing an encountered past experience (i.e., item) but also encompasses the critical ability to identify its episodic context (i.e., source). Source monitoring refers to this cognitive mechanism and subsumes memory (of item and source) and judgment processes by which the original source of a mental experience is determined (Johnson et al., 1993). In the literature, research on source monitoring aiming to understand dissociations between item and source processing has predominantly focused on accuracy performance. However, the speed of item and source processing and, in particular, their dissociations in time have received less attention. The overarching goal of the present dissertation is to examine the speed and the temporal aspects of item and source processing while concurrently benefiting from different methodological approaches. In separate experiments, I investigated whether source information is retrieved after completed item processing (i.e., seriality) or whether both can partially overlap in time (i.e., parallelism). In Manuscript 1, using mouse tracking, I assessed how item decisions and source decisions for recognized trials (i.e., items judged to be old) develop qualitatively over time if they are collected in immediate succession (as in the standard test of source monitoring) versus in separate test blocks (i.e., a novel blocked test procedure created for comparison purposes). In Manuscript 2, as a more sensitive technique to distinguish between seriality versus parallelism, I applied the longstanding additive-factor method to the standard test of source monitoring. On the basis of the selective influence manipulations on item and source latencies, I examined whether item and source retrieval are executed in strict sequence. In Manuscript 3, I used the diffusion model to gain a deeper understanding of processing speed by disentangling decisional and nondecisional processes. Focusing on the drift rates, I compared the item and source decision speeds between the standard and blocked tests on the parameter level. Overall, relying on different measures, the present dissertation aimed to address the temporal sequence of item and source processing dynamically (mouse tracking), in real-time (the additive-factor method), and via a formal modeling approach (diffusion modeling).