Browsing by Author "Besken, Miri"

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Open Access
The bizarreness effect and visual imagery : no impact of concurrent visuo-spatial distractor tasks indicates little role for visual imagery
(American Psychological Association, 2021-08-05) Besken, Miri; Mulligan, N. W.
Ancient as well as modern writers have promoted the idea that bizarre images enhance memory. Research has documented bizarreness effects, with one standard technique finding that sentences describing unusual, implausible, or bizarre scenarios are better remembered than sentences describing plausible, every day, or common scenarios. Not surprisingly, this effect is often attributed to visual imagery, and the effect often referred to as the bizarre imagery effect. But the role of imagery has been disputed even as research has found it difficult to clearly distinguish the effects of imagery from other possible bases for the bizarreness advantage. The current experiments assessed the visual-imagery hypothesis by disrupting visual imagery processes during encoding, which should reduce the bizarreness effect if it is indeed due to imagery. Specifically, one group carried out a concurrent task that selectively disrupted visual working memory (and visual imagery) during the encoding of sentences; a control group encoded the sentences without distraction. Across four experiments, the distractor task was dynamic visual noise, the spatial tapping task, and a visual span task. Each experiment found a robust bizarreness effect that was never reduced by visuospatial distraction. Combined, meta-analytic, and Bayesian analyses concurred with the results of the individual experiments. The results indicate little role for visual imagery in the bizarreness effect.
Open Access
Blessedly forgetful and blissfully unaware: a positivity bias in memory for (re)constructions of imagined past and future events
(Routledge, 2020) Ünal, Belgin; Besken, Miri
People frequently consider the alternatives of the events that can happen in the future and of the events that already happened in the past in everyday life. The current study investigates the effects of engaging in imagination of hypothetical future (Experiment 1) and past (Experiment 2) events on memory and metamemory. We demonstrate, across two experiments, that imagination of positive future and positive past events yielded greater memory performance than negative events, as well as receiving higher vividness and plausibility ratings. In addition, simulation of a negative event occurring positively in the future or having occurred positively in the past produced higher memory performance, compared to simulation of a positive event occurring / having occurred negatively. However, participants’ predictions for their subsequent memory performance did not reflect their increased tendency to remember positive or could-be / could-have-been positive events neither for future nor past reconstructions. These findings are interpreted in the framework of positivity bias which suggests that people have a tendency towards positivity when simulating future events; and we extend this positivity bias to reconstructions of the hypothetical past events as well.
Open Access
Cooking through perceptual disfluencies: The effects of auditory and visual distortions on predicted and actual memory performance
(Springer New York LLC, 2022-11-23) Ardıç, Ecem Eylül; Besken, Miri
The current study investigated the joint contribution of visual and auditory disfuencies, or distortions, to actual and predicted memory performance with naturalistic, multi-modal materials through three experiments. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants watched food recipe clips containing visual and auditory information that were either fully intact or else distorted in one or both of the two modalities. They were asked to remember these for a later memory test and made memory predictions after each clip. Participants produced lower memory predictions for distorted auditory and visual information than intact ones. However, these perceptual distortions revealed no actual memory diferences across encoding conditions, expanding the metacognitive illusion of perceptual disfuency for static, single-word materials to naturalistic, dynamic, multi-modal materials. Experiment 3 provided naïve participants with a hypothetical scenario about the experimental paradigm used in Experiment 1, revealing lower memory predictions for distorted than intact information in both modalities. Theoretically, these results imply that both in-the-moment experiences and a priori beliefs may contribute to the perceptual disfuency illusion. From an applied perspective, the study suggests that when audio-visual distortions occur, individuals might use this information to predict their memory performance, even when it does not factor into actual memory performance.
Open Access
Mixed in a world of truth and lies: list composition moderates the effects of a lie fabrication manipulation on memory and metamemory
(Sage Publications, Inc., 2024-09-14) Ünal, Belgin; Kaya, Samet; Besken, Miri
Research has shown that list composition moderates the effects of encoding manipulations on memory performance; differential memory performance is observed at distinct levels of the independent variable in mixed lists, but not in pure lists. The current study aims to investigate the effect of list composition on predicted and actual memory performance using a semantic lie fabrication manipulation. In Experiment 1, participants either told the truth or fabricated a lie in response to a set of general knowledge questions in a mixed-list design, made memory predictions for each response, and received a free recall test. Experiments 2A and 2B compared the effect of list composition by employing mixed and pure lists, respectively. The results showed that the lie fabrication led to a metacognitive illusion in mixed lists by inducing a crossed double dissociation between memory and metamemory. Participants produced higher memory performance and lower memory predictions for lies than the truth. In contrast, predicted and actual memory performance were similar for truth and lies in pure lists. These findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge on list composition and have implications for situations where individuals need to maintain and remember their fabricated lies.
Open Access
Online dating through lies: the effects of lie fabrication for personal semanticinformation on predicted and actual memory performance
(Routledge, 2023-02-16) Kaya, Samet; Besken, Miri; Bal, Ceren; Berjin İke, Selin
Research shows that people lie on online dating sites often but might fail to remember this information subsequently. This study investigated participants’ predicted and actual memory performance for personal semantic information after telling the truth versus a lie in two experiments in a setup similar to online dating sites. In Experiment 1, participants responded to open-ended questions either truthfully or fabricated lies in a within-subjects design, followed by predictions for remembering their responses. Subsequently, they recalled their responses through free-recall. Using the same design, Experiment 2 also manipulated the type of retrieval task by using a free- or cued-recall test. The results showed that participants consistently had higher memory predictions for truthful than deceptive responses. However, the actual memory performance did not always produce similar results to their predictions. The results suggest that the difficulties during lie fabrication, measured through response latencies, partially mediated the relationship between lying and memory predictions. The study has important applied implications for lying about personal semantic information in online dating contexts.
Open Access
The role of positive relationship events in romantic attachment avoidance
(American Psychological Association, 2022-07-28) Bayraktaroğlu, D.; Günaydın, G.; Selçuk, E.; Besken, Miri; Karakitapoglu-Aygun, Z.
Motivated by the Attachment Security Enhancement Model (Arriaga et al., 2018), the present research investigated the associations between positive relationship experiences and romantic attachment avoidance in three dyadic studies that combined multiple methods, including daily diaries, laboratory observations, and longitudinal follow-ups. Frequency of daily positive relationship events (but not external positive events) during a 21-day diary period predicted declines in romantic attachment avoidance (but not anxiety) from pre to post-diary in fledgling couples (Study 1) and newlyweds (Study 2). Video-recorded discussions of fledgling couples’ shared positive experiences revealed that behaviors validating the relationship (but not simply showing conversational interest) predicted lagged declines in romantic attachment avoidance (but not anxiety) over 1 month (Study 3). The associations were mediated by positive affect during the diary period in Studies 1 and 2, and by changes in positive affect from pre to post-discussion in Study 3. Positive relationship experiences did not significantly interact with time in predicting romantic avoidance over a 1-year follow-up with quarterly assessments of attachment orientations in Study 1, over an 8-month follow-up with monthly assessments in Study 2, or over a 2-month follow-up with monthly assessments in Study 3. Altogether, these studies provide one of the most comprehensive tests of how positive relationship experiences in nondistressing contexts are linked to romantic attachment.