Durable Change in Implicit Cognition through Retrieval-Based Memory Modification

该奖项是美国国家科学基金会社会、行为和经济科学博士后研究奖学金（SPRF）计划的一部分。SPRF计划的目标是为学术界、工业界或私营部门和政府的科学事业准备有前途的早期职业博士级科学家。SPRF奖励包括在知名科学家的赞助下进行为期两年的培训，并鼓励博士后进行独立研究。美国国家科学基金会寻求促进科学界各阶层的科学家，包括那些未被充分代表的群体的科学家，参与其研究项目和活动；博士后阶段被认为是实现这一目标的一个重要的专业发展阶段。每个博士后必须解决各自学科领域的重要科学问题。这个博士后奖学金奖励支持一个正在崛起的学者，研究对人和群体的内隐（即相对自动的）反应的形成和变化。该项目将利用社会心理学、神经科学和动物记忆更新研究方面的研究成果，推进对如何有效、持久地修改内隐社会印象的科学理解。尽管许多人持有明确的（即自我报告的）平等主义和宽容信仰，但对认知的隐性测量揭示了对污名化或边缘化群体的负面印象，例如基于种族、民族、年龄、性别和性取向的群体。在社会的许多领域中，这些隐性反应会对决策和人际关系产生各种各样的影响，但它们能够可靠地改变的方式却没有得到很好的理解。这个项目试图通过测试各种方法来填补这一空白，通过这些方法，可以重新激活和修改关于其他人和群体的现有记忆，以纳入新的信息，并使其与明确的信念更加一致。虽然对有社会意义的群体的内隐反应通常很难修正，但最近对基于记忆检索的更新和再巩固的研究表明，在学习旨在修正这些反应的新信息之前，可以通过检索这些反应背后的记忆来持久地改变认知和情感反应。在一系列采用不同方法和目标群体的研究中，该项目将测试支持消极群体印象的识别和检索记忆在调节旨在改变这些内隐反应的干预成功中的关键作用。新的社会目标（个人和群体）将与各种类型的初始学习（包括评价条件反射、行为描述和一般群体信息）一起呈现，以允许测试后续记忆检索的有效性，以及在不同的社会目标经历后修改初始内隐反应的新学习。使用新颖和真实的群体目标，该项目还将评估不同类型的新学习对记忆提取后产生持久修正的影响，包括：仅仅重新呈现目标，重新构建特定事件记忆的意义，将参与者关于群体的想法与参与者的个人经历联系起来，以及呈现新的事实群体信息。该项目的另一个目标将是测试产生最有效修正的记忆再激活事件的特征，包括检查被重新激活的记忆类型。特别是，在记忆再激活过程中，期望违反被认为是使记忆更新发生的核心重要性。本项目的研究将考察期望违反在记忆表征更新中的作用，这些表征有助于内隐印象，这样做将扩展和建立记忆更新理论。通过使用社区和在线样本，将促进结果的可推广性，并将结果用于开发内隐记忆变化的计算模型，以了解内隐认知在学习和记忆基本过程中的变化。

This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields.This postdoctoral fellowship award supports a rising scholar investigating the formation and change of implicit (i.e., relatively automatic) reactions to people and groups. The project will utilize research across work in social psychology, neuroscience, and animal research on memory updating to advance scientific understanding of how implicit social impressions can be effectively and durably revised. Although many people hold explicitly (i.e., self-reported) egalitarian and tolerant beliefs, implicit measures of cognition have revealed far more negative impressions of stigmatized or marginalized groups, such as those based on race, ethnicity, age, gender, and sexuality. These implicit reactions can have a variety of consequences for decision-making and interpersonal relations in many areas of society, but the ways in which they can be reliably changed are not well understood. This project seeks to fill that gap by testing various methods through which existing memories about other people and groups can be reactivated and revised to incorporate new information and become more consistent with explicit beliefs.Although implicit reactions to socially meaningful groups often have been difficult to revise, recent work on memory retrieval-based updating and reconsolidation has shown that cognitive and affective reactions can be durably altered by retrieval of the memories that underlie those reactions prior to learning new information aimed at revising them. In a series of studies employing diverse methods and target groups, this project will test the critical role of identification and retrieval of memories that support negative group impressions in moderating the success of interventions aimed at changing those implicit reactions. Novel social targets (individuals and groups) will be presented in conjunction with various types of initial learning, including evaluative conditioning, behavioral descriptions, and general group information, to allow a test of the effectiveness of subsequent memory retrieval and new learning for modifying initial implicit reactions following diverse experiences with the social targets. Using novel and real group targets, the project will also assess the impact of different types of new learning on producing durable revision after memory retrieval, including: mere re-presentation of the target(s), reframing the meaning of specific event memories, connecting participant thoughts about groups to the personal experiences of the participant, and presentation of new factual group information. A further goal of the project will be to test the characteristics of the memory reactivation episode that produces the most effective revision, including an examination of the type of memory that is reactivated. In particular, expectancy violation during memory reactivation has been theorized to be of central importance in enabling memory updating to occur. Studies in this project will examine the role of expectancy violation in the updating of the memory representations that contribute to implicit impressions and in so doing will extend and build upon memory updating theory. The generalizability of the results will be promoted through the use of community and online samples, and the results will be used to develop computational models of implicit memory change to understand shifts in implicit cognition in terms of basic processes of learning and memory.