CAREER: Recognition-Memory Modeling: Testing Foundations and Extending Boundaries

近几十年来，心理学家已经使用正式的计算模型，在理解人们识别记忆判断的认知过程方面取得了相当大的进展（例如，“我记得以前见过这个人”）及其相关特征（例如，他们的准确性，主观信心归因于记忆）。这些正式的模型为研究人员提供了测量不同认知过程的相对贡献的方法（例如，“熟悉性”对“情景回忆”），回答关于它们在整个生命周期中的发展的问题的方法（例如，儿童对年轻人对老年人），并允许在不同的临床人群之间进行比较（例如，阿尔茨海默病患者）。识别记忆的正式模型也使研究人员能够自信地解决与社会相关的问题，例如批判性地评估警察部门使用的不同目击者识别程序。所提出的研究解决了目前的问题，即多个候选模型可以提供相同数据的替代表征（例如，一些候选模型假定识别判断由单个助记符过程驱动，而其他模型假定两个或更多个）。虽然这个问题没有得到解决，但它阻碍了研究人员和实践者使用适当验证的工具来详细描述人们的记忆过程。目前工作的一个关键方面是所应用方法的新奇：该团队密切协调实验设计和数学证明，以揭示不同模型预测的“行为特征模式”。这些研究的实证结果允许团队通过解决以下问题来直接测试模型：1）记忆信息，信心判断和反应偏差之间的关系，2）记忆信息的表现方式（绝对与相对），3）记忆信息如何支持以前的遭遇（“我以前见过X吗？”）与上下文记忆信息有关（“我以前在哪里以及如何看到X？”），以及4）需要多少不同的检索过程来充分地表征识别判断（例如，我们是否需要假设独立的“情景回忆”过程？）总体结果是一个可行的候选模型的数量急剧减少，并收敛到一个单一的验证帐户的识别记忆，使正式的识别建模，以充分发挥其潜力，在研究和应用环境。反过来，这项工作的教育组成部分确立了其目标，即在心理科学的基础上开发急需的课程，以及正式建模的本科培训计划，该计划明确旨在增加历史上代表性不足的群体和美国国民的研究生水平代表性。这项工作解决了一些开放的研究问题，并增加了美国大学生的数量，他们有能力使用最先进的形式化方法来应对未来的科学挑战。目前，不同的识别记忆模型正在研究和应用环境中使用，以表征人们记忆判断背后的认知过程。这些模型--表达在信号检测或高阈值框架中--在它们所假设的认知过程的性质和数量方面有所不同。多个候选模型的存在产生了一个问题，即相同的数据可以以多种不兼容的方式进行解释。本研究批判性地比较了这些不同的模型，以获得一个单一的验证帐户的目标。这一目标是通过阐明实验设计来实现的，这些实验设计收集强迫选择和排名判断沿着与所有候选模型相关的正式结果（例如，Block-Marschak和Tversky-Sattath不等式），以便获得需要最少辅助假设的特权测试基础。在实践中，这意味着有可能将研究人员传统上使用的通用模型比较方法（模型拟合+复杂性惩罚）放在一边，并将精力重新集中在特定的模型预测上，这些模型预测可以使用顺序约束推理方法在数据水平上直接进行测试。这里产生的测试结果能够解决一些关键问题，如：1）是信心评级直接，无噪声映射的潜在优势？2)潜在强度值是否用似然比表示？3)除了潜在的优势外，“情景回忆”过程对于充分描述背景信息的提取或从高度相似的背景中区分研究项目是否是必要的？这些答案可以大大减少识别记忆的候选模型集，并将导致开发用于实验程序的强有力的认知心理测量工具，例如记忆相似性任务，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响进行评估来支持审查标准。

In recent decades, psychologists have used formal, computational models to make considerable advances in understanding the cognitive processes underlying people’s recognition memory judgements (e.g., “I remember seeing this person before”) and their associated characteristics (e.g., their accuracy, the subjective confidence ascribed to the memory). These formal models provide researchers with ways to measure the relative contribution of different cognitive processes (e.g., “familiarity” versus “episodic recollection”), ways to answer questions regarding their development across the lifespan (e.g., children vs. young adults vs. older adults), and allow for comparison across different clinical populations (e.g., Alzheimer patients). Formal models of recognition memory also enable researchers to confidently tackle socially-relevant issues, such as critically evaluating different eyewitness identification procedures used by police departments. The proposed research addresses the present problem that multiple candidate models may offer alternative characterizations of the same data (e.g., some candidate models postulate that recognition judgments are driven by a single mnemonic process whereas others postulate two or more). While unresolved, this issue stands in the way of researchers and practitioners having properly validated tools for characterizing people’s mnemonic processes in detail. A key aspect of the present work is the novelty of the methods applied: the team closely coordinates experimental designs and mathematical proofs in order to reveal “behavioral signature patterns” predicted by the different models. The empirical results from these studies allow the team to directly test models by addressing questions regarding: 1) the relationship between mnemonic information, confidence judgments, and response bias, 2) the way mnemonic information is represented (in absolute versus relative terms), 3) how exactly mnemonic information supporting a previous encounter (“did I see X before?”) relates to contextual mnemonic information (“where and how did I see X before?”), and 4) how many distinct retrieval processes are necessary to adequately characterize recognition judgments (e.g., do we need to postulate separate “episodic recollection” processes?). The overarching result is a drastic reduction in the number of viable candidate models and a convergence towards a single validated account of recognition memory that brings the formal modeling of recognition to its full potential in both research and applied settings. In turn, the educational component of this work establishes as its goals the development of much-needed coursework on the foundations of psychological science as well as an undergraduate training program on formal modeling that is explicitly targeted at increasing the graduate-level representation of members of historically underrepresented groups and US nationals more broadly. Together, the work resolves a number of open research problems and increases the number of US college students equipped to take on the scientific challenges of tomorrow using state-of-the-art formal methods.Different models of recognition memory are currently being used in research and applied settings to characterize the cognitive processes behind people’s memory judgments. These models – couched in Signal Detection or High-Threshold frameworks – differ in terms of the nature and number of cognitive processes that they postulate. The existence of multiple candidate models creates a problem in that the same data can be interpreted in multiple, incompatible ways. The present research critically compares these different models with goal of obtaining a single validated account. This goal is achieved by articulating experimental designs collecting forced-choice and ranking judgments along with formal results that speak to all candidate models (e.g., Block-Marschak and Tversky-Sattath inequalities) in order to obtain privileged testing grounds that require minimal auxiliary assumptions. In practice, this means that it is possible to set aside the generic model-comparison methods (model fit + complexity penalty) traditionally used by researchers up to this point and re-focus efforts on specific model predictions that can be directly tested at the level of the data using order-constrained inferential methods. The test results produced here are able to address a number of key questions, such as: 1) are confidence ratings direct, noiseless mappings of latent strengths? 2) are latent-strength values represented in terms of likelihood ratios? 3) are “episodic recollection” processes necessary (in addition to latent strengths) to adequately describe the retrieval of contextual information or the discrimination of studied items from highly similar foils? These answers can drastically reduce the set of candidate models of recognition memory, and will lead to the development of strongly-validated cognitive psychometric tools for experimental procedures, such as the Memory Similarity Task, which is widely used in developmental and neurocognitive research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.