Metamemory: The monitoring and control of memory

我们越来越多地接触到比我们可能记住的更多的信息。我们怎么知道，当我们第一次遇到信息时，我们以后是否会甚至应该记住它？我提出的研究计划的长期目标是更深入地了解影响记忆监测和控制过程的因素：元记忆。在对元记忆的研究中，我的第一个研究方向将是情绪如何影响监测。情绪信息（例如，叙述一场自然灾害、犯罪或庆祝活动）通常比中性信息更容易被记住，但我们不知道的是，情绪信息令人难忘的感觉与个体项目的实际记忆表现之间的关系。目的是检验物品的情感内容和整体学习环境在多大程度上影响我们准确预测记忆表现的能力。在检验元记忆控制时，本研究将使用有意遗忘的适应性。与其关注人们如何努力学习信息，倒不如关注人们如何努力不学习不重要的信息。在定向遗忘范式中，参与者学习项目，并被提示记住一些项目，但忘记其他项目，记忆测试通常显示，被记住的项目表现更好。这是元内存控制编码过程的证据。这项研究将研究信息的来源如何影响我们是否有意忘记，以及从记忆中检索信息如何潜在地超越我们的记忆控制过程。随着互联网上信息的激增，重要的是要认识到，我们所遇到的信息来源的可信度是决定我们是否应该记住一些东西的核心。提出的研究计划将有助于推进我们对元记忆过程的理解，并最终促进我们对记忆的总体理解。

We are increasingly exposed to larger amounts of information than we could possibly be expected to remember. How can we know, when we first encounter information, whether we will or even should remember it later? The long-term goal of my proposed research program is to gain a greater understanding of factors that influence memory monitoring and control processes: metamemory. In the examination of metamemory, my first line of research will examine how emotion influences monitoring. Emotional information (e.g., recounting a natural disaster, crime, or celebration) is often remembered better than neutral information, but what we do not know is how the feeling that emotional information is memorable relates to actual memory performance for individual items. The goal is to examine the extent to which the emotional content of items and overall study context influence our ability to accurately predict memory performance. In examining metamemory control, this research will use an adaptation of intentional forgetting. Rather than focusing on how people try to learn information, the plan is to focus on how people try to not learn information that is unimportant. In the directed forgetting paradigm, participants study items and are cued to remember some items but to forget others, with memory tests generally showing better performance for the to-be-remembered items. This is evidence of metamemory control over encoding processes. This research will examine how the source of the information can influence whether or not we can intentionally forget, and how retrieving information from memory can potentially override our memory control processes. With the proliferation of information on the internet, it is important to recognize that the credibility of the source of the information that we encounter is central for deciding whether we should remember something. The proposed research program will contribute to advancing our understanding of metamemory processes, and ultimately to our understanding of memory in general.