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ABSTRACT
The probability-matching account states that learned specific episodic contingencies of item types and source dominate over general schematic expectations in source guessing. However, recent evidence from Bell et al. [(2020). Source attributions for detected new items: Persistent evidence for schematic guessing. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(9), 1407–1422] suggest that this only applies to source guessing for information that is recognised as belonging to a previously encoded episode. When information was detected as being new, participants persisted in applying schematic knowledge about the sources' profession. This dissociation in source guessing for detected-old and detected-new information may have been fostered by the specific source-monitoring paradigm by Bell et al. (Citation2020) in which sources were a group of individuals in a certain profession rather than fixed persons from that profession for whom episodic contingencies are more likely to persist also for new information. The aim of the present study was to test whether source guessing for detected-old versus detected-new information also dissociates in a more typical source-monitoring task, the doctor-lawyer paradigm, in which one individual doctor and one lawyer present profession-related information. Despite this change in paradigm, source guessing was based on the item-source contingency only for detected-old information, whereas schematic knowledge persisted for detected-new information. The present study thus adds evidence for persistent schema-based source guessing for new information.
Acknowledgments
The data and corresponding analyses can be retrieved from the Open Science Framework (OSF). We thank Katja Bitz, Alina Kias, Franziska Leipold, Michelle Dörnte, Jule Schilling, Paula Schmelzer, and Selina Zajdler for their assistance with the data collection.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Note that Küppers and Bayen (Citation2014) observed schema-based source guessing despite accurate contingency judgments (but see Kuhlmann et al., Citation2012, for a critical discussion of contingency judgments obtained after test), challenging the probability-matching account. Based on their finding of increased source memory for schematically unexpected sources and at the same time biased source guessing for the schematically expected source using kitchen and bathroom scenes, they proposed a competing explanation of schema-based source guessing reflecting a compensatory strategy for source-memory deficits. However, recent evidence from Schaper et al. (Citation2019) further underpinned that source guessing rather reflects contingency- and schema-based source guessing as proposed by the probability-matching account. Their findings disconfirm compensatory source guessing by showing that people do not have awareness for the inconsistency effect in source memory which, however, would be a prerequisite for using source guessing as a metacognitive control strategy.
2 Verbatim (translated from German) test-phase instructions:
You will now be presented with statements again. For each statement, you must make two decisions: Some of the statements will be “old”, they have been presented in the first part of the study. Some of the statements will be “new”, they have not been presented. Please indicate for each statement whether it is “old” or “new”. For each statement, you should indicate in addition whether it has been presented with the image of the doctor, the lawyer, or without an image and name. If you cannot remember how a statement was presented or if the statement is new, please just make a guess. After you made both decisions, click on “continue” to proceed. Caution: Your response for this statement cannot be changed thereafter.