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09:00 - 10:30
Parallel sessions 4
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09:00 - 10:30
Room: HSZ - N5
Chair/s:
Désirée Schönung, Nikoletta Symeonidou
Source memory research aims at understanding how people remember the origin of information (e.g., Where did I read the latest news?). This double symposium brings together findings from both basic (Part 1) and more applied (Part 2) source memory research. The first session highlights new developments in modeling approaches as well as empirical work addressing fundamental determinants of source memory.
Beatrice G. Kuhlmann opens the session with “A Storage-Retrieval Extension of the Two-High-Threshold Multinomial Model of Source Monitoring.”, introducing an extended version of the often-used two-high-threshold multinomial model of source monitoring (2HTSM, Bayen et al., 1996). This extended version distinguishes between storage and retrieval components of source memory by incorporating two separate source-memory parameters.
Meike Kroneisen follows with “The Rare and the Common: Can Rarity Influence the Animacy Effect in Source Memory?”, investigating whether the animacy advantage in source memory depends on the relative frequency of animate and inanimate stimuli. Her talk provides insights into how base-rate expectations and attention shape encoding and retrieval.
In “Source Memory and Metamemory for Concrete and Abstract Words,” Désirée Schönung examines how people monitor their memory for different word types. The talk focuses on whether individuals distinguish between item and source memory in their metamemory judgments by recognizing that concreteness affects item but not source memory.
Further advancing model-related aspects, Hilal Tanyas presents in her talk “Modeling Latency Processes in Source Monitoring” a formal modeling approach that integrates response times to the 2HTSM. This allows estimating the relative speed of memory- and guessing-based processes.
Finally, Lena Nadarevic bridges to more applied questions of source memory in her talk “Source Effects in Memory for Truth and Falsity: A Comparison of Self-Generated Judgments and External Feedback”. Across two experiments, she investigates whether participants remember self-generated subjective truth judgments better than externally provided objective feedback, consistent with the generation effect.
Together, these talks illustrate the range of current approaches to studying source memory, advancing theoretical and methodological understanding of source memory processes. The first session concludes with a general discussion, leading over to Part II: Source Memory - Applied Research.
Submission 296
The Rare and the Common: Can Rarity Influence the Animacy Effect in Source Memory?
SymposiumTalk-02
Presented by: Meike Kroneisen
Meike Kroneisen 1, Vanessa Pallentin 1, Siri Kamp 2, Edgar Erdfelder 3
1 RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau, Germany
2 University of Trier, Germany
3 University of Mannheim, Germany
Evolutionary constraints have shaped not only our bodies but also our memory systems. In line with this, previous research has identified animacy as a key factor influencing memory performance. In a typical experiment, participants are presented with words denoting animate and inanimate objects. In a subsequent recall test, animate words are remembered better than inanimate ones. However, the proximate mechanisms underlying this effect remain unclear.

In one experiment, we investigated the influence of the base rate of animate to inanimate objects on source memory. Previous studies have shown better source memory for animate compared to inanimate objects. The question arises as to how changes in base rates affect source memory for animate objects. Does attention generally shift towards minority objects even if these objects are inanimate, or does the source memory advantage for animate objects persist irrespective of majority-minority relations between animate and inanimate objects? We discuss the theoretical implications of our findings with respect to the mechanisms underlying the animacy effect.