Faculty Mentor
Dr. Danielle Sitzman
Presentation Type
Poster
Primary Discipline of Presentation
Psychology
Abstract
Generally, people tend to believe that they are poor at remembering vital information while simultaneously displaying a tendency to overestimate their performance on memory tests. People display the usage of their metamemory, the control and awareness of memory, by monitoring and reporting how much information they have accurately remembered. Predicting the outcome of test scores is one way of testing metamemory, but this does not address how a person’s trust in their memory relates to their perceptions of how they performed on a test. The Squire Subjective Memory Questionnaire (SSMQ) measures beliefs about susceptibility to omission errors (excluding information), and the New Memory Distrust Scale (MDS) measures beliefs about susceptibility to commission errors (including wrong information). The SSMQ and MDS are usually used in relationship to eyewitness memory and focus purely on trust in memory. This study addresses the relationship between memory-trust and performance perception, with the ultimate aim to produce follow up studies while expanding the understanding of metamemory. Participants in this study completed the MDS, the SSMQ, and a general knowledge test where they answered trivia questions and rated their confidence in the accuracy of their response. Half of the participants fill out the memory distrust scales after answering the general knowledge questions, while the other half of the participants completed them before the general knowledge questions. It is hypothesized that people who do not trust their memory will be less confident of their answers during the general knowledge test than those who do trust their memory.
Recommended Citation
Thayer, Rachel and Thomason, Jenna, "Does Memory Trust Predict Confidence in Memory Performance?" (2025). 2024 Symposium. 22.
https://dc.ewu.edu/srcw_2024/works_2024/works_2024/22
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Does Memory Trust Predict Confidence in Memory Performance?
Generally, people tend to believe that they are poor at remembering vital information while simultaneously displaying a tendency to overestimate their performance on memory tests. People display the usage of their metamemory, the control and awareness of memory, by monitoring and reporting how much information they have accurately remembered. Predicting the outcome of test scores is one way of testing metamemory, but this does not address how a person’s trust in their memory relates to their perceptions of how they performed on a test. The Squire Subjective Memory Questionnaire (SSMQ) measures beliefs about susceptibility to omission errors (excluding information), and the New Memory Distrust Scale (MDS) measures beliefs about susceptibility to commission errors (including wrong information). The SSMQ and MDS are usually used in relationship to eyewitness memory and focus purely on trust in memory. This study addresses the relationship between memory-trust and performance perception, with the ultimate aim to produce follow up studies while expanding the understanding of metamemory. Participants in this study completed the MDS, the SSMQ, and a general knowledge test where they answered trivia questions and rated their confidence in the accuracy of their response. Half of the participants fill out the memory distrust scales after answering the general knowledge questions, while the other half of the participants completed them before the general knowledge questions. It is hypothesized that people who do not trust their memory will be less confident of their answers during the general knowledge test than those who do trust their memory.
