New Research From Psychological Science

Overcoming the Negative Consequences of Interference From Recognition Memory Testing

Kenneth J. Malmberg, Amy H. Criss, Tarun H. Gangwani, and Richard M. Shiffrin

Researchers have found that the more people are tested the worse their ability to recall and recognize past information becomes. This phenomenon is known as output interference. In this study participants were presented with words from two different categories, and were tested on their memory for the words. The words were tested in either a random order, in two large-blocks by category, or in alternating short-blocks by category. Participants in the large-block condition showed a partial release from output interference; however no effect was seen in the random or short-block condition. These findings indicate that output interference can be minimized by switching categories during testing; however there is a limit to this benefit.

The Accuracy or Inaccuracy of Affective Forecasts Depends on How Accuracy Is Indexed: Meta-Analysis of Past Studies

Michael Tyler Mathieu and Samuel D. Gosling

Past research has indicated that people are generally not accurate in predicting how they will feel at a future time-point — known as affective forecasting. Researchers examined the absolute and the relative accuracy of affective forecasting from 16 studies.  Although the results indicated that predictions by participants did not display absolute accuracy (their predictions did not match well to their actual feelings), the predictions did display relative accuracy (those who predicted they would be more or less upset than others by a future event actually were when that event occurred). This finding presents a more nuanced view of the accuracy of affective forecasting.