Dillon Murphy

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · Department of Psychology

We examined potentially selective offloading decisions when the external store has a limited capacity and how the surprising unavailability of offloaded information influences subsequent offloading decision‐making and memory. In three experiments, learners were presented with to‐be‐remembered words paired with point values counting towards their sc...

Older adults often face memory deficits in binding unrelated items. However, in situations such as preparing for foreign travel, a learner may be highly motivated to learn the translations of important words (e.g., "money"). In the present study, younger and older adults studied Swahili-English word pairs and judged the importance of knowing each p...

We examined the effects of interference on value-based memory in younger and older adults by presenting participants with lists of words paired with point values counting toward their score if recalled. In Experiment 1, we created a situation where there was a buildup of interference such that participants could recall words from any studied list t...

Predicting what we will remember and forget is crucial for daily functioning. We were interested in whether evaluating something as likely to be remembered or forgotten leads to enhanced memory for both forms of information relative to information that was not judged for memorability. We presented participants with lists of words to remember for a...

We examined age-related similarities and differences in people’s metacognitive awareness of retrieval from semantic long-term memory as well as the originality of their responses. Participants completed several semantic fluency tasks, and before recalling items, made metacognitive predictions of their performance. Additionally, after retrieval, par...

We are often presented with more information than we can remember, and we must selectively focus on the most valuable information to maximize memory utility. Most tests of value-based memory involve encoding and then being tested on a list of recently studied information. Thus, people are focused on memory for the current list and are encouraged to...

People often rely on habitual, serial processing when presented with to-be-learned information. We tested how strategic processing can override more bottom-up, serial processes when remembering information by having participants study a list of word triads (e.g., “dollar phone pizza”). Participants' goal was manipulated by maximizing either (i) the...

We are frequently exposed to situations where we need to remember important information when our attentional resources are divided; however, it was previously unclear how divided attention impacts responsible remembering: selective memory for important information to avoid consequences for forgetting. In the present study, we examined participants’...

We assessed the effects of removing some constraints that characterize traditional experiments on the effects of spaced, rather than massed, study opportunities. In five experiments—using lists of to-be-remembered words—we examined the effects of how total study time was distributed across multiple repetitions of a given to-be-remembered word. Over...

Do the properties of to-be-remembered events influence the ability to remember, and also intentionally forget, these events in similar ways? Prior work has examined how the font size, animacy, emotionality, concreteness (the degree to which a word denotes something perceptible), frequency (how often a word appears in language), and length of to-be-...

Changing how an issue is framed can influence both decision-making and metacognition, but framing a memory task in terms of gains and losses could also impact how learners prioritize information according to its value or importance. We investigated how framing task instructions and feedback in terms of gains and losses influences learners’ ability...

Metacognition involves the understanding and awareness of one's cognitive processes, and responsible remembering is the notion that people strategically focus on and remember important information to prevent negative consequences for forgetting. The present study examined the metacognitive control processes involved in responsible remembering by ev...

Although older adults are often concerned about instances of forgetting, forgetting can be a useful feature of our memory system. Specifically, strategically forgetting less important information can benefit memory for goal-relevant information (i.e., responsible remembering and responsible forgetting). In two experiments, we presented younger and...

Previous research has indicated that perceptual processing fluency significantly affects metacognitive predictions of performance but not learning outcomes. In the present study, we examined the differential impact of perceptual processing fluency and an item’s value on metacognition and recall. We presented participants with words visually and aud...

Aging is associated with declines in cognitive functioning and memory; however, research has shown that older adults can and do compensate for these declines in a variety of ways. This chapter discusses various theories of motivational shifts in older adulthood, older adults’ ability to selectively remember important information, and the importance...

People tend to better remember same-race faces relative to other-race faces (an “own-race” bias). We examined whether the own-race bias extends to associative memory, particularly in the identification and recall of information paired with faces. In Experiment 1, we presented white participants with own- and other-race faces which either appeared a...

We presented participants with lecture videos at different speeds and tested immediate and delayed (1 week) comprehension. Results revealed minimal costs incurred by increasing video speed from 1x to 1.5x or 2x speed, but performance declined beyond 2x speed. We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed....

Serial position effects are often observed within the free recall of unassociated words but also when recalling items from a semantic category like U.S. presidents. We investigated the dynamics of recall for U.S. presidents in younger and older adults to examine potential age-related differences in the organisation of retrieval from semantic long-t...

For memory to be efficient, people need to remember important information. This involves selective encoding and retrieval operations to maximize the recall of valuable information at the expense of less important information. While past research has examined this in terms of strategic encoding operations, we investigated differences in the dynamics...

Serial position effects involve the differential recall of information based on its temporal order at encoding. Previous research indicates that learners may be aware of these effects under certain encoding conditions, but it is unclear whether metacognitive control is sensitive to serial position effects. The current study examined whether there a...

We investigated how schemas can bias both memory and perception of a frequently seen building leading to a horizontal-vertical illusion. Specifically, undergraduate students (n = 172) were asked to estimate and sketch the dimensions of a highly familiar campus building to determine if they misremember or misperceive the building's features. Despite...

The ability to selectively focus on and remember important information, referred to as value-directed remembering, may be crucial for effective memory functioning. In the present study, we investigated the relationships between metacognitive monitoring and control accuracy, selectivity for valuable information, and fluid intelligence. Mediation ana...

Adaptive memory refers to the memory advantage for information processed in a survival and/or reproduction context while metacognition involves the awareness of what we can later remember. The notion of “responsible remembering” captures how memory functions to prioritise important information that will need to be remembered and how metacognitive p...

The ability to control both what we remember and what is forgotten can enhance memory. The present study used an item-method directed forgetting paradigm to investigate whether participants strategically remembered items they were responsible for remembering rather than items a hypothetical friend was responsible for remembering. Specifically, part...

The present study investigated age-related differences in retrieval from long-term memory using a semantic fluency task in which participants recalled animals during a 5-minute retrieval period. We evaluated the relative uniqueness of items and their output position within the retrieval process to further elucidate how younger and older adults acce...