Calendar of events

Title: Investigations of false memory via the lens of mathematical and computational modeling.

Abstract: This talk covers two modeling studies of Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false recognition. In the DRM paradigm, after studying a list like pillow, bed, snore, yawn, ..., people tend to falsely remember the word "sleep" being on the list. The first study pits two theoretical accounts of this false memory effect, the associative monitoring framework and fuzzy-trace theory, against each other using a combination of behavioral experiments and a simple mathematical model known as the conjoint recognition model. Both behavioral and modeling results support the gist-based account more than the association-based account. The second study seeks to implement two assumptions of fuzzy-trace theory (verbatim-gist distinction and local-global gist distinction) into a computational model known as MINERVA2. The verbatim-gist distinction was implemented by using separate gist representation (distributed semantic vectors) and verbatim representation (holographic word-form vectors) within MINERVA2. In addition, to capture global gist beyond local gist, we added a model assumption that an item’s storage quality depends on its similarity to the preceding item, which helped accommodate the effect of global gist and solved the problem of storage independence in multi-trace models of episodic memory. The model successfully simulated a wide range of empirical effects, including phenomenological findings (e.g., remember/know). Our findings strengthened the connection between the substantive theories and the modeling of false memory.

Dr. Minyu Chang is a cognitive psychologist studying memory and metacognition. Her research focuses on using behavioral experiments, mathematical models, and computational models to investigate (a) how memory errors occur, (b) how people monitor and regulate their learning, (c) how memory is shaped by semantic and contextual knowledge, and (d) how these cognitive processes change across the human lifespan.

Before joining Trinity, Dr. Chang was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology at McGill University from 2022 to 2024, working with Dr. Brendan Johns. Dr. Chang earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Cornell University in 2022, under the supervision of Dr. Charles Brainerd. Before that, she completed her Bachelor's degree in Psychology at the University of Hong Kong in 2017.