The Effect of Relative Encoding on Memory-Based Judgments.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Science
• Memory Studies

Background:

• Judgment models suggest individuals rely on relative comparisons rather than absolute values.
• Memory-based judgments present a challenge: initial encoding may differ from later observed distributions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether people update their mental representations when making judgments from memory.
• To determine if memory-based judgments reflect initial encoding or updated distributional information.

Main Methods:

• Three empirical studies were conducted.
• Participants made judgments based on memory after initial encoding of option distributions.
• Analysis focused on whether judgments reflected initial relative standing or later distributional changes.

Main Results:

• Individuals making memory-based judgments consistently relied on the relative standing of stimuli at the time of initial encoding.
• Participants did not update their representations based on new distributional information presented at the time of judgment.
• Absolute quality of the stimulus did not override the reliance on initial relative rank.

Conclusions:

• Memory-based judgments are anchored to the initial encoding context, demonstrating a robust reliance on relative rank.
• The findings suggest that representations formed during initial encoding are maintained, rather than dynamically updated, for subsequent memory-based judgments.
• This highlights a specific limitation in updating judgments when recalling information from memory.