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Referntial Activity as a Measure of Episodic Memory

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Abstract

A computerized measure of Referential Activity (RA), the High WRAD Proportion (HWP), which assesses the proportion of high RA language in a text, was compared to a widely used measure of episodic memory, the proportion of internal details (IP), those pertaining directly to the main event being described. Both measures, along with several additional computerized measures, were applied to narratives of past and future events, produced by two groups of speakers varying in age. The HWP and IP showed correlations with high effect sizes for all age groups and narrative time periods, providing strong validation for the RA concept and for HWP as a computerized measure of episodic memory. Differences were also found between the results for both narrative time and participant age based on the two measures. HWP scores for narratives of past experience were higher than for future narratives; these differences were supported by other computerized measures applied to the narratives. The differences were in the same direction but were not significant for IP. Older participants showed significantly lower levels of episodic memory, according to IP; the differences were in the same direction but were not significant for HWP. The implications of these results for the RA concept and for the multiple code theory of episodic memory are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The authors wish to express their gratitude to Daniel Schacter and colleagues for making these scored interviews available to us.

  2. \({\text{IP}}\, = \,{\text{INT}}/\left( {{\text{INT}}\, + \,{\text{EXT}}} \right)\), where EXT is the number of external details.

  3. See Maskit (2021) for a detailed explanation of the rationale for this adjustment and its operation.

  4. The distinctions concerning near vs far past or future, and the distinctions among prompts are not retained in this study and will not be considered further.

  5. These changes required adjustments to the general DAAP procedures.

  6. We note that for this and all examples used in this paper, identifying details have been eliminated or changed.

  7. As discussed by Maskit (2021) WRRL has a considerably narrower range than HWP; the mean WRRL for all participants (N = 32).was .528 with a standard deviation of 0.004.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Makthematic Department, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, NY, USA

    Bernard Maskit

  2. Derner Institute, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, USA

    Wilma Bucci

  3. John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

    Sean Murphy

  4. Philosophy Department, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY, USA

    Adam Fishman

Authors
  1. Bernard Maskit
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  2. Wilma Bucci
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  3. Sean Murphy
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  4. Adam Fishman
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Correspondence to Bernard Maskit.

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Maskit, B., Bucci, W., Murphy, S. et al. Referntial Activity as a Measure of Episodic Memory. J Psycholinguist Res 50, 85–101 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-021-09766-3

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