Research Proposal

Visual Art Practice: Source Misattribution as a Possible Mechanism for Autobiographical Memory Distortion

Research Proposal submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the course in Applied Cognitive Psychology

Abstract

This research proposal is for a qualitative preliminary study to more clearly define the variables and refine the methods (design/procedures) to be used for further investigation. Participants will be upper level undergraduate visual arts majors. The proposed method of data collection for this preliminary stage is through the use of a questionnaire which is designed to enable free reporting. The main purpose of this course of research is to determine if source misattribution is a possible source for autobiographical memory distortion in portions of visual art practice. It is possible that the undergraduate visual art major incorporates inaccurate external information from critique of their artwork into the memory of their own creative process. The discussion section of this proposal will also reference current research that specifically addresses this topic with another type of participant group. The reference study suggests that source misattribution is a possible mechanism for autobiographical memory distortion. This preliminary study should help to determine what data collection procedures would be the most effective for this type of participant group and in accounting for the many variables related to metacognitive source misattribution and autobiographical memory of the creative process.

Method

Participants

Upper Level Undergraduate Studio Art majors are to be recruited to volunteer for this study. It is anticipated that this will give a wide population base for sampling (i.e., gender, age, ethnicity, etc.). It is preferable that it be students who are taking the required Visual Thinking I & II or Thesis I & II courses. If possible extra credit or certificates of participation should be arranged through the Art & Art History Department, with approval of the individual professors. Another incentive for the volunteers may be the inclusion of an image of the artwork used for the study in a final report.

Procedure

This proposal, as stated, is concerned with a preliminary qualitative analysis. As such, it will consist of a questionnaire (draft following) that the participants will be asked to fill out. The project will be explained to the participants, i.e. that it is a preliminary study that will be used to determine further research in the area of the creative process or visual art practice. Each participant will be read the first paragraph which is an explanation for filling out the questionnaire. The investigator will also point out the signature area, informing the participant that they may wait until completing questionnaire to agree to its use. The participant will then be given the questionnaire to complete along with extra blank sheets of paper and a pencil. Participants will not be timed, but it is estimated that it should take about 20 to 30 minutes to complete the questionnaire.

Table 1: Draft of Questionnaire

Please answer the following questionnaire as completely as possible. For those questions that ask for a description, you may use a separate sheet of paper noting the question number. For multiple choice questions, you may choose more than one of the examples -- Try to describe in order of importance.

Name:	Email address:
Major area:	GPA:
What level of undergraduate study?	How long have you been an artist?

1. Describe your work: i.e. materials, general size, etc.

2. Describe your approach to making art: i.e. intuitive, extensive planning, idea based, formal issues, social commentary, etc.

3. When was the last time you had a critique?

4. How do you expect a critique to affect your work? Describe.

a. Positively: i.e. improvement, clarification

b. Negatively: i.e. self doubt, confusion

5. Describe what you do to prepare for a critique:

6. What do you use as reference during a critique?

a. The artwork

b. Written references

c. Memory: i.e. of making the work, decisions during preparation for critique or of external references.

d. Combination of the above or other: Note and describe which.

7. What is your most frequent personal response to a critique?

a. Dismissal of comments

b. Think about a few (one or two) of the comments

c. Appreciation of comments

d. Irritation at comments

e. Combination of the above or other: Note and describe which.

8. What do you do after a critique?

a. Decide that there was nothing to do

b. Reassess your thinking

c. Reworking of ideas

d. Reworking of formal aspects

e. Notes/Plan of action

f. Combination of above or other: Note and describe which.

9. Which is your most frequent approach to references after a critique?

a. Consultation with professor

b. Discussion with fellow students (note if only students from your class, friends or both)

c. Discarding some references

d. Seeking more references

e. No change to normal approach to references

f. Combination of above or other: Note and describe which.

Please sign here: _________________________________________ to indicate that you were informed and consent to the use of your completed questionnaire in this study.

The format of the questionnaire is such that the participant will be slightly guided by the questions but is given ample time and freedom to give as much or as little explanation as they would like. The decision to allow free reporting is based on the idea that information received from a participant is more likely to be accurate and include more information if given the option of freely reporting. "Thus, beyond the fundamental distinction between accuracy-based and quantity-based memory measures, the experimental results demonstrate the criticality of subject control over memory reporting, particularly for accuracy." (Koriat & Goldsmith, 1994). This preliminary portion of research does not explicitly address memory recall, but is intended to help determine the proper direction for further research.

Since participants will be left alone to complete the questionnaire, this eliminates the interference of possible researcher bias during this phase. The initial assumptions, biases and perspectives that could influence the shaping of the methods involved in the design of the study and the consequent analysis of the data provided by participants should be evident within this proposal and will again be addressed in the post-questionnaire reporting. The questionnaire itself was designed to be as extensive as possible within the scope of the present research focus and give the participants the ability to answer freely. This, while making the task of analysis and deciding on avenues for further research a larger one, will facilitate more accurate data to confirm or refute the hypotheses put forward in this proposal.

At this point, it is difficult to anticipate the process of analysis or presentation of key findings. Preliminary thought suggests that the model used for the Niedźwieńska study described in the following discussion section is one that on most levels would be applicable. A more definitive description of these areas should be made clearer during the planning process while garnering approval from the Art & Art History department and while determining what level of participation can be expected from individual professors and the potential participants. During this time a more extensive literature review will be undertaken.

Discussion

Although in most cases of autobiographical memory recall there is no independent record of the memory, this is not the case for the practicing artist. The artist has, in the individual object of art, an artefact of the memory that needs to be probed in order to work toward the development of a body of work. In the undergraduate model this artefact is subject to external review and discussion which may contribute to the distortion of the autobiographical recall of the creative experience. There should be no question of the highly personal nature of artistic creation. Most artists work on subject matter of personal relevance and import. Moreover, the artist is probably in a state of intense concentration during the process of creating. As such, it would seem that the creative experience should be less susceptible to interference or distortion, since personal relevance and importance are characteristic of a more robust memory. However, in the critique, the artist is presented with differing opinions, suggestions and references in relation to their artefact of the creative experience. Is it possible that these types of discussions may affect and somehow interfere with the integrity of the artist’s memory of the creative experience? Some studies suggest that incorporating information about remembered events in response to social context is a common phenomenon (Niedźwieńska, 2003). Hyman and his colleagues (Hyman, 1994; Hyman and Pentland, 1996) suggested that if one goal of such discussions is to arrive at an agreed upon version of the past, then people may often come to accept information from others and recount it later as the memories of their own experience. It may even be that discussion about the creative experience during a critique causes a recoding of the artist’s memory during retrieval and leads to confabulation during the description of intentions and choice of representation. However, per Schooler, “Verbalisation produces a generalized processing shift that dampens individuals’ reliance on non-verbal processes. When subsequently confronted with a task that requires such processes, individuals experience transfer inappropriate processing whereby they are unable to apply the optimum processes for completing the task.” With regard to the creative process it seems more feasible to agree with the Schooler article that verbal overshadowing causes a (dampening) processing shift rather that a recoding (which implies erasing) that interferes with the original memory. Engaging in the non-verbal can reverse the effects of verbalization. An alternative account of the verbal overshadowing phenomenon involves the effects self-generated misinformation when participants attempt to retrieve the target stimulus from memory during the description task. And while the focus of the research has largely been in examining the overshadowing effect within the eyewitness (or face) identification paradigm, the basic phenomenon has also been observed when participants attempt to generate descriptions of other ‘difficult-to-describe’ stimuli such as colours or abstract figures, decision making, and insight problem-solving. (Meissner & Memon, 2002). These would have important application to the area of creativity.

A recent study on distortion of autobiographical memory examines the effects of discussions of the past on the subsequent recollections of autobiographical events. The subjects, which were first year undergraduate students at Jagiellonian University, described two autobiographical events that were self-rated according to importance, emotional quality and consequence to the rest of their lives. These two events (the secondary school final exam and the ball 100 days before the exam) are attended by almost everyone in the undergraduate population. The first session was a written free description, after which they answered a set of questions about the events. Seven point memory vividness and confidence scales accompanied each question. The second memory test was not mentioned. Two months after the first session the experimental group were called in to participation in what was presented as a study for empathy for high vivid imagers. They watched a televised account of both events and a videotaped account of a woman’s description of the two events. They were then asked to close their eyes and vividly imagine the two events while being guided by the descriptions of the woman’s experiences. The participants then rated their empathy with the women’s emotions and the vividness of the imagined scenes. Four months after the first session the experimental and control groups were administered the memory questionnaire again. The outcome of the study was that most of the participants [29 of 30] from the experimental group incorporated elements of the woman’s description into their own subsequent accounts. In spite of this, they rated the vividness and the accuracy of their post-test memories as very high. The results are discussed in terms of source misattribution as a distortion mechanism in episodic memory. (Niedźwieńska, 2003).

The Niedźwieńska study was an adaptation of basic methodology in source misattribution research for important autobiographical events. The results suggested that at least some altered reports (incorporated elements/details) did not correspond to reality and indicated that learning about someone else’s experiences altered participants’ reports on their own experiences. There might be some difference in terms of degree between the study and the model of the undergraduate visual artist – learning about in the study through audiotape and guided imagery vs. discussion in the critique that includes other’s interpretation on imagery and consensus about standard uses of imagery. However, similarities can be drawn between the two situations and the undergraduate model weighted toward greater distortion because of the greater level of discussion and external review. The conclusion of the study stresses that exposure to information that participants knew was not about their own experience changed their answers on a subsequent test of memory for that experience and that this finding is important because there is no reason to believe that participants knowingly relied on memory of the woman’s description as a source of answers to questions regarding their experiences. The implication for the undergraduate model is that the regular external monitoring of the artist’s intentions leads to confabulation (unintentional self-generated misinformation) in their descriptive recall of the act of creating. The artist’s autobiographical memory is continually subject to possible incorporation of details from others’ interpretations and suggested art historical references. In the Niedźwieńska study, the participants were not forced to choose one answer from a few given as has happened in many studies on misinformation effect. They could give as little information as they wanted. In fact, participants took advantage of this possibility and their post-test descriptions were significantly shorter than the pre-test ones. The artist is similarly not forced to give particular or formulaic tokens of information during the critique and has the choice of how much to share. In fact some artists choose to only discuss formal issues. It seems likely that changes in reports reflected genuine memory alterations and they could not be explained in terms of demand characteristics or response bias. (Niedźwieńska, 2003). The data from the study suggests then that source misattribution judgments underlie the changes or distortions to autobiographical memories.

Results

In the proposal stage, a preliminary qualitative study, one can only engage in speculation as to what the results may be for the course of this kind of study. That art making is a personal endeavour should indicate a more robust autobiographical memory, although this may be counter balanced by the level of discourse involved in the undergraduate processes of evaluation. It is possible that it may not lead to an increased or new knowledge of source misattribution or autobiographical memory and may only serve to bolster already completed research. This preliminary proposal is more directed toward the establishment of a specialized participant group for continued research. In general, a study of this sort can only lead to possible new directions with this participant base for current researchers in the areas of autobiographical memory and source misattribution.

Applications in education: If it the case that source misattribution is a potential cause of autobiographical memory distortion, an awareness of this potential will positively affect the procedures used in undergraduate visual art education. Two results are possible: 1.) Increased awareness on the part of students will engender a more careful review of sources in decision making. 2.) Increased awareness on the part of educators may influence the techniques used during critiques and individual consultation with students.

Applications in theoretical and applied research: It is possible that the undergraduate visual art student is an untapped reserve that has large potential for creativity research. Creativity is a nascent field. Establishment of this kind of a model for research has the potential for many areas of research in cognitive psychology and other fields, especially the kind of interdisciplinary approach that might be needed for consciousness studies.

References

Anderson, S.J. & Conway, M. A. (1993), Investigating the Structure of Autobiographical Memories, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, Vol 19, No. 5: 1178-1196.

Johnson, M. K., Hashtroudi, S., & Lindsay, D. S. (1993). Source Monitoring, Psychological Bulletin, 114: 3-28.

Kealy, K. J. K. & Arbuthnott, K. D. (2003). Phenomenal Characteristics of Co-Created Guided Imagery and Autobiographical Memories, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17: 801-818.

Kelly, A., Carroll, M. & Mazzoni, G. (2002). Metamemory and Reality Monitoring, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16: 407-428.

Koriat, A. & Goldsmith, M. (1994). Memory in Naturalistic and Laboratory Contexts: Distinguishing the Accuracy-Oriented and Quantity-Oriented Approaches to Memory Assessment, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 123, No. 3: 297-315.

Meissner, C. A. & Memon, A., (2002). Verbal Overshadowing: A Special Issue exploring Theoretical and Applied Issues, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16: 869-872.

Niedźwieńska, A. (2003). Distortion of Autobiographical Memories, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17: 81-91.

Schooler, J. W., (2002). Verbalization Produces a Transfer Inappropriate Processing Shift, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 16: 989–997.

Walters, T.A. (2004). The Creative Process in the Reverse Engineering of the Phenomenon of an Anomaly, Unpublished.

Wilkinson, C. & Hymnan, Jr., I. E. (1998). Individual Differences Related to Two Types of Memory Errors: Word Lists May Not Generalize to Autobiographical Memory, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 12: S29-S46.