Memory skill
Remembering a fact, a phone number, or how to play racquetball reveals the contribution of more than memory. Strategic decisions must be made about how to encode information, how to maintain those stores of knowledge, how to effectively access that information when it is needed, and how to assemble that information into a coherent decision or output. Such dimensions of "memory skill" unite the lab's research on memory—in which we examine basic mechanisms underlying remembering and forgetting—and the research on metamemory, in which we examine the monitoring and control processes that subserve decisions about memory. For more information, see the book Skill and Strategy in Memory Use by Benjamin and Ross (2008).

Recognition memory
Memory for items and sources. Querying memory for an event often involves attempts at retrieving information about the event itself (item memory) as well as information about contextual details accompanying that event (source memory). For example, after studying a number of words, sentences, or pictures, participants in a source monitoring experiment may be tested on their memory for the colors in which the words were presented, the gender or occupation of the speakers producing the statements, or details of the physical surroundings for pictured objects. We examine successful attributions of items to their original sources as well as systematic lapses in source monitoring performance in younger and older adults to address larger questions about memory representation, decision making, normal forgetting, and metamnemonic inferences about memory performance. We believe that differences in levels of performance observed across tasks and with different populations are modulated to a high degree by learners' selective allocation of attention to item-relevant and source-relevant information, making memory a joint product of encoding and retrieval efforts and the strategic use of memory resources.
Models of memory judgments. We also use recognition memory and related tasks as a test bed for developing computational models of memory decisions. In one line of research, we develop decision models based on the theoretical apparatus of signal-detection theory to describe the processes underlying memory judgments in general and also to better understand the effects of aging on such judgments. These models include extending detection theory to include variable decision noise, as well as multivariate applications of detection theory to a variety of memory tasks, including source memory and memory exclusion. We also develop process models of recognition judgments in order to test how global deficits in memory fidelity can yield selective deficits on empirical tasks, as outlined in the section on Aging and Memory.

Metacognition and metamemory
Efficient memory use requires accurate metamemory: the processes that monitor states of learning, knowledge, and skill, and also control the deployment of mnemonic and other cognitive processes to achieve desired states. That is, one must be able to make accurate judgments about one's current memory state and predictions about future states, and exercise judicious control over the various options at one's disposal, including encoding and retrieval strategies, study time allocation, item selection, and scheduling of study repetitions. Our research investigates the monitoring and control processes that comprise metamemory by focusing on factors that moderate metamemory performance, such as: prior knowledge, task goals and expectations, time pressure, and stimulus characteristics. For example, we are interested in the conditions under which one exhibits "learning to learn"—adaptively calibrating metamemory in order to more effectively assess and deploy memory resources in the context of a specific task. Our interests also concern the development of ever more sophisticated and rigorous approaches to the analysis and measurement of metamemory.

Aging and memory
The human memory system is constantly changing and adapting throughout the lifespan. Some of these changes result because of the ever growing body of knowledge and experience acquired over a lifetime. The system has to adapt to maintain fluent access to an ever-growing knowledge base. Other changes occur in order to compensate for biological changes that occur with aging. The goal of our research is to understand what aspects of memory change across the lifespan and to understand what aspects remain the same. Our basic perspective is that aging involves a global deficit in memory that reveals a landscape of the relative resistance of tasks to disruption. This is in contrast to views that suggest that aging affects memory by impairing a specific subset of processes or memory systems.

Language and memory
Prosody and memory. Since people can't remember everything they hear, they must identify and attend to the most important pieces of information in speech. We are investigating how various cues in language, like the stress or emphasis on certain words, affect what listeners attend to and remember. For example, an utterance like "The REPORTER won an award for covering the robbery" suggests that what's most important is that the reporter, and not someone else, won the award. But, "The reporter won an award for covering the ROBBERY" suggests that what's important is that the award was won for covering the robbery, and not some other story. Ongoing work investigates exactly how these cues affect memory and how the use of this information differs across the lifespan.
Linguistic context and memory. The goal of our research in language and memory is to understand how linguistic cues can influence memory for words, sentences, or larger texts. We have investigated the effects of study context (for example, whether words are presented in a list or in sentences) on readers' patterns of false memories. We are focusing on the ways in which these linguistic contexts influence encoding strategies, which in turn affect memory performance. We are also investigating the forgetting functions for semantic information and surface form information and the types of relationships between words that can lead to reminding. Finally, we are conducting studies with older adults to investigate how their use of linguistic cues to guide study strategies differs from that of younger adults.

Reminding
Our research interests concern the role of reminding in basic memory tasks. Reminding may be an effective technique to capitalize on the innate strengths of human memory system while minimizing the efforts learners must expend. We believe that the benefits of reminding on memory may prove superior to those evident from spaced repetitions, yet have fewer practical limitations than conditions that promote self-testing. The goal of our research is to determine how reminding impacts memory and investigate the advantages reminding my provide.