Assessing autobiographical memory: the web-based autobiographical Implicit Association Test. Issue 4 (21st April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Verschuere, Bruno; Kleinberg, Bennett
• Is Part Of: Memory. Volume 25:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 520
• Page End: 530
• Publication Date: 2017-04-21
• Subjects: Autobiographical memory -- deception -- Implicit Association Test -- attitudes -- reaction times; Memory -- Periodicals; 153.1205
• DOI: 10.1080/09658211.2016.1189941
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0965-8211

Abstract

ABSTRACT: By assessing the association strength with TRUE and FALSE, the autobiographical Implicit Association Test (aIAT) [Sartori, G., Agosta, S., Zogmaister, C., Ferrara, S. D., & Castiello, U. (2008). How to accurately detect autobiographical events. Psychological Science, 19, 772–780. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02156.x ] aims to determine which of two contrasting statements is true. To efficiently run well-powered aIAT experiments, we propose a web-based aIAT (web-aIAT). Experiment 1 ( n = 522) is a web-based replication study of the first published aIAT study [Sartori, G., Agosta, S., Zogmaister, C., Ferrara, S. D., & Castiello, U. (2008). How to accurately detect autobiographical events. Psychological Science, 19, 772–780. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02156.x ; Experiment 1]. We conclude that the replication was successful as the web-based aIAT could accurately detect which of two playing cards participants chose (AUC = .88; Hit rate = 81%). In Experiment 2 ( n = 424), we investigated whether the use of affirmative versus negative sentences may partly explain the variability in aIAT accuracy findings. The aIAT could detect the chosen card when using affirmative (AUC = .90; Hit rate = 81%), but not when using negative sentences (AUC = .60; Hit rate = 53%). The web-based aIAT seems to be a valuable tool to facilitate aIAT research and may help to further identify moderators of the test's accuracy.