{"id":3060,"date":"2017-04-17T19:44:29","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T23:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=3060"},"modified":"2017-09-06T12:24:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T16:24:00","slug":"what-was-that-i-cant-remember-what-you-said-i-was-next-in-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2017\/04\/17\/what-was-that-i-cant-remember-what-you-said-i-was-next-in-line\/","title":{"rendered":"What Was That? I Can’t Remember What You Said, I Was Next-In-Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Don’t You Hate When This Happens?<\/p><\/div>\n

Imagine it’s the first day of classes for the semester. Your professor announces to the class that you are going to do an icebreaker activity to get to know each other. There are probably a few groans and a little bit of fear from the shyer students. You must tell the class your name, your class year, where you’re from, and a fun fact about yourself. The dread sets in as you panic and try to think of something interesting. You don’t want everyone to think you’re lame or a weirdo. You spend the whole time everyone else is talking trying to think of what to say and finally it’s your turn: “Hi my name is Emma, I’m a senior, I’m from Jacksonville, Florida, and, um, I can lick my elbow.” Now you wonder if maybe that was a little too interesting, while the person sitting next to you talks about his summer in Belize. Or was it Nicaragua? You can’t really remember. Actually you can’t quite recall what any of the people before you said. You were so focused on your own presentation that you did not pay attention to what other people said. This is called the next-in-line effect.<\/p>\n

The next-in-line effect is the cognitive bias that causes a person to have lower recall for events that happened right before or after a performance (Brenner, 1973). This performance can be any public act, whether it is performing on stage or talking to a group of a few other people. The next-in-line bias was demonstrated experimentally<\/a> in the 1970’s at the University of Michigan. Participants sat in a circle and took turns reading words off of cards to the group. Afterwards, they were given a free recall task. This means they had to report as many of the words from the previous task as they could. It turns out people have a very low recall for anything that happens about 9 seconds before and after a performance (Brenner, 1973). This loss of recall is the result of the next-in-line effect. One theory for why this occurs is due to the fact that the participant is an audience member and a performer (Brenner, 1973). They have two tasks, so there may be interference from one role on the other. Also too many demands on someone’s attention can make it difficult to properly form a memory for the event.<\/p>\n

So why does the next-in-line effect occur? Well to explain that, we first need to talk about how memories are formed. The process of putting information into memory is called encoding. Encoding requires attention; if you are not paying attention to something, then you probably will not remember<\/a> it (Watson & Strayer, 2010). Our attention also has a limited capacity. Performance on a task decreases if attention is allocated to more than one task (Watson & Strayer, 2010). For example, as Brenner (1973) suggested, maybe attention is being allocated to filling the role of performer, causing the role of audience to falter a bit. If encoding is successful, then the memory is stored in your long-term memory. If you try to recall or remember what you stored in memory, the act to do so is called retrieval. When it comes to explaining the next-in-line effect, it is clear that it is either caused by an error in encoding or retrieval. Trying to figure out which one it is has been the subject of many studies.<\/p>\n

In order to determine if the next-in-line effect is an encoding or retrieval error, we should look at some factors that can cause it. Brenner (1973) proposed the effect is due to a lack of attention. This seems logical since attention is necessary for creating the memory. So what causes this attention deficit? Bond and Omar (1988) say that anxiety plays a role. They tested the next-in-line effect and found that people with higher levels of anxiety were more likely to show this bias during a performance. This suggests worry can cause memory to falter. Does this mean that if the next-in-line effect is due to anxiety, information encoded at this time can only be retrieved in a state of anxiety? This is called state-dependent retrieval and it has been offered as another possible explanation for the next-in-line bias. It would contribute to the argument that this effect is a retrieval deficit (Bond and Omar, 1988). However, anxiety has not been found to be the sole cause of the next-in-line bias, so there is probably more going on here.<\/p>\n

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Same, Kourtney<\/p><\/div>\n

The anticipation of a performance also plays a role in causing the next-in-line effect. Being consumed by the expectation of your performance can distract you and keep you from paying attention to anything else. If someone is asked to perform without any warning, then they do not show the next-in-line effect (Bond & Kirkpatrick, 1982). If someone is told they are going to have to perform, but they are not told when the performance will take place, memory for all events during this time period are diminished (Bond & Kirkpatrick, 1982). This means that the anticipation about a performance affects the memory for events surrounding it. Bond (1985) also observed that if you tell participants to pay attention to the information presented before their performance (the information that they would normally forget due to the next-in-line bias), they remember it just as well as all the other stimuli. Based on all of this research, it is clear that there is something about the idea of publically performing that distracts us and diminishes our attention.<\/p>\n

So the big question this blog post has been trying to answer is: why does the next-in-line effect happen? Where does the error that prevents memory recall occur? The next-in-line bias pioneer, Malcolm Brenner (1973), believed this effect was an encoding failure because the resources needed to\u00a0encode the present stimuli were being consumed by the anticipation of the upcoming performance. While some researchers have speculated that the next-in-line effect is a retrieval error, Bond (1985) found evidence<\/a> that it is indeed due to a lack of encoding through his experiments about performance. Based off this research, we can say that attention and encoding, or lack there of, are the keys to explaining the next-in-line effect and that anticipation and anxiety perpetuates it.<\/p>\n

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Unsuccessful Debate<\/p><\/div>\n

So how does the next-in-line bias affect our everyday experiences? In the example at the beginning of the post we see how this bias prevents us from learning about our peers, because we are too focused on ourselves. The next-in-line effect can also play a role in conversation, specifically debates. If you are focused on forming your argument, you may not pay attention to what your opponent is saying. Instead of learning and compromising, you just continue to argue and be unproductive, \u00e0 la the 2016 Presidential Election debates. This can also happen in class when you want to ask a question. You are so focused on saying the right thing and speaking in front of everyone that you do not hear the person before you ask the same question. Talk about awkward… So next time the kid who sits next to you in class forgets what year you are, don’t take too much offense. She was probably too busy thinking about whether to tell the class she has a pet turtle<\/a> or that her cousin is Instagram famous, instead encoding your graduation year like she was supposed to be.<\/p>\n

References<\/p>\n

Bond, C. J. Jr. (1985). Next-in-line effect: Encoding or retrieval deficit?. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48<\/em>(4), 853-862.<\/p>\n

Bond, C. J, Jr. & Kirkpatrick, C. K. (1982). Distraction, amnesia, and the next-in-line effect.\u00a0Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 18<\/em>, 307-323.<\/p>\n

Bond, C. J. Jr. & Omar, A. S. (1990). Social anxiety, state dependence, and the next-in-line effect. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 26<\/em>, 185-198.<\/p>\n

Brenner, M. (1973). The next-in-line effect. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12<\/em>, 320-323.<\/p>\n

Watson, J. M. & Strayer, D. L. (2010). Supertaskers: Profiles in extraordinary multitasking ability. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 17<\/em>(4), 479-485. doi:10.3758\/PBR.17.4.479.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Imagine it’s the first day of classes for the semester. Your professor announces to the class that you are going to do an icebreaker activity to get to know each other. There are probably a few groans and a little bit of fear from the shyer students. You must tell the class your name, your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80216,266316,80215],"tags":[150480,130392,266300],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3060"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3763,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3060\/revisions\/3763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}