Similarity on the Rebound: Inhibition of Similarity Assessment Leads to an Ironic Postsuppressional Rebound

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 64, pp. 1788-1796, 2011

10 Pages Posted: 1 Feb 2012

See all articles by Leaf Van Boven

Leaf Van Boven

University of Colorado Boulder

Nicolas Geeraert

University of Essex - Department of Psychology

Vincent Yzerbyt

Catholic University of Louvain

Date Written: April 23, 2011

Abstract

A widely held but rarely tested assumption among cognitive scientists is that different cognitive tasks may rely upon a single basic cognitive process. Using an established methodology to examine the suppression and subsequent rebound of mental operations, the present research indicates that suppressing use of similarity in one domain results in the subsequent rebound of similarity assessment in a different domain, suggesting that both domains relay on the same underlying cognitive process. In two studies, we demonstrate that leading people to suppress natural similarity assessment in one task produces increased reliance on similarity in subsequent, different, and apparently unrelated tasks. In Experiment 1, participants led to suppress similarity in a concentration task subsequently made more errors in a false-memory paradigm than did control participants. In Experiment 2, participants suppressing similarity in a categorization task made more false-memory errors and perceived more similarity between word pairs than participants who did not suppress. The findings suggest that the cognitive process of similarity assessment may be a domain-general process, such that it is widespread across a number of different mental tasks.

Keywords: similarity, categorization, false memory, rebound

Suggested Citation

Van Boven, Leaf and Geeraert, Nicolas and Yzerbyt, Vincent, Similarity on the Rebound: Inhibition of Similarity Assessment Leads to an Ironic Postsuppressional Rebound (April 23, 2011). Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Vol. 64, pp. 1788-1796, 2011, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1995750

Leaf Van Boven (Contact Author)

University of Colorado Boulder ( email )

University of Colorado Boulder
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, 345 UCB
Boulder, CO 80309
United States
303.735.5238 (Phone)
303.492.2967 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/

Nicolas Geeraert

University of Essex - Department of Psychology ( email )

Colchester CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

Vincent Yzerbyt

Catholic University of Louvain ( email )

Place Cardinal Mercier 10
Louvain-la-Neuve, 1348
Belgium

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