Date of Graduation

5-2013

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Psychological Science

Advisor/Mentor

Lampinen, James M.

Committee Member

Schroeder, David A.

Second Committee Member

Bridges, Ana J.

Keywords

Psychology; Attention; Crime; Memory; Prospective person memory; Stereotypes; Wanted persons

Abstract

Prospective person memory is the ability to recognize and react to a missing or wanted individual that one has been asked to be on the lookout for in the future. Prospective person memory relies on several processes including face recognition, event-based prospective memory, and attention. Only recently has research on the role of visual attention on prospective person memory been examined. In this dissertation, the gap between prospective person memory and attention is addressed. Although research on prospective person memory is steadily increasing, the research in this area is still in its infancy and the exact memory mechanisms that affect prospective person memory have yet to be uncovered. Two experiments examined how stereotypes affect automatic versus strategic processing by examining the effect of Attention (Experiment 1 & 2), crime stereotype (Experiments 1 & 2), criminal charge (Experiments 1 & 2) and criminal profile (Experiment 2) on prospective person memory. A significant amount of evidence was found for the idea that the more match there is between criminal elements the better prospective person memory is. Implications for these findings as well as future research are discussed.

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