Testing alternate accounts of unconscious plagiarism.

Lead Research Organisation: Plymouth University
Department Name: Sch of Psychology

Abstract

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Description Background
The aim of the project was to test alternate theoretical accounts of unconscious plagiarism errors during recall. Previous research has focused on a range of factors that influence the rate at which people include other's ideas as their own, but these data are not sufficient to test alternate theoretical accounts of such errors.
The main aim of the proposal was to use 2 novel methodological innovations to provide a richer data set with which to test alternate accounts of unconscious plagiarism. Originally, we proposed running 10 experiments combined with a PhD studentship based on modelling the data. However, the modelling aspect of the project was not funded.

Achievements
All the studies described in the original proposal were run, with minor modifications to the planned work. However, we managed to run more studies than originally planned, and so the grant objectives were exceeded. Collectively, the experiments distinguished between the different theoretical accounts outlined in the proposal, and also led to a new theoretical perspective. In addition to the use of recall-partner and recall-both tasks, we developed an additional paradigm based upon extended recall. This involved participants outputting everything that came to mind whilst during recall (of own, partner ideas), and indicating which of these ideas they wished to report. This enabled us to explore the independent influences of idea availability (generation) and source monitoring on unconscious plagiarism errors. Another innovation was the extension of this methodology (recalling who said what) to action memory (re-enactment of who did what), which has led to a PhD studentship being awarded to Nicholas Lange (the RA on the grant), to continue this work. A final innovation was that we developed and tested alternate signal-detection models of source judgements in recall that were able to account for the novel patterns of data we observed.
To date, the work has been presented at 6 national and international conferences, and 2 papers have been submitted to international peer-review journals. Both have been invited for resubmission. A third paper is currently being finalised.
Hollins, T. J., Lange, N., Dennis, I. & Berry. C. (invited resubmission). I told you so: people give away more ideas than they plagiarise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition.
Hollins, T. J., Lange, N., Dennis, I. & Longmore, C. (invited resubmission). Social influences on unconscious plagiarism. Memory.
Lange, N., Hollins, T. J. & Bach, P. (in preparation). Who did what? Interference effects on memory for action. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance.

Challenges
There was no funding for the multinomial modelling project, and so this was not conducted. However, we have been working with Chris Berry to carry out signal-detection based modelling of our empirical work.
Our progress in publishing this work is not as advanced as we had planned: informed by recent concerns over replicability of findings, we decided not to publish single-experiment papers based upon the earlier work, but instead to publish more substantive multi-experiment papers. Two of these are in revision following submission, and a third is almost finalised. We believe that at least 2 more papers will follow.
Exploitation Route The aim of this project was primarily methodological and theoretical, and so it will be of principle interest to academic psychologists interested in source memory, recall, and action memory. We believe that our methodological innovations will be adopted in the literature, because they offer a new perspective on the causes of source-memory errors in recall.
Sectors Education
 
Description The project was designed as a theory-driven investigation of source-memory errors in recall. We did not anticipate (nor did we achieve) specific societal or economic impacts. The impacts we anticipate will be academic / theoretical in nature within the field of cognitive psychology. To date we have published 5 papers from this project, and have another under review. The work has resulted in the development of a collaboration (with Hedwige Dehon at Liege University), and a funded PhD studentship (Nicholas Lange at Plymouth University).
First Year Of Impact 2017
 
Description Collaboration with Hedwige Dehon 
Organisation University of Liege
Country Belgium 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution As as result of this project, I have begun collaboration with Dr Hedwige Dehon (University of Liege). This involves joint supervision of a PhD student (Aline Beaufort).
Start Year 2012