This proposed individual project has two primary foci: a research focus and mentor, or preparation of minority researchers, focus. The research focus concerns the area of people's memory for temporal information (""""""""When did event X occur?""""""""). The major research focus is on the effect of people's prior knowledge and expectations on the recall of specific temporal information. A secondary research focus is on building quantitative models of the processes involved in remembering temporal information. The second primary focus of this project is the preparation of minority researchers in psychology. Participation in the proposed research will provide experiences and training that will enable the students to enter and succeed in advanced graduate programs. The proposed research is relevant beyond the bounds of the study of temporal memory to problems of concern in the more general study of mental health and the memory processes of encoding, retention and reporting. One specific domain in which this research is applicable is that concerned with the effects of misleading postevent information. Another domain is that of survey research in which the accuracy of people's answers is critical to policy decisions. Further extensions also can be made into domains in which a person loses contact with the passage of time and even with their own autobiographies, such as the pathological conditions of dementia and amnesia. In all of these domains, a better understanding of how the accuracy of a person's responses is influenced by prior knowledge would be an important contribution. The project also creates an opportunity for minority undergraduate and high school students to gain direct, first-hand experience in psychological research. They will learn to design experiments, collect data, analyze results and co-author articles for publication. Through the mentoring built into this project and the opportunities in the infrastructure component, they will acquire the research skills necessary for pursuit of advanced degree in areas of psychology concerned with alcohol and substance abuse.
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