Social Media and Cognition
Creators: name: Vasquez, Angelina
name: Stone, Charles
name: Zuraw, Klaudia
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: RIF
subject: Social Media

description: This is a two-week study looking at the Retrieval- Induced Forgetting ( RIF) paradigm in the context of Social media (Facebook). In this study, participants submitted 6 daily surveys with 6 pictures per day for the following categories : food, weather, personal relationship, professional relationship, work, and college. They also answered multiple choice, slider scale, and free response questions about their surroundings during the time of the picture (i.e., what time is it, did anything significant happen to you at the time of this picture, etc.). On the 7th day of the study, they uploaded half of their submitted pictures from half of the categories to their Facebook page. There was a delayed recall on day 14. This recall test contained all 36 of their submitted pictures, 12 lure pictures, and all the questions about their surroundings during the time of each picture. We predicted that the details from the pictures that were uploaded to Facebook would create the Rp+ group, the details from the pictures of the same categories but not uploaded to Facebook would be the Rp- group, and the details from the pictures that were from different categories and not uploaded would be the Nrp group. Thus, in keeping with the RIF paradigm (Anderson et al., 1994) we hypothesized that details from the Rp+ would have a higher recall than the Nrp group, and both these groups would have a higher recall than the Rp- group (i.e., Rp+&gt;Nrp&gt;Rp-). We had an exploratory hypothesis that there would be a difference in the recall of the details based on the question type. Some questions were environmental (i.e., what was the approximate temperature during the time of this picture) while others were autobiographical (i.e., color of the clothes they were wearing). Lastly, we had another exploratory hypothesis to see if there was an interaction between the retrieval group ( Rp+, Rp-, Nrp) and the detail type ( environmental or autobiographical). The inclusion criteria to participate in the study was: 1. Between the ages of18-45, 2. Have an active Facebook account, 3. Have a device that can take and upload pictures, and 4. Have daily access to the internet. Participants were recruited from a Northeast college's online platform for undergraduate psychology students who would receive course credit for their participation. Our a priori power analysis using G*Power3 (Faul et al., 2007) indicated a sample size of 36 would afford us 80% power to detect a medium effect size (d=.25). Data collection began Fall 2019, with a brief pause during Spring and summer of 2020 due to Covid-19. At this time, we had 48 participants sign-up through the online platform (SONA) to participate in this study. Of the 48, 2 violated experiment protocol ( i.e., used selfies), 2 did not meet the inclusion criteria (i.e., having a Facebook account), 4 did not complete the recall test, 6 dropped out within the first 6 days of the study, and 9 included extra or incorrect pictures in their Facebook, thus eliminating the distinction between retrieval groups. Therefore, 23 participants data were excluded, leaving 25 participants data for the analysis. During May 2020, data from the 25 participants was analyzed for one of the researcher’s master’s thesis. Age and gender information of these participants was unavailable at the time of the analysis due to campus closures as the result of Covid-19. We used change scores to code the data, such that for every answer to a question that matched perfectly between the daily surveys and the final recall they received a score of 0, for every answer that did not match perfectly but was similar (i.e., casual shorts verse athletic shorts) they received a score of 1, and for every answer that did not match at all (i.e., jeans verses dress) they received a score of 2. We averaged the scores from each question from each category for each picture to get one score per question per category for a total of 45 scores ( 15 Rp+, 15 Rp-, 15 Nrp). To assess detail, we further broke down these 45 scores into either environmental or autobiographical details so that for each set of 15 scores, 8 were labeled environmental and 7 were labeled autobiographical. We conducted a 3x2 repeated measures ANOVA and found no main effects of retrieval type or detail type. However, we did find an interaction F(2,14) = 7.70, ηp2 =.524, p=.006. To further examine this interaction, we performed paired sample t-tests and found that accuracy for autobiographical details was significantly worse in the Rp+ group (M=.70, SD=.44) compared to autobiographical details in the Nrp group ( M=.63, SD=.40), t(7)=2.565, p=.037, d=.90, 95% CI [.004-.122]. Although data has been collected and analyzed for a masters' thesis, we were underpowered with 25 participants when we needed a suggested sample size of 36. We plan on continuing to collect data during Spring 2021 so that we can reach this desired sample size to detect any significant effects that an underpowered sample size may miss. This study has been adapted so that it can be completed fully online, as campuses are still closed due to Covid-19.