Researching The Processing Mechanism Of Temporal Memory For News Events

What kind of temporal information is stored and how the temporal information is remembered for the past events, which has always caught many researchers' attention. Friedman (1993) had distinguished three different theories about temporal memory: the location-based theory,the distance-based theory and the sequence order-based theory. WCWT model of temporal memory proposed by Janssen in 2006 has integrated two types of temporal memory theory: distance-based theory and location-based theory. It can be used to identify under what conditions what temporal information or processing format (distance-based or location-based) is employed.Based on the WCWT model and Janssen's research, the first research of the present thesis has explored, under forced conditions, the segmentation characteristics of temporal memory for past events in last 10 years,the point which error changes from positive to negative,the displacement direction of error,the error size of temporal memory for past events in different periods and the relative accuracy of two processing formats: location-based and distance-based. The second research has explored, under choice conditions, the characteristics of participants' preference to the two processing formats, as well as the influence of age,familiarity,personality self-confidence and assessment confidence on the choice preference.Based on above two studies, the following conclusions have been drawn:(1) Under the conditions of "date and ago", the error's displacement of temporal memory has displayed similar trends: approximately 3.5 years or 3 years ago, the error of temporal memory changes from positive to negative. Before this point, the direction of error is negative, the displacement is towards future; After this point, the direction of error is positive, the displacement is towards past; Overall, the error size of remote events is greater than the recent events.(2) The participants have used both absolute format and relative format with significant preference to the former; For the single event, the familiarity and assessment confidence of events do not affect the preference to the two processing formats; But for the whole 22 events, the familiarity and assessment confidence of events have produced the same impact on the percentage of choosing the two processing formats. The higher the degree of familiarity and assessment confidence, the higher the percentage of choosing absolute format.