Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We report the results of an experiment probing the relative influence of centering and anchoring biases in recon-structive memory for line lengths. On each of 90 trials participants (N=120) viewed a target line, which they reproduced aftera delay by adjusting a response line. We manipulated the starting size of this response line in three conditions: one providedan anchoring bias opposite the centering bias (expand condition), one in the same direction (contract condition) and one thatprovided no anchoring bias (control). We eliminated the centering bias in the expand condition, increased it in the contract con-dition, and showed an attenuated centering bias in the control condition. We discuss the implications for these results in relationto cognitive models of stimulus reproduction that employ the method of serial reproduction. We suggest that experiments ofthis type should carefully control for the possible influence of anchoring biases in reconstructive memory.