Jaap Murre, born in Terneuzen, the Netherlands, in 1963. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Associate Professor at the Psychology Department at the University of Amsterdam.
Fellow (1 September 2003 – 30 June 2004)
AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF MEMORY, RETENTION AND DECISION PROCESSES TO DESCRIBE RESPONSE BEHAVIOUR IN SURVEYS
My research during the NIAS period was concentrated on: (1) learning about the cognitive and social psychology of survey research, a topic with which I was not familiar, (2) participating with the rest of the Survey Group in developing a framework for a cognitive model of survey research, summarized in a flow-chart about the principal elements of such a model, (3) participating with Akos Münnich and Willem Saris in developing a neural network model of survey response behaviour, in particular a model based on Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory, (4) extending the existing ideas by, among others, Milton Lodge from a dual-process model to a multi-process model that involves four systems: a reward system, an emotional system, an episodic memory system, and a semantic memory system, (5) applying the Memory Chain Model, developed with Tony Chessa, to reaction time data from surveys that describes how fast people respond to questions, (6) applying the same model to the learning and forgetting of communicative messages by a population (e.g., learning and forgetting of advertisements, the effect of giving a well-publicized interview on internet hits on the inter site mentioned in the interview). A particular aim was to optimize the distribution of such messages in time, so that learning is maximized and long-term forgetting is minimized.