Sharda Umanath
Biographic Data
| ID | 4127217 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sharda Umanath |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sharda |
| FAMILY NAME | Umanath |
| SIGNATURE | UMANATH S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Claremont McKenna College |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6699-4357 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
National collective memories and their functions in Japan and the US
Collective memories are shared representations of a group's past. For nations, these memories serve important purposes: they shape national identity, promote social cohesion and guide future decisions. Although extensive research has examined collective memory in Europe and the United States, less is known about countries outside these regions, such as Japan. Cultural tightness and other societal differences may influence the extent to which coll…
Using the phenomenology of retrieval failures to understand curiosity for inaccessible and unavailable knowledge
Curiosity arises from metacognitive evaluations of existing knowledge and drives information-seeking behaviors. Past research examining curiosity when retrieval fails used measures of confidence, Feeling-of-Knowing, and Tip-of-the-Tongue states (Brooks et al., 2021; Dubey & Griffiths, 2020; Metcalfe et al., 2017). The present study examines curiosity for irretrievable information by employing phenomenological states of memory failures (Umanath et…
Using the phenomenology of knowledge-based retrieval failures in younger and older adults to characterize proximity to retrieval success and identify a Zone of Proximal Retrieval
Across the lifespan, accumulated knowledge can become inaccessible, with everyone having experienced retrieval failures. These failures are accompanied by varied mental experiences (phenomenology), but little research has been done to distinctly characterize their full range. The present studies examined the extent to which varying failures, ranging from imminent retrieval like tip-of-the-tongue states to unavailability, are associated with disti…
You don’t understand me! But, I do! Awareness of cross-generational differences in collective remembering of national historic events
Collective memories refer to a group's shared representation of the past, which are slow to change over time. In this study, representative samples of American and German Younger Adults (YAs) and Older Adults (OAs) rated the emotional valence of 12 national historic events. Critically, both age groups were also asked to take on the perspective of the other: OAs imagined how YAs feel, whereas YAs imagined how OAs feel about the same events today. …
Flashbulb and first-hand memories for campus closings due to Covid-19: Consistency and Change
Flashbulb memories (FBM) refer to the vivid and detailed retrieval of the reception context of a highly salient event. We examined FBMs and personal memories for one college's sudden transition to remote learning due to COVID-19. We explored whether the announcement of the campus' closure resulted in FBMs, how respondents felt about the decision, and the impacts of the decision. Employing a two-wave longitudinal survey conducted in March and May …
Collective memories serve similar functions to autobiographical memories
People from the same country often hold shared, culturally-shaped memories about important events from that country's history, known as collective memories. Although empirical research has started to shed light on the properties of these memories, none has systematically examined the functions these memories. To what extent do collective memories serve functions? We hypothesised that collective memories serve functions for a collective similar to…
Memory of where predicts confidence in when: The role of spatial information in dating autobiographical events
How do we know when a remembered event took place? Contemporary theories suggest that temporal landmarks, conventional time patterns, transitions, and lifetime periods, among other strategies, help reconstruct the date of an event. Spatial information plays a privileged role in participants’ experiences of reliving and vividness during remembering. Given its influence on these key properties, we conducted two experiments with undergraduate studen…
Changing the public’s crime control theater attitudes
The public’s perception of crime control theater laws: It’s complicated
Face Validity of Remembering and Knowing: Empirical Consensus and Disagreement Between Participants and Researchers
Ever since Endel Tulving first distinguished between episodic and semantic memory, the remember/know paradigm has become a standard means of probing the phenomenology of participants’ memorial experiences by memory researchers, neuropsychologists, neuroscientists, and others. However, this paradigm has not been without its problems and has been used to capture many different phenomenological experiences, including retrieval from episodic versus s…
Some personal life events are more prominent than others: Younger and older adults agree on which life events matter most
Some important life events are part of the cultural life script as expected transitional events with culturally sanctioned timing. However, not all personally important events align with the cultural life script, including some events that are widely experienced. Here, we ask whether there are specific characteristics that define the events that become part of a culture’s life script and what role life experience plays. In Experiment 1, younger a…
Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.
An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence. It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be done from a specific location a…
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Event memory: A theory of memory for laboratory, autobiographical, and fictional events.
An event memory is a mental construction of a scene recalled as a single occurrence. It therefore requires the hippocampus and ventral visual stream needed for all scene construction. The construction need not come with a sense of reliving or be made by a participant in the event, and it can be a summary of occurrences from more than one encoding. The mental construction, or physical rendering, of any scene must be done from a specific location a…
Some personal life events are more prominent than others: Younger and older adults agree on which life events matter most
Some important life events are part of the cultural life script as expected transitional events with culturally sanctioned timing. However, not all personally important events align with the cultural life script, including some events that are widely experienced. Here, we ask whether there are specific characteristics that define the events that become part of a culture’s life script and what role life experience plays. In Experiment 1, younger a…
Face Validity of Remembering and Knowing: Empirical Consensus and Disagreement Between Participants and Researchers
Ever since Endel Tulving first distinguished between episodic and semantic memory, the remember/know paradigm has become a standard means of probing the phenomenology of participants’ memorial experiences by memory researchers, neuropsychologists, neuroscientists, and others. However, this paradigm has not been without its problems and has been used to capture many different phenomenological experiences, including retrieval from episodic versus s…
The public’s perception of crime control theater laws: It’s complicated
Memory of where predicts confidence in when: The role of spatial information in dating autobiographical events
How do we know when a remembered event took place? Contemporary theories suggest that temporal landmarks, conventional time patterns, transitions, and lifetime periods, among other strategies, help reconstruct the date of an event. Spatial information plays a privileged role in participants’ experiences of reliving and vividness during remembering. Given its influence on these key properties, we conducted two experiments with undergraduate studen…
Changing the public’s crime control theater attitudes
Collective memories serve similar functions to autobiographical memories
People from the same country often hold shared, culturally-shaped memories about important events from that country's history, known as collective memories. Although empirical research has started to shed light on the properties of these memories, none has systematically examined the functions these memories. To what extent do collective memories serve functions? We hypothesised that collective memories serve functions for a collective similar to…
Using the phenomenology of knowledge-based retrieval failures in younger and older adults to characterize proximity to retrieval success and identify a Zone of Proximal Retrieval
Across the lifespan, accumulated knowledge can become inaccessible, with everyone having experienced retrieval failures. These failures are accompanied by varied mental experiences (phenomenology), but little research has been done to distinctly characterize their full range. The present studies examined the extent to which varying failures, ranging from imminent retrieval like tip-of-the-tongue states to unavailability, are associated with disti…
You don’t understand me! But, I do! Awareness of cross-generational differences in collective remembering of national historic events
Collective memories refer to a group's shared representation of the past, which are slow to change over time. In this study, representative samples of American and German Younger Adults (YAs) and Older Adults (OAs) rated the emotional valence of 12 national historic events. Critically, both age groups were also asked to take on the perspective of the other: OAs imagined how YAs feel, whereas YAs imagined how OAs feel about the same events today. …
Flashbulb and first-hand memories for campus closings due to Covid-19: Consistency and Change
Flashbulb memories (FBM) refer to the vivid and detailed retrieval of the reception context of a highly salient event. We examined FBMs and personal memories for one college's sudden transition to remote learning due to COVID-19. We explored whether the announcement of the campus' closure resulted in FBMs, how respondents felt about the decision, and the impacts of the decision. Employing a two-wave longitudinal survey conducted in March and May …
National collective memories and their functions in Japan and the US
Collective memories are shared representations of a group's past. For nations, these memories serve important purposes: they shape national identity, promote social cohesion and guide future decisions. Although extensive research has examined collective memory in Europe and the United States, less is known about countries outside these regions, such as Japan. Cultural tightness and other societal differences may influence the extent to which coll…
Using the phenomenology of retrieval failures to understand curiosity for inaccessible and unavailable knowledge
Curiosity arises from metacognitive evaluations of existing knowledge and drives information-seeking behaviors. Past research examining curiosity when retrieval fails used measures of confidence, Feeling-of-Knowing, and Tip-of-the-Tongue states (Brooks et al., 2021; Dubey & Griffiths, 2020; Metcalfe et al., 2017). The present study examines curiosity for irretrievable information by employing phenomenological states of memory failures (Umanath et…
Psychology (9 works) · Memory Processes and Influences (8 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Computer Science (6 works) · Autobiographical memory (5 works) · Identity, Memory, and Therapy (5 works) · Artificial Intelligence (3 works) · Psychological and Educational Research Studies (3 works) · Recall (3 works) · Social Psychology (3 works)