She best known for her research on human memory,and cognitive and neural mechanisms of subjective experience,including pioneering work on comprehension,reality monitoring,source monitoring,and a component process architecture of cognition and memory.[2]
Her work has contributed to scientific understanding of how memories are constructed and distorted,how people make attributions about the origin and veridicality of their subjective experience,and how these cognitive processes are reflected in brain activity.[3]
Education
Johnson attended public schools in Oakland and Ventura California. She received both her B.A. in psychology (1965) and Ph.D. in experimental psychology (1971) from the University of California,Berkeley.[1] Undergraduate research assistant opportunities with Kathleen Archibald (Department of Sociology) and Lloyd Peterson (visiting the Berkeley Psychology Department from Indiana University) provided models of engaged academics working at different levels of analysis.[2]
Along with taking courses from Geoffrey Keppel and Dan Slobin,she conducted her first experimental study and found that people were better at locating target forms embedded among others if they had previously distinguished them using holistic schemas or concepts than using specific features. During graduate school,as she continued to explore experimental approaches to memory and cognition,her primary mentors were Leo Postman and Geoffrey Keppel. An appointment as Visiting Scientist with Laird Cermak's group at the Memory Disorders Research Center,Boston VA (1992-1993) furthered her interests in brain networks of cognition.[3]
Her former graduate students include Shahin Hashtroudi,Frank Durso,Mary Ann Foley,Tracey Kahan,Stephen Lindsay,Elizabeth A. Phelps,Kristi Multhaup,Chad Dodson,Denise Evert,Mara Mather,John Reeder,Wil Cunningham,and Keith Lyle.[6]
Research
Early in her career,Johnson explored the relationship between comprehension and memory,investigating the constructive and reconstructive nature of mental processes.[2] This raised the critical issue of how people differentiate real from imagined or inferred events (reality monitoring). Results from studies prompted by a proposed reality monitoring model led to the development of the Source Monitoring Framework (SMF),a general account of how individuals make attributions about the source of subjective experiences (perceptions,memories,beliefs,knowledge) derived from sensory modalities (e.g.,reading,conversations),and from associations,inferences,imagination,etc. According to the SMF,errors (i.e.,source misattributions,distortions,false memories) arise because of similarities among the qualitative features of mental representations from various sources.[7]
The accuracy of source attributions is affected by the extent of the similarity and how various features are weighted (the criteria used),which in turn are affected by factors such as rehearsal history,motivation,bias,social context,etc. Importantly,the same processes recruited during encoding,accessing,and evaluating generate both accurate and false memories,beliefs,and knowledge.[8]
Building on this work,Johnson introduced the Multiple-Entry Modular memory (MEM) framework,a descriptive cognitive architecture proposing how various perceptual and reflective component processes contribute to cognition.[7] The MEM framework outlines how perception and reflection interact within and between subsystems through agendas,and how different interactions could give rise not only to different types of memory (e.g.,perceptual learning,event recall) but also to different types of consciousness (e.g.,awareness,control,self-reflection) and different emotions (e.g.,fear,remorse).[6]
Members of her Memory and Cognition Lab (MEMlab) and their collaborators also worked to integrate behavioral methods with functional magnetic resonance imaging and studies of age-related changes in cognition to clarify the relation between brain function and processes represented in,and hypotheses suggested by,the SMF and MEM. [3]
For example,neuroimaging studies have contributed to understanding the role of frontal cortex in source monitoring,[9] executive function,and self-related processing.[10]
Studies have also shown that proposed processes in the SMF and MEM models are susceptible to emotional influences and age-related changes. These ideas and findings have influenced studies and/or analyses of cognition in diverse domains including eyewitness testimony,therapy practice,healthy aging,and clinically significant disruptions of cognition (e.g.,involving hallucinations,confabulation,or delusions).[7]
Beyond individual cognition,Johnson expanded the scope of reality monitoring to include social and cultural cognition.[11]
She proposed that societal institutions like the press and the courts function analogously to the brain's frontal lobes,regulating collective memory,knowledge,and beliefs through intra- and inter-institutional reality monitoring. She raised questions about how deficits in social/cultural reality monitoring could devolve into social pathologies,underscoring the broader significance of cognitive science in understanding both individual and societal functioning.[12]
Johnson, M.K (1988). "Discriminating the origin of information". In Oltmanns, T. F.; Maher, B. A. (eds.). Delusional beliefs. John Wiley & Sons. pp.34–65. ISBN978-0471836353.
Johnson, M. K.; Reeder, J. A. (1997), Cohen, Jonathan D.; Schooler, Jonathan W. (eds.), "Consciousness as Meta-Processing", Scientific Approaches to Consciousness, Lawrence Erlbaum, retrieved 2025-10-03
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