Psychonomic Bulletin & Review最新文献

The involuntary integration of discrete fragments into meaningful units (e.g., Gestalt) within visual working memory (VWM) is a crucial process in mind. However, the mechanisms governing the maintenance of these integrated products within VWM have remained largely unexplored. The current study sought to address this gap by investigating whether maintaining such VWM integration products places a greater demand on attention resources compared to discrete representations. We hypothesized that maintenance may be costless or require additional attention, which may be domain-specific or domain-general. To examine these hypotheses, we tested whether the emerged Gestalts by VWM integration can be abolished by an attention consumption task. Participants were required to memorize a sequence of oriented disks with or without Gestalt cues, alongside a secondary task during maintenance, consuming a specific type of attention. We found that a task consuming spatial attention impaired the VWM Gestalts of bar contours (Experiments 1 and 3), but not the Gestalts of square contours (Experiment 2). Moreover, a task consuming domain-general attention did not affect the VWM Gestalts of bar contours (Experiment 4). These findings provide evidence suggesting that maintaining VWM integration products requires more attention than discrete representations and that the type of attention required is domain-specific.

Working memory, an essential component of cognitive function, can be improved through specific methods. This meta-analysis evaluates the effectiveness of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), an emerging technique for enhancing working memory, and explores its efficacy, influencing factors, and underlying mechanisms. A PRISMA systematic search was conducted. Hedges's g was used to quantify effect sizes. We constructed a three-level meta-analytic model to account for all effect sizes and performed subgroup analyses to assess moderating factors. Recognizing the distinct neural underpinnings of various working memory processes, we separately assessed the effects on n-back tasks and traditional working memory tasks. A total of 39 studies with 405 effect sizes were included (170 from n-back tasks and 235 from other tasks). The overall analysis indicated a net benefit of g = 0.060 of tACS on working memory. Separate analyses showed that tACS had a small positive effect on n-back tasks (g = 0.102), but almost no effect on traditional working memory tasks (g = 0.045). Further analyses revealed mainly: A moderately positive effect of theta tACS (without anti-phase stimulation) on n-back tasks (g = 0.207); and a small effect of offline stimulation on working memory maintenance (g = 0.127). Overall, tACS has minimal impact on working memory improvement, but it shows potential under certain conditions. Specifically, both online and offline theta tACS can improve n-back task performance, while only offline stimulation enhances working memory maintenance. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms behind these effects to make tACS an effective method.

Transitive inference (TI) is a cognitive task that assesses an organism's ability to infer novel relations between items based on previously acquired knowledge. TI is known for exhibiting various behavioral and neural signatures, such as the serial position effect (SPE), symbolic distance effect (SDE), and the brain's capacity to maintain and merge separate ranking models. We propose a novel framework that casts TI as a probabilistic preference learning task, using one-parameter Mallows models. We present a series of simulations that highlight the effectiveness of our novel approach. We show that the Mallows ranking model natively reproduces SDE and SPE. Furthermore, extending the model using Bayesian selection showcases its capacity to generate and merge ranking hypotheses as pairs with connecting symbols. Finally, we employ neural networks to replicate Mallows models, demonstrating how this framework aligns with observed prefrontal neural activity during TI. Our innovative approach sheds new light on the nature of TI, emphasizing the potential of probabilistic preference learning for unraveling its underlying neural mechanisms.

The identification of visually presented words tolerates distortions in the input format, as Hannagan et al. Plos One, 7, e32121, (2012) demonstrated in a masked priming lexical decision task, showing sizable identity-priming effects with CAPTCHA-like primes. This tolerance to distortion has two potential explanations: bottom-up normalization in the encoding stage (Dehaene et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9, 335-341, 2005) or top-down lexical feedback (McClelland & Rumelhart, Psychological Review, 88, 375-407, 1981). To disentangle the predictions of these accounts, we conducted two masked identity-priming experiments with printed and CAPTCHA-like distorted primes on high- and low-frequency words. The rationale was that, in the distorted format, high-frequency words would benefit more from top-down feedback than low-frequency words. Results in the lexical decision experiment showed that, for high-frequency words, identity-priming effects were only slightly greater for printed than for CAPTCHA-like primes, whereas this difference was larger for low-frequency words. In contrast, when employing the same-different matching task, which does not require lexical access, the identity-priming effect was greater for printed primes and was unaffected by word frequency. Thus, during lexical access, top-down feedback may help normalize the visual input in the early stages of word recognition, challenging bottom-up models of visual word recognition.

Salient objects are well known to capture attention. Furthermore, a stimulus associated with the attention-capturing objects could infiltrate into working memory. This was recently formulated as filter disruption theory. In the present study, we asked whether such disruption of filter and incidental encoding of irrelevant information into working memory could be prevented. We hypothesized that an active maintenance of information could activate top-down control, thereby preventing the incidental infiltration of irrelevant information into working memory. In experiments, participants performed two consecutive visual searches while maintaining a visual item in working memory. In the first search, one of nontarget items was associated with a salient distractor. Importantly, the color of the nontarget item related to the salient distractor was incidentally encoded into working memory, exerting memory-driven attentional capture in the second search. However, such incidental encoding of irrelevant information into working memory did not occur when participants had to maintain a single color in working memory. This provides novel evidence that while the attentional filter is subject to perceptual distraction, active maintenance of information in working memory can prevent such disruption of the filter.

A widely adopted approach in research on unconscious perception and cognition involves contrasting behavioral or neural responses to stimuli that have been presented to participants (e.g., old items in a memory test) against those that have not (e.g., new items), and which participants do not discriminate in their conscious reports. We demonstrate that such contrasts do not license inferences about unconscious processing, for two reasons. One is Kelley's Paradox, a statistical phenomenon caused by regression to the mean. In the inevitable presence of measurement error, true awareness of the contrasted stimuli is not equal. The second is a consequence, within the framework of Signal Detection Theory, of unequal skewness in the strengths of target and nontarget items. The fallacious reasoning that underlies the employment of this contrast methodology is illustrated through both computational simulations and formal analysis, and its prevalence is documented in a narrative literature review. Additionally, a recognition memory experiment is reported which tests and confirms a prediction of our analysis of the contrast methodology and corroborates the susceptibility of this method to artifacts attributable to Kelley's Paradox and strength skewness. This work challenges the validity of conclusions drawn from this popular analytic approach.

Humans can remember past autobiographical events through extended narratives. How these narrated memories typically unfold, however, remains largely unexplored. We evaluated how autobiographical memory details typically come together in a sample of 235 healthy young, middle-aged, and older adults. We found that details providing background knowledge followed a U shape, such that they were most prevalent in the initial moments of remembering before falling and then rising near the conclusion of the memory's retelling. Details about the scene of the memory declined over time, whereas other event-specific, unique details about the main features of the event followed an inverted U shape, peaking around the midpoint of a remembered event's narration. Whereas most detail arcs were not significantly affected by older age, older adults showed a significant underuse of details describing the scene early in memory retrieval. Our findings suggest that behind the ability to narrate the remembered past is a normative waxing and waning of the details that make autobiographical memories.

Based on the hypothesis of two maintenance mechanisms of verbal information in working memory, an articulatory loop and an attentional executive loop, Barrouillet et al. predicted and observed that facilitating the optimal use and separation of these two systems results in a strong increase in recall performance. They developed for this purpose the maxispan procedure, in which participants cumulatively rehearse aloud a limited number of the first items of the series (i.e., three or four) and keep rehearsing them until the end of the series before recall. Beyond increasing recall performance, the model also predicts that the maxispan procedure should also abolish the phonological similarity effect (PSE, the poorer recall of phonologically similar than dissimilar items) in both the rehearsed and the nonrehearsed items by permitting the perfect maintenance of the former in a nonoverloaded articulatory loop and preventing storage of phonological traces of the latter in the attentional system. However, the PSE should reappear if too many items are verbally rehearsed in the maxispan procedure. In this case, the overload of the articulatory loop should lead to offload its content into the attentional system where phonologically similar traces are prone to confusion. We tested and verified these hypotheses in two experiments.

What we remember reflects both what we encounter, such as the intrinsic memorability of a stimulus, and our internal attentional state when we encounter that stimulus. Our memories are better for memorable images and images encountered in an engaged attentional state. Here, in an effort to modulate long-term memory performance, we manipulated these factors in combination by selecting the memorability of presented images contingent on individuals' natural fluctuations in sustained attention. Can image memorability and attentional state be strategically combined to improve memory? Are memorable images still well remembered during lapses in sustained attention, and conversely, can attentive states rescue memory performance for forgettable images? We designed a procedure to monitor participants' sustained attention dynamics on the fly via their response time fluctuations during a continuous performance task with trial-unique scene images. When high- or low-attentional states were detected, our algorithm triggered the presentation of high- or low-memorability images. Afterwards, participants completed a surprise recognition memory test for the attention-triggered images. Results demonstrated that memory performance for memorable items is not only resistant to lapses in sustained attention but also that memory cannot be further improved by encoding memorable items in engaged attentional states. On the other hand, memory performance for low-memorability images can be rescued by attentive encoding states. In sum, we show that both memorability and sustained attention can be leveraged in real time to maximize memory performance. This approach suggests that adaptive cognitive interfaces can tailor what information appears when to best support overall memory.

Emotions are known to influence cognitive performance, particularly working memory (WM) in both its aspects, processing, and maintenance. One explanatory mechanism might be that negative stimuli capture attentional resources, leaving fewer resources for attentional maintenance and processing of information in WM. However, this attentional capture was only investigated using WM tasks in which participants were explicitly asked to process negative items. The aim of this paper was to determine whether explicit processing of emotional stimuli is necessary to impair WM performance, or if their mere presence is enough to capture attention. For this purpose, participants performed a complex span task in which they alternated between memorizing a series of neutral words and processing either emotional images or neutral ones. In Experiment 1, participants were instructed to explicitly process emotional images, whereas in Experiment 2, emotional images were presented without any processing being required. In both experiments, we observed a decrease in memory performance when the images were negative compared to neutral. Whether or not voluntary processing is involved, emotional images seem to capture attentional resources, which in turn leads to a decline in memory performance. These results were discussed in relation to attentional theories and the influence of emotion on the specific mechanisms of WM.