Psychonomic Bulletin & Review最新文献

In Egon Brunswik's theory of probabilistic functionalism, human prediction is conceptualized as an inductive inference process, in which cues are utilized as a lens to predict the probabilistically associated criterion in the environment. Dynamic cognitive adjustment, driven by the uncertainty of the individual and the substitutability of the environment, is based on vicarious functioning, the principle of learning from the frequency of co-occurrences. However, previous models of vicarious functioning, the multiple-regression lens and the fast-and-frugal lens, fail to explain how the individual reduces uncertainty while learning ecological cue validities. We therefore developed a diffusion lens model of vicarious functioning that captures dynamic cognitive adjustment to environments with multiple probabilistic and substitutable cues. A superstatistics approach allowed us to account for uncertainty reduction over time by an increasing sensitivity of the drift rate to the ecological validity of the cues. Additionally, the non-decision time is assumed to increase linearly with the number of presented cues to account for cue substitutability in the environment. The resulting model was validated by successfully fitting it to response time and choice data previously collected across multiple-cue probability learning tasks in diverse environments and scenarios. This suggests that the diffusion lens model can explain cognitive adjustment from an initial absence of knowledge to a near-perfect approximation of the probabilistic environment.

Bilinguals frequently code-switch during conversations-a behavior often viewed as creating processing challenges for listeners. However, code-switching may also enhance comprehension and memory by directing attention to key information. This study tested whether bilinguals recall information better in code-switched contexts compared with single-language contexts and explored whether code-switching experience amplifies this benefit. In a preregistered study, Spanish-English bilinguals listened to short vignettes containing both single-language and code-switched segments. Participants recalled details more accurately when they had been presented within a code-switched sentence, suggesting that switches act as cues that boost attention and memory encoding. Moreover, bilinguals with greater everyday code-switching experience showed the strongest recall benefits, supporting the idea that listeners learn to associate switches with communicative importance. These findings challenge the long-standing view that code-switching primarily imposes cognitive costs in comprehension. Instead, they reveal how bilinguals leverage the communicative value of code-switches to enhance memory for linguistic content. By demonstrating that code-switches can promote learning and retention, this study highlights the potential for code-switching to serve as a communicative tool, particularly in contexts where understanding and recalling information is critical.

The production effect refers to the finding that words read aloud are remembered better than words read silently. Historically, this phenomenon has been explained with reference to distinctive features encoded at study (e.g., auditory and motor elements) being retrieved at test to discriminate between studied and unstudied items, with emphasis placed on features stemming from the act of production itself. Across two experiments, we demonstrate that even anticipation of reading a word aloud is sufficient to improve its memory over silent items. Using a recent variant of the production paradigm involving pupillometry, participants were instructed to withhold their response until a "Go" signal appeared. On "catch" trials this signal never occurred. Despite having not produced the word on a catch trial, participants nonetheless demonstrated both a behavioral (Experiments 1 and 2) and a pupillary (Experiment 2) production effect, although both were of lesser magnitude than on trials requiring actual production. For "Go" trials, the behavioral production effect was evident for both recollection and familiarity; for "catch" trials, the effect was evident only for recollection. These results support recent claims that motivational or attentional factors play a role in the emergence of the production effect, connecting this effect to a broader framework of action-oriented memory enhancement.

Episodic memories are segmented. This study explores the dual role of prior knowledge in event segmentation, hypothesizing that knowledge leads to coarser segmentation when experiences align with it, and finer segmentation when they do not. Participants underwent a training phase to learn sequences of images, followed by a segmentation phase where they identified event boundaries, and, finally, a surprise memory test. Our findings reveal that trained participants segmented less at trained color transitions compared to untrained participants. Conversely, when sequences were disrupted, trained participants exhibited more segmentation. Interestingly, the segmentation differences changed over time, suggesting that participants updated their expectations based on new experiences. Additionally, our study dissociated the roles of prediction errors and context switches in event segmentation. While prediction errors alone would predict larger differences between trained and untrained groups, we observed high segmentation rates in the trained group, even for expected transitions, underscoring the importance of contextual shifts. In conclusion, our results highlight that knowledge is a double-edged sword in event segmentation, promoting both coarser and finer segmentation. These findings provide insights into how the mind navigates and organizes experiences, emphasizing the nuanced interplay between knowledge, perception, and memory.

While biological motion processing has been extensively studied, little is known about the top-down impact of expectations in this context. We tested whether expectations about the likelihood of encountering a human walker influence the detection of biological motion in point-light displays, particularly when perceptual information is unreliable. Seventy-four participants completed a signal detection task, responding to stimuli featuring either a human walker or scrambled biological motion, each masked with one of four levels of visual noise. Participants were randomly assigned to the high or low expectations group and were told that 75% or 25% of the displays would feature a human walker, although the actual proportion was 50%. Participants in the high expectation group showed a greater tendency to respond "yes," with the largest group difference emerging at the highest level of noise. These findings suggest that expectations can bias biological motion detection, particularly under conditions of sensory unreliability. The results also support the predictive processing model of agency detection, which proposes that false-positive perceptions of (supernatural) agents arise from expectations combined with ambiguous input.

Complex span tasks are working memory (WM) tasks in which participants maintain series of items (e.g., letters) for further serial recall while performing a concurrent task (e.g., parity judgement on digits). It has been shown that even pushing the demand of this concurrent task at its individual limits strongly reduces, but does not totally abolish, memory performance. A small memory residual of about one item remains. The present study aimed at testing the hypothesis that this residual is retrieved from long-term memory (LTM). For this purpose, two experiments compared the size of memory residual either through immediate recall or after a 1-min delay filled with a backward counting task. If it is retrieved from LTM, a substantial part of this residual should still be accessible after the delay. Although this delay reduced the immediate memory residual, about two-thirds of this residual was still retrievable when the complex span task was performed under concurrent articulation. These findings confirmed that when processing almost entirely captures attention, memory residual mainly relies on LTM. However, the fact that forgetting rate during the complex span task was far larger than during the subsequent delay weakens WM theories suggesting that memory items are offloaded in activated LTM when attention is switched away. We suggest that our findings are more compatible with the short-term transient storage hypothesized by the synaptic theory of WM.

Across languages, major prosodic boundaries, such as intonational phrase (henceforth, IP) boundaries, are typically signalled via three types of prosodic cues, namely pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. However, the relative weight of each cue in the perception of IP boundaries differs across languages. Little is known about which cues are important in Dutch. This study investigates cue-weighting during processing of IP boundaries in Dutch by examining the effects of varying combinations of cues on the neurophysiological correlate of boundary processing, i.e., the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). Twenty-five native speakers of Dutch listened to renditions of a name sequence, connected by the coordinating conjunction en ('and'), i.e., Moni en Lilli en Manu, with or without an IP boundary after the second name. Event-related potential (ERP) results showed that the CPS was elicited by IP boundaries if a pause was present, regardless of whether pitch rise or final lengthening was omitted. In contrast, no CPS was observed when the pause cue was absent, even if both the other two cues were present. Together, these findings suggest that pause has a crucial role in the processing of IP boundaries in Dutch coordinated constructions, thereby differing from findings previously reported for the other West Germanic languages such as English and German.

Devraj et al. (Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02448-2 ,  2024) argued that findings which suggest that memories for items become less accessible over time conflict with categorisation findings where exemplar performance improves across training. To reconcile this, they highlighted that under real-world conditions items tend to reappear less frequently over time, thus preferentially maintaining new items can improve performance. Typical categorisation experiments instead distribute exemplars uniformly across trials. However, under a power-law stimulus distribution, Devraj et al. showed worsening fit for exemplar classification models across trials. They used this as evidence that forgetting behaviour adapted to task demands, reducing exemplar accessibility and encouraging prototype use for classification decisions. By re-analysing the same data, we argue instead that this pattern can be produced with exemplar-forgetting in both conditions. By systematically increasing in the delays across which stimuli were tested, their Experimental condition exaggerated the effects of forgetting on performance in later trials compared to the Control condition. This resulted in a reversal of performance growth across trials - instead leading to a steady decline in performance. As exemplar model-fit advantage is expected to vary with performance, we suggest that trends in this advantage are not diagnostic of a shift in classification strategy. We found that a forgetting-function improved exemplar model fit to Devraj et al.'s data, and under reasonable parameters could predict the observed patterns of performance and model-fit a priori. Compared with a strategy-shifting mixture model, exemplar-forgetting provided equivalent fits despite being more theoretically parsimonious. We suggest power-law memory decay does not produce a tension between categorisation and memory findings, as increased forgetting is found across longer retention intervals, whereas the delay between exemplar learning and classification remains constant across typical categorisation experiments.

According to previous research, if people rest quietly for a brief period of time after learning, they have better memory (i.e., reduced forgetting) after a delay compared to when they engage in a cognitively demanding task. We call this the wakeful rest effect. It has been observed with different kinds of study items, interference tasks, and delay intervals involving younger adults, older adults, and patients with amnesia. Despite the sometimes-presumed robustness of the effect, many studies have failed to observe significant results, particularly in healthy young adult populations. This random-effects meta-analysis combined 142 effect sizes from 51 studies to evaluate the evidence for the wakeful rest effect and to identify the sources of variation. Meta-regression was also done. As expected, there were larger effects for patient populations than for healthy populations, as well as weaker effects for younger than older adults. The results of this meta-analysis can inform further research on the potential benefits of wakeful rest.

Cross-linguistic reading research often focuses on the effect of orthographic depth-the closeness of the relationship between print and speech. To understand its effect on reading, we need to be able to objectively quantify the level of orthographic depth of a given orthography. Previous work has suggested that different dimensions underlie orthographic depth, and it is not always clear if and how existing quantifications map onto these underlying dimensions. Here, we first examine how different measures relate conceptually to underlying theoretical dimensions. Then, we quantify the relative depth of eight European orthographies. We use existing methods and new approaches which have not been previously used to quantify orthographic depth: Distance-based measures relying on the closeness of the phonology of orthographically similar words, and mutual information, as a theory-neutral approach. The relationship between the different measures suggests that they map on two separate dimensions: the size of the orthographic units that map onto phonology and the systematicity of the mapping, in line with previous theoretical work which drew a distinction between complexity and unpredictability. The measures derived based on different theoretical assumptions largely show agreement. From a theoretical perspective, this prevents us from making differential predictions based on different approaches. From a practical perspective, this suggests that different measures may yield comparable results, as long as they tap into the same underlying dimension of orthographic depth.