Memory & Cognition最新文献

The semantic relatedness effect, a memory advantage of semantically related items (e.g., "penguin, giraffe, goat"), is well established in the literature on working memory (WM). Nevertheless, it remains unclear what mechanisms are responsible for this effect. Although an influential account ascribes it to the cue-dependent retrieval process (e.g., "animal" works as a cue for "penguin, giraffe, goat"), this account has not yet been fully investigated. This is partly because the influence of cues cannot be directly tested in typical studies using common categories (e.g., "animal" is likely to be generated and used by participants, but the generation and use of cues are uncontrollable for the experimenter). The present study, by introducing ad hoc categories and cueing ad hoc category labels, directly tested the influence of cues. Specifically, seemingly unrelated items (e.g., "bone, fly, car") were presented with or without the corresponding ad hoc category label (e.g., "things that dogs chase"). Four experiments demonstrated that providing ad hoc category labels affected WM performance. Importantly, providing the labels improved item memory in WM (Experiments 2 and 3). This supported the retrieval-cue account. Nevertheless, the effect was small (Experiments 2 and 3) and was not found in an experiment (Experiment 1). In contrast, providing the labels had a substantial and systematic effect on long-term memory, suggesting that the manipulation of providing the labels, per se, was successful. The current study's implications for research on WM and ad hoc categories were also discussed.

Communication frequently involves discussions about real-world implausible events. Since most prior research used specific contextual cues to indicate a strong bias towards real-world knowledge violations, it remains unclear how real-world and contextual knowledge interact when the context is relatively unconstraining (e.g., dream scenarios), where both plausible and implausible information is supported. We investigated this issue using sentence completion (Experiment 1) and self-paced reading tasks (Experiment 2). Results of Experiment 1 showed that comprehenders were guided by the dream context to expect less plausible information in a general way, but their expectations were still largely constrained by real-world knowledge. Results of Experiment 2 showed that although comprehension in such contexts was initially guided by real-world knowledge, plausible information became more difficult to comprehend than implausible information (e.g., "putting meat and vegetables in the refrigerator_plausible/wardrobe_implausible") at the final regions of the target sentence. Our study is the first to show that context is powerful enough to guide comprehenders towards expecting world knowledge violations even without explicit constraints indicating this bias, which is mainly driven by increased comprehension difficulties for plausible contents rather than decreased difficulties for implausible ones. Importantly, our findings raise new questions about how comprehenders switch from an old situation model to a new one. They also indicate necessary extensions for language comprehension models, highlighting that information unrelated to both real-world and contextual knowledge in any direct way (i.e., information with extremely low cloze probability) can still be ultimately preferred in certain contexts.

The goal of the present study was to test the hypothesis that cross-language activation of cognates significantly increases working memory capacity for bilingual readers. Highly proficient, Spanish-English bilinguals completed the reading span task (RST) in which participants made sentence plausibility judgments while simultaneously holding target words in memory for later recall. Across three experiments the cognate status of either the constituent sentence words or follow-up targets was manipulated. Contrary to our predictions, the presence of cognates in the stimulus set did not have a uniform benefit on performance. Instead, the pattern of performance across experiments indicates that the presence of cognates caused a shift in resource allocation across the two subtasks of the RST. Specifically, when the cognate manipulation was in the target words, sentence plausibility judgments were more accurate in the cognate condition. When the cognate manipulation was in the sentences, target word recall was superior while sentence plausibility judgment accuracy was worse in the cognate condition. The ease of facilitated lexical access of cognate words may have induced this reallocation of resources to the alternative task. These findings have critical implications for the valid use of the RST as a measure of working memory capacity for comprehension in bilingual populations as well as our understanding of the working memory demands of bilingual sentence comprehension and how these are modulated by cross-language lexical activation dynamics.

The regulation of Visual Working Memory (VWM) distraction resistance by internal attention remains debated with four hypotheses: the null hypothesis (attentional priorities don't affect distraction resistance), protection hypothesis (higher priority, greater distraction resistance), vulnerability hypothesis (higher priority, lower distraction resistance), and available resource threshold hypothesis (distraction resistance depends on attentional resource allocation exceed required thresholds). A recent study found that temporal attention can influence VWM priorities, yet this hasn't been explored from the perspective of temporal attention. This study used a continuous reporting task to examine these issues. Experiment 1 established stable attentional priority using an auditory cue, while Experiment 2 removed this cue to introduce dynamic priority changes. To explore neural mechanisms, Experiment 3 employed EEG to measure contingent negative variation (CNV) and decode priority representations during the delay period. Behavioral results confirmed that visual distractors increased memory deviation during maintenance, but deviations were smaller for anticipated high-priority items, suggesting better memory accuracy. High-priority items showed greater resistance to distraction at long intervals. Without the auditory cue, high-priority items resisted distraction better at short intervals. EEG results revealed enhanced CNV before long interval targets and better decoding of priority with distractors during long intervals. In summary, distraction affects different priority items equally when resources exceed requirements. High-priority items resist interference when adequately resourced but suffer if resources are insufficient, supporting the available resource threshold hypothesis. This study highlights the temporal dynamics of distraction resistance in VWM representations.

We often use tools and aids to help us achieve our cognitive goals - that is, we often offload to external supports. One such variety of offloading is the use of external memory stores (e.g., phones, computers, notebooks, calendars) to support memory. Recent work aimed at better understanding the consequences of offloading memory on aspects of unaided memory have revealed a clear cost to unaided memory performance when an external memory store is unexpectedly lost, but this work has focused on examining this cost in free-recall paradigms. Using key theoretical differences between recall and recognition, we sought to examine the influences of expecting external memory supports in a recognition memory context across five preregistered experiments, finding evidence for a small cost to unaided recognition memory. We found evidence for a specific cost in recollection (Experiments 2, 3a, and 3b). When testing the effects of expecting external memory support on indices of study effort, there was a reduction to study time which partially mediated the relation between expecting support and memory performance indices, consistent with earlier work using free recall. Individuals did not predict a cost to memory of losing expected support in recognition, contrasting earlier work using free recall.

This study explores multi-tasking by examining the effects of transitioning from dual-task to triple-task scenarios. Our research extends beyond conventional dual-task paradigms to investigate the impact of triple-task performance on two participant groups: those unprepared in single, dual, or triple tasks (N = 14) and those previously prepared in single and dual tasks (N = 13). The study consisted of a preparation phase with nine sessions and an assessment phase with eight sessions. In the assessment phase, both groups performed single, dual, and triple tasks of varying complexity (simple, medium, and complex). Despite the initial advantage observed in the prepared group, this advantage diminished throughout the sessions. Notably, both groups adopted distinct strategies for processing within the triple task, revealing the influence of task coordination on response times as the task set combinations expanded. The study demonstrates that preparation in the form of pre-training can facilitate applying skills acquired from specific tasks to others, with the formation of specific task pair sets playing a pivotal role in processing and coordination. Despite extensive preparation, the persistence of multi-tasking costs challenges traditional assumptions about eliminating such costs through practice. In conclusion, our research contributes to the current understanding of multi-tasking by highlighting the need for further exploration into inter(sub)task coordination and prioritization in multiple-task scenarios. The study underscores the complexities inherent in managing triple tasks and individuals' potential strategies. The findings suggest that ongoing refinement of cognitive models from dual tasks is necessary to accommodate multi-tasking behaviors in more complex environments.

The Stroop task is widely used to study attentional control and cognitive flexibility. However, questions about its sensitivity to training and the impact of task conflict on attentional control remain open. We investigated the effects of practice and task conflict on attentional control in the Stroop task, with participants completing four sessions of a Stroop task over 3 weeks in low and high task-conflict conditions. Our results show that the level of task conflict had an impact only in the first session, even though participants remained sensitive to task conflict throughout all four sessions. Moreover, we found that practice reduced response times in the Stroop task, for both congruent and incongruent trials. Nevertheless, the interference between congruent and incongruent stimuli remained consistent over the 3-week period, indicating that inter-condition interference is not affected by training. Our study, therefore, suggests that the extent to which the level of task conflict modulates Stroop task performance is only partially sensitive to training. These findings provide further insights into the role of task conflict and practice in attentional control and cognitive flexibility.

In short-term ordered recall tasks, phonological similarity impedes item and order recall, while semantic similarity benefits item recall with a weak or null effect on order recall. Ishiguro and Saito recently suggested that these contradictory findings were due to an inadequate assessment of semantic similarity. They proposed a novel measure of semantic similarity based on the distance between items in a three-dimensional space composed of the semantic dimensions of valence, arousal, and dominance. We conducted an experimental examination of their proposal. In four experiments, participants performed an immediate serial recall or an immediate order reconstruction task. Performance of dissimilar lists was contrasted with performance for semantically similar lists defined by valence, arousal, and dominance or by the typical latent semantic analysis. Two sets of words were used to assess the reproducibility of the findings and similar results were observed with both sets. As expected, when similarity was defined with latent semantic analysis, items were better recalled without noticeable impact on their order. However, contrary to Ishiguro and Saito's predictions, when similarity was defined with valence, arousal and dominance, no effect emerged.

The nature and basis of creative thought has been the subject of wide-ranging inquiry. It is well established that people tend to struggle to solve problems that require an insight-and that this limitation is not readily alleviated. What can help produce more successful creative cognition? We propose a benefit from increased focus on the relations that hold between the elements of a problem situation. The present research addresses a novel technique to promote relational encoding by guiding participants to generate relational content connecting problem elements. In two experiments, we find that participants who engage in relational encoding are more likely to solve insight problems than controls. Theoretical and applied implications of the findings are addressed.

The accuracy of metacognitive judgments is rarely incentivized in experiments; hence, it depends on the participants' willingness to invest cognitive resources and respond truthfully. According to arguments promoted in economic research that performance cannot reach its full potential without proper motivation, metacognitive abilities might therefore have been underestimated. In two experiments (N = 128 and N = 129), we explored the impact of incentives on the accuracy of judgments of learning (JOLs), memory performance, and cue use in free recall of word lists. We introduced a payoff scheme with 5 cents maximum per judgment to promote the accuracy of predicting recall success while simultaneously discouraging strategic responding in the memory test. Incentivizing JOLs had no effect on memory performance. Metacognitive accuracy in terms of resolution (Kruskal's Gamma) was slightly improved in Experiment 1, but not in Experiment 2. On the more negative side, the incentives boosted JOLs indiscriminately, producing substantial overconfidence. A deeper analysis including cues like word concreteness, imagery, arousal, frequency, subjective relevance, and font size showed the usual and simultaneous cue effects on JOLs. However, cue effects were largely unaffected in size by incentivizing JOLs. In summary, incentives for accuracy do not improve the resolution of JOLs to an extent that outweighs the large inflation of overconfidence. Based on the current results, one cannot recommend the future use of incentivized studies in the field of metamemory.