Memory & Cognition最新文献

Readers utilize both foveal and parafoveal information to recognize letters and words effectively. In the fovea, the ability to identify letters is maximized, resulting in greater accuracy for letters that are directly fixated upon. Conversely, the accuracy of letter identification diminishes in the parafovea. Notably, letters at the beginning and end of words are often recognized more accurately than those in the middle, which yields a W-shaped function in identification accuracy and an M-shaped function in response times. Building upon these observations, word identification rates are higher for strings presented in the foveal area. Due to an attentional bias toward reading direction, there exists a greater ability to identify words in the right parafovea compared to the left. Given that deaf readers display a distinct distribution of visual attention, the present study aims to investigate, using a Rapid Parallel Visual Presentation paradigm, whether deaf readers differ in their ability to identify letters and words. Participants were presented with three-letter nonword and word sequences at foveal and parafoveal positions and instructed to identify post-cued letter and word targets. While both groups demonstrated the W-shaped accuracy function for letter identification, response times for deaf readers were characterized by a distinct M-shaped pattern, particularly for letters in the right visual field (RVF). Hearing participants exhibited a RVF advantage in word identification; however, deaf participants displayed a reduced RVF advantage, suggesting a more bilateral distribution of visual attention during reading. These results indicate that deafness leads to subtle yet significant differences in letter and word identification processes.

People tend to encode high-value information better than low-value information. This value-directed encoding effect (VDE) is usually studied in the context of future gains, whereas the impact of future losses is rarely studied. This is a notable gap because behavioral economics suggests that participants are highly motivated to avoid losses. Here, we compared the encoding of potential gains, losses, and neutral items in three recognition experiments. We also manipulated time constraints such that participants had 1 s (Experiment 1), unlimited encoding time (Experiment 2), or 3 s (Experiment 3) to encode the valued words. VDE effects were absent when participants were given only 1 s to encode in Experiment 1. When given unlimited encoding time in Experiment 2, Win words were later recognized more often than Loss words, which were recognized more often than Neutral words. Participants also spent longer encoding Win versus Loss words. In Experiment 3, when encoding was restricted to 3 s, Win and Loss words were similarly later recognized at rates higher than Neutral words. Thus, potential future losses do not loom larger than gains during encoding. However, both yield better encoding than Neutral items if participants are given more than 1 s to encode. Additionally, in all three experiments, memory for the prior value of Win and Loss items was robust, and analyses demonstrated that VDE recognition effects were unnecessary for robust memory of value.

A growing body of evidence shows that selective attention can be strategically directed to prioritize items of higher "value" in working memory. This work has typically been limited to tests of feature binding using simple "unitized" colored shapes as memoranda. Recent research has suggested prioritization may not be effectively applied to color-odor bindings. This raises the possibility that the benefits of value-based prioritization in working memory may be limited to bindings between unitized visual features (e.g., object-color bindings, object-location bindings). The current study explored this, examining whether value-directed prioritization can be effectively applied when feature pairings of color and shape are separated out, either into different spatial locations (Experiment 1) or across visual and auditory presentation modalities (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 found an overall cost to working memory performance when features were spatially separated, relative to a unitized condition, while Experiments 2 found no such cost for cross-modal feature separation. Across the experiments, participants were equally able to derive performance benefits from prioritizing high-value items in the sequence, regardless of whether features were encountered as part of the same unitized object or separated in space (Experiment 1) or modality (Experiment 2). The findings have implications for the relationship between working memory and attention, suggesting that value-directed prioritization can be effectively applied across different types of feature binding.

Mind wandering during reading has been extensively investigated, with multiple studies reporting differences in eye-movement behavior between mind-wandering and on-task reading. More recently, researchers have tried to use eye-movement measures to predict mind wandering during reading; however such indicators of mind wandering during reading have not yet been clearly identified. This article presents results from two studies. Firstly, we carried out a meta-analysis to identify eye-movement indicators of mind wandering during reading. From the initial search, abstracts from 140 articles were reviewed for eligibility, and 39 articles were included for full text reading and data extraction. Finally, we identified 16 individual datasets from 19 articles for which we could compute effect sizes. We calculated effect sizes for nine eye-movement measures: mean fixation duration, fixations count, first-fixation duration, gaze duration, total reading time, saccade length, skipping, blink count, and inter-word regressions. The results indicated that readers skipped more words and made fewer fixations during mind-wandering compared to on-task reading. Following these results, we carried out exploratory analyses with a dataset from our own lab to examine other possible explanations for this eye-movement pattern. Specifically, we investigated readers' sensitivity to word frequency and length and readers' use of corrective regressions. Results indicated that readers show reduced effects of word length and frequency on skipping behavior as well as a reduced use of corrective regressions during mind-wandering compared to on-task reading. Results and implications from both studies are discussed in the context of mind-wandering and reading research.

In the domain of perception and cognition, few scientists have contributed more broadly and profoundly than W. R. Garner. Today, Garner is best known for the eponymous Garner interference, but several equally epoch-making developments are less widely recognized or associated with his name. In this article, we provide an in-depth examination of five areas developed by Garner's pioneering ideas, all precursors of contemporary research. They include hearing psychophysics, methodology (with implications for resolving the replication/credibility crisis), information theory, perceptual independence, and attention. All have been instrumental in shaping and molding current perceptual and cognitive science. This article can also serve the student of cognition and perception as a reference for the origins of contemporary work and findings in psychological science.

The importance of the post-encoding period for memory retention is clear from studies of retroactive interference. However, it is less clear how the nature of post-encoding information determines the mnemonic fate of complex memories, which contain both central details describing the unfolding of the event and peripheral details which provide perceptual richness. The goal of the present study was to test whether interfering narratives composed of central details varying in conceptual similarity causes retroactive interference for details from the encoded memory. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design where participants encoded videos depicting complex events (e.g., going to a restaurant) followed by a post-encoding period consisting of an unfilled delay or an interfering narrative that was either related (e.g., going to a restaurant) or unrelated to the event (e.g., taking an art class). The interfering narratives were composed of only central details and were presented auditorily, to minimize overlap with peripheral details in the videos. Half of the videos were recalled immediately, and half were recalled after 24-hours. We found that central details were forgotten more in the unrelated post-encoding group than the other two groups. Experiment 2 replicated the difference in central detail recall between related and unrelated post-encoding interference using a within-subjects design. We reveal that retroactive interference for complex memories may be determined both by the conceptual similarity of the interfering information and by the overlap between the types of details being interfered with.

Memories of events from fictional sources (e.g., scenes from movies or novels) share many properties with memories of lived experiences (Yang et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151 (5), 1089,  2022). Here we test whether memories of fictional events can serve a similar function to personal memories, serving as the building blocks for simulations of novel scenarios. Across two studies, participants imagined themselves in future scenarios, rated the phenomenological qualities of each simulation (e.g., visual properties), and then identified the sources (e.g., fiction, lived experience) used to generate their simulations. Study 1 (N = 208) focused on people's simulations of a pandemic as a function of whether they had personally experienced the COVID-19 lockdown yet. Participants tested prior to lockdown reported drawing on fictional sources when simulating a pandemic scenario; in contrast, participants tested after lockdown began drew on their own lived experiences when simulating. Study 2 (N = 248) replicated these results using a diverse set of scenarios (e.g., being stuck in an elevator) selected to elicit different levels of prior experience across participants. Again, fictional memories were relied upon when simulating in the absence of lived experience. The results suggest that fictional and personally experienced memories can serve similar functions. Theoretically, the results are consistent with arguments to broaden frameworks of autobiographical memory to include memories of fictional events, in the same way that false memories and vicarious memories are considered to be types of autobiographical memories.

Research on the misinformation effect has shown that individuals' memories can be influenced by postevent misinformation. However, individuals do not passively receive such misinformation; instead, they may form perceptions about its sources. This study was the first to examine the relationship between individuals' social perceptions of misinformation sources and their susceptibility to postevent misinformation, considering different types of misinformation in three preregistered studies. Participants first learned a narrative paragraph in preparation for an interview. They then answered questions under one of three conditions: neutral (no misinformation), explicit misinformation, or pragmatic implication misinformation. Participants rated the interviewers who prepared the questions (Study 1 and Study 2) or asked the questions in a video (Study 3) on competence, sociability, morality, and overall perception. Memory accuracies during the direct interaction and subsequent cued recall were analyzed alongside these social perception ratings. Participants gave lower social perception ratings to sources presenting explicit misinformation compared with those in neutral and pragmatic misinformation conditions. However, social perception ratings were not associated with memory accuracies. Regardless of the type of misinformation, exposure to misinformation increased the likelihood of making corresponding misinformation errors.

The noisy channel language comprehension proposal posits that comprehenders detect and correct errors when interpreting sentences. This study replicates and extends Zhan et al. (2023), testing the model in Mandarin Chinese with three syntactic alternations: (1) Active-Passive-BA sentences, (2) Double Object (DO)-Initial position Prepositional Object (PO)-Final position PO sentences, and (3) Transitive-Initial position Adverbial Intransitive-Final position Adverbial Intransitive sentences. In each alternation, the first two structures were adopted from Zhan et al. (2023), while the third was introduced in this study. These alternations require different numbers and types of edits to transform implausible sentences into plausible ones. Participants read test items and answer corresponding comprehension questions, which indicate whether they interpret the item literally. The results aligned with Zhan et al. (2023)'s findings, indicating that Mandarin participants were most likely to make inferences for implausible sentences resulting from deleting or inserting a single morpheme, followed by those formed by a noun phrase exchange across a function word, and least likely to make inferences for implausible sentences obtained through a noun phrase exchange across a main verb. The inclusion of novel structures reinforces the robustness of the noisy-channel framework and highlights how language-specific properties influence language comprehension.

While the role of attention via WM during free recall has been well established in the dual-task literature, the potential role of storage-based aspects of WM in episodic retrieval has yet to be explored, particularly outside the context of individual differences. We enforced a storage-based WM load during the recall window of a free recall-based task to examine effects on a variety of episodic recall characteristics. We assessed the effects of the load on benchmark effects from the free-recall literature (primacy, recency, lag-recency) and the rate of memory search. While load affected overall recall accuracy, there was otherwise no reliable effect of a storage-based WM load on the benchmark effects of free recall. The impairment of recall accuracy under WM load without any commensurate effect on fundamental aspects of episodic retrieval is challenging for perspectives in which the differences in episodic retrieval uniquely arise from effects on the rate of memory search, as has usually been observed in both the dual-task and WM literatures.