Memory & Cognition最新文献

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.

Tonal short-term memory has been positively associated with both incidentally acquired absolute pitch memory (e.g., for popular songs) and explicitly learned absolute pitch (AP) categories; however, the relationship between these constructs has not been directly tested within the same individuals. The current study investigated how tonal short-term memory relates to both incidentally and intentionally acquired AP. Participants (n = 192) completed a tonal short-term memory task, an incidental AP task, and an AP categorization task. The tonal short-term assessment involved adjusting a starting tone to match a target tone. The incidental AP task involved judging whether excerpts of popular songs were presented in the correct key. The AP categorization task involved associating six pitch chroma categories with arbitrary labels, including a generalization test that used Shepard tones to discourage pitch height cues. We found that all three pitch measures were positively correlated with one another. Critically, however, we found that tonal short-term memory fully mediated the relationship between incidental AP and explicit AP categorization. This finding held even when controlling for musical training and tonal language fluency. Overall, these results suggest that pitch memory is a consistent individual difference measure across different timescales and different measures (e.g., incidental measures, explicit measures). However, tonal short-term memory appears to be foundational to both incidentally acquired and explicitly learned AP categories.

Research shows that insufficient language access in early childhood significantly affects language processing. While the majority of this work focuses on syntax, phonology also appears to be affected, though it is unclear exactly how. Here we investigated phonological production across age of acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL). Participants were deaf adult signers who first learned ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years and they performed both lexical decisions and repetitions of ASL signs and pseudosigns. Because phonological production has been understudied across age of acquisition, we were particularly interested in production accuracy for the sublexical phonological parameters of handshape, movement, and location. Lexical decision responses were slower and more accurate for impossible pseudosigns compared with possible pseudosigns, indicating participants were sensitive to ASL phonological structure regardless of age of acquisition. Despite this, age of acquisition affected repetition accuracy. Handshape errors were highest for those with earlier ages of acquisition, but movement errors were highest for those with later ages of acquisition, though this effect of age of acquisition was only seen for real ASL signs and not pseudosigns. The parameter error pattern for pseudosigns was not affected by age of acquisition. These results indicate that later age of acquisition does not inhibit the ability to produce ASL phonology but ultimately alters the processing of the phonological parameters when meaning and phonology are integrated.

Theorists across all fields of psychology consider goals crucial for human action control. Still, the question of how precisely goals are represented in the cognitive system is rarely addressed. Here, we explore the idea that goals are represented as distributed patterns of activation that coexist within continuous mental spaces. In doing so, we discuss and extend popular models of cognitive control and goal-directed behavior, which implicitly convey an image of goals as discrete representational units. To differentiate empirically between discrete and continuous formats of goal representation, we employed a set-shifting paradigm in which participants switched between color goals that varied systematically in their distance in representational space. Across three experiments, we found that previous goals biased behavior during goal switches and that the extent of this bias decreased gradually with the previous goal's distance in color space from color information in the current trial. These graded effects of goal distance on performance are difficult to reconcile with the assumption that goals are discrete representational entities. Instead, they suggest that goals are represented as distributed, partly overlapping patterns of activation within continuous mental spaces. Moreover, the monotonous effects of distance in representational space on performance observed across all conditions in all experiments imply that the spreading of goal activation in representational space follows a monotonous (e.g., bell-shaped) distribution and not a nonmonotonous (e.g., Mexican-hat shaped) one. Our findings ask for a stronger consideration of the continuity of goal representations in models and investigations of goal-directed behavior.

Category learning is usually better supported by interleaved training (alternating between exemplars from different categories) than by blocked training (studying all exemplars within a category sequentially), yet when asked to choose between the two strategies most people endorse blocking as superior. We used a prototype category-learning task to examine the effects of between- and within-category similarity and knowledge of the number of stimuli to be studied on study sequencing choices during self-regulated learning. Across three experiments (including a complete replication), participants who viewed the number of stimuli in each category showed more interleaving in comparison with those who did not, indicating that participants adjusted their strategy based on the projected length of the study phase. Participants informed about the number of stimuli also showed greater interleaving when within-category similarity was high and greater blocking when within-category similarity was low; this difference was not found when participants were not told the number of stimuli to be studied. Between-category similarity did not affect degree of blocking versus interleaving. Overall, interleaving decreased over training and blocking increased. Most participants endorsed hybrid strategies in which blocking was combined with at least some interleaving on a metacognitive questionnaire, but when forced to choose between exclusive blocking and exclusive interleaving, the majority endorsed blocking. These results indicate that participants are sensitive to category structure and expectations about task length when choosing stimuli to study during self-regulated learning, and adjust their strategy across the time course of study.

The tip-of-the-pen (TOP) is a phenomenon in which individuals fail to completely retrieve the orthographic information of a known character, and mainly occurs in Mandarin (a non-alphabetic language in which the orthography is largely independent of the phonology). The present study examined whether and how long-term language experience and brief exposure to non-target language affected TOP rates in Mandarin handwriting. In Experiment 1, high and low proficiency Mandarin-English bilinguals completed a Mandarin character dictation task before and after watching a short English movie. The results revealed similar increases in TOP rates for both groups following the English movie. In Experiment 2, Cantonese-Mandarin bidialectals and native Mandarin speakers completed a protocol similar to Experiment 1, but the movie was replaced with a Cantonese movie. Notably, TOP rates significantly increased for bidialectals after the Cantonese movie, but the rates of incorrect responses increased for native speakers. These findings suggest that brief exposure to non-target language exerted a non-item-specific, global interference effect in written production, and also imply that the underlying mechanisms may be modulated by non-target language familiarity.

People show enhanced memory recall for disgust over fear, despite both being highly negative and arousing emotions. But does disgust's 'stickiness' in memory result in more false memories for disgust versus fear? Existing research finds low false-memory rates for disgust and fear, perhaps from using image lures depicting content unrelated to target images. Therefore, we presented 111 participants with disgust, fear, (and neutral) images during an attention-monitoring task. After 24-48 hours, participants completed a recognition test, where they viewed 'old' (previously seen) and 'new' images (both related and unrelated lures) and indicated whether each image was 'old' or 'new'. Relative to fear, participants experienced fewer false memories of disgust for unrelated lures, but similar false memories for related lures. Furthermore, participants' attention was captured more by disgust than fear images, and correct recognition and memory sensitivity were enhanced for disgust relative to fear. Our findings suggest disgust memory enhancement extends to accurate memory, which has clinical implications.

Fifty years ago, Tversky and Kahneman (Cognitive Psychology, 5[2], 207-232, 1973) reported that people's speeded estimations of 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1 were notably higher than their estimations for the equivalent expression in the opposite order, 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 × 5 × 6 × 7 × 8 (Median = 2,250 vs. 512, respectively). On top of this order effect, both groups grossly underestimated the correct value (40,320). The differential effect of the two orders on estimation has become famous as an early demonstration of the anchoring effect, where people's judgments under uncertainty are unduly influenced by an initial reference point (or "anchor"). Despite this fame, to the best of our knowledge, this effect has never been replicated. In a sample of 253 U.S. adults, the current study provides the first replication of this foundational example of anchoring. It extends this effect for the first time to a within-participants design, revealing its relative robustness even among participants who see the descending order first. Drawing on procedures from the mathematical cognition literature, it shows how the anchoring effect can be mitigated: calibrating to the correct value of 6! reduces this effect, and calibrating to 10! eliminates it altogether. An individual differences analysis measures the arithmetic fluency of participants and their accuracy on a new estimation assessment, and finds that higher estimation ability may be a "protective factor" against some anchoring effects. These findings affirm the anchoring effect of Tversky and Kahneman (1973, Study 6) while suggesting that calibration may be an effective strategy for helping to improve people's estimation of superlinear functions that are important in real-life contexts.

Collective temporal thought includes individuals' memories of group experiences and expectations about the group's collective future. Prior studies have found inconsistent valence biases (e.g., positivity) in North American collective memory and consistently negative biases in collective future thought. Discrepancies in collective memory valence biases may be due to different question framing across studies. Moreover, a limited number of studies extend collective temporal thought research beyond Western nations and few studies examine potential age-related differences in this area. Therefore, the present study investigates valence-based biases in collective temporal thought from the perspective of question framing, culture, and participant age. Participants (N = 1,548) included younger (20-39 years) and older (60+ years) adults from the USA and mainland China. Whereas Americans' collective memory biases varied across question framings, Chinese participants consistently displayed positivity biases. The American bias patterns were specific to collective memory and did not carry over to collective future thought ratings. Chinese participants showed higher dialectical thinking than American participants and dialectical thinking positively correlated with the proportion of positive events reported. Older adults generated significantly more positive events than younger adults, more so in collective memory than in collective future thought. Overall, collective temporal thinking is influenced by question framing, cultural context, and participant age.

In cognitive psychology, research on attention is shifting from focusing primarily on how people orient toward stimuli in the environment toward instead examining how people orient internally toward memory representations. With this new shift the question arises: What factors in the environment send attention inward? A recent proposal is that one factor is cue familiarity-detection (Cleary, Irving & Mills, Cognitive Science, 47, e13274, 2023). Within this theoretical framework, we reinterpret a decades-old empirical pattern-a primacy effect in memory for repetitions-in a novel way. The effect is the finding that altered repetitions of an image were remembered as re-occurrences of the first presentation despite having a changed left-right orientation; participants better retained the first orientation while incorrectly remembering changed instantiations as repetitions of the first orientation (DiGirolamo & Hintzman, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 4, 121-124, 1997). We argue that this pattern, which has never been fully explained, is an existing empirical test of the newly proposed mechanism of cue familiarity-detection flipping attention inward toward memory. Specifically, an image's first appearance is novel so draws attention outward toward encoding the stimulus' attributes like orientation; subsequent mirror-reversed appearances are detected as familiar so flip attention inward toward memory search, which leads to 1) inattentional blindness for the changed orientation due to the familiarity-driven shift of attention inward and 2) memory retrieval of the first instance and its orientation, thereby enhancing memory for the first instance and its previously encoded attributes like orientation.