Memory & Cognition最新文献

The decision-making processes involved in relying on an external source (cognitive offloading) for memory retrieval tasks have been discussed in numerous publications. The nature of original learning strategies could be an important contributing factor to the decision to offload but is unexamined. In this study we used a paired-associate learning task to investigate the influences of mnemonic (associative) and rote learning strategies on the likelihood of opting out, either by offloading or omitting a response. Further, we investigated the ways that certain outcome variables (specifically, the number of opt-out responses and amount of time spent studying) may in fact influence the relationship between learning strategy and decisions to persist in effortful search. We also investigated the degree to which any effects of learning strategy are specific to either offloading or omission decisions. Overall, we found a mnemonic learning effect of decreased frequency of general opt-out decisions relative to the rote group. Further, we found that mnemonic learning led to longer internal search times prior to opt-out responses, suggesting additional, intentional search processes such as trying to retrieve the original mnemonic, to help recover the response word. A partial mediation of the learning strategy effect on omission latency by performance factors suggested the learning strategy effect affects omission latency independently. Finally, relative to the rote learning strategy, the mnemonic strategy led to fewer instances of offloading, and longer decision latencies for omission responses.

Humans have long used external resources to overcome limitations of internal memory. However, experimental research investigating the efficacy of these strategies has emerged relatively recently. Given the rapidly growing interest in this topic, we conducted two meta-analyses to answer key questions regarding the effects of cognitive offloading - the use of physical action to reduce internal cognitive demand - on the performance of memory-based tasks. A meta-analysis of mean differences revealed that the benefit of offloading is greater for forced- compared to choice-offloading conditions and within- compared to between-subject designs. A meta-analysis of variance found that cognitive offloading reduces interindividual variability in the performance of memory-based tasks and that the reduction is greater for adults compared to children, for forced- compared to choice-offloading conditions, and for prospective compared to retrospective memory tasks. Study modality was not a significant moderator in either analysis. We discuss the applied, theoretical, and methodological implications of these findings.

Interleaving items from different categories is often better for learning than blocking items by category, but research on the interleaving effect has neglected situations in which people can take notes. In addition to the practical reasons for examining note-taking, notes also provide insight into participants' thought processes during learning. In two experiments, participants studied paintings by different artists, with paintings by half of those artists blocked by artist and paintings by the other half interleaved with paintings by other artists. We manipulated whether participants took notes. Then, participants classified new paintings by the studied artists (in Experiment 1, all note-takers used their notes on the test; in Experiment 2, half of the note-takers used their notes on the test and half did not). Across both experiments, we found an interaction between sequence and note-taking conditions. In the no-notes condition, interleaving was more effective than blocking for classifying new paintings. However, this benefit was significantly reduced when participants took notes but could not use them on the test and eliminated when they could take notes and use them on the test. Additionally, participants' notes tended to contain object and style characteristics, and the presence of critical style characteristics in participants' notes predicted their performance. This research sheds light on thought processes in category learning and may have implications for educational contexts.

Cognitive effort-based decision-making typically focuses on how much effort a person chooses to invest in a given action. Past experiments follow the assumption that monetary means and cognitive demands influence effort investment. However, motivation can influence behaviors beyond these factors, leaving open the question as to how individual tasks can motivate effort. Using two experiments, this study investigated how different elements of task designs can contribute to preferences that are related to the costs of performing an action and the rewards of monetary incentives. The results of this study suggest that preferences for an option can be influenced by various task-related factors such as the cognitive components required to complete a task (e.g., motor- or memory-related), how demanding the options are relative to each other (as determined by the number of elements to be manipulated in the task), and how much reward is available after task completion. In some cases, task designs could explain decision-making tendencies better than monetary reward or demand levels. These findings have significant implications for understanding how intrinsic motivation affects preferences based on the requirements of a task that can be unrelated to ability.

Eliciting judgments of learning (JOLs) from participants has been shown to enhance memory recall on paired-associates tasks in some contexts, a reactivity effect. However, little is known about the effect of JOLs on forms of learning where the task requires generalizing beyond the training set, such as in category learning. Here, we explore the effect of JOLs on relational rule discovery using a categorization paradigm. In Experiments 1 and 2, where both a relational rule and visual stimulus features can be effectively used for categorization, we show that JOLs impair rule discovery but do not affect memorization of visual features. In Experiment 3, we modified the task such that only a relational rule could be used to categorize stimuli and observed no evidence of reactivity. We explain these findings using a conservative strategy-shift account of reactivity, which proposes that eliciting JOLs causes participants to shift strategies to utilize the more obviously rewarded strategy. Specifically, when participants have multiple viable strategies, JOLs shift participants' categorization strategy away from rule discovery and instead encourage a more obvious strategy based on memorization of visual features.

People attribute higher truth to information they have previously been exposed to. This "truth effect" is resistant to many interventions aimed to reduce it. In three preregistered experiments, we explored whether processing largely unknown information in the form of questions could counteract repetition-induced truth. In Experiment 1 (N = 100), participants judged the truth of repeated and unrepeated sentences. Half of the participants processed sentences in declarative form and the other half processed them in interrogative form during exposure and judgment. A significant interaction between sentence repetition and sentence form emerged, with a significant truth effect in the declarative condition but not in the interrogative. Experiment 2 (N = 325) introduced an additional interrogative condition presenting sentences as questions only during the exposure phase. Compared with the declarative condition, the truth effect was greatly reduced, but still significant, in both interrogative conditions. Experiment 3 (N = 235) employed a within-participant design to manipulate both repetition and sentence form. We confirmed that the truth effect was substantially reduced for interrogative sentences. Additionally, repetition had a smaller effect on certainty about truth judgments for interrogative compared with declarative sentences. We discuss how these findings inform theoretical accounts of the truth effect and their implications for debiasing strategies.

Narrative comprehension, a cognitive skill essential for social participation, relies on a range of abilities, including memory and inference-making. While aging-related cognitive changes are well-documented, research on narrative comprehension in aging populations yields mixed findings, underscoring the importance of this study. This preregistered study examines how age, education, and presentation format (i.e., the narrative's codality: pictorial vs. textual) influence inference generation in older adults (N = 143, ages 62-86 years). Participants were presented with pictorial and textual stories consisting of three panels, with the second panel replaced with a blank panel. Their task was to comprehend the stories and determine whether the inferences provided for the missing event were correct or incorrect. Results reveal that pictorial narratives were better comprehended than textual ones; however, this advantage attenuates with increasing age. Contrary to expectations, narrative comprehension was largely resilient to age-related declines, as neither age nor education significantly impaired performance. Exploratory analyses tested the influence of protective (e.g., physical and mental activity, companionship) and risk factors (e.g., depression, anxiety, chronic pain, stress, and poor sleep) but found no significant impact on comprehension. Notably, narrative comprehension correlated with memory performance but not with other cognitive abilities, underscoring its specificity within the broader cognitive domain. These findings highlight the stability of narrative comprehension across media and aging, while also suggesting a narrowing pictorial advantage with age. Implications for existing cognitive theories and future research directions are discussed.

Through interactions with our environment, we cause perceivable effects. In four experiments, we investigated long-term bindings between action and effect features in action-effect episodes, and how they are influenced by action-effect compatibility (AEC). In addition, we asked whether AEC facilitates memory for effects. In a prime phase, participants performed actions that resulted in an effect that comprised two features, namely a spatial feature (a linear movement or rotation of a box in a certain direction) and a certain identity of a word presented in that box. The effect movement or rotation was either spatially compatible or incompatible (or neutral, in Experiment 3) to the action. In a subsequent probe phase, we assessed whether participants were inclined to repeat the action when re-presented with the effect word. Memory for effect words was also tested. Results showed a higher propensity to repeat an action in Experiments 1-3, but not when the influence of spatial effect features was reduced (Experiment 4). Participants further tended to retrieve the spatial effect location in the neutral condition to a similar extent to in the compatible and incompatible condition in Experiment 3. These findings suggest long-term feature bindings after one-shot learning of action-effect episodes, although primarily due to bindings between different effect features rather than between action and effect features. AEC facilitated memory for effect words in a free recall test (Experiment 1) given repeated presentation of the effect word, but not in a recognition test (Experiments 2-4). Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

The attentional boost effect (ABE) refers to a phenomenon wherein heightened attention to target detection in dual-task paradigms enhances memory performance for target-associated items. While the standard ABE has been extensively investigated in individual settings with self-relevant targets, it remains unclear whether the ABE persists or modulates in dyadic interactions involving both self-relevant and partner-relevant targets. To address this gap, we employed a mixed experimental design using lexical materials. Three groups were recruited to perform a typical ABE test using the same stimuli, including a single-person group for the standard ABE test, a dyadic baseline group (consisting of one true participant and one confederate), and a dyadic experimental group (composed of two true participants). As results, we observed a standard ABE for self-relevant targets (characterized by significantly higher d-prime scores for self-target items compared with distractor items) among all three groups, with no significant differences between the groups. Moreover, both the dyadic baseline group and the dyadic experimental group exhibited a reversed ABE for partner-target items (characterized by significantly lower d-prime scores for partner-target items compared with distractor items). These findings not only validate the ABE triggered by self-targets but also present, for the first time, a reversed ABE driven by spontaneous co-representation of partner targets. Consequently, the self-referential and actor/agent co-representation mechanisms underlying the standard and reversed ABEs are discussed.

We propose an integrated semantic-pragmatic account predicting the relative reading of necessary conditionals (NCs) (with two typical expression forms: p only if q vs. not-p unless q). It assumes that the reading of NCs is the joint effect of the semantic factor (q being necessary for p is context-independent) and the pragmatic factor (whether q is sufficient for p is context-dependent), and so varies with level of abstraction (abstract vs. concrete materials) in content. Three experiments used equivalence judgment tasks, possibility judgment tasks, and conditional reasoning tasks, respectively, to investigate how expression form and level of abstraction affect the reading of Chinese NCs. Experiment 1 established the equivalence between the two expression forms. Experiment 2 found that response patterns in conditional reasoning about NCs more often indicated the dual interpretation (q is both necessary and sufficient for p) in abstract materials than in concrete ones. Experiment 3 found that patterns of possibility judgments of four cases under NCs more often indicated the dual interpretation in abstract materials than in concrete ones. Overall, abstract NCs more often meant the dual interpretation than concrete NCs did, regardless of expression form. The present findings support the integrated semantic-pragmatic account rather than the mental model theory.