Memory & Cognition最新文献

Déjà vu-the strange, inexplicable sensation that a current situation has been experienced before-is often accompanied by an illusory feeling of knowing regarding what is about to happen next. Studies have shown that when déjà vu occurs during virtual tours of scenes, an illusory sense of being able to predict the direction of the next turn frequently accompanies it. The present study examined whether a similar illusory sense of prediction might also accompany the auditory analog of déjà vu known as déjà entendu. Participants heard simple piano pieces, some of which had been experimentally familiarized through previous exposure to some of their features (e.g., isolated rhythm). Upon stopping each piano piece, participants made a familiarity judgment, a déjà entendu judgment, a feeling-of-prediction judgment, a prediction regarding the likely characteristics of the next note, and finally, an identification attempt. In Experiment 1, the prediction judgments were about the contour of the proceeding note (will ascend vs. descend in pitch). In Experiment 2, prediction judgments were about the location of the next note (left vs. right speaker), which was randomly predetermined and therefore unpredictable. Déjà entendu reports were significantly more likely to be accompanied by a feeling of prediction for the proceeding note's contour or location. However, these feelings were illusory, as participants did not show above-chance prediction accuracy in Experiment 1 concerning song contour, and predicting the proceeding note's location was not possible in Experiment 2.

The episodic flanker task is a memory analog of the classic perceptual flanker task. It was designed to test the conjecture that memory retrieval is perceptual attention turned inward. It measures the sharpness of the focus of attention on memory and produces episodic compatibility effects from flanking items analogous to the perceptual flanker task. Here we ask whether the episodic flanker compatibility effect results from a local match between the probe item and the cued item in the memory list, a global match between the entire (multiletter) probe and the memory list, or a combination of the two. We report two episodic flanker experiments that manipulate the compatibility of near (adjacent to the target) and far (nonadjacent) flankers independently. Local matching predicts no effect of remote targets. Global matching predicts that remote flankers will modulate the compatibility effect, reducing it when one is compatible and the other is incompatible. The results of both experiments confirmed the global matching prediction. A third experiment manipulated near and far flankers in a classic perceptual flanker task and found that far flankers modulated the compatibility effect in the same way, strengthening the parallels between episodic and perceptual flanker tasks. We conclude that the episodic flanker compatibility effect, like the perceptual effect, depends on both local and global matching. Our results provide converging evidence for the idea that memory retrieval is perceptual attention turned inward.

Two recent studies utilized indirect response procedures (i.e., a sentence completion task and the Implicit Association Test) and suggest that people evaluate the future more positively than the past (Kaup et al., Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 612,720, 2021; Ulrich et al., Memory & Cognition, 52, 444-458, 2024). This present article reports a novel chronometric approach and a self-report study examining whether this relationship can be observed consistently. In one part of the chronometric study, participants were instructed to respond verbally with the words "past" and "tomorrow" to negatively and positively connotated words. In the positive-future condition, participants responded with "tomorrow" to positive and "yesterday" to negative words; in the positive-past condition, they responded with "yesterday" to positive and "tomorrow" to negative words. In the other part, participants responded verbally with "good" and "bad" to time-related words. In the positive-future condition, they responded with "good" to future-related and "bad" to past-related words; in the positive-past condition, they responded with "good" to past-related and "bad" to future-related words. Response times were shorter in the positive-future than in the positive-past condition, suggesting that participants consistently evaluate the future more positively than the past (i.e., the positive-future effect). This strengthens the view that the positive-future effect is robust and general. Several possible mechanisms of why this effect emerges are discussed. The self-report study, in contrast, indicated no significant difference in individuals' perceptions of the past compared to the future. This may be attributed to a positivity bias in recalling past events, which may mask the differences in how people perceive the past versus the future.

Intentional visual imagery is a component of numerous aspects of cognition. Related to visual imagery, mental simulation plays a role in language comprehension: modality-specific regions of the brain are activated as an implicit part of people understanding language. The degree of overlap between the processes underlying conscious, voluntary visual imagery versus less conscious, more automatic mental simulation is unclear. We investigated this issue by having aphantasics (people who are unable to experience conscious voluntary visual imagery) and control participants perform a property verification task in which they were asked whether a property is a physical part of an object (e.g., is mane a physical part of a lion?). We manipulated the false trials so that the two words either were associated (semantically related) but did not form an object-part combination (monkey-banana), or were not associated (apple-cloud). Solomon and Barsalou (Memory & Cognition, 32, 244-259, 2004) demonstrated that word association influenced responses when the words in the false trials were not associated, whereas when they were associated, perceptual measures most strongly influenced the results, indicating mental simulation. In the present study, control participants and aphantasics demonstrated similar evidence of the use of both mental simulation and word association when verifying whether the words formed an object-part combination. These results suggest that visual imagery and mental simulation are at least somewhat separable cognitive processes.

Causal illusions refer to the erroneous perception of causal connections between noncontingent variables. Previous research has demonstrated that the format in which contingency information is displayed can impact causal judgments. On this basis, we examined the effect of graphical displays on the strength of causal illusions and reasoning strategies across three experiments. Study 1 revealed that frequency trees and contingency tables involving icons lead to weaker causal illusions than trial-by-trial presentations or contingency tables with numbers. An assessment of the participants' open responses in Study 2 indicated that stronger causal illusions were associated with reports of less sophisticated reasoning strategies. In Study 3, we directly compared frequency trees and contingency table visualizations. In addition to corroborating previous observations, we found that advanced strategies were more likely when the information was presented in frequency trees. Overall, our findings suggest that the efficacy of frequency trees in reducing causal illusions may be due to their ability to make sophisticated strategies more accessible.

Hearing music can evoke vivid memories from one's past. Here, we examined how musical versus verbal features of pop songs influenced retrieval of autobiographical memories (AMs) and explored mechanisms of action. We first compared the quantity and quality of AMs evoked by musical cues (popular songs) versus matched nonmusical cues (spoken lyrics). On each trial, participants (N = 84) listened to an auditory cue, which was either musical (a song clip) or spoken (a computer-generated neutral voice reading the lyrics from the song clip). While listening, participants indicated via button press whether the cue evoked an AM - if so, they described the AM in text, then rated the AM's properties (e.g., age of the memory, feelings of reliving, cue familiarity). We found that song cues were significantly more likely to evoke AMs (M = 49%) than spoken cues (M = 33%), even when controlling for cue familiarity. Song cues also elicited significantly greater feelings of reliving the evoked AM, compared to spoken cues, though this effect disappeared after controlling for cue familiarity. Critically, we found evidence of temporal and emotional alignment between cues and their evoked AMs: older cues (e.g., songs released in 2017 vs. 2020) evoked older AMs, and more positive cues (e.g., songs of higher valence, as derived from Spotify audio features) evoked AMs with more positive content (as derived from sentiment analysis). Findings suggest that song cues enhance AM accessibility by setting the temporal and emotional contexts for retrieval.

Stereotype threat (ST) occurs when individuals primed with negative stereotypes underperform relative to a control group. Activating ST increases anxiety and worries about being negatively perceived, also introducing mental distraction that negatively impacts performance. We consider racial/ethnic ST effects on standardized test performance (SDTP) on the verbal and quantitative reasoning sections of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). Across two experiments, working memory capacity (WMC) is investigated as a mediator and/or moderator of ST for race/ethnicity (Experiment 1, final n = 447, 19% Black, 81% White, 59% female and for Experiment 2, n = 166, 41% Black, 59% White, 73% female). We find a lack of strong evidence for the classic ST effect of a Race × Condition interaction. However, we show evidence that for Black students, higher trait WMC moderates racial/ethnic ST such that higher WMC is associated with higher scores on standardized tests under conditions of race-related ST. Our findings suggest the importance of higher WMC for racial minority students in remaining mentally resilient and maintaining performance during ST. Future work should address diversity and inclusion concerns regarding research on ST effects for racial/ethnic minorities, include more work examining racial/ethnic ST based on replication issues and statistical power, as well as more examination of the importance of WMC for performance under racial/ethnic ST. Future work should also consider the roles of protective factors, such as mindfulness and self-regulation practices in the context of racial/ethnic ST as WMC and SDTP have been shown to generally improve through implementing these practices.

A well-supported working memory (WM) model holds that a "gate" separates the content of WM from information that does not need to be maintained or manipulated. Previous research suggests that switching between opening and closing this gate incurs a response-time cost, reflecting controlled cognitive effort. However, the exact nature of this cost remains debated. Some studies find that closing the gate is more costly than opening it, while in other studies these costs are comparable. Using an intertrial interval manipulation in the reference-back paradigm, we show that the larger cost of gate-closing is not an intrinsic feature of WM control, but is instead influenced by the automatic retention and removal of stimulus- and response-related information in WM. This finding indicates that WM is automatically but transiently updated with information for which attention-consuming processes such as response selection take place, challenging the prevailing view that WM updating is always effortful and controlled. Crucially, our findings reveal that updating individual items occurs rapidly and automatically when a single item is maintained. In contrast, updating bindings between items and their context is a slower, effortful process that requires gating. These results reconcile conflicting views regarding the nature of working memory encoding and updating.

Ironic utterances (i.e., when people intend the opposite of what they say) are often more difficult to understand than literal utterances during natural reading (reviewed in Olkoniemi & Kaakinen, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75, 99-106, 2021). Moreover, ironic compliments ("Good job!" spoken upon a failure) tend to be even more challenging compared to ironic criticisms ("Terrible job!" spoken upon a success) (Pexman & Olineck, Discourse Processes, 33, 199-217, 2002). Relevant here, understanding irony is thought to require mentalizing capacity, which may be impacted by bilingual language experience (Tiv et al., Memory & Cognition, 51, 253-272, 2023) and differ for first and second language reading (L1 and L2, respectively). In this study, bilingual adults read sentences containing ironic compliments, criticisms, and matched literal statements in both their L1 and their L2 (blocked and counterbalanced), enabling a rigorous within-participant evaluation of L1 versus L2 irony processing. Linear mixed-effects modelling demonstrated the increased difficulty of ironic compliments during reading but indicated no group-level, within-participant L1 versus L2 irony differences. However, a significant effect of bilingual language experience emerged, in that individual differences in how readers distribute use of their L1 and L2 (i.e., language entropy) patterned with faster go-past times for ironic sentences during L1 reading. These findings cohere with the idea that bilingual language experience may relate to mentalizing processes that underlie irony resolution (e.g., Tiv et al., Memory & Cognition, 51, 253-272, 2023).

Collaboration influences memory during group recall (e.g., collaborative inhibition) and downstream, impacting individual recall (e.g., retrieval gains) and memory convergence (e.g., collective memory) following the interaction. The current study tested the scope of this downstream reach as we examined whether prior collaborative recall, compared with individual recall, improves subsequent learning. Further, we assessed whether group recall protects original learning-that is, if collaboration helps individuals distinguish learning episodes and if postcollaborative effects persist even as new learning occurs. In two experiments, participants worked individually or in collaborative groups to recall a word list. Next, participants studied a new list of words that were semantically related to the original list before recalling the most recently studied list (noncumulative recall; Experiment 1) or both lists (cumulative recall; Experiment 2). Interestingly, collaborative and individual retrieval influenced subsequent learning of new material similarly. However, collaboration protected original learning; former collaborators recalled fewer prior-list intrusions (Experiment 1), and they were better at identifying when words appeared on the original list (Experiment 2). Moreover, postcollaborative retrieval gains and collective memory for the originally studied material persisted as new learning occurred (Experiment 2). These novel findings suggest that while collaborative retrieval may not readily improve subsequent learning compared with individual retrieval, group recall confers a downstream source-monitoring advantage and postcollaboration effects are resilient in the face of subsequent learning. We discuss how these findings align with relevant theoretical accounts that emphasize the importance of contextual dynamics and highlight the potential for more applied research on this topic.