Memory & Cognition最新文献

Everyday language experience increases the efficiency of word production. The possible link between this type of learning and the memory phenomenon of repetition priming was explored in a bilingual repetition-priming experiment. Spanish-English bilinguals read or translated short stories containing target words that corresponded to pictures to be named at test, with retention intervals of several minutes or at least 24 h. Repetition priming in picture-naming RTs was significant following story translation in either direction or story reading in the language of the picture-naming test. These effects persisted across a retention interval of at least 24 h, indicating that the speeded word production reflects long-term learning. Thus, practice with either comprehension or production of contextualized words elicits long-term benefits for later production. In contrast to previous studies with isolated words or words embedded in short sentences, the priming effects in picture-naming RTs did not differ across encoding conditions. This pattern suggests that in complex language contexts, the comprehension processes of reading and translation are similar and the top-down processes elicited by comprehension and production practice are similarly beneficial in speeding later production. However, it remains a challenge to explain patterns of repetition-priming effects in accuracy, which represent enhanced probability of access to word forms that are not reliably produced.

Visual working memory (VWM) is a cognitive system, which temporarily stores task-relevant visual information to enable interactions with the environment. In everyday VWM use, we typically decide how long we look to encode information, and how long we wait before acting on the memory. In contrast, VWM is typically studied in unnaturally rigid paradigms that keep presentation times and delays fixed. Here, we ask how visual memories build up over self-paced viewing times, and how they decay over self-paced delays, in a task that naturally engages VWM. We employed a copying task in which participants were tasked to recreate an "example" arrangement of items in an adjacent empty "workspace". We tracked their unconstrained viewing and copying behavior at the level of individual items' viewing times and the time to successful placements (i.e., delay). Our results show that performance monotonically increased for viewing times up to 1 s (per item), and plateaued afterwards. Interestingly, while views exceeding 1 s did not strongly improve performance for short (2-s) delays, views beyond 1-s did improve performance for longer delays. In contrast, this pattern was not observed in Experiments 2A and 2B, where viewing and delay times were experimentally manipulated (i.e., in more typical, rigid paradigms). These findings showcase the importance of considering aspects of naturalistic behavior, like decision-making, when studying VWM. We suggest that in everyday situations, short glances are sufficient for immediate use from VWM, but long views are required for effective delayed use.

In a key study, Megreya and Burton (Memory & Cognition, 34, 865-876, 2006) argued that identity-matching tasks using unfamiliar faces may not effectively measure general 'real-world' face-processing ability - that is they are "not faces". They observed a high correlation in performance between upright and inverted unfamiliar face matching, a pattern not seen with familiar faces, which they interpreted as indicating unfamiliar face matching is qualitatively different and largely driven by image-specific factors. However, the authors cautioned that this limitation likely applies only to unfamiliar face-matching tasks for identity rather than other types of face judgements (e.g., emotion). The present study replicates and extends these findings by considering within-subject performance for upright/inverted unfamiliar face matching across various paradigms (sequential/simultaneous presentation or sorting) and face-judgement types (identity or emotion), whilst considering different types of measures (accuracy and reaction time). Our results illustrated high correlations for upright/inverted conditions were universally observed within tasks for both accuracy and reaction times. Subsequent factor analyses indicated that upright and inverted conditions loaded together into task-specific latent variables. These results concur with the conclusions of Megreya and Burton (2006) and extend to both identity and emotion matching tasks - that is such tasks exhibit low construct validity for testing hypotheses about much general 'everyday' face processing. We propose that researchers should carefully consider alignment between their test materials and the theoretical 'constructs' they aim to measure, ensuring more accurate and meaningful interpretations of their results.

Past work has yielded mixed insights into how people draw upon their memories to make new inferences. While some studies have shown memories can be combined during encoding to store never-experienced, inferential associations, others have emphasized a retrieval-based mechanism in which separate, high-quality memories are recombined as inferences are needed. We hypothesized that there might be important individual differences to consider when reconciling these seemingly disparate findings. We set out to quantify these differences by measuring contingencies in people's memory recall behaviour. In Experiment 1, we first compared the performance of three memory contingency metrics using simulations and data from a task known to induce dependency. In doing so, we developed a correction to remove biases associated with general memory performance to isolate the representational structure of memories, and we selected the highest-fidelity option - corrected dependency - for subsequent analyses. Experiment 2 tested the sensitivity of our chosen metric: We manipulated the similarity across experiences to encourage integration for half of the memories. Consistent with prior work, we found reliable recall dependency in the high similarity condition. Finally, in Experiment 3, we used memory dependencies to reveal individual differences in inference approaches in exploratory analyses: While "separators" relied upon high-fidelity individual memories to make speeded inferences, "integrators" drew inferences faster than separators, but their judgements were not sped by recalling constituent experience details. Together, these findings highlight the importance of considering individual differences in memory representations when characterizing the mechanisms underlying memory-based inference.

The terms heuristics and cognitive biases are often used loosely, with definitions that lack clarity. This paper refines these terms by presenting two definitions of heuristics: a narrow and a broad one. The narrow definition reflects Kahneman and Tversky's view of heuristics as perception-like, natural assessments. From this perspective, people use various types of information as cues to make judgments about things not directly accessible but important to them. Some cues have high indicative value, i.e., the probability of achieving the desired result. Based on them, rules like "If A, then B" are formed, which become useful heuristics. Thus, heuristics are simple, intuitive if/then rules of judgment and decision making that, using such cues, generally enable the achievement of intended goals. Pólya, Simon, Gigerenzer, and others also describe a different type of heuristics - conscious methods that simplify decision making and problem solving. Taking them into account, it is possible to propose a broad definition of heuristics according to which they are simple methods of judgment, decision making, and problem solving that, using little information and cognitive resources, mostly enable the achievement of the intended goal. As for cognitive biases, they are systematic errors in cognition that occur when, having an epistemic goal, we non-consciously deviate from it by relying on irrelevant or partially relevant information and ignoring that which is relevant. They arise from the same cognitive processes as Kahneman and Tversky's heuristics: just as we, without conscious awareness, use heuristic cues for judgment and decision making, we rely on irrelevant information when pursuing epistemic goals.

Intentional forgetting, commonly studied using a directed forgetting paradigm, can disrupt memory performance. Beyond verbal report, attenuation of physiological fear responding to emotional associations has also been demonstrated following a simple instruction to forget. Discussion nevertheless persists about the mechanisms underlying this directed forgetting effect, and, by extension, the active or passive nature of forgetting. In recent years, the body of research suggesting that forgetting is an active process has expanded, with attentional withdrawal among its proposed mechanisms. In the current study, we demonstrate that both verbal memory and physiological fear responding to emotional stimuli were disrupted due to the instruction to forget, using a nondifferential fear conditioning paradigm. Using an inhibition of return task, we also show that attention was withdrawn more vigorously from items accompanied by an instruction to forget, and that the magnitude of this withdrawal effect was correlated with the directed forgetting effect across individuals. Our findings corroborate the proposition of stronger attentional withdrawal upon the presentation of a forget instruction, and thus the potential involvement of active attentional withdrawal in directed forgetting of emotional memories.

It has been proposed that relative familiarity (i.e., the increase in familiarity relative to an item's pre-experimental familiarity) results from an attribution process, by which the perceived discrepancy between expected and perceived fluency is attributed to the past. This mechanism potentially contributes to the higher hit rates for low- compared with high-frequency words in the word-frequency mirror effect as the fluency of a studied low-frequency word might be less expected than the fluency of a studied high-frequency word. Importantly, attributions to familiarity are more likely if the increase in fluency is not only unexpected for the given item class (e.g., low-frequency words), but also in comparison to the context (e.g., when low-frequency words are presented intermixed with high-frequency words, for which the increase in fluency is relatively small). Experiment 1 used a random and a blocked version of the two-list exclusion task combined with a short response deadline. High- and low-frequency words were studied in two modalities, one of which had to be classified as old during retrieval. We found more hits and exclusion errors (false alarms to nontargets) for low- than for high-frequency words when word frequency varied randomly, indicating that relative familiarity drove responses. However, these differences were eliminated when word frequency was blocked across study-test cycles and when a random study phase was combined with a blocked test phase (Experiment 2), indicating that relative familiarity results from an attribution process which is contingent on contextual factors during retrieval.

Wayfinding success hinges on the effective processing of landmarks and environmental structures, yet studies examining the functional roles of different landmark types have yielded inconsistent results. This study explored the joint effects of landmark types and environmental structure regularity on wayfinding efficiency by factorially manipulating these variables. Participants navigated through environments with either regular or irregular structures, containing either global or local landmarks. We measured travel durations and paths, finding that both varied according to landmark type and environmental regularity. Notably, during the learning trials when landmarks were visible, both types improved wayfinding in irregular environments but not in regular ones, indicating that the effectiveness of salient cues depends on environmental uncertainty. Conversely, in the probe trial where landmarks were invisible, wayfinding in all environments improved following exposure to local landmarks, but only irregular environments benefited from global landmarks. These findings imply that local and global landmarks are processed and utilized differently, supporting a hierarchical processing model that weights different types of information based on their availability and reliability.

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.