Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition最新文献

Under the noisy-channel framework of language comprehension, comprehenders infer the speaker's intended meaning by integrating the perceived utterance with their knowledge of the language, the world, and the kinds of errors that can occur in communication. Previous research has shown that, when sentences are improbable under the meaning prior (implausible sentences), participants often interpret them nonliterally. The rate of nonliteral interpretation is higher when the errors that could have transformed the intended utterance into the perceived utterance are more likely. However, previous experiments on noisy channel processing mostly relied on implausible sentences, and it is unclear whether participants' nonliteral interpretations were evidence of noisy channel processing or the result of trying to conform to the experimenter's expectations in an experiment with nonsensical sentences. In the current study, we used the unique properties of Russian, an understudied language in the psycholinguistics literature, to test noisy-channel comprehension using only simple plausible sentences. The prior plausibility of sentences was tied only to their word order; subject-verb-object (SVO) sentences were more probable under the structural prior than object-verb-subject (OVS) sentences. In two experiments, we show that participants often interpret OVS sentences nonliterally, and the probability of nonliteral interpretations depended on the Levenshtein distance between the perceived sentence and the (potentially intended) SVO version of the sentence. The results show that the structural prior guides people's final interpretation, independent of the presence of semantic implausibility. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

While known to influence visual lexical processing, the semantic information we associate with words has recently been found to influence auditory lexical processing as well. The present work explored the influence of semantic richness in auditory lexical decision. Study 1 recreated an experiment investigating semantic richness effects in concrete nouns (Goh et al., 2016). In Study 2, we expanded the stimulus set from 442 to 8,626 items, exploring the robustness of effects observed in Study 1 against a larger data set with increased diversity in both word class and other characteristics of interest. We also utilized generalized additive mixed models to investigate potential nonlinear effects. Results indicate that semantic richness effects become more nuanced and detectable when a wider set of items belonging to different parts of speech is examined. Findings are discussed in the context of models of spoken word recognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The biological motion refers to the continuous configuration movement of live agents in space. The perceptual processing of biological motion has the specificity of the dissociation between body form and body motion. However, there is limited evidence for whether such specificity continues when holding biological motion in working memory. We explored this question from the perspective of field dependence (FD) and field independence (FI) cognitive styles in the current study. Three categories of biological motion have been developed: intact movement, motion feature, and form feature. We examined the working memory capacity of motion features, form features, intact movements (Experiments 1-3), and the recognition of three categories of biological motion when remembering intact movements (Experiment 4). The results showed that for the motion features, FI individuals had better memory performance when remembering five items and showed greater working memory capacity and recognition compared with FD individuals, whereas the opposite pattern was observed between FI and FD individuals for the form features. The cognitive style could modulate the working memory storage of biological motion when the task becomes demanding, suggesting that body form and body motion are dissociable in working memory. Our study provided additional evidence for the specificity of biological motion processing in working memory, extending the hierarchical neural model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The animacy effect refers to the memory advantage of words denoting animate beings over words denoting inanimate objects. Remembering animate beings may serve important evolutionary functions, but the cognitive mechanism underlying the animacy effect has remained elusive. According to the richness-of-encoding account, animate words stimulate participants to generate more ideas than inanimate words at encoding. These ideas may later serve as retrieval cues and thus enhance recall. There is as yet only correlational evidence associating rich encoding and the animacy advantage in memory. To experimentally test the assumption that richness of encoding plays a causal role, we examined whether the animacy effect can be modulated by facilitating or suppressing rich encoding. In Experiment 1, richness of encoding was manipulated by requiring participants to write down four ideas or one idea in response to animate and inanimate words. In Experiment 2, the one-idea-generation condition was compared to an unrestricted-idea-generation condition. In Experiment 3, the unrestricted-idea-generation condition was compared to a distractor-task condition in which the idea-generation process was suppressed. In Experiment 4, richness of encoding was manipulated by asking participants to rate the relevance of the words for achieving three survival-related goals or one survival-related goal. Animate words were better remembered than inanimate words. In three of the four experiments, rich encoding led to improved recall. However, none of the manipulations of richness of encoding affected the animacy effect on memory, demonstrating its robustness irrespective of the encoding conditions. These results weaken the richness-of-encoding account of the animacy effect on memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

This study traced different types of distractor effects in the picture-word interference (PWI) task across repeated naming. Starting point was a PWI study by Kurtz et al. (2018). It reported that naming a picture (e.g., of a duck) was slowed down by a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative picture name from a different taxonomic level ("birch" related to "bird") when compared to an unrelated control, indicating that the alternative name was (phonologically) coactivated. Importantly, the effect was stable across repeated naming. The authors argued that this stability challenges adaptive models of word production according to which coactivated but nonselected words become less accessible for future retrieval; such a change in lexical accessibility should have been reflected in reduced interference. Using a similar experimental protocol as Kurtz et al., our study looked at the stability of different distractor effects in PWI. Interference from a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative name was stable across repeated naming, replicating Kurtz et al. In contrast, interference from a distractor word denoting a semantic category coordinate ("stork") was reduced across repeated naming. A similar pattern was found for a distractor word corresponding to an alternative name ("bird"). Facilitation from a distractor word phonologically related to the target name ("dust"), in contrast, was stable across repeated naming. We discuss the implications of these findings with respect to the issue of changes in the accessibility of lexical representations, the use of the PWI task in this context, and the use of this task in general. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Repeating a single-prime stimulus as a target to respond to usually facilitates responses. However, sometimes, prime repetition slows the responses and produces the single-prime negative priming effect. In this study, the distractor set hypothesis was proposed as a mechanism of attentional control that can contribute toward single-prime negative priming. In Experiments 1a-1d, an integrated Stroop task was used. The results showed that the prime produced negative priming only when it matched the form of the competing distractors. A separate Stroop task was used in Experiments 2 and 3 and a flanker task was used in Experiments 4a and 4b. In both tasks, the results suggested that a prime produced negative priming when the location of the prime matched that of the distractors. In Experiment 5, alternative explanations including the effects of the prime-to-distractor similarity and the target set were examined. The results revealed that the distractor set, rather than the target set and the similarity between the prime and distractor, could better account for the negative priming effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Performing two actions at the same time usually results in performance costs. However, recent studies have also reported dual-action benefits: performing only one of two possible actions may necessitate the inhibition of the initially activated, but unwarranted second action, leading to single-action costs. Presumably, two preconditions determine the occurrence and strength of such inhibition-based dual-action benefits: (a) response set reductivity and (b) action prepotency. A nonreductive response set (given when all possible responses have to be kept in working memory) creates inhibitory action control demands in single-, but not in dual-action trials, and the ensuing inhibitory costs are proportional to the level of action prepotency (i.e., an action that is easy to initiate is hard to inhibit). Here, we set out to test this hypothesis by varying representational characteristics in working memory (namely response set reductivity and action prepotency) across four experiments. In Experiments 1 to 3, we compared (a) a randomized mode of trial presentation to (b) intermixed, but predictable fixed sequences of trial types and (c) a completely blocked mode of presentation. As expected, dual-action benefits were strongly present in Experiment 1, significantly reduced in Experiment 2, and absent in Experiment 3. This pattern of results matches our predictions derived from the assumption that differential inhibitory costs in single-action trials are the root cause of dual-action benefits. Crucially, however, the results of Experiment 4 (in which response conditions were only partially blocked) pointed to a secondary source of dual-action benefits that was inseparable from inhibition-based effects in previous experimental designs: semantic redundancy gains. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Concepts contain rich structures that support flexible semantic cognition. These structures can be characterized by patterns of feature covariation: Certain features tend to cluster in the same items (e.g., feathers, wings, can fly). Existing computational models demonstrate how this kind of structure can be leveraged to slowly learn the distinctions between categories, on developmental timescales. However, it is not clear whether and how we leverage feature structure to quickly learn a novel category. We thus investigated how the internal structure of a new category is first extracted from experience, with the prediction that feature-based structure would have a rapid and broad influence on the learned category representation. Across three experiments, novel categories were designed with patterns of feature associations determined by carefully constructed graph structures, with Modular graphs-exhibiting strong clusters of feature covariation-compared against Random and Lattice graphs. In Experiment 1, a feature inference task using verbal stimuli revealed that Modular structure broadly facilitated category learning. Experiment 2 replicated this effect in visual categories. In Experiment 3, a statistical learning paradigm revealed that this Modular benefit relates to high-level structure rather than pairwise feature associations and persists even when category structure is incidental to the task. A neural network model was readily able to account for these effects, suggesting that correlational feature structure may be encoded within rapidly learned, distributed category representations. These findings constrain theories of category representation and link theories of category learning with structure learning more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

It is commonly accepted that repeatedly using mental procedures results in a transition to memory retrieval, but the determinant of this process is still unclear. In a 3-week experiment, we compared two different learning situations involving basic additions, one based on counting and the other based on arithmetic fact memorization. Two groups of participants learned to verify additions such as "G + 2 = Q?" built on an artificial sequence (e.g., "XGRQD…"). The first group learned the sequence beforehand and could therefore count to solve the problems, whereas the second group was not aware of the sequence and had to learn the equations by rote. With practice, solution times of both groups reached a plateau, indicating a certain level of automatization. However, a more fine-grained comparison indicated that participants relied on fundamentally different learning mechanisms. In the counting condition, most participants showed a persistent linear effect of the numerical operand on solution times, suggesting that fluency was reached through an acceleration of counting procedures. However, some participants began memorizing the problems involving the largest addends: Their solution times were very similar to those of participants in the rote learning group, suggesting that they resulted from a memory retrieval process. These findings show that repeated mental procedures do not systematically lead to memory retrieval but that fluency can also be reached through the acceleration of these procedures. Moreover, these results challenge associationist models, which cannot currently predict that the process of memorization begins with problems involving the largest addends. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stimulus-response binding and retrieval (SRBR) is a fundamental mechanism driving behavior automatization. In five experiments, we investigated the modulatory role of affective consequences (AC) on SRBR effects to test whether binding/retrieval can explain instrumental learning (i.e., the "law of effect"). SRBR effects were assessed in a sequential prime-probe design, with an orthogonal variation of response relation (response repetition vs. change) by distractor relation (word repetition vs. change). Binding/retrieval effects are measured by an interaction of the two factors, with distractor repetitions inducing a retrieval of the prime episode and a tendency to re-enact the previous response, which leads to facilitation in conditions where the response must be repeated, but leads to interference when the required response changes from prime to probe. Positive, neutral, or negative events signaling changes in points that were linked to monetary gains or losses were delivered after every trial to investigate whether AC modulate the binding/retrieval effect. Consistently across all five experiments (total N= 466), robust SRBR effects were obtained, but we did not find any evidence for an affective modulation of these binding/retrieval effects, indicating that these effects are automatic and independent of AC. In particular, Experiment 5 demonstrated a dissociation between instrumental learning via AC (reflected in higher frequencies of rewarded responses) and SRBR, which was not influenced by AC following a response. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).