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

Reading relies on the incremental processes that occur across all words in a passage to build a global comprehension of the text. Factorial experimental designs are not well-suited to examine these incremental processes, which are influenced by multilevel factors in an overlapping manner. Exemplifying an alternative approach, we combined event-related potentials, probabilistic language models, authentic texts, and statistical methods to examine the time course of multilevel linguistic influences on the incremental processes which occur during reading each word. We found that indicators of the initial stages of word identification (N170 and P200) are sensitive to context-independent statistical information of a word, for example, word frequency. The later stages of word processing, involving processes related to meaning retrieval and integration (N400), heavily rely on the word's context-dependent information measured by word surprisal. Syntactic processing, reflected by a word's syntactic surprisal and the number of phrase structures it closes, was presented across multiple phases (an early negativity, N400, and a late positivity). Additionally, the effects of position factors at both the word and sentence levels emerged across multiple time windows (including N170, P200, and N400), suggesting their distinct influence beyond linguistic factors. These findings provide a theoretically coherent picture of incremental reading, partly convergent with conclusions from factorial studies but with novel results concerning the time courses and interactions of processing components. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

According to the embodied cognition view, activation of perceptual semantics (such as visual information for the words "white" or "red" or tactile information for the words "warm" or "fuzzy") should occur even in a relatively shallow lexical decision task. While some studies found this activation, other studies did not. We argue that minimizing the time gap between the stimuli is crucial for detecting the activation of perceptual semantics in this task. Furthermore, we suggest that modalities should be analyzed separately due to their possible qualitative differences. We designed two experiments addressing these points in Russian (Experiment 1) and German (Experiment 2) languages. We selected visual, tactile, and auditory adjectives (e.g., "white," "warm," and "loud," respectively) and assessed lexical decision times for two stimuli at once (e.g., "white + fuzzy"), thus eliminating the time gap between the two stimuli. Our analysis accounted for word length, frequency, and shallow lexical associations between presented words. Overall, the results of both experiments demonstrated that perceptual semantics is indeed activated even during shallow lexical processing, such as in the lexical decision task. Importantly, in line with our predictions, the effect of perceptual semantics was not identical across all modalities. More specifically, there was a consistent advantage for processing visual semantics and a consistent disadvantage for processing haptic semantics. Thus, the exact combination of semantic modalities modulates the activation of modality information. Our results strongly support the embodied view of language semantics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In recent years, discussions comparing high-threshold and continuous accounts of recognition-memory judgments have increasingly turned their attention toward critical testing. One of the defining features of this approach is its requirement for the relationship between theoretical assumptions and predictions to be laid out in a transparent and precise way. One of the (fortunate) consequences of this requirement is that it encourages researchers to debate the merits of the different assumptions at play. The present work addresses a recent attempt to overturn the dismissal of high-threshold models by getting rid of a background selective-influence assumption. However, it can be shown that the contrast process proposed to explain this violation undermines a more general assumption that we dubbed "single-item generalization." We argue that the case for the dismissal of these assumptions and the claimed support for the proposed high-threshold contrast account does not stand the scrutiny of their theoretical properties and empirical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Two previous studies indicated that removing expected landmarks disrupts homing, a new phenomenon concerning the interplay between path integration and landmark-based navigation. This study systematically investigated when this disruption occurs, which spatial representations are disrupted, and whether lessening landmark prevalence mitigates this disruption. In immersive virtual environments, against three landmarks, participants learned the location of a home object (Experiments 2 and 3), plus two additional objects (Experiment 1), or plus four additional objects (Experiments 4 and 5). They then navigated an outbound path originating from the home object. After participants' views were blocked, landmarks were revealed for nine standard paths/trials but removed in a subsequent catch trial, except in Experiment 3 where a curtain kept landmarks concealed. In Experiment 5, landmarks were rotated instead of being removed in the second catch trial. Participants replaced the home object in standard trials but all objects in catch trials. Baseline trials, which were identical to the catch trials except for no landmarks throughout the trials, followed catch trials. The results showed larger homing errors in first catch trials than baseline trials when landmarks were removed (Experiment 2) but not when the curtain concealed the landmarks (Experiment 3). For experiments with multiple objects, participants' represented position and heading were calculated based on the replaced and correct locations. Experiment 1 showed disrupted homing and heading estimates but intact position estimates, while Experiments 4 and 5 showed no disruption. Additionally, participants followed rotated landmarks in Experiment 5. These findings provide a comprehensive picture of the interplay between path integration and landmarks in familiar environments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Lupker and Davis (2009) introduced a modification of Forster and Davis's (1984) masked priming technique that increased the size of priming effects. The modification involved briefly presenting the target as a preprime during the priming sequence (e.g., #####-JUDGE-judge-JUDGE; the "sandwich" method). At present, the precise mechanisms underlying this increase are not well understood, at least partially because most previous experiments comparing the two procedures involved between-subject comparisons. To examine these mechanisms more fully, we conducted three lexical decision experiments with sandwich and conventional priming methods using a within-subject design. We examined two types of form-related priming: letter transpositions (Experiment 1) and letter replacements (Experiments 2 and 3). Results showed an increase in masked priming effects with the sandwich method in all three experiments. Cross-method comparisons revealed the source of this increase: The sandwich technique sped up the responses to transposed-letter pairs and one-letter replacement letter pairs, produced no latency differences for double replacement-letter pairs, and slowed down responses to unrelated pairs. Experiment 3, using a control preprime (xxxxx), showed that the change in the nature of the priming effects was not simply due to the longer lag between the pattern mask and the target stimulus in the sandwich priming method. These findings pose problems for computational activation-based models that provide accounts of masked priming effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Attention is strongly biased toward the location where a previous target was recently found. This priming-of-location (PoL) effect is taken to indicate that selecting an object automatically and proactively enhances the attentional priority at its location. This account predicts that PoL should be unaffected by changes in task context. Here, we tested this prediction. In Experiments 1 and 2, we manipulated task context by interleaving search trials (2/3) where participants searched for a shape target, search-probe trials where they reported letters briefly superimposed on the search display after a short delay, and probe trials where only the to-be-reported letters appeared. We measured PoL on probe reports when the task context repeated (search → search-probe sequences) and when it changed (search → probe sequences). We found PoL to be insensitive to task changes, indicating that attention is proactively guided to previously selected locations by default, even in variable task environments. We then examined whether expectations about the upcoming task modulate PoL by inverting the task probabilities (2/3 probe trials and 1/3 search trials) in Experiment 3 and by informing participants with 100% validity as to what their next task would be, in Experiment 4. We found PoL to decline sharply as the expectation of a task change increased. We conclude that PoL is proactive but flexible. We discuss two possible mechanisms to explain these findings: proactive attenuation and proactive retrieval, both of which entail that priorities from previous selections are reduced as a by-product of participants' reconfiguring their task set. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has shown that high math anxiety (HMA) detrimentally impacts math performance; however, limited work has examined how math anxiety may impact math learning. The present study drew on our understanding of disparate long-term learning and memory systems to provide a framework for how HMA potentially disrupts specific types of math learning. Adult participants completed unfamiliar multiplication trials (e.g., 219 × 4 = ?) in two sessions across consecutive days. Repeated problems enabled retrieval arithmetic learning by repeating the same four problems a total of 72 times each (288 total trials). Unrepeated problems enabled procedural arithmetic learning by repeating a consistent problem structure but without ever repeating a specific problem (288 total trials). HMA subjects (HMAs) showed impaired learning of unrepeated problems suggesting that math anxiety may have disrupted procedural math learning. Conversely, learning of repeated problems was accelerated in HMAs relative to low math anxious subjects, suggesting enhanced retrieval learning. We interpret these results within the context of effort-avoidance and well-established learning and memory systems, suggesting that HMAs enhance effort on declarative memory-mediated retrieval learning possibly at the expense of efficiency gains in procedural memory-mediated learning of computational procedures. This work also suggests that the mechanisms linking math anxiety with math performance may differ in important ways from how math anxiety impacts math learning. Further, this work highlights the potential value of considering how math anxiety interacts with multiple types of math learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Factors that predict mind wandering in the laboratory and in daily life differ (Kane et al., 2007, 2017). However, it is unknown how these predictors may vary when considering two identified dimensions of mind wandering-intentionality and emotional valence. We examined this with a 1-week daily-life experience sampling study with laboratory-based measures of working memory, personality, anxiety, and dispositional mindfulness predicting mind wandering in daily life. Overall, our results suggest that predictors of mind wandering in daily life vary based on both the intentionality and emotional valence dimension of the off-task thought. Dispositional mindfulness was predictive of neutral, intentional, and overall rates of mind wandering. Interactions between working memory and concentration level were observed for some but not all dimensions of mind wandering. The current findings suggest that is it critical to consider both intentionality and emotional valence dimensions to understand individual differences in mind wandering in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The testing effect is a well-established phenomenon in which memory is better for information that has been enhanced through practice tests rather than through restudying. However, this phenomenon has been studied almost exclusively with verbal or semantically meaningful material. We explored whether the testing effect holds for abstract visual material that lacks both meaning and verbal labels. In a series of six experiments, no evidence for a testing effect was found. Each experiment changed the nature of test practice in different ways that were designed to bolster test practice relative to restudy, such as imposing a delay before the final test, providing different kinds of choice options, providing different kinds of practice feedback, and using drawing as the form of test practice, and yet, the performance after test practice was either similar to the performance after restudy or in some cases significantly worse than restudy (i.e., a negative testing effect). We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, which suggest either that the testing effect relies on properties that our stimuli did not possess-for example, semantic content, high-dimensional content, or preexisting neocortical representations-or that eliciting a testing effect for visual material requires radically different task parameters than for verbal material. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In conflict tasks, congruency effects are thought to reflect attentional control mechanisms needed to counteract response conflict elicited by incongruent stimuli. Although congruency effects are well-replicable experimentally, recent studies have evidenced low correlations between congruency effects measured across different paradigms, leading to a heated debate over whether these low correlations indicate a lack of construct validity or are rather attributable to high measurement error, as indicated by the poor reliability typically displayed by congruency effects. In the present study, we investigated whether the poor reliabilities of congruency effects are due to their poor theoretical specification. Specifically, we tested whether the psychometric properties of congruency effects can be improved by focusing exclusively on those trials in which response conflict is theoretically expected to be highest. We considered two factors modulating the degree of response conflict: previous trial congruency, with higher conflict following congruent trials, and the time elapsed since stimulus onset, with higher conflict in fast responses. Data from 195 participants completing a Simon and a spatial Stroop paradigm showed that generally poor split-half reliabilities for the full set of trials improved greatly when excluding postincongruent and slow trials. Importantly, between-task correlations also increased substantially when controlling for these factors, suggesting that, with increased reliability, these tasks capture common attentional control ability. Our results suggest that individual differences in conflict tasks can provide valid and reliable measures of inhibition as a major component of attentional control when focusing on the trials with the theoretically highest response conflict. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).