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

Most research on visual working memory (WM) focuses on 2D objects and spatial locations; however, the storage mechanism of depth information-another important dimension in a 3D environment-remains largely unknown. The present study conducted seven experiments to systematically investigate how absolute depth (metric distance) and relative depth (ordinal relations among depth planes) are encoded, maintained, and consolidated in WM. In Experiments 1a and 1b, we found that memory accuracy for relative depth was higher than that for absolute depth, and verbal WM seemed to be automatically involved in encoding relative depth in the form of numerals even though memory stimuli were presented visually, and verbal suppression was applied. Experiments 2a and 2b showed memory for fine absolute depth information gradually declined over time, while memory for coarse depth information and relative depth showed no temporal decay. By manipulating the stimuli-mask onset latency, Experiment 3a revealed that memory for absolute depth remained to be fragile across retention, while Experiment 3b showed that relative depth information could be consolidated into robust memory. By inserting an additional visual search task into the memory task, Experiment 4 showed that attention was required for the maintenance of absolute depth information, while relative depth memory involved minimal attention engagement. These findings indicate separate storage mechanisms for the two types of depth information: Absolute depth, especially fine information, is poorly maintained in a fragile visual store, whereas relative depth, which is encoded coarsely, involves both a robust verbal store and a visual store. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Memorability denotes a stimulus-intrinsic property that results in stimuli being more likely to be remembered or forgotten. The effect is generally consistent across observers and can be measured in various stimuli such as faces and scene images. Long-term memory paradigms have been used to measure memorability with studies demonstrating long-term memorability effects via incidental and intentional encoding mechanisms. The present study examines whether memorability modulates the ability to unexpectedly report an image at short intervals. Three sets of experiments (using faces and scenes) with replications used an attribute amnesia paradigm to measure the effect of memorability on incidental visual working memory processes while controlling attentional priorities. When participants had to identify the target image in the immediate trial unexpectedly, we observed that memorable targets yielded a higher accuracy compared to forgettable targets, showing that people incidentally remember more information about memorable stimuli even across very short intervals. This memorability benefit was observed for both stimulus types but was greater for faces compared to scenes. Moreover, follow-up experiments suggested this memorability effect was not due to enhanced attentional capture by the high-memorability item or differences in target-foil contrast. Thus, memorability modulates incidental memory even without the need to retrieve from long-term memory. These results expand our understanding of the mechanisms behind memorability effects and how attentional filters impact memory traces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Skilled deaf readers are more efficient than their hearing counterparts-they read faster, skipping more words without a negative impact on comprehension. It is not clear from where deaf readers' efficiency derives, because reading is a complex cognitive process that requires readers to extract meaning from text, incorporating visual, lexical, and contextual information. To assess the contributions of these factors to deaf readers' efficiency, we tracked their eye movements as they read sentences with target words that were manipulated for length, frequency, and predictability, and we assessed the effects of those variables on skipping probability (i.e., whether the reader skipped or fixated the target) and gaze duration (i.e., the amount of time spent fixating the word before leaving it) and compared these patterns to hearing readers with equivalent reading comprehension skill. Deaf readers demonstrated increased skipping rates and shorter gaze durations overall compared to hearing readers and exhibited different patterns of word length and predictability effects, but similar frequency effects. Deaf readers' eye movements reflect visual linguistic processing expertise as they are primarily driven by word length when targeting words for fixation, but frequency and predictability effects on word skipping indicate that they do engage in parafoveal linguistic processing. These results emphasize the qualitative differences in reading strategies between deaf and hearing readers and advance our understanding of the impact of early language and sensory experiences on reading behaviors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Remembering past events usually takes less time than their actual duration-their unfolding is temporally compressed in episodic memory. The rate of temporal compression (i.e., the ratio of the actual duration of an event to the duration of its remembering) is not constant but varies between individuals and as a function of the structure of events (e.g., how they can be divided into shorter subevents). However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying these variations remain poorly understood. Given its role in the encoding and retrieval of information in episodic memory, working memory (WM) capacity could be an important determinant of temporal compression rates. We tested this hypothesis in two experiments in which we asked participants to watch and then mentally replay short videos showing people engaged in daily life activities. We showed that temporal compression rates depend on an interplay between WM and the structure of the remembered events: participants' WM capacity (assessed using complex span tasks) was negatively associated with temporal compression rates, but only when the remembered events contained few event boundaries (i.e., few subevents). This suggests that the temporal compression of events in episodic memory emerges when some of the subevents to be retained are too long to be fully represented in WM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

There is an ongoing debate about the cognitive mechanisms behind human contingency learning (CL). Although, in some studies, episodic retrieval of previous responses fully explained the observed CL effects (C. G. Giesen et al., 2020; Schmidt et al., 2020), other findings suggest that global contingencies have an additional effect on behavior (Xu & Mordkoff, 2020). In a high-powered (N = 500), preregistered study, we investigated CL effects after controlling for episodic retrieval of distractor-target (S-S) and distractor-response (S-R) bindings. Retrieval explained a large part of the CL effect. However, we still found a reliable residual CL effect even after controlling for retrieval. Notably, the residual CL effect depended on contingency awareness: The residual CL effect only occurred for trials for which participants correctly detected the respective color-word contingency, whereas for trials without contingency awareness, there was no residual CL effect. Collectively, our findings suggest that human CL is driven by two independent sources: (a) episodic retrieval of S-S and S-R bindings and (b) propositional knowledge of the contingencies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The dominant model of executive functions, which has held for over two decades, contends that various aspects of seemingly disparate forms of inhibitory control-for example, inhibiting a prepotent response, or inhibiting irrelevant thoughts and distractions-are in fact manifestations of a single latent executive function. Recent work, however, has cast doubt on this dominant model, as certain conditions can dissociate performance on tasks thought to index inhibitory control. Moreover, issues related to task reliability and latent estimation of inhibition processes have prompted questions about whether the structure of inhibitory control can even be reliably estimated at a latent level. We addressed these issues in two studies of healthy young adults (Study 1 N = 154, Study 2, N = 279), examining seven then 12 different tasks taken by prior research to assess inhibitory control. Contrary to the dominant model of executive functions, we found that, at a latent level, inhibitory control was best fit by a replicable two-factor solution, with response inhibition as a distinct executive function. Further, our data suggested that prior work on executive functions may not have observed a response inhibition factor due to task selections (i.e., including either one of two specific tasks was critical to identifying a separate response inhibition factor). Therefore, contrary to the current primary theoretical model of executive functions, these results suggest that response inhibition is, in fact, a distinct control process from the control process underpinning other forms of inhibition, which has important implications for designing interventions and assessing outcomes related to inhibitory control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Broad retrieval ability (Gr) posits an essential factor of human cognitive abilities. Previous literature indicates Gr is best modeled as a higher-order factor model with lower-level factors such as ideational fluency (IF), word fluency (WF), expressional fluency (EF), or figural fluency (FF). However, the dimensionality of Gr is not well studied. Furthermore, it remains unclear whether specific retrieval affordances such as differing retrieval time periods (e.g., short vs. long) can be psychometrically separated from more general retrieval affordances. Such a distinction would imply differential associations between specific retrieval, general retrieval, and other cognitive abilities, which, in turn, depict a vital part of explanatory models of individual differences in Gr. To test these assumptions, we conducted a multivariate study (N = 331) and evaluated competing latent variable measurement models for a variety of Gr tests. We then regressed the best measurement model onto working memory capacity, secondary memory, mental speed, and crystallized intelligence in order to evaluate the distinctiveness of Gr. Our results suggest that no specific retrieval affordances with regard to time periods can be distinguished. A higher-order model, with a second-order Gr factor above three first-order factors (IF, WF, EF, and FF) fitted the data best, extending previous literature by increasing construct coverage through the implementation of FF. All covariates show incremental predictive validity, beyond their communality. Summarizing, our results endorse a perspective on Gr as a strong and discriminant factor of cognitive abilities that is not affected by time constraints, and show that Gr is more than a linear combination of its parts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The congruency effect in Stroop-like tasks-a popular measure of distraction-is smaller after incongruent relative to congruent trials. However, it is unclear whether this congruency sequence effect (CSE)-a popular index of coping with distraction-reflects adjustments of control after congruent trials, incongruent trials, or both. The episodic retrieval account of the CSE posits adjustments of control after both congruent and incongruent trials. In this account, retrieving a memory of the previous trial's congruency (i.e., congruent or incongruent) biases control processes to prepare for an upcoming trial with the same congruency (i.e., congruent or incongruent). In contrast, the default setting account posits adjustments of control after a single trial type. For example, control processes might increase inhibition of the response cued by the distractor after incongruent trials but make no adjustments after congruent trials. To distinguish between these accounts for the first time while (a) using long distractor-target intervals and (b) excluding prevalent feature integration and contingency learning confounds, we employed a confound-minimized prime-probe task with neutral trials. We usually observed adjustments of control after both trial types. Furthermore, whether the reduction of the congruency effect after incongruent trials indexed (a) inhibition of the distractor-congruent response or (b) activation of the distractor-incongruent response depended on whether the distractor and target were same-sized or different-sized, respectively. These findings favor the episodic retrieval account of the CSE over the default setting account. They also indicate that "low-level" stimulus properties may influence the nature of "high-level" control adjustments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The construct of mind wandering has notoriously been characterized as heterogenous which may mean that not all types of mind wandering produce the same pattern of results. One operationalization of mind wandering, task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs), can also itself vary in many dimensions, including the emotional valence of TUTs. The current study summarizes several years of work examining the impact that the emotional valence of TUTs has on different aspects of sustained attention. Participants in several studies reported whether their TUTs were negative, neutral, or positive in emotional valence during a sustained attention-to-response task (SART). The first major focus was a meta-analysis where we examined correlations between each TUT valence and SART performance measures. For the second major focus, we tested how different TUT valences changed over the course of the task. The results suggest that negative TUTs typically show stronger associations with SART performance measures, although all TUT valences have numerically similar correlations. Regarding time-on-task effects, across the studies, there was consistent evidence for a linear increase in negative TUTs across blocks. Evidence for this linear increase was not consistent for neutral and positive TUTs. The results of the current study suggest that the relationships between TUTs and performance, and their likelihood of occurring during a task, are not necessarily the same for every type of TUT. These results highlight the importance of continuing to investigate different types of TUTs and different forms of mind wandering, in general, to better understand how this phenomenon occurs. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We use a computational model of memory search to study how people generate counterfactual outcomes in response to an established target outcome. Hierarchical Bayesian model fitting to data from six experiments reveals that counterfactual outcomes that are perceived as more desirable and more likely to occur are also more likely to come to mind and are generated earlier than other outcomes. Additionally, core memory mechanisms such as semantic clustering and word frequency biases have a strong influence on retrieval dynamics in counterfactual thinking. Finally, we find that the set of counterfactuals that come to mind can be manipulated by modifying the total number of counterfactuals that participants are prompted to generate, and our model can predict these effects. Overall, our findings demonstrate how computational memory search models can be integrated with current theories of counterfactual thinking to provide novel insights into the process of generating counterfactual thoughts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).