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

Participants in an eye-movement experiment performed a modified version of the Landolt-C paradigm (Williams & Pollatsek, 2007) to determine if there are preferred viewing locations when they searched for target squares embedded in linear arrays of spatially contiguous clusters of squares (i.e., sequences of one to four squares having missing segments of variable size and orientation). The results of this experiment indicate that, although the peaks of the single- and first-of-multiple-fixation landing-site distributions were respectively located near the centers and beginnings of the clusters, thereby replicating previous patterns that have been interpreted as evidence for the default saccadic-targeting hypothesis, the same dissociation was evident on nonclusters (i.e., arbitrarily defined regions of analysis). Furthermore, properties of the clusters (e.g., character number and gap size) influenced fixation durations and forward saccade length, suggesting that ongoing stimulus processing affects decisions about when and where (i.e., how far) to move the eyes. Finally, results of simulations using simple oculomotor-based, default-targeting, and dynamic-adjustment models indicated that the latter performed better than the other two, suggesting that the dynamic-adjustment strategy likely reflects the basic perceptual and motor constraints shared by a variety of visual tasks, rather than being specific to Chinese reading. The theoretical implications of these results for existing and future accounts of eye-movement control are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In an influential article, Jones et al. (1995) provide evidence that auditory distraction by changing relative to repetitive auditory distracters (the changing-state effect) did not differ between a visual-verbal and visual-spatial serial recall task, providing evidence for an amodal mechanism for the representation of serial order in short-term memory that transcends modalities. This finding has been highly influential for theories of short-term memory and auditory distraction. However, evidence vis-à-vis the robustness of this result is sorely lacking. Here, two high-powered replications of Jones et al.'s (1995) crucial Experiment 4 were undertaken. In the first partial replication (n = 64), a fully within-participants design was adopted, wherein participants undertook both the visual-verbal and visual-spatial serial recall tasks under different irrelevant sound conditions, without a retention period. The second near-identical replication (n = 128), incorporated a retention period and implemented the task-modality manipulation as a between-participants factor, as per the original Jones et al. (1995; Experiment 4) study. In both experiments, the changing-state effect was observed for visual-verbal serial recall but not for visual-spatial serial recall. The results are consistent with modular and interference-based accounts of distraction and challenge some aspects of functional equivalence accounts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study investigated the role of syntactic processing in driving bilingual language selection. In two experiments, 120 English-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals read aloud 18 paragraphs with language switches. In Experiment 1a, each paragraph included eight switch words on function targets (four that repeated in every paragraph), and Experiment 1b was a replication with eight additional switches on content words in each paragraph. Both experiments had three conditions: (a) normal, (b) noun-swapped (in which nouns within consecutive sentences were swapped), and (c) random (in which words in each sentence were reordered randomly). In both experiments bilinguals produced intrusion errors, automatically translating language switch words by mistake, especially on function words (e.g., saying the day and stay awake instead of the day y stay awake). Intrusion rates did not vary across experiments even though switch rate was doubled in Experiment 1b relative to Experiment 1a. Bilinguals produced the most intrusions in normal paragraphs, slightly but significantly fewer intrusions in noun-swapped paragraphs, and a dramatic drop in intrusion rates in the random condition, even though the random condition elicited the most within-language errors. Bilinguals also demonstrated a common signature of inhibitory control in the form of reversed language dominance effects, which did not vary significantly across paragraph types. Finally, intrusions increased with switch word predictability (surprisal), but significant differences between conditions remained when controlling for predictability. These results demonstrate that bilingual language selection is driven by syntactic processing, which operates independently from other language control mechanisms, such as inhibition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Across two experiments, we assessed the rates of relative forgetting following instructions to remember or forget information in an item-method directed forgetting paradigm across several retention intervals. In addition to the Forget and Remember cues, we also included Thought Substitution (TS) cues in the same design instructing participants to mentally shift to a different context on some study trials. TS cues have been shown to impair memory compared with Remember cues, but not as effectively as cues to Forget in item-method studies (Hubbard & Sahakyan, 2021). The results demonstrated that Forget cues produce accelerated rates of forgetting compared with Remember cues and showed that these differences are independent of initial learning rates, which were deliberately equated in Experiment 2. TS cued items showed faster forgetting than Remember cued items but were less effective than Forget cues and exhibited a more complex pattern likely reflecting individual differences. Thus, delayed testing demonstrated that active forgetting can have long-lasting effects on memory traces beyond initial suppression, in line with cognitive neuroscientific theory suggesting inhibition can produce lasting changes to memory traces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Distractor-related congruency effects are smaller in blocks of mostly incongruent (vs. mostly congruent) trials. It remains unclear, though, how control processes produce this proportion congruency effect (PCE). The attentional shift account posits that experiencing conflict more frequently in mostly incongruent (vs. mostly congruent) blocks biases control processes to shift attention away from the distractor. The response modulation account posits that, if participants identify the distractor before the target, control processes use the distractor's identity to prepare a congruent response in mostly congruent blocks and/or an incongruent response in mostly incongruent blocks. We conducted four experiments (N = 192) to investigate whether a modulation of response activation contributes to the PCE in the prime-probe task. We observed a larger PCE when the prime/distractor appeared 166 ms before (vs. simultaneously with) the probe/target (Experiment 1) and a PCE without an overall congruency effect at a longer, 933-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; Experiment 2). Critically, the latter PCE was associated with a negative congruency effect in mostly incongruent blocks, consistent with a modulation of response activation but not a shift of attention. Finally, in a modified prime-probe task, wherein participants respond to each stimulus before the next one appears (1,133 ms SOA), we observed analogous PCEs and negative congruency effects (Experiment 3) and a PCE-like effect in response force just before the probe appeared (Experiment 4). These findings indicate an independent contribution of control processes that modulate response activation to the PCE at long prime-probe SOAs, which extends beyond minimizing distraction from irrelevant stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Cronbach (1957) famously noted the divergence between the experimental and psychometric traditions in psychology and called for a unification, but many domains of cognitive experimental psychology continue to pay minimal heed to basic psychometric principles. The present article considers the lack of attention devoted to the reliability of measures extracted in a popular visual search task for studying putatively unconscious mental processes, contextual cuing, and the inferential fallacies that this neglect can cause. Two experiments (total N = 200) demonstrated that the reliability of contextual cuing and awareness measures can be increased by three manipulations designed to increase between-participant variability in search performance. At the same time, the data were subjected to a multiverse analysis, which found that specific data preprocessing pipelines result in more reliable estimates. Nevertheless, the reliability estimates remained too low for drawing firm conclusions from standard statistical techniques. Interpreting results from analyses based on individual differences, such as the typical low correlations between implicit and explicit measures, will be challenging so long as the underlying measures have poor reliability. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Past research has evaluated participants' understanding of their memory by soliciting judgments of learning (JOLs). Importantly, JOLs sometimes change memory for the judged material, leading to JOL reactivity. The cue-strengthening account (Soderstrom et al., 2015) and changed-goal account (Mitchum et al., 2016) propose different mechanisms that lead to JOL reactivity. In the present study, we collected measures that can provide further insight into these mechanisms. Specifically, participants studied related and unrelated word pairs in different colored fonts for a source recognition test. Across three experiments, data were analyzed using a hierarchical Bayesian model of multidimensional source memory to determine how JOLs impact item memory as well as relatedness and color source memory. In Experiment 2, we also compared the effects of making JOLs to making judgments of relatedness (JORs), and Experiment 3 examined how JOLs impact study time allocation. The results of our experiments failed to fully follow predictions of either account. Making JOLs (Experiments 1-3) and JORs (Experiment 2) strengthened item memory for related as well as unrelated pairs, the latter finding not predicted by either account. In addition, JOLs and JORs did not specifically strengthen source memory for relatedness, as the cue-strengthening account predicts, nor did JOLs change study time (Experiment 3), as suggested by the changed-goal account. In all, our results provide novel insight that enhanced item memory may be largely responsible for JOL reactivity, thus adjudicating between candidate explanations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

In face-to-face contexts, discourse is accompanied by various cues, like gestures and mouth movements. Here, we asked whether the presence of gestures and mouth movements benefits discourse comprehension under clear and challenging listening conditions and, if so, whether this multimodal benefit depends on the communicative environment in which interlocutors are situated. In two online experiments, participants watched videoclips of a speaker telling stories, and they answered yes-no questions about the content of each story. The speaker in the videos was spontaneously gesturing (or kept her hands still) and was wearing a surgical mask (or had her lips visible). The experiments differed in the communicative environment. In Experiment 1, the speaker narrated stories in silence, whereas the listener (participants) heard them in clear or degraded speech conditions (analogous to watching the news on TV in a quiet or noisy café). In Experiment 2, the speaker narrated the stories once in silence and once while listening to background noise, and the listener heard them in clear or degraded speech condition, respectively (analogous to listening to a friend in a quiet or noisy café). Across the experiments, we found that cospeech gestures facilitated discourse comprehension regardless of the listening conditions or the presence of a mask. In contrast, mouth movements were primarily helpful in challenging listening conditions. These findings indicate that both cues matter to listeners but to a different extent. Moreover, we found that the multimodal benefit to comprehension was similar regardless of the communicative environment. Thus, this study demonstrates the importance of both cospeech gestures and mouth movements to discourse comprehension, offering insights into the dynamic interplay between these cues under different communicative environments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Homophone (HP) priming occurs when phonologically ambiguous words persistently coactivate their contextually irrelevant meanings. If suppressing those meanings fails, they subliminally bias preferences. Yet, it is unclear if prior findings generalize beyond individual words and to bilingual contexts. This has implications for consumer behavior and the debate on differences between first (L1) and second language (L2) lexical processing. We present four multi-item experiments with German-English bilinguals. An initial eye-tracked primed choice task established that homophones affect decision making. Three visual preference experiments with written and/or auditory primes and high- or low-proficiency L2 users found that homophones bias preferences more in L1 than L2. The L1-L2 gap widened if listening or low proficiency made suppression more difficult. We argue that the interplay between reduced suppression in L2 as predicted by activation-suppression models and lower subjective frequency of L2 homophones assumed by the frequency lag hypothesis explain the size of the L1-L2 priming gap. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The task-switch cost is one of the most robust phenomena in human task performance, but it can disappear after nogo trials where the actors decide not to respond to the target. According to the response-selection account, it is the occurrence of response selection that generates a task-switch cost on the subsequent trial, and the absence of a switch cost after nogo trials has been attributed to a nonoccurrence of response selection on nogo trials. However, an alternative account is that a task-switch cost is generated but is abolished on nogo trials because of the interference from the nogo signal with the activated task set, suggesting that the absence of a task-switch cost does not necessarily imply the nonoccurrence of response selection. The present study tested these competing accounts by using selective go/nogo procedures for which withholding a response would require selecting a response and inhibiting the selected response. Bayes factors in five experiments provided evidence for the absence of a task-switch cost after selective nogo trials, indicating that the occurrence of response selection does not necessarily result in a task-switch cost on the subsequent trial. The present results are consistent with the task-set interference account that a task-switch cost could be generated on nogo trials but is abolished because a nogo signal interferes with the activated task-set. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).