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

In a recognition memory task, correct "old" responses to previously studied target items (hits) trigger larger pupil dilation (PD) than correct "new" responses to previously not presented foil items (correct rejections). This pupil old/new effect reflects the specific processes involved in recognition decisions, with dilation being larger when decisions are based on recollection of contextual details rather than mere familiarity. However, previous research has been limited in determining the exact link between PD and recognition processes due to the categorical nature of tasks used to assess recollection/familiarity. To investigate this issue, we examined whether the precision of the recollected memory representation is related to PD during successful recognition. During encoding, target words were presented on the outline of an invisible circle, and during a subsequent recognition task, participants made old/new decisions. For "old" responses, participants had to indicate the exact location of the target on the outline of the invisible circle. We found that larger PD during the old/new decision was related to more precise subsequent localization decision. Furthermore, we also demonstrated that PD and memory precision are linearly related, and even hits followed by unprecise source localization trigger larger PD than correct rejections. Thus, increased PD is present for all recognition decisions, but its magnitude increases with increasing precision of source recollection. This pattern of results suggests that the pupil old/new effect might originate from two distinct components: The first is related to the mere recognition of a word, whereas the second reflects the quality of recollected source information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Spoken language understanding requires the integration of incoming speech with representations of the preceding context. How rich the information is that listeners maintain in these contextual representations has been a long-standing question. Under one view, subcategorical information about the preceding input-including any uncertainty about the underlying categories-is quickly discarded due to memory limitations. Alternative views hold that listeners maintain some subcategorical information far beyond word boundaries. This would facilitate more effective integration with subsequent context, under the assumption that subsequent context is informative about the preceding input. We thus ask whether listeners are sensitive to changes in the informativity of subsequent context by changing the expected utility of subcategorical information maintenance. In three experiments, we manipulate how informative subsequent context is about words that occur six to nine syllables earlier. We find that reduced informativity leads listeners to down-weight the importance of subsequent context. This suggests that listeners can adjust the degree to which they maintain subcategorical information. We do, however, also identify alternative interpretations that affect not only the present results but also the interpretation of previous work on subcategorical information maintenance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In two visual-world eyetracking experiments, we investigated how effectively addressees use information about a speaker's perspective to resolve temporary ambiguities in spoken expressions containing prenominal scalar adjectives (e.g., the small candle). The experiments used a new "Display Change" task to create situations where an addressee's perspective conflicted with that of a speaker, allowing the point of disambiguation (early vs. late) to be specified independently from each perspective. Contrary to existing perspective-taking theories, the only situation in which addressees resolved references early was when both perspectives afforded early disambiguation. When perspectives conflicted, addressees exhibited a lower rate of preferential looks to the target and slower response times. This disruption to contrastive inference reflects either the suspension of pragmatic inferencing or cognitive limitations on the simultaneous representation and use of incompatible perspectives. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Few studies have examined whether semantic relatedness between objects can influence object grouping, thereby optimizing the efficiency of visual working memory (WM). Moreover, these studies have largely used real-world grayscale objects. Here, we sought to determine whether and how sharing object semantics and colors would benefit WM. Participants viewed six to-be-remembered objects, arranged as one semantically related and/or perceptually similar object pair plus four singletons, or as six singletons. Perceptually similar pairs shared color, while semantically related pairs included co-occurring objects. Our series of three experiments mainly showed redundancy advantages, with memory of related objects improved over that of singletons. This advantage was present for similarly colored objects in all experiments and under conditions that allowed deeper information processing by facilitating access to knowledge (longer encoding or retention times), extended to semantically related objects. None of the experiments showed any redundancy-boost on overall WM performance, with memory for scenes comprising a related pair not differing from that for scenes comprising only singletons. The experiments also showed no capacity spillover for singletons in the presence of pairs. Overall, the results support the existence of an attentional encoding bias and rule out the compression hypothesis to explain the benefits of grouping by semantic and color similarity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study examined how Arabic-Hebrew-English trilinguals process double and triple cognate words in their third language (L3) across three different experiments. Utilizing the same set of critical cognate items, trilinguals completed a semantic relatedness task, a lexical decision task, or a sentence reading eye-tracking task. The results revealed a significant cognate facilitation effect in the semantic relatedness task, with no consistent differences in the magnitude of facilitation across double and triple cognates, suggesting that both L1 and L2 are activated during L3 processing. In contrast, no cognate facilitation was observed in the lexical decision or the sentence reading tasks. These results demonstrate that the cognate facilitation is task-dependent, varying with the degree to which meaning is activated, sentential context is available, and orthographic cues are involved. Critically, the study extends findings of phonologically mediated cross-language activation from bilinguals to trilinguals. (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).

We employed the retro-cue paradigm to examine performance improvements resulting from permanent versus temporary removal in verbal working memory. Permanent removal entails discarding a subset of working memory representations marked as definitively irrelevant, while temporary removal involves momentarily setting aside the uncued subset of representations from the attentional focus, preserving accessibility for later refocusing. We observed that both permanent and temporary removal led to marked progressive reductions in reaction time and errors across cue-target intervals (200, 400, 800, and 1,600 ms), reflecting the gradual simplification of the search set following informative cues. Although removal conditions did not differ in accuracy, responses were slower in the temporary removal condition, especially at the longest interval. A key finding was that performance in the temporary removal condition, but not in the permanent removal condition, was modulated by the presentation order of the target's memory set. This order effect was also observed in a nonremoval control condition where double retro-cues marked all presented information as relevant. We suggest that order effects depend on maintaining the integrity of the retrieval framework (all the contextual cues) needed to guide attentional access to specific representations, including those provisionally set aside in the temporary removal condition. We conclude that the primary distinction between permanent and temporary removal processes is that only permanent removal simplifies the retrieval framework by removing unnecessary contextual cues, resulting in a greater reduction in the complexity of the search set compared to temporary removal. (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).

Some prior studies of item recognition, source recognition, and judgments of learning have produced evidence of framing effects in episodic memory. A theoretical consequence of these phenomena is that emotional arousal is not a necessary condition for framing effects because, unlike the classic framing effects of social psychology and behavioral economics, different memory frames are not designed to stimulate different emotional reactions. However, a review of available evidence on framing effects in item recognition revealed that the data were inconsistent for old items and nonexistent for similar distractors. We attempted to secure definitive evidence of whether these types of items display framing effects by analyzing a corpus of 478 sets of data, in which old items and similar distractors are factorially crossed with old? and similar? recognition frames. Both types of items exhibited large framing effects: Recognition was far more accurate for similar items than for old items when probes asked if test items were old, whereas recognition was more accurate for old items than for similar items when probes asked if test items were similar. There was a frame-independence effect, too, such that accuracy in one memory frame was dissociated from accuracy in the other frame. The conjoint-recognition model predicted both the core memory framing effect and its direction (superior recognition of similar distractors in the old? frame but superior recognition of old items in the similar? frame). The model also explained frame independence as a by-product of between-frame differences in how three retrieval processes (true recollection, false recollection, and semantic familiarity) affect accuracy in the different frames. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Interlocutors in conversation coordinate to achieve very short transitions between acoustic turns. The mechanisms supporting this coordination remain an area of active investigation. A large body of work has considered the cues that might clue next speakers (i.e., interlocutors awaiting their upcoming turn in conversation) that the floor is about to be yielded. Less attention has been given to the cues that next speakers might emit when preparing to take the floor. Most work that has considered cues from next speakers has emphasized manual gestures and nonspeech facial movements, and it has seldom examined the effects of these cues on onlookers. The present study proceeded from the insight that kinematic speech articulation necessarily precedes the onset of phonation, at the beginning of a new turn. Across four web-based experiments (total N = 171), participants viewed the beginnings of speech turns drawn from an audiovisual database of natural two-way conversations. In all experiments, participants were tasked with timing keypresses to coincide with audible speech onset. Visibility of facial movements (including lip movements) was manipulated. Experiment 1 compared clips with digitally obscured and unobscured faces. Experiments 2-4 compared clips that did or did not include isolated visualizations of lip movements. Experiment 3 varied the presence of speech audio, and Experiment 4 manipulated whether initial lip position was informative to the target utterance. Overall, findings suggest that visible lip motion facilitates detecting acoustic speech onset, especially if that motion is directly relevant to the speaker's phonetic goals. Implications for conversational turn-taking are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).