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

Bilinguals simultaneously activate both languages during comprehension and production, requiring cognitive control to manage cross-language interference. Language-switching naming tasks using pictures or digits are traditionally employed to study this control. However, comparisons of these stimuli are scarce, raising critical questions about whether they engage similar cognitive processes. Importantly, assuming their equivalency risks overlooking key aspects of bilingual language control mechanisms. To investigate this, 192 native Chinese speakers learned Turkish words under seven conditions designed to manipulate semantic and associative relationships: unrelated pictures, semantically and associatively related pictures, as well as digits and magnitudes presented either sequentially or randomly. After learning the words to criterion accuracy, participants completed a language-switching picture-naming task. Results revealed larger switching costs for digits than unrelated pictures, an effect absent for magnitudes or other picture types. These findings suggest that digit naming may bypass semantic processing pathways, diverging from the top-down processes typically engaged in picture and magnitude naming. This divergence highlights key differences in cognitive processing and emphasizes the need for caution when comparing stimuli in language control research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study investigates whether voluntary saccades or fixations on an item ensure its visual working memory consolidation through three experiments, which used modified attribute amnesia paradigms. In each trial, all the items were first masked, and participants needed to gaze at the masked locations to temporarily unmask the items below. They were asked to search for the target and report its location in presurprise trials and then were unexpectedly asked to report its identity in a surprise trial and two control trials. In Experiments 3 and 4, the participants were further asked to retain information for a brief while before reporting colors or identities. Report accuracy in the surprise trial was significantly lower than in control trials across four experiments, indicating that an attribute amnesia phenomenon was found. All these results demonstrate that neither voluntary saccades toward an item nor fixations on it are a sufficient condition of automatic visual working memory consolidation of it, indicating the separation between the mechanisms of foveal attention and visual working memory consolidation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Numerous episodic memory research studies have shown that young adults use self-initiated intentional strategies to encode verbal stimuli and that self-initiated intentional encoding strategy use plays a significant role in memory performance. However, the types, frequency, and effectiveness of self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies that young adults use during free recall of verbal stimuli from episodic memory have not been systematically investigated. The goals of this study were to (a) systematically examine the types and frequency of self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies that young adults use to recall individually presented unrelated words and to (b) investigate whether use of self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies during free recall could benefit memory for individually presented unrelated words in addition to use of self-initiated intentional memory strategies during encoding. Young adults intentionally encoded individually presented unrelated words, completed a free recall memory assessment, and made retrospective open-ended and frequency rating scale encoding and retrieval strategy reports. Several types of self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies were reported. Ninety-seven and one hundred percent of participants reported using at least one self-initiated systematic intentional memory retrieval strategy in their open-ended and frequency rating scale strategy reports, respectively. Participants reported using individual self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies to try to recall 10%-59% of words on average. Self-reported use of concept imagery and sentence generation retrieval strategies predicted free recall when controlling for self-reported use of concept imagery and sentence generation encoding strategies, suggesting that use of self-initiated intentional memory retrieval strategies could benefit verbal episodic memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Adaptive control refers to flexible adjustments in control settings in response to conflicting situations. There has been a long-standing debate as to whether this adaptation relies on a domain-general or domain-specific process. Recent models predict a U-shaped relation where only highly similar or highly dissimilar tasks show adaptation across tasks, because only those tasks can be represented or activated in parallel. While there has been an abundance of evidence for adaptation within and across highly similar tasks, only some recent studies have reported adaptation across highly dissimilar tasks, with some failures to replicate. In order to further investigate this, we interleaved two very different conflict tasks, a manual multisource interference task and a vocal picture-word interference task. We ran this experiment in Dutch (Experiment 1) and Mandarin (Experiment 2). Across the two experiments, results show no cross-task conflict adaptation. These results do not fit with the suggestion of domain-general adaptive processes nor with the hypothesis of a U-shaped model. Instead, our results are most compatible with a task-specific view on the mechanisms behind adaptive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

It is well established that in sentences exhibiting quantifier scope ambiguity such as "a hiker climbed every hill," the surface scope interpretation (where a single hiker climbed all relevant hills) is preferred over the inverse scope interpretation (where multiple hikers each climbed potentially different hills). However, less is known about how individual differences modulate these preferences. In this study, we asked how language experience, as measured by print exposure, affects acceptability judgments and reaction times for surface versus inverse interpretations of sentences with quantifier scope ambiguity. We found that print exposure predicts both of these measures: participants with higher scores on measures of print exposure gave ambiguous sentences lower ratings than participants with lower levels of print exposure and had significantly longer reaction times for inverse scope items in particular than participants with lower levels of print exposure. We conclude that high print exposure may strengthen expectations for the dominant surface scope interpretation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

How do we tailor learning experiences to promote the formation and generalization of conceptual knowledge? Exposing learners to a highly variable set of examples has been postulated to benefit generalization, but evidence is conflicting. In the present study, we manipulated training set variability in terms of both the typicality of training examples (high vs. low coherence) and the number of unique examples (small vs. large set size) while controlling the total number of training trials. The face family category structure was designed to allow participants to learn by picking up on shared features across category members and/or by attending to unique features of individual category members. We found relatively little effect of set size but a clear benefit of high-coherence (lower variability) training both in terms of category learning and generalization. Moreover, high-coherence training biased participants to make judgments based on shared features in both categorization and recognition. Using an exploratory model fitting procedure, we tested the hypothesis that high-coherence training facilitates prototype abstraction. Instead, we found an exemplar model advantage across training conditions. However, there was also systematic misfit for all models for some trial types, including underestimating the influence of shared features in categorization responses. Overall, we show that high-variability training is not necessarily beneficial for concept learning when the total length of training is controlled. Instead, training on typical examples promotes fast learning and broad category knowledge by helping learners extract shared category features. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The present study investigated the word-form encoding process of handwriting in a nonalphabetic writing system, Chinese. The form-preparation paradigm (Experiment 1) and the picture-word interference paradigm (Experiment 2) were adopted to examine the facilitation effects of radical or logographeme overlap in Chinese handwritten production. Three different groups of Chinese writers were involved: Mainland Chinese participants who mainly used phonology-based Chinese input methods (Pinyin) for typewriting and the simplified Chinese script, Hong Kong participants who mainly used orthography-based input methods (e.g., Sucheng, Cangjie) and the traditional script, and Taiwanese participants who mainly used phonology-based input methods (Zhuyin) and the traditional script. The radical effects were consistently observed in the two paradigms across groups, indicating a prominent role of radicals in planning Chinese handwritten production. The Hong Kong participants showed a significantly larger radical effect than the Taiwanese participants, suggesting an influence of typewriting experience on the salience of radicals during Chinese handwriting. On the other hand, the logographeme effects were significant in the Mainland participants only and significantly smaller than the radical effects in the form-preparation paradigm and at 0-ms stimulus onset asynchrony in the picture-word interference paradigm. No significant difference was found between the radical and logographeme effects at -100- and 100-ms stimulus onset asynchrony, suggesting that the time courses of radical processing and logographeme processing are similar despite the lower salience of logographemes in planning Chinese handwritten production. Overall, these findings suggest that radicals and (nonradical) logographemes are processed at the same level of word-form encoding during Chinese handwritten production, but with different saliences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reinforcement learning (RL) frameworks have been extremely successful at capturing how biological agents learn to make rewarding choices. However, there is also increasing evidence that multiple cognitive processes, including working memory (WM) and episodic memory (EM), support such learning in parallel with value-based mechanisms such as RL. Here, we investigate EM's role in a context where both RL and WM are known to strongly support learning. We develop two new experimental paradigms to isolate EM's contributions, using trial-unique signals (Experiment 1) and temporal context effects (Experiment 2) to tag EM. As predicted, our results across both experiments consistently showed a weak role of EM in learning alongside RL and WM. However, surprisingly, we showed that EM's contributions did not improve overall behavior; instead, participants appeared to primarily encode in or retrieve from the EM part of a past trial's information (the stimulus-action choice, without outcome), leading to characteristic error patterns. Across both experiments, computational modeling confirmed a small contribution of traces of past stimulus-action (association) events stored in EM to learning behavior. Our results shed light on the format of EM traces and how they support decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Language control is an essential cognitive process that allows bilinguals to fluently produce language by reducing cross-language interference. Yet, it remains unclear whether the control processes implemented when reducing cross-language interference are similar to those when reducing within-language interference. Since prior research has shown contradictory results, we set out to investigate this issue further based on a combination of language switch costs, as a measure of control processes resolving cross-language interference, and Stroop incongruency, as a measure of control processes resolving within-language interference. Relying on a range of statistical techniques, the results across three experiments, including a replication of Experiment 1 of Liu et al. (2019), testing three different groups of bilinguals (i.e., Dutch-English, Arabic-English, and Chinese-English) showed no clear interaction between language switch costs and Stroop incongruency, and neither was this pattern influenced by language dominance. These results are more in line with the claim that control processes implemented to reduce cross- and within-language interference are separate or occur in separate stages of processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Research in the retrospective memory domain has shown that individuals encode information less effortfully when expecting a reminder system (i.e., external store) to be available at the test. Critically, this expectation leads to worse memory performance when the reminder is unexpectedly removed. The present study examined whether these findings extend to prospective memory (PM) intentions, which are thought to maintain a privileged status in memory and therefore may be less sensitive to expectancy effects. Participants formed the intention to make a special PM response to target items across four ongoing task blocks. Study duration (Experiments 1 and 3), pupil size (Experiment 2), and self-report (Experiments 1-3) indexed encoding effort while learning these targets. Participants had reminders available across the first three blocks (i.e., targets listed at the top of the screen), but not on the fourth. Critically, only one condition was informed that they would not have a reminder prior to encoding targets in the fourth block. Results showed that expecting a reminder lowered objective (Experiments 1 and 3) and subjective (Experiments 1-3) encoding effort and reduced unaided PM retrieval (Experiments 1-3) in the fourth block, independent of memory load (Experiments 3). Objective (Experiments 1 and 3) and subjective (Experiments 1-3) effort also partially mediated the influence of expectations on unaided PM retrieval. These findings suggest PM and retrospective memory encoding operate similarly and that participants can alter learning to more effectively commit PM targets to memory when reminders are not expected. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).