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

Prior research has shown that visual working memory capacity is enhanced for meaningful stimuli (i.e., real-world objects) compared to abstract shapes (i.e., colored circles). Here, we hypothesized that the shape of meaningful objects would be better remembered incidentally than the shape of nonmeaningful objects in a color memory task where the shape of the objects is task-irrelevant. We used a surprise-trial paradigm in which participants performed a color memory task for several trials before being probed with a surprise trial that asked them about the shape of the last object they saw. Across three experiments, we found a memory advantage for recognizable shapes relative to scrambled versions of these shapes (Experiment 1) that was robust across different encoding times (Experiment 2), and the addition of a verbal suppression task (Experiment 3). Interestingly, this advantage disappeared when all objects were from the same category (Experiment 4), suggesting that people are incidentally encoding broad conceptual information about object identities, but not visual details. Finally, when we asked about the location of objects in a surprise trial, we did not observe any difference between the two stimulus types (Experiment 5). Overall, these results show that conceptual information about the categories of meaningful objects is incidentally encoded into working memory even when task-irrelevant. This privilege for meaningful information does not exhibit a trade-off with location memory, suggesting that meaningful features influence representations of visual working memory in higher-level visual regions without altering the use of spatial reference frames at the lower level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This article investigates people's judgments of actual causation in the context of a previously neglected property of causal structures-their reversibility, that is, whether an effect persists or returns to its original state if its causes are removed. Causal reversibility, and its potential impact on causal judgment, was recently analyzed theoretically by Ross and Woodward (2022). They hypothesized that reversibility might affect people's evaluation of causes in late-preemption scenarios. The typical finding in preemption scenarios is that events happening earlier are considered to be actual causes, while events happening later are regarded as noncauses. The hypothesis is that this robust intuition depends on causal reversibility and that in reversible structures later events are regarded as actual causes. Across three main experiments and one supplementary study (N = 590), it is shown that reversibility has the predicted effect: later causes are perceived to make an actual causal contribution to the effect. It is also shown that Henne et al. (2023), in a first study, did not find evidence for Ross and Woodward's hypothesis because they did not test whether people regard later causes in preemption-like sequences of reversible structures as maintainers and not as triggers of their effect. Because they used test questions that asked explicitly for triggering rather than maintaining or were at least ambiguous, their results seemed to show that people think that later events have no causal impact. Maintaining is a relevant causal concept deserving more attention in both philosophical theories and psychological studies on causal cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In sharp contrast to event-based prospective memory (PM), dynamics of (re)allocation of attention between the ongoing and PM tasks have been much less investigated in time-based PM tasks. We propose an in-depth examination of attention allocation in a time-based PM task by jointly analyzing multiple indicators of time-monitoring behavior, net and time-structured intraindividual variability (IIV) in ongoing-task reaction times (OT RTs), and task performance. Results from dynamic structural equation modeling in a lifespan sample of 198 adults (19-86 years) revealed that larger fluctuations in OT RTs (net IIV) predicted poorer OT performance, but fostered a more efficient pattern of time-monitoring behavior (i.e., checking a clock more frequently and strategically, and slowing OT RTs during the PM response window) that, in turn, enhanced PM. Conversely, greater inertia in OT RTs (time-structured IIV) led to fewer clock-checks and poorer PM performance. Focusing attention on time monitoring to enhance PM performance did not detrimentally affect OT accuracy. Instead, participants showed a speed-accuracy tradeoff to optimize both OT and PM accuracies by slowing their OT RTs during the PM response window. This study therefore shows that two concomitant aspects of IIV (net and time-structured IIV) not only predicted time-monitoring behavior, but also OT and PM accuracies differentially, hence advocating for the necessity to consider both aspects of IIV and time monitoring together to better understand attention allocation policies in time-based PM tasks. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The capacity for goal-directed behavior relies on the generation and implementation of task sets. While task sets are traditionally defined as mnemonic ensembles linking task goals to stimulus-response mappings, we here asked the question whether they may also entail information about task difficulty: does the level of focus required for performing a task become incorporated within the task set? We addressed this question by employing a cued task-switching protocol, wherein participants engaged in two intermixed tasks with trial-unique stimuli. Both tasks were equally challenging during a baseline and a transfer phase, while their difficulty was manipulated during an intermediate learning phase by varying the proportion of trials with congruent versus incongruent response mappings between the two tasks. Comparing congruency effects between the baseline and transfer phases, Experiment 1 showed that the task with a low (high) proportion of congruent trials in the learning phase displayed reduced (increased) cross-task interference effects in the transfer phase, indicating that the level of task focus required in the learning phase had become associated with each task set. Experiment 2 indicated that strengthening of task focus level in the task with a low proportion of congruent trials was the primary driver of this effect. Experiment 3 ruled out the possibility of cue-control associations mediating this effect. Taken together, our results show that task sets can become associated with the focus level required to successfully implement them, thus significantly expanding our concept of the type of information that makes up a task set. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has demonstrated that attentional prioritization is shaped by prior experience of reward uncertainty: Attention is more likely to be captured by a stimulus associated with a variable (uncertain) reward than a stimulus that provides diagnostic information about available reward. This finding is noteworthy, because it runs counter to the principle that cognition is motivated to reduce uncertainty and hence surprise. Here we investigated whether this pattern of uncertainty-modulated attentional capture (UMAC) reflects a process of attention for learning, wherein uncertainty-related stimuli are prioritized in an attempt to learn about their true predictive status. To address this, we examined the distinct impact of two information sources that modulate potential for learning: explicit instruction versus ongoing experience of prediction error in reward feedback. Experiment 1 demonstrated that providing explicit instructions-and hence negating the need for further learning-did not reduce the magnitude of the UMAC effect, indicating that UMAC does not reflect attention for learning as a strategic approach for determining the task state. On the other hand, Experiment 2 showed that instructions alone were insufficient to generate a UMAC effect in the absence of reward feedback, suggesting that the impact of uncertainty on rapid attentional prioritization is driven by direct experience of prediction error. Taken together, these findings point to two possibilities: UMAC may reflect attention for learning operating at an implicit level or may evince an attentional system that is configured for rapid detection of sources of experienced uncertainty so that subsequent behavior can be tailored appropriately. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

An unexamined assumption in many studies of learning and decision making is that people learn underlying probability distributions. However, the acquisition of distributional knowledge is rarely the focus of investigations. We report five experiments (N = 580 adults) that provide this focus and highlight the factors that impact people's ability to accurately learn and reproduce underlying distributions. We find that people accurately reproduced the distribution only when either the environmental signal is strong (e.g., discrete bimodal distributions) or sufficient cues are provided to aid construction of mental representations (e.g., items from the modes in a noisy bimodal distribution are presented in different colors). We interpret these results in terms of participants testing and learning discrete rules corresponding to salient features of the environment rather than spontaneously representing entire distributions. As such, the findings challenge strong assumptions about the role of probability distribution knowledge in explanations of learning and decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Extensive research has shown that differences in cognitive ability predict working memory (WM) performance. However, strategy use may also explain individual differences in WM. Here we explored individual variation in encoding strategy optimization in visual WM. Participants searched for a target that changed between two alternating displays that cycled until response. Critically, participants could freely choose between one red and one blue target, and the ratio of red to blue items varied randomly across trials. Therefore, the optimal strategy was to selectively encode items in the smaller color subset. Results showed a general tendency to choose the optimal (small subset) target, but there were large individual differences in strategy choice, with many participants using suboptimal strategies. While Experiment 1 found no relationship between ability and strategy, a larger sample replication in Experiment 5 found a small, positive correlation between WM ability and strategy optimization. Experiment 2 showed that strategy use was not stable over time. Many participants spontaneously shifted to highly optimal target choices, suggesting a sudden discovery of the optimal strategy. Experiment 3 confirmed the importance of explicit knowledge in strategy choice. Informing participants about the optimal strategy induced a large strategy improvement. Moreover, optimally performing participants demonstrated explicit awareness of the optimal strategy. Experiment 4 showed that, even under greater task demands, when participants viewed the displays only once, strategy use was still suboptimal. Our findings highlight strategy choice as an important source of individual variation and therefore should be considered alongside the ability to fully understand differences in WM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Collecting an adequate amount of information for a decision is an important skill. However, previous experiments on speed-accuracy trade-offs in sample-based decisions revealed marked oversampling that was impervious to various interventions (Fiedler, McCaughey, et al., 2021). When faced with the threat of being preempted by a rival in making decisions, participants seem to reduce information search substantially (Phillips et al., 2014). Such a decrease provides unique opportunities for metareasoning, which should advance people's understanding of the task and improve their performance. To test this possibility, in the present research (N = 101), participants had to compete with a fast (computer-simulated) rival and indeed substantially reduced self-determined sample size compared to a control condition. This speed increase also carried over to a subsequent decision block without rival, albeit participants regressed to a slower strategy. Mere exposure to a teammate using small samples either in an equivalent competitive version of the task or the standard solitary version led to similar reductions in sample size. This demonstrates that competition is not a necessary requirement for participants to make use of the metareasoning opportunity to improve task performance. Further research is needed to uncover the metacognitive underpinnings of improving performance and facilitate people taking full advantage of such opportunities for metareasoning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Past research has shown that semantically richer (i.e., modified) words are retrieved more easily at a subsequent point during language comprehension relative to less rich (i.e., unmodified) words, presumably due to more robust encoding of modified words. We investigated if this modification effect is modulated by age and/or the level of engagement with the task. Young and older participants (total N = 120) read sentences containing unmodified and premodified words followed by a critical verb that triggered their retrieval. The results showed that the retrieval benefit was not modulated by age but depended on the accuracy rates on comprehension questions (a proxy for task engagement), with the retrieval benefit emerging only for participants with lower accuracy rates. We replicated this engagement effect in a reanalysis of an independent, large data set from younger adults (N = 333). Based on these results, it is possible that when engagement is high, the memory representations associated with critical words may remain in the focus of attention when retrieval is being triggered, obviating a retrieval operation and eliminating the modification effect. However, when engagement is low, the critical memory representations may fade to a degree that the modification effect can emerge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive control processes mirror fast and dynamic adaptation toward a change in the environment. When performing dual tasks, mental representations of dual-task-specific control requirements and the task-pair set are established that help to manage dual-task processing (Hirsch et al., 2017, 2018; Hommel, 2004, 2020). In the present study, we investigated to which extent such higher order representations of dual-task processing persist even if major characteristics of the task context change, for example, if one of the tasks of a dual task becomes irrelevant. For this, we adapted the fade-out paradigm (Mayr & Liebscher, 2001) to a dual-task setting and tested whether fade-out costs appear. Performance of pure Task 1 single tasking was compared to the performance of Task 1 processing right after dual-task trials (fade-out phase). Results showed that performance in this fade-out block did not immediately drop to single-task performance (fade-out costs), indicating the persistence of task-pair set representations (Experiments 1 and 3, N = 40 each). In addition, automatic stimulus-response translation processes continued within the fade-out phase, resulting in ongoing between-task interference. Furthermore, the frequency of between-task interference in dual-task blocks was manipulated (75% vs. 25% incongruence) between participants to establish conflict-biased control states of increased versus relaxed task shielding. These different control states, however, did not modulate fade-out costs (Experiment 2, N = 80). Nevertheless, the persistence of these control adaptations was reflected in manipulation-dependent between-task interference during fade-out trials. Implications of this new evidence are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).