Cognitive busyness and the processing of evaluative information in intergroup contexts.
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Adolescent↗
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Monkey auditory list memory: tests with mixed and blocked retention delays.
A rhesus monkey was tested in an auditory list memory task with blocked and mixed retention delays. Each list of four natural or environmental sounds (from a center speaker) was followed by a retention delay (0, 1, 2, 10, 20, or 30 sec) and then by a recognition test (from two side speakers). The monkey had been tested for 12 years in tasks with blocked delays. An earlier (4 years prior) blocked-delay test was repeated, with virtually identical results. The results from the mixed-delay test were likewise similar. Thus, the peculiarities of blocked-delay testing, such as delay predictability or differences in list spacing, apparently do not alter this monkey's memory for auditory lists. It is concluded from this and other evidence that the monkey's serial position functions reflect mnemonic processes that change with changes in retention delay and are not artifacts of the blocked-delay procedure. The nature of the monkey's auditory memory is discussed.
Animals↗
Phonological similarity neighborhoods and children's short-term memory: typical development and dyslexia.
In this article, we explore whether structural characteristics of the phonological lexicon affect serial recall in typically developing and dyslexic children. Recent work has emphasized the importance of long-term phonological representations in supporting short-term memory performance. This occurs via redintegration (reconstruction) processes, which show significant neighborhood density effects in adults. We assessed whether serial recall in children was affected by neighborhood density in word and nonword tasks. Furthermore, we compared dyslexic children with typically developing children of the same age or reading level. Dyslexic children are held to have impaired phonological representations of lexical items. These impaired representations may impair or prevent the use of long-term phonological representations to redintegrate short-term memory traces. We report significant rime neighborhood density effects for serial recall of both words and nonwords, for both dyslexic and typically developing children.
Attention↗
Artificially induced valence of distractor words increases the effects of irrelevant speech on serial recall.
In a game context, nonwords either were artificially associated with negative valence or were in some sense neutral or irrelevant. Subsequently, participants memorized target words in silence or while attempting to ignore the negatively valent, irrelevant, or neutral auditory distractor nonwords. The presence of distractor nonwords impaired recall performance, but negative distractor nonwords caused more disruption than neutral and irrelevant distractors, which did not differ in how much disruption they caused. These findings conceptually replicate earlier results showing disruption due to valence with natural language words and extend them by demonstrating that auditory features that may possibly be confounded with valence in natural language words cannot be the cause of the observed disruption. Explanations of the irrelevant speech effect within working memory models that specify an explicit role of attention in the maintenance of information for immediate serial recall can explain this pattern of results, whereas structural models of working memory cannot.
Adult↗
Distinctiveness revisited: unpredictable temporal isolation does not benefit short-term serial recall of heard or seen events.
The notion of a link between time and memory is intuitively appealing and forms the core assumption of temporal distinctiveness models. Distinctiveness models predict that items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors at presentation should be recalled better than items that are temporally crowded. By contrast, event-based theories consider time to be incidental to the processes that govern memory, and such theories would not imply a temporal isolation advantage unless participants engaged in a consolidation process (e.g., rehearsal or selective encoding) that exploited the temporal structure of the list. In this report, we examine two studies that assessed the effect of temporal distinctiveness on memory, using auditory (Experiment 1) and auditory and visual (Experiment 2) presentation with unpredictably varying interitem intervals. The results show that with unpredictable intervals temporal isolation does not benefit memory, regardless of presentation modality.
Attention↗
Eye movements and the identification of spatially ambiguous words during chinese sentence reading.
Readers of Chinese must generally determine word units in the absence of visually distinct inter-word spaces. In the present study, we examined how a sequence of Chinese characters is parsed into words under these conditions. Eye movements were monitored while participants read sentences with a critical four-character (C1234) sequence. Three partially overlapping character groupings formed legal words in the ambiguous condition (C12, C23, and C34), two of which corresponded to context-consistent words (C12 and C34). Two nonoverlapping groupings corresponded to legal words in the control conditions (C12 and C34). In two experiments, readers spent more time viewing the critical character sequence and its two center characters (C23) in the ambiguous condition. These results argue against the strictly serial assignment of characters to words during the reading of Chinese text.
Adult↗
Mixing costs in task shifting reflect sequential processing stages in a multicomponent task.
We investigated the hypothesis that mixing costs intask shifting reflect th e sequential selection of task components (e.g., stimulus categories) during task execution. This proposition was supported by Hübner, Futterer, and Steinhauser (2001), who showed that the amount of mixing costsdepends on the number of mixed task components (e.g., stimulus level and judgment). However, their results could also be explained by a task set selection account, because task components and task sets were confounded. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared conditions in which either the number of task sets varied and the number of mixed task components was constant or vice versa. Only the number of mixed task components was predictive for the mixing costs. In Experiment 3, we replicated the additivity of mixing costs from level a ndjudgment mixing. Our results suggest thatthe mixingcosts reflect a selection strategy in which interference is reduced in a stepwise manner.
Adolescent↗
A strategy disruption component to retrieval-induced forgetting.
Retrieval-induced forgetting refers to a paradoxical occurrence wherein the act of remembering some material disrupts the retrieval of other, related material (see, e.g., M. C. Anderson, R. A. Bjork, & E. L. Bjork, 1994). This effect is generally accounted for in terms of inhibitory processes. Across three experiments, we test the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting, as well as whether there may be a strategy disruption component to the effect. In our first two experiments, we manipulate which items individuals are cued to recall during retrieval practice and demonstrate that retrieval-induced forgetting can be neutralized when those items do not interfere with the individual's retrieval strategy. In the third experiment, we confirm this finding with a different set of stimuli. These results are inconsistent with a purely inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting, and we discuss implications for inhibition theory and strategy disruption in light of these and other findings.
Attention↗
The relationship between absolute and proportion scores of serial order memory: simulation predictions and empirical data.
The capability of a feature model of immediate memory (Naine, 1990; Neath, 2000) to predict and account for a relationship between absolute and proportion scoring of immediate serial recall when memory load is varied (the list-length effect, LLE) is examined. The model correctly predicts the novel finding of an LLE in immediate serial order memory similar to that observed with free recall and previously assumed to be attributable to the long-term memory component of that procedure (Glanzer, 1972). The usefulness of formal models as predictive tools and the continuity between short-term serial order and longer-term item memory are considered.
Attention↗
Attentional capture triggers an attentional blink.
Two experiments examined the possibility that attention directed to a distractor during rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) can produce an attentional blink (AB). A to-be-ignored distractor (D1) preceded a target word (T2) by a variable lag in RSVP streams of black false-font distractors. D1 was highlighted by color and was a word, a string of consonants, a string of digits, or a string of false-font characters. Recall of T2 was significantly suppressed at short D1-T2 lags (the AB) but only when D1 contained letters; the AB was completely absent when D1 was composed of digits or false-font characters. Thus, the AB can be triggered by a highlighted distractor if the distractor shares features with a target.
Adult↗
Out with the old, in with the new: more valid measures of switch cost and retrieval time in the task span procedure.
Two experiments provided new measures of switch cost and retrieval time in the task span procedure. In Experiment 1, subjects were given lists of six task names to remember, followed by six targets on which to perform the tasks named in the list. The lists contained alternations and repetitions, and switch costs were estimated by comparing reaction time (RT) on alternation and repetition trials. The experiment also included memory span and single task conditions, so switch costs could be estimated by subtracting the sum of the RT in those conditions from the task span RT, as in the original report (Logan, 2004). The data suggested that the original measure of switch cost was invalid and that the new measure was preferable. In Experiment 2, subjects performed each task on the list twice. Retrieval was required on the first but not on the second trial in each pair. Retrieval time was estimated by comparing the RT on trials that required retrieval with trials that did not require retrieval. This measure was more valid than the RT in the memory span condition of Experiment 1, which was used in the original report.
Attention↗
Distinctiveness and serial position effects in tonal sequences.
The proportion-of-the-total-duration rule (Kidd & Watson, 1992) states that the detectability of a change in a component of a tonal sequence can be predicted by the proportional duration of the changed component relative to the length of the sequence as a whole. A similar viewpoint relies on temporal distinctiveness to account for primacy, recency, and other serial position effects in memory (Murdock, 1960; Neath, 1993a, 1993b). Such distinctiveness models predict that an item will be remembered if it is more distinctive along some dimension relative to possible competitors. Three experiments explored the relation between distinctiveness and proportional duration by examining the effects of the proportion of the total duration of a tone in a sequence, serial position, and interstimulus interval (ISI) on the detection of a change in one component of a tonal sequence. Experiment 1 replicated the basic effect with relatively untrained subjects and a fixed frequency difference. Experiment 2 showed that distinctiveness holds for tonal sequences and a same/different task. Experiment 3 combined the two to show that proportional duration, ISI, and position of the changed tone all contribute to discrimination performance. The present research combines theories that have been proposed in the psychophysics and memory fields and suggests that a comprehensive principle based on relative distinctiveness may be able to account for both perceptual and memory effects.
Acoustic Stimulation↗
The midstream order deficit.
The relative order of an auditory sequence can be more difficult to apprehend when it is presented repeatedly without pause (i.e., cycling) than when it is presented only once (Warren, Obusek, Farmer, & Warren, 1969). We find that this phenomenon, referred to as the midstream order deficit (MOD), can also occur with visual stimuli. The stimuli need not form separate perceptual "streams," and the effect can occur with presentation rates as slow as five items per second, even though the identification of individual letters is very accurate at this rate. However, if the first item of the sequence is visually very distinct from the preceding items, relative order reports can be as accurate in the cycling condition as in the single-presentation condition. Our results suggest that the MOD is not due to masking, attentional blink, repetition blindness, Reeves and Sperling's (1986) order illusion, memory limitations, or decision criteria. The MOD may reflect an attentional cost to the initiation of order encoding, which is distinct from the allocation of attention is required in order to detect and identify individual items. To initiate order encoding successfully, one's attention must be set for, or captured by, an initial salient event.
Adult↗
Contextual relative temporal duration judgment: an investigation of sequence interruptions.
How do listeners judge relative duration? There currently are three primary classes of proposed timing mechanisms: interval based (judgments of discrete events), beat based (judgments of beat synchrony), and oscillator based (judgments of relative phase or synchrony). In the present research, these mechanisms were examined in terms of predictions both about how an induction sequence of preceding intervals affects relative temporal duration comparison in a simple, two-interval task and about how a pause (e.g., an interstimulus interval) within the presented sequence affects relative temporal duration judgment. Results indicated that a relative temporal judgment was best when all intervals preceding the to-be-judged interval were equal in duration to the to-be-judged interval. Results also indicated that whereas short pauses significantly impair a relative temporal duration judgment, long pauses generally do not reduce the effectiveness of the induction sequence. The results are not entirely consistent with current conceptualizations of any of the proposed mechanisms but can be fully accommodated with simple modifications to the oscillator-based mechanism.
Attention↗
The sandwich effect reassessed: effects of streaming, distraction, and modality.
The degree of disruption from interleaving auditory irrelevant items within a sequence of to-be-remembered items--the sandwich effect--was examined in two experiments. Previous demonstrations of the effect have shown that the penalty for interleaving items is small and that changing irrelevant tokens is no more damaging than repeating ones (contrary to the classic changing state effect of irrelevant sound). The results of Experiment 1 suggest that these earlier results were due to the lack of tokens in the irrelevant sequence (in part, the result of using a span method). The results of Experiment 2 also show that the sandwich effect was marked and, further, that it comprised two elements, one due to the partitioning of relevant from irrelevant streams (which may be promoted by similarity of identity within sequence or pitch disparity between sequences), and the other a classic irrelevant sound effect (with effects of changing state). The results are discussed in terms of the role of perceptual organization within and between modalities in short-term memory.
Adult↗
Top-down processing and the suffix effect in young and older adults.
The suffix effect has generally been viewed as reflecting an automatic component involving the terminal item and a component susceptible to top-down influences involving the preterminal items (Balota & Engle, 1981). Recent findings have raised questions about this widely accepted view of the suffix effect by showing that the terminal component is not insensitive to top-down influences (Bloom & Watkins, 1999). In the present study, we attempted to uncover the source of these contradictory findings by assessing whether the terminal item's susceptibility to top-down influences might depend on subjects' first-hand experience of the extent to which recall is affected by the suffix. Furthermore, we examined whether age differences in the suffix effect could be attributed to age-related declines in inhibitory processes. Our findings supported both predictions.
Adolescent↗
Working memory capacity and strategy use.
In this study, we examine the role of strategy use in working memory (WM) tasks by providing short-term memory (STM) task strategy training to participants. In Experiment 1, the participants received four sessions of training to use a story-formation (i.e., chaining) strategy. There were substantial improvements from pretest to posttest (after training) in terms of both STM and WM task performance. Experiment 2 demonstrated that WM task improvement did not occur for control participants, who were given the same amount of practice but were not provided with strategy instructions. An assessment of participants' strategy use on the STM task before training indicated that more strategic participants displayed better WM task performance and better verbal skills. These results support our hypothesis that strategy use influences performance on WM tasks.
Adolescent↗
Word frequency and memory: effects on absolute versus relative order memory and on item memory versus order memory.
Word frequency can produce opposite effects on recognition and order memory: Low-frequency words produce greater recognition accuracy, whereas high-frequency words produce superior order memory. The present experiments further delineate the relationship between word frequency and order memory. Experiment 1 indicates that low-frequency words produce worse performance on a measure of absolute order memory but not on a test of relative order, which is consistent with the idea that different forms of information underlie different types of order judgments (Greene, Thapar, & Westerman, 1998). Experiment 2 contrasted high-, low-, and very low-frequency words on recognition memory and absolute order memory. In comparison with high-frequency words, low-frequency words enhanced recognition, whereas very low-frequency words did not. Both low- and very low-frequency words, however, produced worse memory for absolute order. Thus, the relationship between frequency and item memory is an inverted U-shaped function, whereas the relationship between frequency and absolute order memory is direct. This implies that the item-enhancing effects of lower word frequency may be dissociated from its order-disrupting effects.
Adult↗