Showing papers in "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition in 2001"

Memory interference during language processing.

Abstract: The authors studied the operation of working memory in language comprehension by examining the reading of complex sentences. Reading time and comprehension accuracy in self-paced reading by college students were studied as a function of type of embedded clause (object-extracted vs. subject-extracted) and the types of noun phrases (NPs) in the stimulus sentences, including relative clauses and clefts. The poorer language comprehension performance typically observed for object-extracted compared with subject-extracted forms was found to depend strongly on the mixture of types of NPs (descriptions, indexical pronouns, and names) in a sentence. Having two NPs of the same type led to a larger performance difference than having two NPs of a different type. The findings support a conception of working memory in which similarity-based interference plays an important role in sentence complexity effects.

Working memory and focal attention.

Abstract: Measures of retrieval speed indicated that only a small subset of representations in working memory falls within the focus of attention. An n-back task, which required tracking an item 1, 2, or 3 back in a sequentially presented list, was used to examine the representation and retrieval of recent events and how control processes can be used to maintain an item in focal attention while concurrently processing new information. A speed-accuracy trade-off procedure was used to derive measures of the availability and the speed with which recent events can be accessed. Results converge with other time course studies in demonstrating that attention can be concurrently allocated only to a small number of memory representations, perhaps just 1 item. Measures of retrieval speed further demonstrate that order information is retrieved by a slow search process when an item is not maintained within focal attention.

Source memory in older adults: an encoding or retrieval problem?

Abstract: Source memory has been found to be more affected by aging than item memory, possibly because of declining frontal function among older adults. In 4 experiments, the authors explored the role of the frontal lobes (FLs) in source memory, the extent to which they may be involved in the encoding and/or retrieval of source or context, and the conditions under which the source memory deficit in older people may be reduced or eliminated. Results indicated that only a subset of older adults show deficits in source memory, namely those with below average frontal function, and these deficits can be eliminated by requiring people at study to consider the relation between an item and its context. These results provide convincing evidence of the importance of frontal function during the encoding of source and suggest that older adults with reduced FL function fail to initiate the processes required to integrate contextual information with focal content during study.

The combined contributions of the cue-familiarity and accessibility heuristics to feelings of knowing.

Abstract: A model for the basis of feeling of knowing (FOK) is proposed, which combines 2 apparently competing accounts, cue familiarity (L. M. Reder, 1987), and accessibility (A. Koriat, 1993). Both cue familiarity and accessibility are assumed to contribute asynchronously to FOK, but whereas the effects of familiarity occur early, those of accessibility occur later and only when cue familiarity is sufficiently high to drive the interrogation of memory for potential answers. General information questions were used to orthogonally manipulate cue familiarity and accessibility. As expected, both familiarity and accessibility enhanced FOK judgments, but the effects of accessibility were found mostly when familiarity was high. This interactive pattern was replicated when FOK judgments were delayed but not when they were immediate. The results support the proposed cascaded model of FOK but also imply a differentiation between 2 variants of the accessibility heuristic.

The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: I. The heuristic basis of feelings of familiarity.

Abstract: B. W. A. Whittlesea and L. D. Williams (1998, 2000) proposed the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis to explain the source of feelings of familiarity. By that hypothesis, people chronically evaluate the coherence of their processing. When the quality of processing is perceived as being discrepant from that which could be expected, people engage in an attributional process; the feeling of familiarity occurs when perceived discrepancy is attributed to prior experience. In the present article, the authors provide convergent evidence for that hypothesis and show that it can also explain feelings of familiarity for nonlinguistic stimuli. They demonstrate that the perception of discrepancy is not automatic but instead depends critically on the attitude that people adopt toward their processing, given the task and context. The connection between the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis and the "revelation effect" is also explored (e.g., D. L. Westerman & R. L. Greene, 1996).

Prototypes in category learning: the effects of category size, category structure, and stimulus complexity.

Abstract: Although research in categorization has sometimes been motivated by prototype theory, recent studies have favored exemplar theory. However, some of these studies focused on small, poorly differentiated categories composed of simple, 4-dimensional stimuli. Some analyzed the aggregate data of entire groups. Some compared powerful multiplicative exemplar models to less powerful additive prototype models. Here, comparable prototype and exemplar models were fit to individual-participant data in 4 experiments that sampled category sets varying in size, level of category structure, and stimulus complexity (dimensionality). The prototype model always fit the observed data better than the exemplar model did. Prototype-based processes seemed especially relevant when participants learned categories that were larger or contained more complex stimuli.

Removing irrelevant information from working memory: a cognitive aging study with the modified Sternberg task.

Abstract: Two experiments with a modified Sternberg recognition task explored the ability of young and old adults to remove irrelevant information from working memory. The task involved 2 memory sets, 1 of which was later cued as irrelevant. The recognition probe was presented at a variable time after the cue. Two indicators of inhibition, the setsize effect of the irrelevant set and the reaction time cost of intrusion probes (i.e., negative probes present in the irrelevant list), were dissociated. Irrelevant setsize effects lasted less than 1 s after the cue and did not differ between old and young adults. Intrusion costs lasted up to 5 s and were disproportionally large for old adults. With the additional requirement to remember both lists until after the probe, young adults' intrusion costs in Experiment 2 were equivalent to those of old adults in Experiment 1, but the setsize effects of the irrelevant set was larger. The results are compatible with a dual-process model of recognition in combination with a working-memory model distinguishing the focus of attention from the activated portion of long-term memory.

Information processing and insight: a process model of performance on the nine-dot and related problems.

Abstract: The 9-dot problem is widely regarded as a difficult insight problem. The authors present a detailed information-processing model to explain its difficulty, based on maximization and progress-monitoring heuristics with lookahead. In Experiments 1 and 2, the model predicted performance for the 9-dot and related problems. Experiment 3 supported an extension of the model that accounts for insightful moves. Experiments 4 and 5 provided a critical test of model predictions versus those of previous accounts. On the basis of these findings, the authors claim that insight problem solving can be modeled within a means-ends analysis framework. Maximization and progress-monitoring heuristics are the source of problem difficulty, but also create the conditions necessary for insightful moves to be sought. Furthermore, they promote the discovery and retention of promising states that meet the progress-monitoring criterion and attenuate the problem space.

Conjoint recognition and phantom recollection.

Abstract: A new methodology for measuring illusory conscious experience of the "presentation" of unstudied material (phantom recollection) is evaluated that extracts measurements directly from recognition responses, rather than indirectly from introspective reports. Application of this methodology in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Experiments 1 and 2) and in a more conventional paradigm (Experiment 3) showed that 2 processes (phantom recollection and familiarity) contribute to false recognition of semantically related distractors. Phantom recollection was the larger contributor to false recognition of critical distractors in the DRM paradigm, but surprisingly, it was also the larger contributor to false recognition of other types of distractors. Variability in false recognition was tied to variability in phantom recollection. Experimental control of phantom recollection was achieved with manipulations that were motivated by fuzzy-trace theory's hypothesis that the phenomenon is gist-based.

Meaning and modality: influences of context, semantic memory organization, and perceptual predictability on picture processing.

Abstract: Using event-related potentials (ERPs), the authors investigated the influences of sentence context, semantic memory organization, and perceptual predictability on picture processing. Participants read pairs of highly or weakly constraining sentences that ended with (a) the expected item, (b) an unexpected item from the expected semantic category, or (c) an unexpected item from an unexpected category. Pictures were unfamiliar in Experiment 1 but preexposed in Experiment 2. ERPs to pictures reflected both contextual fit and memory organization, as do ERPs to words in the same contexts (K. D. Federmeier & M. Kutas, 1999). However, different response patterns were observed to pictures than to words. Some of these arose from perceptual predictability differences, whereas others seem to reflect true modality-based differences in semantic feature activation. Although words and pictures may share semantic memory, the authors' results show that semantic processing is not amodal.

The discrepancy-attribution hypothesis: II. Expectation, uncertainty, surprise, and feelings of familiarity.

Abstract: In the accompanying article (B. W. A. Whittlesea & L. D. Williams, 2001), surprising violation of an expectation was observed to cause an illusion of familiarity. The authors interpreted that evidence as support for the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis. This article extended the scope of that hypothesis, investigating the consequences of surprising validation of expectations. Subjects were shown recognition probes as completions of sentence stems. Their expectations were manipulated by presenting predictive, nonpredictive, and inconsistent stems. Predictive stems caused an illusion of familiarity, but only when the subjects also experienced uncertainty about the outcome. That is, as predicted by the discrepancy-attribution hypothesis, feelings of familiarity occurred only when processing of a recognition target caused surprise. The article provides a discussion of the ways in which a perception of discrepancy can come about, as well as the origin and nature of unconscious expectations.

Metacognition in motor learning.

Abstract: Research on judgments of verbal learning has demonstrated that participants' judgments are unreliable and often overconfident. The authors studied judgments of perceptual-motor learning. Participants learned 3 keystroke patterns on the number pad of a computer, each requiring that a different sequence of keys be struck in a different total movement time. Practice trials on each pattern were either blocked or randomly interleaved with trials on the other patterns, and each participant was asked, periodically, to predict his or her performance on a 24-hr test. Consistent with earlier findings, blocked practice enhanced acquisition but harmed retention. Participants, though, predicted better performance given blocked practice. These results augment research on judgments of verbal learning and suggest that humans, at their peril, interpret current ease of access to a perceptual-motor skill as a valid index of learning.

Modality effects in false recall and false recognition.

Abstract: R. E. Smith and R. R. Hunt (1998) reported a dramatic reduction in false remembering in a list-learning paradigm by switching from auditory to visual presentation at study. The current authors replicated these modality effects using written recall and visual recognition tests but obtained smaller effects than those in R. E. Smith and R. R. Hunt's study. In contrast, no modality effect occurred on auditory recognition tests. Manipulating study and test modality within-subjects (Experiment 2) and between-subjects (Experiment 3) yielded similar results. It was also found that subjects frequently judged critical nonstudied words as having been presented in the modality of their corresponding study lists. The authors concluded that subjects could retrieve distinctive information about a study list's presentation modality to reduce false remembering but only did so under certain conditions. The modality effect on false remembering is a function of both encoding and retrieval factors.

Errors committed with high confidence are hypercorrected.

Abstract: The relation between people's confidence in the accuracy of an erroneous response and their later performance was investigated. Most models of human memory suggest that the higher a person's confidence, the stronger the item (in the context of the eliciting cue) that is retrieved from memory. In recall, stronger associates to a cue interfere with competing associates more than do weaker associates. This state of affairs implies that errors endorsed with high, rather than low, confidence should be more difficult to correct by learning the correct response feedback. In contrast to the authors' expectations, highly confident errors were the most likely to be corrected in a subsequent retest. Participants nearly always endorsed the correct response in cases in which both the correct response and the original erroneous response were generated at retest, suggesting that people possess a refined metacognitive ability to know what is correct and incorrect.

Telling Stories: The Perils and Promise of Using Verbal Reports To Study Math Strategies

Abstract: The problem size effect in adult arithmetic performance is generally attributed to direct retrieval processes operating on a network representation in long-term memory. J. LeFevre and her colleagues (J. LeFevre, J. Bisanz, et al., 1996; J. LeFevre, G. S. Sadesky, & J. Bisanz, 1996) challenged this explanation using verbal report evidence that adults also use time consuming nonretrieval strategies to solve simple addition and multiplication. The authors replicated J. LeFevre and colleagues' methods, but added instructional biasing and silent control conditions to test these methods. Both reaction time and report results suggest that LeFevre and colleagues' conclusions about nonretrieval frequency may have been influenced by instructions that revealed the experimental hypothesis and affected participants' strategy reports. Obtaining evidence about adult strategy use in simple arithmetic will require understanding instructional demand and appropriate report methodology.

On the dual effects of repetition on false recognition.

Abstract: The effects of study-list repetition on false recognition of semantic associates were examined using aging (Experiment 1) and recognition time pressure (Experiment 2). Participants studied word lists, each of which was composed of high associates to a single, unstudied word (the critical lure). Under normal testing circumstances, young adult participants (ages 19-26) falsely endorsed fewer critical lures associated with lists that had been presented multiple times than lists presented only once. However, young participants tested under time pressure and older participants (ages 67-85) endorsed a greater number of critical items associated with lists presented thrice than with lists presented once. The results suggest dual bases for the recognition decision, one of which is based on the rapid spread of activation within domains of semantic similarity and the other of which functions to attribute that activation to likely sources and set appropriate decision criteria. The latter capacity is compromised both under conditions of time pressure and in the elderly.

Automatic and intentional activation of task sets.

Abstract: Four experiments examined automatic and intentional activation of task sets in a switching paradigm. Experiment 1 demonstrated incidental task sequence learning that was not accompanied by verbalizable task sequence knowledge. This learning did not affect task shift cost and may be attributed to automatic task-set activation. In Experiment 2, both shift cost and learning effect increased when the response-cue interval was short, indicating the influence of residual, persisting activation of the preceding task set. In Experiment 3, learning disappeared with a long cue-stimulus interval (CSI), which resulted in a strong preparation effect. This preparation, however, reduced reaction time level but was not specific to task shifts. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that a within-subject CSI variation also leads to reduced shift costs. Together, the data suggest an activational account of task preparation and may have relevant implications for inhibitory accounts.

The specific-word frequency effect: implications for the representation of homophones in speech production.

Abstract: In a series of experiments, the authors investigated whether naming latencies for homophones (e.g., /nlambdan/) are a function of specific-word frequency (i.e., the frequency of nun) or a function of cumulative-homophone frequency (i.e., the sum of the frequencies of nun and none). Specific-word but not cumulative-homophone frequency affected picture-naming latencies. This result was obtained in 2 languages (English and Chinese). An analogous finding was obtained in a translation task, where bilingual speakers produced the English names of visually presented Spanish words. Control experiments ruled out that these results are an artifact of orthographic or articulatory factors, or of visual recognition. The results argue against the hypothesis that homophones share a common word-form representation, and support instead a model in which homophones have fully independent representations.

Temporal contextual cuing of visual attention.

Abstract: Previous research has shown how spatial attention is guided to a target location, but little is understood about how attention is allocated to an event in time. The authors introduce a paradigm to manipulate the sequential structure of visual events independent of responses. They asked whether this temporal context could be implicitly learned and used to guide attention to a relative point in time or location, or both, in space. Experiments show that sequentially structured event durations, event identities, and spatiotemporal event sequences can guide attention to a point in time as well as to a target event's identity and location. Cuing was found to rely heavily on the element immediately preceding the target, although cuing from earlier items also was evident. Learning was implicit in all cases. These results show that the sequential structure of the visual world plays an important role in guiding visual attention to target events.

The emergence of coherence over the course of decision making.

Abstract: Previous research has indicated that decision making is accompanied by an increase in the coherence of assessments of the factors related to the decision alternatives. In the present study, the authors investigated whether this coherence shift is obtained before people commit to a decision, and whether it is obtained in the course of a number of other processing tasks. College students were presented with a complex legal case involving multiple conflicting arguments. Participants rated agreement with the individual arguments in isolation before seeing the case and after processing it under various initial sets, including playing the role of a judge assigned to decide the case. Coherence shifts were observed when participants were instructed to delay making the decision (Experiment 1), to memorize the case (Experiment 2), and to comprehend the case (Experiment 3). The findings support the hypothesis that a coherence-generating mechanism operates in a variety of processing tasks, including decision making.

On the nature of associative information in recognition memory

Abstract: In a typical associative-recognition task, participants must distinguish between intact word pairs (both words previously studied together) and rearranged word pairs (both words previously studied but as part of different pairs). The familiarity of the individual items on this task is uninformative because all of the items were seen before, so the only way to solve the task is to rely on associative information. Prior research suggests that associative information is recall-like in nature and may therefore be an all-or-none variable. The present research reports several experiments in which some pairs were strengthened during list presentation. The resulting hit rates and false alarm rates, and an analysis of the corresponding receiver operating characteristic plots, suggest that participants rely heavily on item information when making an associative-recognition decision (to no avail) and that associative information may be best thought of as a some-or-none variable.

Retrieval processes in recognition and cued recall.

Abstract: The present studies used response time (RT) and accuracy to explore the processes and relation of recognition and cued recall. The studies used free-response and signal-to-respond techniques and varied list length and presentation rate. In Experiment 1, the free-RT distributions for recognition had much lower mean and variance than those for cued recall. Similarly, signal-to-respond curves showed fast rates of accumulation of information in recognition and slow rates in recall. (Quantitative models of the results are presented in the companion article by D. E. Diller, P. A. Nobel, and R. M. Shiffrin, 2001). To rule out the possibility that the slower responses in cued recall were due to a fast retrieval process followed by a slow process of cleaning up the retrieved trace for output, additional signal-to-respond tasks provided the relevant alternatives at test. Yet, these conditions showed slow growth rates, similar to those seen in recall. The results support the hypothesis that retrieval processes differ for single-item recognition and cued recall, with retrieval in cued recall (and associative recognition) due to a sequential search.

Homophone effects in lexical decision.

Abstract: The role of phonology in word recognition was investigated in 6 lexical-decision experiments involving homophones (e.g., MAID-MADE). The authors' goal was to determine whether homophone effects arise in the lexical-decision task and, if so, in what situations they arise, with a specific focus on the question of whether the presence of pseudohomophone foils (e.g., BRANE) causes homophone effects to be eliminated because of strategic deemphasis of phonological processing. All 6 experiments showed significant homophone effects, which were not eliminated by the presence of pseudohomophone foils. The authors propose that homophone effects in lexical decision are due to the nature of feedback from phonology to orthography.

Are emotionally charged lures immune to false memory

Abstract: Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott task and E. Tulving's (1985) remember-know judgments for recognition memory, the authors explored whether emotional words can show the false memory effect. Participants studied lists containing nonemotional, orthographic associates (e.g., cape, tape, ripe; part, perk, dark) of either emotional (e.g., rape) or nonemotional (e.g., park) critical lures. This setup produced significant false "remembering" of emotional lures, even though initially no emotional words appeared at study. When 3 emotional nonlure words appeared at study, emotional-lure false recognition more than doubled. However, when these 3 study words also appeared on the recognition test, false memory for the emotional lures was reduced. Across experiments, participants misremembered nonemotional lures more often than they did emotional lures, but they were more likely to rate emotional lures as "remembered," once they had been recognized as "old." The authors discuss findings in light of J. J. Freyd and D. H. Gleave's (1996) criticisms of this task.

Learning new word meanings from context: A study of eye movements.

Abstract: This study examined how readers establish the meaning of a new word from the sentence context during silent reading. Readers' eye movements were monitored while they read pairs of sentences containing a target word, context, and a word related to the target word. The target word varied in familiarity (high, low, or novel). The context varied in informativeness about the meaning of the target word (informative or neutral). The amount of time readers spent on the context depended on both the familiarity of the target word and the informativeness of the context. Readers spent additional time on the related word only when the context was neutral and the target was novel. These results indicate that readers were able to determine which areas of text were relevant and used the information to infer a meaning for the novel word.

Relation and lexical priming during the interpretation of noun-noun combinations.

Abstract: This research indicates that recent exposure to a similar combination (e.g., oil moisturizer or surgery treatment) influences the processing of a subsequent combination (e.g., oil treatment) by increasing the availability of the lexical entries for the modifier and head noun, and by altering the availability of the relation used to link the two nouns. The amount of lexical and relational priming obtained depends on whether the modifier or head noun is in common between the prime and target. The head noun prime yields more lexical priming than does the modifier prime and this finding suggests that the head noun is more strongly activated than the modifier. In contrast, relation priming is obtained only from the modifier prime and this finding is consistent with the CARIN theory (C. L. Gagne & E. J. Shoben, 1997) but inconsistent with schema-based theories of conceptual combination (e.g., G. L. Murphy, 1988; E. J. Wisniewski, 1996).

Syllables and morphemes: contrasting frequency effects in Spanish.

Abstract: Three types of sublexical units were studied in Spanish visual word recognition: the syllable, the basic orthographic syllabic structure (BOSS), and the root morpheme. In Experiment 1, using a lexical-decision task, a typical inhibitory effect of the first-syllable frequency was found (while keeping constant the BOSS frequency) as well as the word-frequency effect. Experiment 2 examined the role of both the BOSS frequency and the word frequency, also in a lexical-decision task. Syllable frequency was controlled. Both the BOSS frequency and the word frequency showed facilitatory effects. However, in Experiments 3A and 3B, a facilitatory effect of the root frequency (when controlling for BOSS frequency) and a null effect of BOSS frequency (when controlling for root frequency) were found, suggesting that the BOSS effect is in fact reflecting a morpheme effect. A review of the current models shows that it is difficult to integrate syllables and morphemes in a unique model.

Comparing recollective experience in true and false autobiographical memories.

Abstract: This study investigated whether true autobiographical memories are qualitatively distinct from false autobiographical memories using a variation of the interview method originally reported by E. F. Loftus and J. Pickrell (1995). Participants recalled events provided by parents on 3 separate occasions and were asked to imagine true and false unremembered events. True memories were rated by both participants and observers as more rich in recollective experience and were rated by participants as more important, more emotionally intense, as having clearer imagery, and as less typical than false memories. Rehearsal frequency was used as a covariate, eliminating these effects. Imagery in true memories was most often viewed from the field perspective, whereas imagery in false memories was most often viewed from the observer perspective. More information was communicated in true memories, and true memories contained more information concerning the consequences of described events. Results suggest repeated remembering can make false memories more rich in recollective experience and more like true memories. Differences between true and false memories suggest some potentially distinct characteristics of false memories and provide insight into the process of false memory creation.

Recollections of things schematic: Room schemas revisited.

Abstract: In 2 experiments, the authors examined the effects of schemas on the subjective experience of remembering. Participants entered a room that was set up to look like a graduate student's office under intentional or incidental learning conditions. They later took a recognition memory test that included making remember-know judgments. In Experiment 1, they were tested during the same session; in Experiment 2 they were tested either during the same session or after a 48-hr delay. Consistent with the authors' predictions, memory for atypical objects was especially likely to be experienced in the remember sense. In addition, false remember judgments rose dramatically after the 48-hr delay, especially for participants in the incidental learning condition. Results are discussed in terms of schema theory, fuzzy-trace theory, and the distinctiveness heuristic.

Learning of event sequences is based on response-effect learning: further evidence from a serial reaction task.

Abstract: Four experiments provide converging evidence that serial learning in a serial reaction task is based on response-effect learning, mediated by the learning of the relations between a response and the stimulus that follows it. In Experiment 1, the authors varied the stimulus sequence and the response-stimulus relations while holding the response sequence constant. Learning effects depended on the complexity of the response-stimulus relations but not on the stimulus-stimulus relations. In Experiment 2, transfer of serial learning from 1 stimulus sequence to another was only found when both sequences had identical response-stimulus relations. In Experiment 3, a variation of the stimulus sequence alone had no effect on serial learning, whereas in Experiment 4 learning effects increased when the response-stimulus relations but not the stimulus-stimulus relations were simplified. These findings suggest that serial learning is based on mechanisms of voluntary action control.