Journal of Experimental Psychology Learning Memory and Cognition

Mulligan, Neil W.; Spataro, Pietro; Rossi-Arnaud, Clelia; Wall, Avery R.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0000990pmid: 33464110

Stimuli presented with targets during a monitoring task are better remembered than stimuli presented with distractors, a result referred to as the attentional boost effect (ABE). The ABE is consistently found for item memory, but conflicting results have been reported for different assessments of associative memory, with studies of source memory (whether the study item had been presented with a target or distractor) demonstrating an ABE and studies of context memory (memory for the perceptual details or list membership of the study item) not showing the effect. This could be due to methodological differences across studies (study materials: pictures vs. words; number of study presentations: multiple vs. single), issues related to the measurement of source memory (traditional measures vs. multinomial modeling), or differences in the informational bases of source and context memory tests. Three experiments consistently found an ABE in source memory and ruled out differences based on study materials, number of study presentations, and technique for measuring source memory. The discrepancies in the prior research appear to hinge on the differences in informational bases of source and context memory tests. In particular, source memory relies on associations between the study item and information about the monitoring task and is open to inferential processes (participants exhibit a significant bias to categorize false alarms as coming from the distractor condition).

Hood, Audrey V. B.; Charbonneau, Brooke; Hutchison, Keith A.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001185pmid: 36201799

Previous research has shown that Stroop effects interact with working memory capacity (WMC) more strongly with lists of mostly congruent items. Although the predominant explanation for this relationship is goal maintenance, some research has challenged whether listwide effects truly reflect goal-maintenance abilities. The current study improved upon previous methodology by using both within-subject and between-subjects manipulations of goal reminder, increasing both the number of trials between reminders and the total length of the task to allow for greater goal neglect, and more precisely maintaining congruency proportion within each block. Participants completed the Automated Operation Span followed by a Stroop task in which they stopped every 24 trials to vocalize either a goal-reminder statement (“name the color not the word”) or a nongoal statement (“This is part of my intro to psychology class”). In the within-subject manipulation (Experiment 1), there was no consistent benefit for goal reminders over nongoal statements. However, in the between-subjects manipulation (Experiment 2), results demonstrated a strong benefit of goal reminders, such that goal reminders eliminated the relation between WMC and Stroop effects, whereas that relation was robust following nongoal statements. Moreover, the benefit of receiving goal reminders lasted for at least 24 trials and accumulated across the course of the experiment. These data provide strong evidence that goal reminders eliminate the relationship between WMC and Stroop errors and suggest goal reminders can be a useful intervention for those suffering from lapses in controlled attention.

Oberauer, Klaus

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001199pmid: 36326652

Longer free time between presentation of verbal list items often leads to better immediate serial recall. The present series of three experiments demonstrates that this beneficial effect of time is more general than has been known: It is found for verbal items presented visually and auditorily (Experiments 1 and 2), and also when people engage in concurrent articulation during presentation, thereby preventing rehearsal (Experiment 3). The effect of time is to improve memory most strongly for the later part of the list, contrary to what is predicted from the assumption that time between items is used to bolster memory traces of already encoded items through rehearsal, refreshing, or elaboration. The data are compatible with a ballistic form of short-term consolidation, and with the assumption that encoding an item into working memory partially depletes a limited resource, which is replenished over time.

Wixted, John T.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001196pmid: 36355779

Slamecka and McElree (1983) and Rivera-Lares et al. (2022), like others before them, factorially manipulated the number of learning trials and the retention interval. The results revealed two unsurprising main effects: (a) the more study trials, the higher the initial degree of learning, and (b) the longer the retention interval, the more items were forgotten. However, across many experiments, the interaction was not significant, a finding that is often interpreted to mean that the degree of learning is independent of the absolute rate of forgetting (i.e., the absolute number of items forgotten per unit time). Yet there is considerable tension between that interpretation and the fact that forgetting has long been characterized by a power law, according to which the absolute rate of forgetting is not a particularly meaningful measure. When the power function is fit to the same data, the results show that a higher degree of learning results in a lower relative (i.e., proportional) rate of forgetting. This raises an interesting question: which of the two definitions of “forgetting rate” (absolute vs. relative) is theoretically relevant? Here, I make the case that it is the relative rate of forgetting. Theoretically, the explanation of why a higher degree of learning is associated with a lower relative rate of forgetting may be related to why, as observed by Jost (1897) long ago, the passage of time itself is associated with a lower relative rate of forgetting.

Rickard, Timothy C.; Pan, Steven C.; Gupta, Mohan W.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001090pmid: 35084925

We explored the possibility of publication bias in the sleep and explicit motor sequence learning literature by applying precision effect test (PET) and precision effect test with standard errors (PEESE) weighted regression analyses to the 88 effect sizes from a recent comprehensive literature review (Pan & Rickard, 2015). Basic PET analysis indicated pronounced publication bias; that is, the effect sizes were strongly predicted by their standard error. When variables that have previously been shown to both moderate the sleep gain effect and substantially reduce unaccounted for effect size heterogeneity were included in that analysis, evidence for publication bias remained strong. The estimated postsleep gain was negative, suggesting forgetting rather than facilitation, and it was statistically indistinguishable from the estimated postwake gain. In a qualitative review of a smaller group of more recent studies we observed that (a) small sample sizes—a major factor behind the publication bias—are still the norm, (b) use of demonstrably flawed experimental design and analysis remains prevalent, and (c) when authors conclude in favor of sleep-dependent consolidation, they frequently do not cite the articles in which those methodological flaws have been demonstrated. We conclude that there is substantial publication bias, that there is no consolidation-based, absolute performance gain following sleep, and that strong conclusions regarding the hypothesis of less forgetting after sleep than after wakefulness should await further research. Recommendations are made for reducing publication bias in future work.

Cyr, Véronique; Poirier, Marie; Yearsley, James M.; Guitard, Dominic; Harrigan, Isabelle; Saint-Aubin, Jean

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001093pmid: 34726441

The production effect is a well-established finding: If some words within a list are read aloud, that is, produced, they are better remembered than their silently read neighbors. The effect has been extensively studied with long-term memory tasks. Recently, using immediate serial recall and short-term order reconstruction, Saint-Aubin et al. (2021) reported informative interactions between the production effect and serial positions. Here, we asked whether these interactions would also be observed with the long-term memory tasks used in the field. In Experiment 1, pure and mixed lists of eight words were presented in both order reconstruction and free recall tasks, with a 30-s filled retention interval. In Experiment 2, the list length was extended to 24 words; in Experiment 3, 10-word lists were used with a 2-min retention interval. Results from all experiments aligned well with those observed in short-term memory. With mixed lists, where produced and silently read words alternated, produced items were better recalled, leading to sawtooth serial position curves. With pure lists, produced items were better recalled when studied in the last serial positions, but they were less well recalled for the primacy positions. Results were readily accounted for by the revised feature model, originally developed to explain short-term memory performance. The findings and model suggest that produced items are encoded with more item-specific, modality-related features and that this generates a relative distinctiveness advantage in short- and long-term memory. However, the richer encoding comes at a cost: It appears to disrupt rehearsal.

Mulligan, Neil W.; Susser, Jonathan A.; Horschler, Daniel J.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001136pmid: 35549444

Actions can enhance memory, exemplified by the enactment effect. In a typical experiment, participants hear a series of simple action phrases (e.g., bounce the ball), which they either carry out (subject-performed tasks, or SPTs), watch the experimenter carry out (experimenter-performed tasks, EPTs), or simply listen to (verbal tasks, VTs). Later memory is usually better for SPTs than for either EPTs or VTs. Although research on action memory is extensive, research on action and metamemory is sparse and produces contradictory results. Furthermore, the metamemory literature has largely ignored the effects of action. Some theoretical perspectives argue that actions produce a particularly effective and automatic form of encoding, and that such nonstrategic encoding should produce inaccurate memory predictions. Other theories argue that action memory relies on executive control processes, suggesting that memory predictions for actions should be just as good (or better) than for control conditions. In Experiments 1a and 1b, participants predicted (with judgements-of-learning, JOLs) whether they would later remember SPTs and EPTs. Resolution (the correlation between JOLs and later recall) was greater for EPTs than SPTs, and not significantly different than zero in the latter case. Experiment 3 produced the same results with SPTs and VTs: resolution was greater for VTs and not significant for SPTs. The results are consistent with nonstrategic accounts of the enactment effect, and also highlight the importance of examining metamemory for actions given that actions can alter metamemory relative to verbal (VT) and other nonaction (EPT) conditions. In addition, the presence of JOLs attenuates the enactment effect, a reactive effect of JOLs similar to that found with other encoding effects.

Neath, Ian; Hockley, William E.; Ensor, Tyler M.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0000901pmid: 34672663

The mirror effect is the finding that in recognition tests, a manipulation that increases the hit rate also decreases the false alarm rate. For example, low frequency words have a higher hit rate and a lower false alarm rate than high frequency words. Because the mirror effect is held to be a regularity of memory, it has had a pronounced influence on theories of recognition. We took advantage of the recent increase in the number of linguistic databases to create sets of stimuli that differed on one dimension (contextual diversity, frequency, or concreteness) but were more fully equated on other dimensions known to affect memory. Experiment 1 (contextual diversity), Experiment 3 (frequency), and Experiment 5 (concreteness) found no evidence of a mirror effect. We also conducted parallel experiments which used previously published stimuli that could not avail of the new databases and which therefore contained confounds. Experiment 2 (contextual diversity), Experiment 4 (frequency), and Experiment 6 (concreteness) all resulted in mirror effects. If this pattern of results is replicable, it has broad implications for theories of recognition, which typically view the mirror effect as a benchmark finding. Unfortunately, few articles on the mirror effect include the stimuli, rendering the past literature of little use in testing this hypothesis. We encourage researchers to create and assess other pools of highly controlled stimuli to establish whether the stimulus-based mirror effect obtains when confounds are eliminated or whether it is due to the presence of these confounds.

Brainerd, C. J.; Bialer, D. M.; Chang, M.; Upadhyay, P.

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001101pmid: 34843341

In recognition memory, anything that is objectively new is necessarily not-old, and anything that is objectively old is necessarily not-new. Therefore, judging whether a test item is new is logically equivalent to judging whether it is old, and conversely. Nevertheless, a series of 10 experiments showed that old? and new? judgments did not produce equivalent recognition accuracy. In Experiments 1–4, wherein subjects made old? or new? judgments about test items, new? judgments yielded more accurate performance for old items than old? judgments did, and old? judgments yielded more accurate performance for new items than new? judgments did. This same violation of logical equivalence was observed in Experiments 5–10, wherein subjects made similar? judgments as well as old? and new? ones. In short, old? and new? judgments displayed consistent Judgment × Item crossovers, rather than equivalence. Response latencies were used to test the hypothesis that Judgment × Item crossovers were due to certain judgment-item combinations provoking more deliberate, thorough retrieval than other combinations. There was no support for that hypothesis, but the data were consistent with an earlier theory, which posits that latency depends on the extent to which judgments or items slant retrieval toward accessing verbatim traces.

Williams, Glenn P.; Panayotov, Nikolay; Kempe, Vera

doi: 10.1037/xlm0001094pmid: 34898231

Many bidialectal children grow up speaking a variety (e.g., a regional dialect) that differs from the variety in which they subsequently acquire literacy. Previous computational simulations and artificial literacy learning experiments with adults have demonstrated lower accuracy in reading contrastive words for which dialect variants exist compared with noncontrastive words without dialect variants. At the same time, exposure to multiple varieties did not affect learners’ ability to phonologically decode untrained words; in fact, longer literacy training resulted in a benefit from dialect exposure as competing variants in the input may have increased reliance on grapheme-phoneme conversion. However, these previous experiments interleaved word learning and reading/spelling training, yet children typically acquire substantial oral language knowledge prior to literacy training. Here we used artificial literacy learning with adults to examine whether the previous findings replicate in an ecologically more valid procedure where word learning precedes literacy training. We also manipulated training conditions to explore interventions thought to be beneficial for literacy acquisition, such as providing explicit social cues for variety use and literacy training in both varieties. Our findings replicated the reduced accuracy for reading contrastive words in those learners who had successfully acquired the dialect variants prior to literacy training. This effect was exacerbated when literacy training also included dialect variation. Crucially, although no benefits from the interventions were found, dialect exposure did not affect reading and spelling of untrained words suggesting that phonological decoding skills can remain unaffected by the existence of multiple word form variants in a learner’s lexicon.