The fan effect: A tale of two theories.

This article addresses J. R. Anderson and L. M. Reder's (see record 1999-05245-004) account of the differential fan effect reported by G. A. Radvansky, D. H. Spieler, and R. T. Zacks (see record 1993-16287-001). The differential fan effect is the finding of greater interference with an increased number of associations under some conditions, but not others, in a within-subjects mixed-list recognition test. Anderson and Reder concluded that the differential fan effects can be adequately explained by assuming differences in the weights given to concepts in long-term memory. When a broader range of data is considered, this account is less well supported. Instead, it is better to assume that the organization of information into referential representations, such as situation models, has a meaningful influence on long-term memory retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mental organization of maps.

Previous studies deconfounding spatial and temporal proximity during map learning have found a temporal influence on mental map organization. The authors explored whether this observed priming effect reflected the manner in which a map was learned by having people either name objects or point to them during learning. Naming objects resulted in temporal organization but pointing to objects resulted in spatial organization, suggesting that mental map organization is sensitive to emphasizing different types of map information during learning. The authors also explored whether the temporal organization observed in the naming group was influenced by the ease of using spatial information during learning, such as when the expectancy to use spatial information was made explicit or when a consistent temporal order was absent. When naming map objects, evidence for a spatial organization was weak, whereas a temporal organization was observed when a consistent temporal order was present. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Brief report: Aging and functional spatial relations in comprehension and memory.

Previous research has suggested that, relative to younger adults, older adults devote a greater proportion of their discourse processing to the situation model level. The current experiment assessed whether this is due, in part, to a preserved ability to focus on functionally appropriate information. The focus here was on spatial relations. Both reading time and recognition data showed superior performance for functional over nonfunctional information, and this functional effect was similar in younger and older adults. This is consistent with the idea that older adults' ability to process information at the situation model level is relatively well preserved. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reasoning, Integration, Inference Alteration, and Text Comprehension.

This paper reports how the study of formal logical reasoning provides insight into more everyday types of reasoning, such as that involved in language comprehension. Both of these types of cognition are thought to involve the use of mental models, and so it is reasonable to think that the cognitive operations needed for formal logical reasoning would be involved in everyday reasoning as well. We focused on three aspects of formal reasoning: (a) the integration of information into a common mental model, (b) the drawing of inferences, and (c) the coordination of alternative possibilities. We were able to show that the integration and inference components were related to narrative comprehension processes, but the coordination of alternative models was not. Thus, there is evidence for some overlap in the mental processes used in formal and everyday reasoning. This further justifies the study of formal logical reasoning as a window into certain types of everyday reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situation models in language comprehension and memory

This article reviews research on the use of situation models in language comprehension and memory retrieval over the past 15 years. Situation models are integrated mental representations of a described state of affairs. Significant progress has been made in the scientific understanding of how situation models are involved in language comprehension and memory retrieval. Much of this research focuses on establishing the existence of situation models, often by using tasks that assess one dimension of a situation model. However, the authors argue that the time has now come for researchers to begin to take the multidimensionality of situation models seriously. The authors offer a theoretical framework and some methodological observations that may help researchers to tackle this issue.     

Coping With Stereotype Threat: Denial as an Impression Management Strategy.

Four experiments tested the hypothesis that people who are concerned with impression management cope with stereotype threat through denial. Consistent with this hypothesis, temporary employees threatened by a stereotype of incompetence (Study 1) and hostel-dwelling older adults (Study 2) were more likely to deny incompetence if they were high in impression management. African Americans (Study 3) showed a similar pattern of denying cognitive incompetence, which emerged primarily when they were interviewed by a White experimenter and had attended a predominantly Black high school. In Study 4, White students who expected to take an IQ test and were threatened by a stereotype of being less intelligent than Asians were more likely to deny that intelligence is important if they were high in impression management. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synesthesia and memory: Color congruency, von Restorff, and false memory effects.

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that, although their memory for word lists was superior overall, synesthetes did not exhibit typical color- or semantic-defined von Restorff isolation effects (von Restorff, 1933) compared with control participants. Moreover, our synesthetes exhibited a reduced Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory effect (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Taken as a whole, these findings are consistent with the idea that color-grapheme synesthesia can lead people to place a greater emphasis on item-specific processing and surface form characteristics of words in a list (e.g., the letters that make them up) relative to relational processing and more meaning-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading times and the detection of event shift processing.

When people read narratives, they often need to update their situation models as the described events change. Previous research has shown little to no increases in reading times for spatial shifts but consistent increases for temporal shifts. On this basis, researchers have suggested that spatial updating does not regularly occur, whereas temporal updating does. The current study looked more deeply into this reading time pattern for spatial updating. If the prior interpretation is correct, then the absence of a reading time increase reflects a failure to update the situation model. Two experiments evaluated this claim by assessing whether other indicators of updating, namely memory probes, converge on a similar interpretation as that derived from the reading time data. Our results showed that, in contrast to previous accounts, although there was no change in the pattern of reading times, spatial updating was occurring and was extensive. As a comparison, we also looked at temporal updating. Unlike spatial updating, the temporal shifts had an influence on reading time but did not have as extensive an influence on memory probe performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Situation models and aging.

Younger and older adults were tested for their ability to process and retrieve information from texts. The authors focused on the construction and retrieval of situation models relative to other types of text representations. The results showed that during memory retrieval, younger adults showed superior memory for surface form and textbase knowledge (what the text was), whereas older adults had equivalent or superior memory for situation model information (what the text was about). The results also showed that during reading, older and younger adults were similar in their sensitivity to various aspects of the texts. Overall, these findings suggest that although there are age-related declines in the processing and memory for text-based information, for higher level representations, these abilities appear to be preserved. Several possibilities for why this is the case are discussed, including an in-depth consideration of one possibility that involves W. Kintsch's (1988) construction-integration model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory retrieval and suppression: The inhibition of situation models.

When people retrieve newly learned facts on a recognition test, they are often increasingly slowed by the number of other newly learned facts that have a concept in common with the probed fact. This is called the fan effect. Assuming that people are using situation models of the learned information, the author considers whether the inhibition of competing representations is one of the processes involved in the fan effect. Evidence was found for negative priming of related but irrelevant situation models, thus supporting the idea that the inhibition of highly related memory traces is used in long-term memory retrieval. As such, this is a form of retrieval-based inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)