Conscious and unconscious lexical retrieval blocking in younger and older adults.

The effects of orthographically overlapping prime words in a word fragment completion task (modified from S. M. Smith & D. R. Tindell, 1997) were studied in younger and older adults. Participants studied words and then completed word fragments corresponding to those words. Fragments were preceded by a blocking, unrelated, or neutral prime. In Experiment 1, all participants were slower and less likely to complete the word fragments correctly in the blocking prime condition. Older adults also were more likely to use the blocking prime to incorrectly complete the word fragment compared with younger adults, even when warned against doing so (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 used a masked priming paradigm in younger adults to examine whether conscious processing of the prime word was necessary to produce blocking effects. Reliable blocking effects were obtained, including an intrusion rate similar to that observed in older adults in the first two experiments. These results suggest that certain aspects of word-finding failures in normal aging may be related to the reduced ability to control the activation of a lexical competitor when attempting to retrieve a target word. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Bodner et al. (2000).

Reports an error in the original article by G. E. Bodner et al, ( Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2000 [Mar], Vol. 26[2], 267–293). The parameter estimates and goodness-of-fit (G2) statistics for the fits of the generate-recognize and direct-retrieval models to the data from Exps 1, 2, and 4 were inaccurate because of errors in the frequency data used to perform the model fits. The pertinent portion of Table 7 is provided and includes the correct parameter estimates and G2 values for these experiments. Information updates for page 283 (the second full paragraph of the right-hand column) and the Discussion section on pages 285–286 (i.e., the discussion of multinomial modeling) are also provided. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 2000-07237-001). Application of the process-dissociation procedure has shown that conceptual encoding episodes do not lead to automatic influences of memory on purportedly data-driven indirect tests of memory. Using 2 variants of the process-dissociation procedure with the word-stem completion task, the procedure is shown to underestimate automatic influences of memory when prior encoding includes a conceptual component. The underestimation is attributed to an awareness of… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parallel memory retrieval in dual-task situations: II. Episodic memory.

Three experiments asked whether subjects could retrieve information from a 2nd stimulus while they retrieved information from a 1st stimulus. Ss performed recognition judgments on each of 2 words that followed each other by 0, 250, and 1,000 msec (Experiment 1) or 0 and 300 msec (Experiments 2 and 3). In each experiment, reaction time to both stimuli was faster when the 2 stimuli were both targets (on the study list) or both lures (not on the study list) than when 1 was a target and the other was a lure. Each experiment found priming from the 2nd stimulus to the lst when both stimuli were targets. Reaction time to the 1st stimulus was faster when the 2 targets came from the same memory structure at study (columns in Experiment l; pairs in Experiment 2; sentences in Experiment 3) than when they came from different structures. This priming is inconsistent with discrete serial retrieval and consistent with parallel retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional disregulation: A benefit for implicit memory.

The authors investigated the effect of age and time of testing on the ability to control attention and addressed the possibility that older adults' susceptibility to distraction may sometimes facilitate performance on a later cognitive task. Using a modification of a G. Rees, C. Russell, C. D. Frith, and J. Driver (1999) procedure, the authors asked the participants to make same or different judgments on line drawings superimposed with task-irrelevant letter strings. Memory for the distractors was subsequently tested with an implicit memory task. Both older and young adults demonstrated greater memory for distractors at nonoptimal times of day than at optimal times of day; however, older adults showed considerably better memory for the distractors than did young adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selecting a response in task switching: Testing a model of compound cue retrieval.

How can a task-appropriate response be selected for an ambiguous target stimulus in task-switching situations? One answer is to use compound cue retrieval, whereby stimuli serve as joint retrieval cues to select a response from long-term memory. In the present study, the authors tested how well a model of compound cue retrieval could account for a complex pattern of congruency effects arising from a procedure in which a cue, prime, and target were presented on each trial. A comparison of alternative models of prime-based effects revealed that the best model was one in which all stimuli participated directly in the process of retrieving a response, validating previous modeling efforts. Relations to current theorizing about response congruency effects and models of response selection in task switching are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Control of cost in prospective memory: Evidence for spontaneous retrieval processes.

To examine the processes that support prospective remembering, previous research has often examined whether the presence of a prospective memory task slows overall responding on an ongoing task. Although slowed task performance suggests that monitoring is present, this method does not clearly establish whether monitoring is functionally related to prospective memory performance. According to the multiprocess theory (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000), monitoring should be necessary to prospective memory performance with nonfocal cues but not with focal cues. To test this hypothesis, we varied monitoring by presenting items that were related (or unrelated) to the prospective memory task proximal to target events. Notably, whereas monitoring proximal to target events led to a large increase in nonfocal prospective memory performance, focal prospective remembering was high in the absence of monitoring, and monitoring in this condition provided no additional benefits. These results suggest that when monitoring is absent, spontaneous retrieval processes can support focal prospective remembering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dynamics of the attentional control of word retrieval: Analyses of response time distributions.

Since W. Wundt (1904) and H. J. Watt (1906), researchers have found no agreement on how goals direct word retrieval. A prevailing associative account (E. K. Miller & J. D. Cohen, 2001) holds that goals bias association strength, which determines retrieval latency and whether irrelevant words interfere. A symbolic account (A. Roelofs, 2003) holds that goals enable retrieval rules and predicts no strict dependence of interference on latency. Here, 3 chronometric experiments in which the role of relative retrieval latency was investigated through distributional analyses, following Watt, are reported. Participants verbally categorized picture-word pairs that were semantically related or unrelated, or they categorized single pictures or words. The pairs yielded semantic latency effects in both word and picture categorizing, although single words were categorized slower than single pictures. Semantic effects occurred in word categorizing even when postexposure of the pictures compensated for the difference in categorizing latency. Vincentile and ex-Gaussian analyses revealed that the semantic effects occurred throughout the latency distributions, excluding goal neglect as the cause of the effects. The results were interpreted as most consistent with the symbolic account, which was corroborated by computer simulations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term aftereffects of response inhibition: Memory retrieval, task goals, and cognitive control.

Cognitive control theories attribute control to executive processes that adjust and control behavior online. Theories of automaticity attribute control to memory retrieval. In the present study, online adjustments and memory retrieval were examined, and their roles in controlling performance in the stop-signal paradigm were elucidated. There was evidence of short-term response time adjustments after unsuccessful stopping. In addition, it was found that memory retrieval can slow responses for 1-20 trials after successful inhibition, which suggests the automatic retrieval of task goals. On the basis of these findings, the authors concluded that cognitive control can rely on both memory retrieval and executive processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning.

Taking tests enhances learning. But what happens when one cannot answer a test question—does an unsuccessful retrieval attempt impede future learning or enhance it? The authors examined this question using materials that ensured that retrieval attempts would be unsuccessful. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants were asked fictional general-knowledge questions (e.g., “What peace treaty ended the Calumet War?”). In Experiments 3–6, participants were shown a cue word (e.g., whale) and were asked to guess a weak associate (e.g., mammal); the rare trials on which participants guessed the correct response were excluded from the analyses. In the test condition, participants attempted to answer the question before being shown the answer; in the read-only condition, the question and answer were presented together. Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhanced learning with both types of materials. These results demonstrate that retrieval attempts enhance future learning; they also suggest that taking challenging tests—instead of avoiding errors—may be one key to effective learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"What is learned during automatization? The role of attention in constructing an instance": Correction to Logan and Etherton.

Reports an error in "What is learned during automatization? The role of attention in constructing an instance" by Gordon D. Logan and Joseph L. Etherton (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1994[Sep], Vol 20[5], 1022-1050). In the aforementioned article, the Appendix on page 1050 was incomplete. The complete Appendix is presented in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1995-04305-001.) Seven experiments with 372 Ss were conducted to examine the role of attention in automatization. Ss searched 2-word displays for members of a target category in divided-attention, focused-attention, and dual-task conditions. The main issue was whether attention conditions would affect what Ss learned about co-occurrences of the words in the displays. The attention hypothesis, derived from the instance theory of automaticity, predicts learning of co-occurrences in divided-attention and dual-task conditions in which Ss attend to both words but not in focused-attention conditions in which Ss only attend to 1 word. The data supported the attention hypothesis and therefore the instance theory. [A correction concerning this article appears in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 1994(Nov), Vol 20(6), 1390. The Appendix was incomplete and the complete Appendix is presented.] (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of motivations on the availability and retrieval of memory traces.

A review which analyzes a vast array of studies relating motivation and memory is presented. Investigations in which the motivational manipulation occurred during trace formation are distinguished from studies in which the manipulation occurred during trace storage or trace retrieval. Includes a series of investigations by the author which varied the incentive for retaining stimuli. The general conclusion is that many studies in the area are methodologically inadequate, and have yielded conflicting results. However, there are studies which provide strong evidence that memory can be influenced by nonassociative factors. (3 p. ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the automatic evaluation of end-states.

The author's research examined automatically activated attitudes toward desired end-states. Across 4 studies, participants' automatic attitudes toward goals (i.e., thinness, egalitarianism) significantly predicted their goal pursuit, including behaviors, intentions, and judgments. Such attitudes predicted behavior and judgments that are difficult to monitor and control (i.e., restrained eating, subtle prejudice), but not judgments that are easy to monitor and control (i.e., blatant prejudice). Automatic attitudes toward goals also possessed unique predictive validity compared with explicit measures of motivation and with automatic attitudes toward more physical, "graspable" objects. The findings are discussed with regard to the predictive validity of automatic attitudes, the use of automatic attitudes toward goals as an implicit measure of motivation, and the role of automatic evaluative processes in goal-pursuit and self-regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emotion enhanced retention of cognitive skill learning.

Ample evidence suggests that emotional arousal enhances declarative/episodic memory. By contrast, there is little evidence that emotional enhancement of memory (EEM) extends to procedural skill based memory. We examined remote EEM (1.5-month delay) for cognitive skill learning using the weather prediction (WP) probabilistic classification task. Participants viewed interleaved emotionally arousing or neutral pictures during WP acquisition. Arousal retarded initial WP acquisition. While participants in the neutral condition showed substantial forgetting of WP learning across the 1.5-month delay interval, the arousal condition showed no evidence of forgetting across the same time period. Thus, arousal during encoding determined the mnemonic fate of cognitive skill learning. Emotional enhancement of WP retention was independent of verbally stated knowledge of WP learning and EEM for the picture contexts in which learning took place. These results reveal a novel demonstration of EEM for cognitive skill learning, and suggest that emotional arousal may in parallel enhance the neural systems that support procedural learning and its declarative context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Encoding modality can affect memory accuracy via retrieval orientation.

Research indicates that false memory is lower following visual than auditory study, potentially because visual information is more distinctive. In the present study we tested the extent to which retrieval orientation can cause a modality effect on memory accuracy. Participants studied unrelated words in different modalities, followed by criterial recollection tests that selectively oriented retrieval toward one study modality at a time. Memory errors were lower when oriented toward visual than toward auditory information, thereby generalizing the modality effect to an explicit source memory task. Moreover, these effects persisted independent of the test presentation modality, indicating that retrieval orientation overrode the potential cuing properties of the test stimulus. An independent manipulation check confirmed that visual recollections were subjectively experienced as more distinctive than auditory recollections. These results suggest that retrieval orientation is sufficient to cause a modality effect on memory accuracy by focusing monitoring processes on the recollection of studied features that are diagnostic of prior presentation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expanding retrieval practice promotes short-term retention, but equally spaced retrieval enhances long-term retention.

Expanding retrieval practice (T. K. Landauer & R. A. Bjork, 1978) is regarded as a superior technique for promoting long-term retention relative to equally spaced retrieval practice. In Experiments 1 and 2, the authors found that expanding retrieval practice of vocabulary word pairs produced short-term benefits 10 min after learning, conceptually replicating Landauer and Bjork's results. However, equally spaced retrieval produced superior retention 2 days later. This pattern occurred both with and without feedback after test trials. In Experiment 3, the 1st test occurred immediately or after a brief delay, and repeated tests were expanding or equally spaced. Delaying the first test improved long-term retention, regardless of how the repeated tests were spaced. The important factor for promoting long-term retention is delaying initial retrieval to make it more difficult, as is done in equally spaced retrieval but not in expanding retrieval. Expanding the interval between repeated tests had little effect on long-term retention in 3 experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interference effects from divided attention during retrieval in younger and older adults.

The authors examined how retrieval, under divided attention (DA) conditions, is affected by the type of material in a concurrent task, and whether aging produces larger interference effects on memory. Young and old adults studied a list of unrelated words under full attention, and recalled them while performing either an animacy decision task to words or an odd-digit identification task to numbers. The animacy-distracting task interfered substantially with retrieval, and the size of the effect was not amplified in older compared with younger adults. DA using the odd-digit task did not produce as large an interference effect. These findings support the component-process model of memory, and pose problems for resource models of interference from DA at retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The memory enhancement effect of emotion is absent in conceptual implicit memory.

Memory for emotional stimuli is superior to memory for neutral stimuli. This study investigated whether this memory advantage is present in implicit memory. Memory was tested with a test of explicit memory (associate cued recall) and a test of conceptual implicit memory (free association) identical in all respects apart from the retrieval instructions. After studying emotional and neutral paired associates, participants saw the first member of the pair, the cue; in the test of explicit memory participants were instructed to recall the associate; in the test of implicit memory participants were instructed to generate the first word coming to mind associated to the word. Depth of study processing dissociated performance in the tests, confirming that the free-association test was not contaminated by an intentional retrieval strategy. Emotional pairs were better recalled than neutral pairs in the test of explicit memory but not in the equivalent test of implicit memory. The absence of an emotion effect in implicit memory implies that emotional material does not have a privileged global mnemonic status; intentional retrieval is necessary for observing the emotion-related memory advantage. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory and focal attention.

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. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of object-feature retrieval in recognition.

The time course of perception and retrieval of object features was investigated. Participants completed a perceptual matching task and 2 recognition tasks under time pressure. The recognition tasks imposed different retention loads. A stochastic model of feature sampling with a Bayesian decision component was used to estimate the rate of feature perception and the rate of retrieval of feature information. The results demonstrated that retrieval rates did not differ among object features if only a single object was held in memory. If 2 objects were retained in memory, differences among retrieval rates of features emerged, indicating that features that were quickly perceived were also quickly retrieved. The results from the 2-object retention condition are compatible with process reinstatement models of retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Component processes of conceptual priming and associative cued recall: The roles of preexisting representation and depth of processing.

The authors investigated depth-of-processing effects on conceptual priming by comparing incidental (implicit) and intentional (explicit) tests of word association. In Experiment 1, depth of processing at study influenced priming of weak and medium associates but not of strong associates. In Experiment 2, depth of processing influenced priming of weak associates but not of compound phrases (e.g., coathanger), whose preexperimental association strength matched that of weak associates. In Experiment 3, the same pattern persisted when study was auditory and test was visual, ensuring that priming was conceptual and not perceptual. In all experiments, in matched intentional tests, depth-of-processing effects occurred for all association strengths and for both phrases and associates, suggesting that the incidental tests were uncontaminated by voluntary retrieval, because they showed depth-of-processing effects only for some materials and not others, within the same participants and tests. Because depth-of-processing effects on involuntary free-association priming depend on the presence versus absence of a cohesive preexperimental representation, the memory-systems and conceptual/perceptual processing approaches to memory-test dissociations require modification to account for component processes of conceptual priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)