Recognition during recall failure: Semantic feature matching as a mechanism for recognition of semantic cues when recall fails

Research suggests that a feature-matching process underlies cue familiarity-detection when cued recall with graphemic cues fails. When a test cue (e.g., potchbork) overlaps in graphemic features with multiple unrecalled studied items (e.g., patchwork, pitchfork, pocketbook, pullcork), higher cue familiarity ratings are given during recall failure of all of the targets than when the cue overlaps in graphemic features with only one studied target and that target fails to be recalled (e.g., patchwork). The present study used semantic feature production norms (McRae et al., Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547–559, 2005) to examine whether the same holds true when the cues are semantic in nature (e.g., jaguar is used to cue cheetah). Indeed, test cues (e.g., cedar) that overlapped in semantic features (e.g., a_tree, has_bark, etc.) with four unretrieved studied items (e.g., birch, oak, pine, willow) received higher cue familiarity ratings during recall failure than test cues that overlapped in semantic features with only two (also unretrieved) studied items (e.g., birch, oak), which in turn received higher familiarity ratings during recall failure than cues that did not overlap in semantic features with any studied items. These findings suggest that the feature-matching theory of recognition during recall failure can accommodate recognition of semantic cues during recall failure, providing a potential mechanism for conceptually-based forms of cue recognition during target retrieval failure. They also provide converging evidence for the existence of the semantic features envisaged in feature-based models of semantic knowledge representation and for those more concretely specified by the production norms of McRae et al. (Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 37, 547–559, 2005).     

The links between self-determined motivations and behavioral automaticity in a variety of real-life behaviors

The different motivations postulated by the Self-Determination Theory have proved to be meaningful to predict the level of engagement in a wide variety of life domains. The present research examines the relation between the different forms of self-determined motivation and behavioral automaticity of 12 behaviors associated with different life domains. Following 1743 measurements of self-determination (using a short version of the situational motivational scale, SIMS8), behavioral automaticity (using the self-reported behavioral automaticity index, SRBAI), and behavioral frequency (self-reported number of executions in a unit of time) for 12 various common behaviors collected on 315 young adults (M_age = 20.60?±?2.87 years) through an online survey, the results of crossed linear mixed models indicated that self-determined motivations are more associated with behavioral automaticity than non-self-determined motivations (intrinsic motivation: β?=?0.13, p?<?.001, identified extrinsic motivation: β?=?0.13, p?<?.001; external extrinsic motivation : β?=?0.08, p?<?.001; amotivation: β?=?0.02, p?=?.433). Furthermore, self-determination played a moderating role between the repetition of behaviors and behavioral automaticity (β?=?0.06, p?<?.002) suggesting that self-determination facilitated automatization, as high level of behavioral automaticity was achieved with less frequent behaviors when behaviors were performed for highly self-determined (β?=?0.41, p?<?.001) than weakly self-determined reasons (β?=?0.29, p?<?.001). The applications of these findings for learning and habit formation are discussed.     

Recall is not necessary for verbal sequence learning

The question of whether overt recall of to-be-remembered material accelerates learning is important in a wide range of real-world learning settings. In the case of verbal sequence learning, previous research has proposed that recall either is necessary for verbal sequence learning (Cohen & Johansson Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 6, 139–143, 1967; Cunningham, Healy, & Williams Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 575–597, 1984), or at least contributes significantly to it (Glass, Krejci, & Goldman Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 189–199, 1989; Oberauer & Meyer Memory, 17, 774–781, 2009). In contrast, here we show that the amount of previous spoken recall does not predict learning and is not necessary for it. We suggest that previous research may have underestimated participants’ learning by using suboptimal performance measures, or by using manual or written recall. However, we show that the amount of spoken recall predicted how much interference from other to-be-remembered sequences would be observed. In fact, spoken recall mediated most of the error learning observed in the task. Our data support the view that the learning of overlapping auditory–verbal sequences is driven by learning the phonological representations and not the articulatory motor responses. However, spoken recall seems to reinforce already learned representations, whether they are correct or incorrect, thus contributing to a participant identifying a specific stimulus as either “learned” or “new” during the presentation phase.     

Interpreting confidence intervals: A comment on Hoekstra,Morey, Rouder,and Wagenmakers (2014)

Hoekstra, Morey, Rouder, and Wagenmakers (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 21(5), 1157–1164 2014) reported the results of a questionnaire designed to assess students’ and researchers’ understanding of confidence intervals (CIs). They interpreted their results as evidence that these groups “have no reliable knowledge about the correct interpretation of CIs” (Hoekstra et al. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 21(5), 1157–1164 2014, p. 1161). We argue that their data do not substantiate this conclusion and that their report includes misleading suggestions about the correct interpretations of confidence intervals.     

Reasoning defeasibly about probabilities

In concrete applications of probability, statistical investigation gives us knowledge of some probabilities, but we generally want to know many others that are not directly revealed by our data. For instance, we may know prob(P/Q) (the probability of P given Q) and prob(P/R), but what we really want is prob(P/Q&;R), and we may not have the data required to assess that directly. The probability calculus is of no help here. Given prob(P/Q) and prob(P/R), it is consistent with the probability calculus for prob(P/Q&;R) to have any value between 0 and 1. Is there any way to make a reasonable estimate of the value of prob(P/Q&;R)? A related problem occurs when probability practitioners adopt undefended assumptions of statistical independence simply on the basis of not seeing any connection between two propositions. This is common practice, but its justification has eluded probability theorists, and researchers are typically apologetic about making such assumptions. Is there any way to defend the practice? This paper shows that on a certain conception of probability—nomic probability—there are principles of “probable probabilities” that license inferences of the above sort. These are principles telling us that although certain inferences from probabilities to probabilities are not deductively valid, nevertheless the second-order probability of their yielding correct results is 1. This makes it defeasibly reasonable to make the inferences. Thus I argue that it is defeasibly reasonable to assume statistical independence when we have no information to the contrary. And I show that there is a function Y(r, s, a) such that if prob(P/Q) = r, prob(P/R) = s, and prob(P/U) = a (where U is our background knowledge) then it is defeasibly reasonable to expect that prob(P/Q&;R) = Y(r, s, a). Numerous other defeasible inferences are licensed by similar principles of probable probabilities. This has the potential to greatly enhance the usefulness of probabilities in practical application.     

Use of the familiarity difference cue in inferential judgments

The familiarity difference cue has been regarded as a general cue for making inferential judgments (Honda, Abe, Matsuks, & Yamagishi in Memory and Cognition, 39(5), 851–863, 2011; Schwikert & Curran in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(6), 2341–2365, 2014). The current study tests a model of inference based on familiarity differences that encompasses the recognition heuristic (Goldstein & Gigerenzer, 1999, Goldstein & Gigerenzer in Psychological Review, 109(1), 75–90, 2002). In two studies, using a large pool of stimuli, participants rated their familiarity of cities and made choices on a typical city-size task. The data were fitted with the r-s model (Hilbig, Erdfelder, & Pohl in, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 37(4), 827–839, 2011), which was adapted to include familiarity differences. The results indicated that people used the familiarity difference cue because the participants ignored further knowledge in a substantial number of cases when the familiarity difference cue was available. An analysis of reaction-time data further indicated that the response times were shorter for heuristic judgments than for knowledge-only-based judgments. Furthermore, when knowledge was available, the response times were shorter when knowledge was congruent with a heuristic cue than when it was in conflict with it. Differences between the familiarity difference cue and the fluency heuristic (Schooler & Hertwig, 2005, Psychological Review, 112, 610–628) are discussed.     

Estimating the average need of semantic knowledge from distributional semantic models

Continuous bag of words (CBOW) and skip-gram are two recently developed models of lexical semantics (Mikolov, Chen, Corrado, & Dean, Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 26, 3111–3119, 2013). Each has been demonstrated to perform markedly better at capturing human judgments about semantic relatedness than competing models (e.g., latent semantic analysis; Landauer & Dumais, Psychological Review, 104(2), 1997 211; hyperspace analogue to language; Lund & Burgess, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 28(2), 203–208, 1996). The new models were largely developed to address practical problems of meaning representation in natural language processing. Consequently, very little attention has been paid to the psychological implications of the performance of these models. We describe the relationship between the learning algorithms employed by these models and Anderson’s rational theory of memory (J. R. Anderson & Milson, Psychological Review, 96(4), 703, 1989) and argue that CBOW is learning word meanings according to Anderson’s concept of needs probability. We also demonstrate that CBOW can account for nearly all of the variation in lexical access measures typically attributable to word frequency and contextual diversity—two measures that are conceptually related to needs probability. These results suggest two conclusions: One, CBOW is a psychologically plausible model of lexical semantics. Two, word frequency and contextual diversity do not capture learning effects but rather memory retrieval effects.     

Picture (im)perfect: Illusions of recognition memory produced by photographs at test

Photographs have been found to affect a variety of psychological judgments. For example, nonprobative but semantically related photographs may increase beliefs in the truth of general knowledge statements (Newman, Garry, Bernstein, Kantner, & Lindsay, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(5), 969–974, 2012; Newman et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(5), 1337–1348, 2015). Photographs can also create illusions of memory (Cardwell, Henkel, Garry, Newman, & Foster, Memory & Cognition, 44(6), 883–896, 2016; Henkel, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(1), 78–86, 2011; Henkel & Carbuto, 2008). A candidate mechanism for these effects is that a photograph increases the fluency with which a statement or an event is processed. The present study was conducted to determine whether photos at test can induce illusions of recognition memory and to test the viability of a conceptual fluency explanation of these effects. The results of the present study suggest that photographs enhance the fluency of related words (Experiment 1), that false memories can be produced by the mere presence of a related photo on a recognition memory test for words (Experiments 2 & 3), and that these effects appear to be limited to conceptually based recognition tests (Experiments 4 & 5). The results support the notion that photograph-based illusions of memory stem from the ability of related photographs to increase the speed and ease of conceptual processing.     

Sit Down and Play: A Preventive Primary Care-Based Program to Enhance Parenting Practices

The primary care office offers an ideal setting to encourage parenting behaviors that promote early childhood development. We conducted a pilot study to establish feasibility and acceptability of Sit Down and Play (SDP), a brief primary care-based program to facilitate positive parenting behaviors through take-home play activities. A prospective 1-month study was conducted in an urban primary care clinic. SDP was administered to 30 caregivers of 6–12 month-old children while they waited for their well-child appointment. Caregivers completed baseline and 4-week follow-up surveys. Open-ended interview questions regarding acceptability and usefulness of SDP were administered and analyzed using content analysis. Parenting practices related to child development were measured with standardized measures and changes analyzed using paired t-test and linear mixed effects models. Most caregivers were mothers (90?%) and non-white (97?%); the majority of children received Medicaid (87?%). There were significant increases in parental reports of practices related to child development (p?<?0.001), including families who reported low incomes (i.e. <$25,000) and received a high-school education or less (p?=?0.001). Four main themes emerged from the open-ended interview data: (1) importance of play, (2) noticing a change in their child, (3) reinforcing existing positive parenting behaviors, and (4) satisfaction with the program. This preliminary study suggests that SDP is a feasible and potentially beneficial program that can be delivered during pediatric well-child visits. Further studies are needed to determine the effectiveness of SDP on parenting behaviors and developmental outcomes.     

A Gentzen Calculus for Nothing but the Truth

In their paper Nothing but the Truth Andreas Pietz and Umberto Rivieccio present Exactly True Logic (ETL), an interesting variation upon the four-valued logic for first-degree entailment FDE that was given by Belnap and Dunn in the 1970s. Pietz & Rivieccio provide this logic with a Hilbert-style axiomatisation and write that finding a nice sequent calculus for the logic will presumably not be easy. But a sequent calculus can be given and in this paper we will show that a calculus for the Belnap-Dunn logic we have defined earlier can in fact be reused for the purpose of characterising ETL, provided a small alteration is made—initial assignments of signs to the sentences of a sequent to be proved must be different from those used for characterising FDE. While Pietz & Rivieccio define ETL on the language of classical propositional logic we also study its consequence relation on an extension of this language that is functionally complete for the underlying four truth values. On this extension the calculus gets a multiple-tree character—two proof trees may be needed to establish one proof.     

Gesture as representational action: A paper about function

A great deal of attention has recently been paid to gesture and its effects on thinking and learning. It is well established that the hand movements that accompany speech are an integral part of communication, ubiquitous across cultures, and a unique feature of human behavior. In an attempt to understand this intriguing phenomenon, researchers have focused on pinpointing the mechanisms that underlie gesture production. One proposal––that gesture arises from simulated action (Hostetter & Alibali Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 15, 495–514, 2008)––has opened up discussions about action, gesture, and the relation between the two. However, there is another side to understanding a phenomenon and that is to understand its function. A phenomenon’s function is its purpose rather than its precipitating cause––the why rather than the how. This paper sets forth a theoretical framework for exploring why gesture serves the functions that it does, and reviews where the current literature fits, and fails to fit, this proposal. Our framework proposes that whether or not gesture is simulated action in terms of its mechanism––it is clearly not reducible to action in terms of its function. Most notably, because gestures are abstracted representations and are not actions tied to particular events and objects, they can play a powerful role in thinking and learning beyond the particular, specifically, in supporting generalization and transfer of knowledge.     

Values Realized in Personal Strivings and Motivation,and Meaning in Life in Polish University Students

The present study was based on two theoretical conceptions—Deci and Ryan’s self-determination theory and its characteristic approach to values, and the conception of meaning in life derived from the Logotherapy of Frankl. The aim of the study was to verify the thesis that values realized in personal strivings play a significant role in experiencing meaning in life. The study was also designed to explore the relationships between types of motivation and meaning in life. A semi-open method was used to study values and striving motivations, one based on the Personal Striving Assessment by Emmons and the Purpose in Life Test by Maholick and Crumbaugh. The sample comprised 353 students of Wroc?aw-based universities (159 women and 194 men). The findings of this study demonstrated that meaning in life is related to motivation as well as to certain values that participants reported as realized in their personal strivings. Predictors of meaning in life were the value of financial success for men, and the value of intimacy/friendship for women. Another predictor of meaning for both groups was external motivation. Further interesting results discussed in this paper were obtained by comparing individuals with low and those with high levels of meaning in life. The latter group was found to attribute greater importance to autonomous motivation and to attach greater meaning to their everyday strivings by associating them more closely with both intrinsic and extrinsic values.     

Is Explanatoriness a Guide to Confirmation? A Reply to Climenhaga

We (2013, 2014) argued that explanatoriness is evidentially irrelevant in the following sense: Let H be a hypothesis, O an observation, and E the proposition that H would explain O if H and O were true. Then our claim is that Pr(H | O & E) = Pr(H | O). We defended this screening-off thesis (SOT) by discussing an example concerning smoking and cancer. Climenhaga (Philos Sci, forthcoming) argues that SOT is mistaken because it delivers the wrong verdict about a slightly different smoking-and-cancer case. He also considers a variant of SOT, called “SOT*”, and contends that it too gives the wrong result. We here reply to Climenhaga’s arguments and suggest that SOT provides a criticism of the widely held theory of inference called “inference to the best explanation”.     

‘You Do You’ Feminism: Lesbian,Bisexual, and Queer Women’s Perspectives on the Dildo

Historically, feminists have engaged in a contentious debate about the dildo. Some assert that it is an oppressive tool of the patriarchy whereas others proclaim that it is a practical means of expressing lesbian, bisexual, and queer women’s sexuality. To gain some perspective into the current status of this debate, seven non-heterosexual women were interviewed about their attitudes toward dildos. Interviews were examined using inductive thematic analysis, and viewed through the lens of social constructionism. Rather than taking sides in the dildo debates, participants embraced a you do you ideology (i.e., there is no “right” or “wrong” answer when it comes to choosing whether to use or not use dildos). Three themes clustered around this overarching ideology: dildos are optional (à la carte dildo), meanings of dildos are contextually and phenomenologically determined (contextuality of the dildo), and dildos have theoretical implications (critically conscious queers). Participants’ eschewal of the binarized debate about the dildo may be entwined with changing understandings of feminist, gender, and queer theory.     

From anticipation to integration: the role of integrated action-effects in building sensorimotor contingencies

Ideomotor approaches to action control have provided evidence that the activation of an anticipatory image of previously learned action-effects plays a decisive role in action selection. This study sought for converging evidence by combining three previous experimental paradigms: the response–effect compatibility protocol introduced by Kunde (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(2), 387–394, 2001), the acquisition-test paradigm developed by Elsner and Hommel (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 27(1), 229, 2001), and the object-action compatibility manipulation of Tucker and Ellis (Visual Cognition, 8(6), 769–800, 2001). Three groups of participants first performed a response–effect compatibility task, in which they carried out power and precision grasps that produced either grasp-compatible or grasp-incompatible pictures, or no action effects. Performance was better in the compatible than in the incompatible group, which replicates previous observations and extends them to relationships between grasps and objects. Then, participants were to categorize object pictures by carrying out grasp responses. Apart from replicating previous findings of better performance in trials in which object size and grasp type was compatible, we found that this stimulus–response compatibility effect depended on previous response-effect learning. Taken together, these findings support the assumption that the experience of action–effect contingencies establishes durable event files that integrate representations of actions and their effects.     

Object detection and basic-level categorization: Sometimes you know it is there before you know what it is

A tight temporal coupling between object detection (is an object there?) and object categorization (what kind of object is it?) has recently been reported (Grill-Spector &; Kanwisher, 2005), suggesting that image segmentation into different objects and categorization of those objects at the basic level may be the very same mechanism. In the present work, we decoupled the time course of detection and categorization through two task manipulations. First, inverted objects were categorized significantly less accurately than upright objects across a range of image presentation durations, but no significant effect on object detection was observed. Second, systematically degrading stimuli affected categorization significantly more than object detection. The time course of object detection and object categorization can be selectively manipulated. They are not intrinsically linked. As soon as you know an object is there, you do not necessarily know what it is.     

Conditioned task-set competition: Neural mechanisms of emotional interference in depression

Depression has been associated with increased response times at the incongruent-, neutral-, and negative-word trials of the classical and emotional Stroop tasks (Epp et al., Clinical Psychology Review, 32, 316–328, 2012). Response-time slowdown effects at incongruent- and negative-word trials of the Stroop tasks were reported to correlate with depressive severity, indicating strong relevance of the effects to the symptomatology. This study proposes a novel integrative computational model of neural mechanisms of both the classical and emotional Stroop effects, drawing on the previous prominent theoretical explanations of performance at the classical Stroop task (Cohen, Dunbar, & McClelland, Psychological Review, 97, 332–361, 1990; Herd, Banich, & O’Reilly, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 18, 22–32, 2006), and in addition suggesting that negative emotional words represent conditioned stimuli for future negative outcomes. The model is shown to explain the classical Stroop effect and the slow (between-trial) emotional Stroop effect with biologically plausible mechanisms, providing an advantage over the previous theoretical accounts (Matthews & Harley, Cognition & Emotion, 10, 561–600, 1996; Wyble, Sharma, & Bowman, Cognition & Emotion, 22, 1019–1051, 2008). Simulation results suggested a candidate mechanism responsible for the pattern of depressive performance at the classical and the emotional Stroop tasks. Hyperactivity of the amygdala, together with increased inhibitory influence of the amygdala over dopaminergic neurotransmission, could be at the origin of the performance deficits.     

The metaphysics of goodness in the ethics of Aristotle

Kraut (Against absolute goodness. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011) and other neo-Aristotelians have argued that there is no such thing as absolute goodness. They admit only good in a kind, e.g. a good sculptor, and good for something, e.g. good for fish. What is the view of Aristotle? Mostly limiting myself to the Nicomachean Ethics (NE), I argue that Aristotle is committed to things being absolutely good and also to a metaphysics of absolute goodness where there is a maximally best good that is the cause of the goodness of all other things in virtue of being their end. I begin (in Sect. 2) by suggesting that the notion of good as an end, which is present in the first lines of the NE, is not obviously accounted for by good in a kind or good for something. I then give evidence that good in a kind (in Sect. 3) and good for something (in Sect. 4) can explain neither certain distinctions drawn between virtues nor the determinacy ascribed to what is good “in itself.” I argue (in Sect. 5) contra Gotthelf (2012) that because several important arguments in the Nicomachean Ethics rely on comparative judgments of absolute value—e.g. “Man is the best of all animals”—Aristotle is committed to the existence of both absolute goodness and an absolutely best being. I focus (in Sect. 6) on one passage, Aristotle’s division of goods in NE I 12, which presupposes this metaphysical picture.     

The influence of object similarity and orientation on object-based cueing

Responses to targets that appear at a noncued position within the same object (invalid–same) compared to a noncued position at an equidistant different object (invalid–different) tend to be faster and more accurate. These cueing effects have been taken as evidence that visual attention can be object based (Egly, Driver, & Rafal, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 123, 161–177, 1994). Recent findings, however, have shown that the object-based cueing effect is influenced by object orientation, suggesting that the cueing effect might be due to a more general facilitation of attentional shifts across the horizontal meridian (Al-Janabi & Greenberg, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 1–17, 2016; Pilz, Roggeveen, Creighton, Bennet, & Sekuler, PLOS ONE, 7, e30693, 2012). The aim of this study was to investigate whether the object-based cueing effect is influenced by object similarity and orientation. According to the object-based attention account, objects that are less similar to each other should elicit stronger object-based cueing effects independent of object orientation, whereas the horizontal meridian theory would not predict any effect of object similarity. We manipulated object similarity by using a color (Exp. 1, Exp. 2A) or shape change (Exp. 2B) to distinguish two rectangles in a variation of the classic two-rectangle paradigm (Egly et al., 1994). We found that the object-based cueing effects were influenced by the orientation of the rectangles and strengthened by object dissimilarity. We suggest that object-based cueing effects are strongly affected by the facilitation of attention along the horizontal meridian, but that they also have an object-based attentional component, which is revealed when the dissimilarity between the presented objects is accentuated.     

The scope of formal explanation

The existence of multiple modes of explanation means that a crucial step in the process of generating explanations has to be selecting a particular mode. The present article identifies the key conceptual, as well as some pragmatic and epistemological, considerations that license the use of the formal mode of explanation, and thus that enter into the process of selecting and generating a formal explanation. Formal explanations explain the presence of certain properties in an instance of a kind by reference to the kind of thing it is (e.g. That has four legs because it is a dog). As such, this mode of explanation is intrinsically tied to kind representations and is applicable domain-generally. Although it is possible for formal explanation to apply domain-generally, for any given kind it is selective in its application, in that it can explain some, but not all, properties of the instances of a kind. It also appears that different types of properties can receive formal explanations across different domains. This article provides a sketch of a theory of the selectivity of formal explanation that results from the manner in which kinds of different types are distinguished. The present discussion also suggests how the mechanisms underlying formal explanations may contribute to the illusion of explanatory depth Keil (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 368–373,2003), the operation of the inherence heuristic Cimpian & Salomon (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 461–480, 2014a; Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 37, 506–527,2014b), and psychological essentialism (Gelman, 2003).