Searching for two things at once: Evidence of exclusivity in semantic and autobiographical memory retrieval

We examined whether retrieval from semantic memory (Experiment 1) and autobiographical memory (Experiment 2) is exclusive, or whether people can search for two things at once. In Experiment 1, participants retrieved items as quickly as possible over 4 ruin from single categories (e.g., foods, countries) and from disjunctive categories (e.g., foods or countries). In Experiment 2, participants retrieved autobiographical episodes associated with single cue words (e.g., flower, ticket) or with disjunctive cue words (e.g., flower or ticket). In both experiments, retrieval of items from the disjunctive category did not exceed predictions based on optimal sequencing of retrieval from the corresponding two single categories. That is, exclusivity was observed to occur in retrieval from among multiple nonoverlapping categories in both semantic and autobiographical memory.     

The perception of collative properties in visual stimuli

Two experiments were conducted to determine how quickly subjects respond to collative properties (e. g., Complexity, Uncertainty) of visual stimuli. In Experiment 1 subjects were presented with reproductions of paintings and artificial patterns which varied in collative properties (e. g., Uncertainty, Redundancy). Subjects were able to discriminate these properties on related verbal scales after only a single glance (50 msec) as well as after multiple glances (500 and 5000 msec). In Experiment 2 subjects were presented with pairs of paintings and patterns differing along collative dimensions (e. g., High versus Low Uncertainty) in an exploratory choice paradigm. The results show that for exploratory choice subjects were particularly sensitive to unity or order after only a single glance (50 msec) and to diversity or complexity after multiple glances (500 and 5 000 msec). In general, the data for the single glance condition are consistent with theories which attribute holistic processing to the initial phase of perception.     

The effect of retrieval enactment on recall of subject-performed tasks and verbal tasks

The effect of retrieval enactment on memory for nouns (objects) or verbal phrases describing simple actions (e.g., “lift the box”) was addressed in two experiments. In Experiment 1, the type of object involved in the actions was manipulated, with three different types of object being used (body parts, laboratory-related objects, and external objects). In Experiment 2, the integration between the verb-noun pairs was manipulated (well-integrated vs. poorly integrated). Results from both experiments showed that whereas encoding enactment (motor encoding and verbal test) substantially improved the memory performance compared with a verbal condition (verbal encoding and verbal test), retrieval enactment (verbal encoding and motor test) had no major impact on the number of recalled nouns or phrases. Moreover, there was no additional effect of dual enactment (motor encoding and motor test). The overall pattern of the results suggests that there is a fundamental difference between motor processing at encoding and motor processing at retrieval, and the lack of encoding specificity advantage for the motor modality contradicts the view that encoding enactment of verbal commands results in storage of motor representations.     

“Girls Are as Good as Boys at Math” Implies That Boys Are Probably Better: A Study of Expressions of Gender Equality

Although “Girls are as good as boys at math” explicitly expresses equality, we predict it could nevertheless suggest that boys have more raw talent. In statements with this subject‐complement structure, the item in the complement position serves as the reference point and is thus considered more typical and prominent. This explains why “Tents are like houses,” for instance, sounds better than “Houses are like tents”—people generally think of houses as more typical. For domains about ability, the reference point should be the item that is typically more skilled. We further propose that the reference point should be naturally more skilled. In two experiments, we presented adults with summaries of actual scientific evidence for gender equality in math (Experiment 1) or verbal ability (Experiment 2), but we manipulated whether the reference point in the statements of equality in the summaries (e.g., “Boys’ verbal ability is as good as girls’”) was girls or boys. As predicted, adults attributed more natural ability to each gender when it was in the complement rather than subject position. Yet, in Experiment 3, we found that when explicitly asked, participants judged that such sentences were not biased in favor of either gender, indicating that subject‐complement statements must be transmitting this bias in a subtle way. Thus, statements such as “Girls are as good as boys at math” can actually backfire and perpetuate gender stereotypes about natural ability.     

Verbal cues facilitate memory retrieval during infancy

In three experiments, 18-month-olds were tested in a deferred imitation paradigm. Some infants received verbal information during the demonstration and at the time of the test (full narration), and some did not (empty narration). When tested after a 4-week delay, infants given full narration exhibited superior retention relative to infants given empty narration (Experiment 1). This retention advantage appears to be due to the effects of verbal cues at the time of memory retrieval. There was no effect of verbal cues that were presented only at the time of original encoding (Experiment 2A). Furthermore, infants who received verbal cues only at the time of retrieval exhibited superior retention relative to infants who received verbal cues only at the time of original encoding (Experiment 2B). These findings demonstrate that verbal cues can enhance memory retrieval by participants who are not yet fluent speakers themselves.     

Directed search through autobiographical memory

Two experiments were designed to study retrieval from a well-ordered set of overlearned information in long-term autobiographical memory. In Experiment 1, each of 161 university students was asked to recall the name of one teacher from each of the 12 preuniversity school years. Recall was cued in forward (Grades 1-12), backward (Grades 12-1), or random order. Backward-ordered search proved most efficient: Fewer students failed to complete the task :in that search order, and those who did complete the task were faster than the successful students in the other search orders. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1, except that the 148 students tested were asked to “think aloud” as they attempted recall. From the resulting protocols, 25 categories of verbal reports were identified, including four that reflected retrieval strategies. Omission errors (failures to recall teachers’ names) and, with one exception, frequencies of verbal reports decreased as recency increased. Taken together, the results of both experiments show that the recall of one item can indirectly aid the recall of contiguous items and that the probability of recalling an item from autobiographical memory is primarily a function of recency.     

Priming associations between bodily sensations and catastrophic misinterpretations: Specific for panic disorder?

Cognitive models assume that panic disorder is characterised by a tendency to misinterpret benign bodily symptoms (e.g. breathlessness) in a catastrophic fashion (e.g. suffocation). This is a central part of the cognitive model which presents a core focus for treatment. Several studies have supported this hypothesis. These studies have, however, almost always relied on self-report. In addition to susceptibility to biases (e.g. distortions of memory), a limitation of research based on verbal report is its inability to capture the spontaneous/automatic nature that is attributed to these catastrophic interpretations. The present paper reports on two experiments in which a priming procedure was used to test the hypothesis that panic disorder is characterised by spontaneous catastrophic interpretations and whether this effect is ‘specific’ to panic disorder. In line with predictions from the cognitive model, it was observed in the first experiment that the panic group demonstrated facilitated responses to trials consisting of a ‘symptom’ prime and a ‘catastrophic outcome’ target (e.g. breathlessness - suffocate). Similar effects were not observed for an anxious control group and a nonclinical control group, supporting the specificity of this effect. Interestingly, however, significant priming effects were observed for a group of mental health professionals (part of the healthy control group) who had no history of panic disorder. Subsequently, this unexpected observation was explicitly addressed in a second experiment, which confirmed the findings of Experiment 1. Together, these results suggest that associations between mental representations of benign bodily symptoms and catastrophic outcomes might develop as part of professional knowledge and experience, and should not necessarily be viewed as pathogenic. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.     

The effect of verbal elaborations on memory in young and older adults

The Stein paradigm was used to examine the circumstances under which verbal elaborations enhance memory in young and older adults. Subjects studied target adjectives that were embedded in one of three sentence contexts that varied in elaboration of the subject-adjective relationship: (1) nonelaborated base sentences; (2) base sentences with semantically consistent, but arbitrary verbal, elaborations; and (3) base sentences with explanatory verbal elaborations that clarified the significance of the subject-adjective relationship. The presence of the elaborations was varied at encoding and retrieval, and cued recall of the target adjectives was tested with incidental and intentional learning procedures. In Experiments 1A and 1B, explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval yielded the largest memorial facilitation for both young and older adults, and the benefit was comparable for the incidental and intentional learning measures. In Experiment 2, age-related differences in recall were minimal with explanatory elaborations at encoding and retrieval, but larger age differences occurred in the nonelaborated comparison conditions. In Experiment 3, explanatory elaborations present at encoding but not at retrieval enhanced recall when the original Stein stimuli were used, but not with the present stimuli. The implications of these results with regard to the mnemonic efficacy of verbal elaborations for young and older adults are discussed.     

Temporal invariance for picture-word translation: Evidence from drawing-writing and naming-reading tasks

In two experiments, picture-word processing was investigated using graphic (drawing-writing) and verbal (naming-reading) production tasks. In both experiments, the subjects drew a picture or wrote a word upon presentation of a picture or a word stimulus. Additionally, the subjects in Experiment 2 named a picture or read a word stimulus. Production onset latency was assessed. In both experiments, drawing production was initiated more slowly than was writing production. In Experiment 2, graphic production was initiated more slowly than was verbal production. Equivalent latency increases were found for cross-modality trials (e.g., drawing a picture given a word stimulus) relative to within-modality trials (e.g., drawing a picture given a picture stimulus), independent of stimulus modality (word or picture), production modality (word or picture), or task (graphic or verbal production). These results strongly support a mathematical model which incorporates temporal invariance for pictures and words concerning encoding, cross-modality transfer, and retrieval.     

The properties of retrieval cues constrain the picture superiority effect

In three experiments, we examined why pictures are remembered better than words on explicit memory tests like recall and recognition, whereas words produce more priming than pictures on some implicit tests, such as word-fragment and word-stem completion (e.g., completing -l-ph-nt or ele----- as elephant). One possibility is that pictures are always more accessible than words if subjects are given explicit retrieval instructions. An alternative possibility is that the properties of the retrieval cues themselves constrain the retrieval processes engaged; word fragments might induce data-driven (perceptually based) retrieval, which favors words regardless of the retrieval instructions. Experiment 1 demonstrated that words were remembered better than pictures on both the word-fragment and word-stem completion tasks under both implicit and explicit retrieval conditions. In Experiment 2, pictures were recalled better than words with semantically related extralist cues. In Experiment 3, when semantic cues were combined with word fragments, pictures and words were recalled equally well under explicit retrieval conditions, but words were superior to pictures under implicit instructions. Thus, the inherently data-limited properties of fragmented words limit their use in accessing conceptual codes. Overall, the results indicate that retrieval operations are largely determined by properties of the retrieval cues under both implicit and explicit retrieval conditions.     

Gesture Helps,Only If You Need It: Inhibiting Gesture Reduces Tip-of-the-Tongue Resolution for Those With Weak Short-Term Memory

People frequently gesture when a word is on the tip of their tongue (TOT), yet research is mixed as to whether and why gesture aids lexical retrieval. We tested three accounts: the lexical retrieval hypothesis, which predicts that semantically related gestures facilitate successful lexical retrieval; the cognitive load account, which predicts that matching gestures facilitate lexical retrieval only when retrieval is hard, as in the case of a TOT; and the motor movement account, which predicts that any motor movements should support lexical retrieval. In Experiment 1 (a between-subjects study; N = 90), gesture inhibition, but not neck inhibition, affected TOT resolution but not overall lexical retrieval; participants in the gesture-inhibited condition resolved fewer TOTs than participants who were allowed to gesture. When participants could gesture, they produced more representational gestures during resolved than unresolved TOTs, a pattern not observed for meaningless motor movements (e.g., beats). However, the effect of gesture inhibition on TOT resolution was not uniform; some participants resolved many TOTs, while others struggled. In Experiment 2 (a within-subjects study; N = 34), the effect of gesture inhibition was traced to individual differences in verbal, not spatial short-term memory (STM) span; those with weaker verbal STM resolved fewer TOTs when unable to gesture. This relationship between verbal STM and TOT resolution was not observed when participants were allowed to gesture. Taken together, these results fit the cognitive load account; when lexical retrieval is hard, gesture effectively reduces the cognitive load of TOT resolution for those who find the task especially taxing.     

On the prevalence of directly retrieved autobiographical memories

In this study, we used process measures to understand how people recall autobiographical memories in response to different word cues. In Experiment 1, participants provided verbal protocols when cued by object and emotion words. Participants also reported whether memories had come directly to mind. The self-reports and independent ratings of the verbal protocols indicated that directly recalled memories are much faster and more frequent than generated memories and are more prevalent when cued by objects than emotions. Experiment 2 replicated these results without protocols to eliminate any demand characteristics or output interference associated with the protocol method. In Experiment 3, we obtained converging results using a different method for assessing retrieval strategies by asking participants to assess the amount of information required to retrieve memories. The greater proportion of fast direct retrievals when memories are cued by objects accounts for reaction time differences between object and emotion cues, and not the commonly accepted explanation based on ease of retrieval. We argue for a dual-strategies approach that disputes generation as the canonical form of autobiographical memory retrieval and discuss the implication of these findings for the representation of personal events in autobiographical memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Musical stem completion: humming that note

This study looked at how people store and retrieve tonal music explicitly and implicitly using a production task. Participants completed an implicit task (tune stem completion) followed by an explicit task (cued recall). The tasks were identical except for the instructions at test time. They listened to tunes and were then presented with tune stems from previously heard tunes and novel tunes. For the implicit task, they were asked to sing a note they thought would come next musically. For the explicit task, they were asked to sing the note they remembered as coming next. Experiment 1 found that people correctly completed significantly more old stems than new stems. Experiment 2 investigated the characteristics of music that fuel retrieval by varying a surface feature of the tune (same timbre or different timbre) from study to test and the encoding task (semantic or nonsemantic). Although we did not find that implicit and explicit memory for music were significantly dissociated for levels of processing, we did find that surface features of music affect semanticjudgments and subsequent explicit retrieval.     

Age-of-acquisition effects in lexical and episodic memory tasks

This paper reports four experiments on the effects of word age of acquisition in verbal tasks. In all cases, multiple-regression analysis was used to assess the relative effects of age as opposed to other potentially relevant word attributes. Experiments 1 and 2 concerned lexical memory tasks. In Experiment 1, picture naming speeds were found to be mainly determined by picture codability and name age of acquisition. In Experiment 2, it was found that when subjects produced words in response to bigram cues, early acquired target words were more likely to be produced than later acquired words, even when frequency and other word attributes were taken into account. The remaining two experiments dealt with the episodic memory tasks of free recall and recognition. No age effects were found in these tasks. It was concluded that early age of acquisition facilitates retrieval from lexical memory but has no significant effect in episodic memory tasks.     

Manipulating cues in involuntary autobiographical memory: Verbal cues are more effective than pictorial cues

In two experiments, pictorial cues were compared with their verbal labels to assess their effectiveness in eliciting involuntary autobiographical memories. Cues were relatively complex in Experiment 1 (e.g., relaxing on a beach) and simple objects in Experiment 2 (e.g., a ball). In both experiments, participants went through a vigilance task in which they were presented with frequent nontarget and rare target visual stimuli. Pictures or their corresponding verbal labels were also displayed on both target and nontarget stimuli, but participants were told that these were irrelevant to the task. They were asked to interrupt the vigilance task whenever they became aware of task-unrelated mental contents and to report them. In both experiments, more involuntary memories were elicited in the verbal cue condition, rather than in the pictorial cue condition. This result is discussed in relation to previous work that highlighted the greater effectiveness of verbal cues in memory tasks.     

Verification of multiplication facts: an investigation using retrospective protocols

Retrospective verbal protocols collected throughout participants' performance of a multiplication verification task (e.g., "7 x 3 = 28, true or false?") documented a number of different strategies and changes in strategy use across different problem categories used for this common experimental task. Correct answer retrieval and comparison to the candidate answer was the modal but not the only strategy reported. Experiment 1 results supported the use of a calculation algorithm on some trials and the use of the difference between the candidate and correct answers (i.e., split) on others. Experiment 2 clearly demonstrated that participants sometimes bypassed retrieval by relying on the split information. Implications for mental arithmetic theories and the general efficacy of retrospective protocols are discussed.     

Nonspecific verbal cues alleviate forgetting by young children

Verbal reminders play a pervasive role in memory retrieval by human adults. In fact, relatively nonspecific verbal information (e.g. ‘Remember the last time we ate at that restaurant?’) will often cue vivid recollections of a past event even when presented outside the original encoding context. Although research has shown that memory retrieval by young children can be initiated by physical cues and by highly specific verbal cues, the effect of less specific verbal cues is not known. Using a Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) procedure, we examined the effect of nonspecific verbal cues on memory retrieval by 4‐year‐old children. Our findings showed that nonspecific verbal cues were as effective as highly specific nonverbal cues in facilitating memory retrieval after a 2‐week delay. We conclude that, at least by 4 years of age, children are able to use nonspecific verbal reminders to cue memory retrieval, and that the VRM paradigm may be particularly valuable in examining the age at which this initially occurs.     

Task-set inertia and memory-consolidation bottleneck in dual tasks

Three dual-task experiments examined the influence of processing a briefly presented visual object for deferred verbal report on performance in an unrelated auditory-manual reaction time (RT) task. RT was increased at short stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs) relative to long SOAs, showing that memory consolidation processes can produce a functional processing bottleneck in dual-task performance. In addition, the experiments manipulated the spatial compatibility of the orientation of the visual object and the side of the speeded manual response. This cross-task compatibility produced relative RT benefits only when the instruction for the visual task emphasized overlap at the level of response codes across the task sets (Experiment 1). However, once the effective task set was in place, it continued to produce cross-task compatibility effects even in single-task situations (“ignore” trials in Experiment 2) and when instructions for the visual task did not explicitly require spatial coding of object orientation (Experiment 3). Taken together, the data suggest a considerable degree of task-set inertia in dual-task performance, which is also reinforced by finding costs of switching task sequences (e.g., AC → BC vs. BC → BC) in Experiment 3.     

The effects of implementation intention strategies on prospective memory cue encoding

Implementation intentions, which include a structured verbal statement and mental imagery, improve prospective memory performance (i.e. remembering to execute delayed intentions). To investigate whether, and how, implementation intention strategies affect encoding processes we had participants complete a thought probe procedure immediately after forming the intention to remember to press Q when seeing fruit words. In Experiment 1, an implementation intention verbal statement (relative to control statement) significantly increased generation of high typicality exemplars (apple, banana, orange). In Experiment 2, an implementation intention imagery procedure (relative to control imagery) produced similar outcomes. In Experiment 3, combining the statement and imagery components of the implementation intention (relative to control statement and imagery) demonstrated even more potent effects (e.g. three-fold increase in fruit exemplars generated). In Experiment 4, we tested whether the control statement versus control imagery procedure differentially affected encoding, but these control procedures showed no significant differences. An interesting, unanticipated finding was that there was significantly less mind wandering in the implementation intention conditions relative to the control conditions. The current experiments provide novel information on the processes operating during intention encoding, and support the classic view that implementation intentions increase the encoding of specific retrieval cues.