Manual pointing to remembered targets...but also in a remembered visual context

In this paper we investigated whether visual background information available during target presentation influences manual pointing to remembered targets. Younger and older participants manually pointed with their unseen hands to remembered or visible targets that were presented or not over a structured visible background. The results indicated that a structured visual background biased movement planning processes, but did not influence motor control processes, regardless of the fact that target location and the background were visible or remembered. How one uses visual background information for movement planning is not modified by aging.     

Task predictability and remembered duration

The effects of structural predictability on remembered duration judgments were examined within the context of the performance of a series of highly familiar tasks. Across a set of three experiments, task predictability was manipulated by the presence or absence of advance expectancies of what tasks were to be performed (Experiment 1), an (in)variant ordering of task performance (Experiment 2), and the placement of interruptions at between- versus within-task locations (Experiment 3). In each case, a higher degree of predictability led to more accurate and reliable duration estimates that were relatively free of bias, while uncertainty decreased accuracy through an overestimation bias. These results not only render insight into the mediational mechanisms responsible for temporal judgments, but also sug-gest some practical applications for everyday behavior.     

Relational judgments with remembered stimuli

Two experiments investigating the effect of the direction of a relational judgment on the speed of the judgment are reported. In both experiments, college students required more time to select the smaller of a pair of large animals than to select the larger. Conversely, the smaller of a pair of small animals was selected more quickly than was the larger. The magnitude of this “cross-over effect” was fully graded, increasing regularly with extremity, but the variability of the response times in each direction was unrelated to extremity. Individual animals were classified as “small” or “large” with almost perfect consistency. This pattern of results is used to evaluate several models of relational judgment; of these, the congruency model is shown to be inconsistent with these data.

     

The discriminability of remembered magnitudes

Psychometric functions and the associated indices of discriminative performance (i.e., the point of subjective equality [PSE], just noticeable difference, and Weber fraction) were obtained with the method of constant stimuli using perceptual and remembered line-length standards. Three important results were obtained. First, comparisons with a perceptual or a remembered standard were sensitive to variations of absolute stimulus differences with a common ratio; that is, Weber's law was violated. Second, relative to discriminative performance with the longest and shortest remembered standards, comparisons involving mid-range remembered standards displayed increased variability in the PSE and inflated Weber fractions, characteristic of a reduction in the quality of the memorial representation. Finally, large and negative time-order errors (TOE) were observed for successive line judgments but not for those involving remembered standards. The implications of these findings for research concerned with the relationships between perception and memory, as well as the TOE phenomenon, are discussed.     

Directional scanning of remembered visual patterns

We report a set of experiments that helps to define the conditions under which mental image scanning may be used spontaneously for specific, practical purposes. Subjects were shown a dot pattern, followed by an arrow, and their task was to say whether the arrow was pointing at any of the previously seen dots. When no advance information was provided about the arrow's location, reaction time for correctly verifying that an arrow was pointing at a dot increased linearly with increasing arrow-dot distance, and the subjects almost always reported scanning a mental image in order to make their judgments. However, when a cue for the arrow's location was presented 2 sec beforehand, reaction time was uncorrelated with distance, and most of the subjects reported using an alternative strategy based on the determination in advance of correct directions from that location to the dots. When given only 1 sec of advance information about arrow location, most subjects reported using a combined image-scanning and advanced determination strategy, resulting in a reaction time function that increased only for the farthest distances. Because in each of these experiments instructions to form or to scan mental images were never given, these findings address the most common criticisms of the image-scanning paradigm.     

Preferences for experienced versus remembered happiness

Abstract

Consider two types of happiness: one experienced on a moment-to-moment basis, the other a reflective evaluation where people feel happy looking back. Though researchers have measured and argued the merits of each, we inquired into which happiness people say they want. In five studies (N = 3351), we asked people to choose between experienced happiness and remembered happiness – for shorter timeframes (e.g. one’s next hour) and longer timeframes (e.g. one’s lifetime). The results revealed a consistent pattern: most people choose experienced happiness for longer timeframes, but not for shorter timeframes. Since people typically live hour-to-hour, these findings imply that people may end up living a different version of happiness than what they believe is a happy life.     

The role of learning in remembered duration

In two experiments, the effects of learning on both the accuracy and bias of duration judgments were examined. In Experiment 1, subjects learned one of two tasks (i.e., using a computer software package, building a model car), containing a varying number of action steps, over a one-, three-, or five-trial period. Retrospective judgments of a task’s total duration revealed that accuracy was high at intermediate stages of learning but was low at early stages due to an overestimation bias and low at later stages due to an underestimation bias. The number of action steps within a task influenced behavior only at early learning stages where more action steps led to significantly longer duration estimates. Experiment 2 acted as a converging operation in which novice and experienced pianists were asked to estimate, in advance, how long they thought it would take them to play melodies that varied in their degree of familiarity (i.e. recently learned, well learned, extremely well learned). When these estimates were compared with the melodies’ actual playing times, results revealed a similar pattern of accuracy and bias as found in Experiment 1. These findings are discussed in terms of a “structural remembering model” that emphasizes the role of event predictability in time estimation behavior.     

Psychophysical functions for perceived and remembered distance

Two separate groups of subjects made magnitude estimations of the distances to fifteen objects (from 20 ft to 14.28 miles away) situated in a landscape. On day 1 of the experiment both groups learned the names and locations of the objects while viewing them from the top of a small mountain. On day 2 the perception group (N = 19) judged the distances to the objects while viewing them from the top of the mountain, whereas the memory group (N = 18) judged the distances while visualizing the landscape from memory. The data for both groups were well fit by power functions; the exponent was reliably smaller for the memory group (0.596) than for the perception group (0.811). Both groups drew maps of the landscape (reproduction task) from memory and the exponents were 0.483 and 0.514 for the memory and perception groups, respectively. The results are discussed in light of possible transformations performed on the original stimulus inputs by the sensory/perceptual and the memorial systems.     

Print adverts: Not remembered but memorable

Attempts to measure advertising effectiveness have relied on explicit memory measures based on recall or recognition. However, recent cognitive research has shown that not only is it possible to measure unconscious effects of prior experience through implicit tests of memory, but that such performance is independent of explicit recollection. The present study sought to determine whether it is possible to demonstrate the same pattern of findings using print advertising in an ecologically valid situation. Eighty subjects saw 25 full-page colour magazine adverts in either a deliberate or incidental study condition and subsequently rated (on four salient dimensions) a set of 50 adverts, which included the target adverts. Following the ratings subjects were asked to indicate which of the adverts they recognized as having been in the original set. While the deliberate study group recognized around 60 per cent of the adverts, the incidental study group recognized only 11 per cent. However, both groups showed the same positive bias in attitudes towards the adverts they had been exposed to compared to the ones they had not seen before. Thus, in line with by the cognitive literature, it is possible to show shifts in attitudes that are independent of conscious recollection. This data questions advertisers' reliance one explicit memory tests as measures of advertising effectiveness.     

Items on the left are better remembered

Neurologically intact individuals show a spatial processing bias in perception tasks, specifically showing a bias towards the left in bisecting lines. We present evidence for a novel finding that a leftwards bias occurs in short-term memory for recently presented arbitrary bindings of visual features. Three experiments are reported, two of which involve a total of over 60,000 participants with a small number of trials for each. Experiment 3 involved a larger number of trials for each of 144 participants. Participants reproduced from immediate memory arrays of shape–colour–location bindings. In all three experiments, significantly more errors were observed in reproduction of items presented on the right of the array than on the left. Results could not be accounted for by perceptual errors, or by order of presentation or order of reproduction. Findings suggest that items presented on the left are better remembered, indicating a spatial asymmetry in forming or retrieving feature bindings in visual short-term memory.     

Differentiating falsely recognized faces from incompletely remembered faces

This study describes an experimental method for determining whether people who recognize a face containing both some target features and some new features are falsely recognizing the face or whether they are incompletely remembering it. Twenty min. after studying a target face either one time or a third time, 136 participants were instructed to examine six test faces similar to the target and to select two test faces sharing only target features and no unstudied features. The likelihood of selecting two test faces sharing four target features and no incorrect features was significantly greater than chance only for the 67 participants who studied the target three times. Because the two faces selected as containing only target features did not share any unstudied features, they were not falsely recognized; instead, they were indicative of correct but incomplete memory for the thrice-studied target.     

Prismatic displacement and the remembered location of targets

Following adaptation, only the trained limb misreaches to the remembered location of targets. This suggests a change in the feit position of the trained limb, but conflicts with recent reports, and with the hypothesis that when a limb changes, the remembered location of targets encountered only by that limb undergo some change too. It suggests that information is stored independently of the mode of acquisition.     

Determinants of the remembered utility of aversive sounds

Retrospective evaluations of aversive episodes were studied in the context of a general model of "judgment by prototype" that has been applied in other situations. Unpleasant sounds of variable loudness and duration were the stimuli. In Experiment 1, continuous reports of annoyance closely tracked variations of noise intensity. Hypotheses about the determinants of retrospective evaluation were examined in Experiment 2. Experiment 3 confirmed a prediction of judgment by prototype: The effects of sound duration and intensity are additive in multitrial experiments. Experiment 4 confirmed a robust preference for aversive episodes that are "improved" by adding a period of reduced aversiveness.     

Things learned in early adulthood are remembered best

Evidence is reviewed that for older adults the period from 10 to 30 years of age produces recall of the most autobiographical memories, the most vivid memories, and the most important memories. It is the period from which peoples’ favorite films, music, and books come and the period from which they judge the most important world events to have originated. Factual, semantic, general-knowledge, multiple-choice questions about the Academy Awards, the World Series, and current events from this period were answered more accurately by two different groups of 30 older adults tested 10 years apart. A cognitive theory based on the importance of transitions and several noncognitive theories are considered as explanations of this pervasive phenomenon.