Perceptual interference at encoding enhances item-specific encoding and disrupts relational encoding: Evidence from multiple recall tests

Interfering with perception during encoding can enhance later memory, a phenomenon known as the perceptual interference effect. This effect is investigated in the context of the item-specific-relational framework (e.g., Hunt & McDaniel, 1993), which suggests that the perceptual interference enhances item-specific encoding and impedes relational encoding. Two experiments performed with multiple recall tests support this view. Prior research indicates that item-specific processing increases item gains across tests, whereas relational processing protects against item losses (e.g., Burns, 1993; Klein, Loftus, Kihlstrom, & Aseron, 1989). Consistent with the item-specific-relational framework, perceptual interference produced significant increases in both item gains and losses relative to a control condition.     

Total retrieval time and hypermnesia: Investigating the benefits of multiple recall tests

Hypermnesia is an increase in recall over repeated tests. A core issue is the role of repeated testing, per se, versus total retrieval time. Prior research implies an equivalence between multiple recall tests and a single test of equal total duration, but theoretical analyses indicate otherwise. Three experiments investigated this issue using various study materials (unrelated word lists, related word lists, and a short story). In the first experimental session, the study phase was followed by a series of short recall tests or by a single, long test of equal total duration. Two days later, participants took a final recall test. The multiple and single test conditions produced equivalent performance in the first session, but the multiple test group exhibited less forgetting and fewer item losses in the final test. In a fourth experiment, using a brief delay (15 min) between the recall sessions, the multiple recall condition produced greater hypermnesia as well as fewer item losses. In addition, final recall was significantly higher in the multiple than in the single test condition in three of the four experiments. Thus, single and repeated recall tests of equal total duration are not functionally equivalent, but rather produce differences observable in subsequent recall tests.     

Effects of cross-modal and intramodal division of attention on perceptual implicit memory

Extant results motivate 3 hypotheses on the role of attention in perceptual implicit memory. The first proposes that only intramodal manipulations of attention reduce perceptual priming. The second attributes reduced priming to the effects of distractor selection operating in a central bottleneck process. The third proposes that manipulations of attention only affect priming via disrupted stimulus identification. In Experiment 1, a standard cross-modal manipulation did not disrupt priming in perceptual identification. However, when study words and distractors were presented synchronously, cross-modal and intramodal distraction reduced priming. Increasing response frequency in the distractor task produced effects of attention regardless of target-distractor synchrony. These effects generalized to a different category of distractors arguing against domain-specific interference. The results support the distractor-selection hypothesis.     

Can we neurologise about spiral after effect duration?

Spiral After Effect (SAE) durations and measures of judgmental delay on an audio shift task were taken from 26 subjects. The importance of a general dispositional factor relative to specific neurological factors in determining SAE duration was investigated.A significant correlation was found between the two test measures (r = 0.79, P < 0.001). The validity of the SAE as a measure of ‘arousal modulation’ (Claridge, 1967; Blowers, 1979) is brought into question, and an alternative account of the reported duration of after-effect is given in terms of a general disposition for decision making under conditions of uncertainty, determined by social conditioning factors.     

Exploring the role of attention during memory retrieval: Effects of semantic encoding and divided attention

Research on attention and memory suggests that semantic encoding leads to retrieval that is highly susceptible to divided attention. Three experiments tested this proposition and showed that dividing attention did not selectively affect semantically encoded items. Participants encoded a list of words in one of two ways: semantically or phonetically. Later, memory was assessed using either a standard recognition test (Experiment 1) or a rhyme recognition test (Experiments 2 and 3). The participants took the memory test either alone (full attention) or while simultaneously performing a secondary task (divided attention). Recognition accuracy was reduced by divided attention on both recognition tests, and semantically and phonetically encoded words were equally affected.     

Conceptual Implicit Memory in Advertising Research

A growing body of research examines the effect of advertising on implicit (unconscious or unintentional) forms of memory, in contrast with typical advertising research focusing on explicit (conscious or recollective) measures. This research primarily examines perceptual implicit memory, but conceptual implicit tests also have clear relevance for advertising research. The present experiments use a conceptual implicit test to determine if conceptual priming is obtained with brand materials and to assess the degree of explicit contamination (using a post‐test awareness questionnaire). The experiments first demonstrated that awareness is a threat to conceptual implicit measures within the advertising context. Steps were taken to reduce awareness, which were successful. Results suggest that brands can be conceptually primed when presented as text or as images but that awareness has to be accounted for as aware participants did show significantly more priming than those who were unaware (Experiment 3). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partisan Ambivalence,Split‐Ticket Voting,and Divided Government

Despite recent periods of unified party control of government in Washington, DC, divided government has been the norm in recent decades. Scholars agree that when both presidential and congressional candidates are on the ballot the driving force behind divided government at the national level is split‐ticket voting. In this study, I present a new psychological model of split‐ticket voting. I posit that ticket splitting is motivated by ambivalence over the two major political parties. I test this partisan ambivalence explanation on split‐ticket votes between president and Congress nationally between 1988 and 2004 and voting for state executive offices in Ohio in 1998. I find that partisan ambivalence predicts ticket splitting at both the national and state levels and does so about as well as some other explanations. The results of this study suggest that divided government occurs, in part, because voters are divided within themselves.     

Explanations determine the impact of information on financial investment judgments

Previous research has shown that some types of judgments are influenced by the results of an explanation‐seeking comprehension process. The present experiments investigated novice investors' stock price forecasts and investment decisions. Information presented in a narrative story order was hypothesized to promote the construction of a coherent mental representation that would affect how information was interpreted and subsequently used to predict stock price changes. The results showed that outcome information had a distinctively high impact, but only when the information was read in story order. These results imply that presentation order affects the mental representation of evidence relevant to the forecast, and the form of that mental representation moderates the impact of individual pieces of information on the ultimate judgment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The effects of generation on auditory implicit memory

The generation manipulation produces the classic functional dissociation between explicit and implicit memory. This dissociation has been explained by the transfer-appropriate processing (TAP) framework, which emphasizes the overlap in cognitive processes operative at encoding and at retrieval. However, the vast majority of implicit memory studies have been conducted in the visual modality; in the auditory modality, the effects of generation have never been investigated. In four experiments, we examined the effects of generating from semantic and nonsemantic cues on auditory implicit tests. Generating from antonyms produced a reversed generation effect on priming in auditory perceptual identification and word stem completion, while producing the traditional positive effect on explicit recognition. Generating from definitions, as well as from rhymes, also produced a reversed generation effect on auditory priming. These results are critical for more fully characterizing auditory priming and are consistent with an extended TAP analysis.     

The effects of levels-of-processing and organization on conceptual implicit memory in the category exemplar production test

The distinction between item-specific and relational information (Hunt & Einstein, 1981) may be relevant to accounts of conceptual priming in the category exemplar production task. In three experiments, the implications of this hypothesis were tested by examining the effects of organization and levels-of-processing (LOP) on this implicit test. Consistent with the hypothesis, the effects of LOP were greater when study lists were organized by category than when they were presented randomly. Furthermore, when subjects claiming test awareness or intentional retrieval were excluded from the analysis, the LOP effect was reduced (and, in fact, eliminated) in the random list condition but remained robust in the categorized condition. Finally, the experimental design of the LOP manipulation (i.e., mixed-list within, blocked-list within, or between subjects) did not moderate the effects of LOP on this priming task.