Assessment of calibration for reconstructed eye-witness memories

Two experiments examined confidence judgments associated with eyewitness memory for events to misinformation [Loftus, E. F. (1975). Leading questions and the eyewitness report. Cognitive Psychology, 7, 560-572]. Participants in each experiment watched videos depicting crimes and either responded to questionnaires (Experiment 1) or read narratives (Experiment 2) containing veridical or non-veridical information. Upon testing for memory performance 24 h later, participants exposed to misinformation accepted the misinformation as part of their memory of the events in the videos. In both experiments, confidence judgments of participants subjected to misinformation were high and comparable to those of participants not subjected to misinformation. The relationship between accurate responding and confidence was assessed via calibration analysis [Yates, J. F. (1990). Judgments and decision making. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall]. Performance on various measures of calibration was generally better for participants who were not exposed to misinformation. We conclude that confidence judgments can depend on factors other than those that improve the accuracy of memory, such as the retrieval fluency of one’s memories.     

Situational information contributes to object categorization and inference

Three experiments demonstrated that situational information contributes to the categorization of functional object categories, as well as to inferences about these categories. When an object was presented in the context of setting and event information, categorization was more accurate than when the object was presented in isolation. Inferences about the object similarly became more accurate as the amount of situational information present during categorization increased. The benefits of situational information were higher when both setting and event information were available than when only setting information was available. These findings indicate that situational information about settings and events is stored with functional object categories in memory. Categorization and inference become increasingly accurate as the information available during categorization matches situational information stored with the category.     

Stress state mediation between environmental variables and performance: The case of noise and vigilance

Effects of environmental variables on performance may be mediated by individual stress states. In this study the effects of jet-aircraft engine noise and signal salience on vigilance performance and self-reported stress state were examined. One hundred and ninety-two (96 female and 96 male) participants were randomly assigned to four experimental conditions consisting of 48 participants each resulting from the factorial combination of signal salience (high and low salience signals) and noise (95 dBA intermittent aircraft noise or quiet). Performance metrics and self-reported stress state (Task Engagement, Distress, and Worry) were collected. Performance in the noise conditions was significantly better than in the quiet conditions. Performance in the high salience conditions was significantly better than the low salience conditions. Noise elevated Task Engagement and low signal salience elevated Distress. Moreover, structural equation model analyses were used to examine stress state mediation between the experimental variables and performance. These analyses indicated Engagement mediates between noise and vigilance performance.     

Models of high-dimensional semantic space predict language-mediated eye movements in the visual world

In the visual world paradigm, participants are more likely to fixate a visual referent that has some semantic relationship with a heard word, than they are to fixate an unrelated referent [Cooper, R. M. (1974). The control of eye fixation by the meaning of spoken language. A new methodology for the real-time investigation of speech perception, memory, and language processing. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 813-839]. Here, this method is used to examine the psychological validity of models of high-dimensional semantic space. The data strongly suggest that these corpus-based measures of word semantics predict fixation behavior in the visual world and provide further evidence that language-mediated eye movements to objects in the concurrent visual environment are driven by semantic similarity rather than all-or-none categorical knowledge. The data suggest that the visual world paradigm can, together with other methodologies, converge on the evidence that may help adjudicate between different theoretical accounts of the psychological semantics.     

Save the last dance II: unwanted serial position effects in figure skating judgments

Serial position effects may occur whenever options are judged in sequence, as is the case in figure skating competitions. International figure skating competitions consist of at least two rounds, with serial position being randomized in the first round. Figure skaters with better scores in the first round perform later in the second round. Despite the initial randomization of serial position, figure skaters who perform later in the first round receive better scores in first and in the second round. The findings presented here replicate those of Bruine de Bruin (2005) [Save the last dance for me: unwanted serial position effects in jury evaluations. Acta Psychologica, 118, 245-260], using a larger dataset, and addressing potential concerns about Bruine de Bruin's analyses.     

Verbal coding and the storage of form-position associations in visual-spatial short-term memory

Short-term memory for form-position associations was assessed using an object relocation task. Participants attempted to remember the positions of either three or five Japanese Kanji characters, presented on a computer monitor. Following a short blank interval, participants were presented with 2 alternative Kanji, only 1 of which was present in the initial stimulus, and the set of locations occupied in the initial stimulus. They attempted to select the correct item and relocate it back to its original position. The proportion of correct item selections showed effects of both articulatory suppression and memory load. In contrast, the conditional probability of location given a correct item selection showed an effect of load but no effect of suppression. These results are consistent with the proposal that access to visual memory is aided by verbal recoding, but that there is no verbal contribution to memory for the association between form and position.     

Symmetry and repetition in perspective

Although ecologically relevant, perspective views of symmetries and repetitions have hardly been investigated. Any symmetry or repetition that is not oriented orthogonally to the line of sight yields perspective distortions on the retina. In this study, these distortions are analyzed in terms of first-order structures (i.e., virtual lines between corresponding points) and second-order structures (i.e., correlation quadrangles formed by two virtual lines). In the literature, these structures have been proposed to guide the detection of fron to parallel symmetry and repetition. But what about perspective views? First, the analysis in this study shows that perspective distorts the retinal first-order and second-order structures of symmetry and repetition differently. Second, the results of two experiments on this distortion difference suggest that, in perspective views, symmetry and repetition detection is not preceded by normalization but occurs directly on the basis of the retinal first-order and second-order structures.     

Timed picture naming norms for 590 pictures in Dutch

The present study presents timed norms for 590 pictures in Belgian Dutch. We determined name agreement and response latencies. Furthermore, we assessed which factors influenced the naming latencies of the pictures. It appeared that age-of-acquisition, the H-statistic (an index of name agreement), and the number of syllables of the dominant response were significant predictors of the naming latencies. These results are discussed in comparison with previous findings.     

Aging and performance on an everyday-based visual search task

Research on aging and visual search often requires older people to search computer screens for target letters or numbers. The aim of this experiment was to investigate age-related differences using an everyday-based visual search task in a large participant sample (n=261) aged 20-88 years. Our results show that: (1) old-old adults have more difficulty with triple conjunction searches with one highly distinctive feature compared to young-old and younger adults; (2) age-related declines in conjunction searches emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age; (3) age-related declines are evident in feature searches on target absent trials, as older people seem to exhaustively and serially search the whole display to determine a target's absence. Together, these findings suggest that declines emerge in middle age then progress throughout older age in feature integration, guided search, perceptual grouping and/or spreading suppression processes. Discussed are implications for enhancing everyday functioning throughout adulthood.