Manipulability impairs association-memory: Revisiting effects of incidental motor processing on verbal paired-associates

Imageability is known to enhance association-memory for verbal paired-associates. High-imageability words can be further subdivided by manipulability, the ease by which the named object can be functionally interacted with. Prior studies suggest that motor processing enhances item-memory, but impairs association-memory. However, these studies used action verbs and concrete nouns as the high- and low-manipulability words, respectively, confounding manipulability with word class. Recent findings demonstrated that nouns can serve as both high- and low-manipulability words (e.g., CAMERA and TABLE, respectively), allowing us to avoid this confound. Here participants studied pairs of words that consisted of all possible pairings of high- and low-manipulability words and were tested with immediate cued recall. Recall was worse for pairs that contained high-manipulability words. In free recall, participants recalled more high- than low-manipulability words. Our results provide further evidence that manipulability influences memory, likely occurring through automatic motor imagery.     

More conflict does not trigger more adjustment of cognitive control for subsequent events: A study of the bivalency effect

Encountering a conflict triggers an adjustment of cognitive control. This adjustment of cognitive control can even affect subsequent performance. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether more conflict triggers more adjustment of cognitive control for subsequent performance. To this end, we focussed on the bivalency effect, that is, the adjustment of cognitive control following the conflict induced by bivalent stimuli (i.e., stimuli with relevant features for two tasks). In two experiments, we tested whether the amount of conflict triggered by bivalent stimuli affected the bivalency effect. Bivalent stimuli were either compatible (i.e., affording one response) or incompatible (i.e., affording two different responses). Thus, compatible bivalent stimuli involved a task conflict, whereas incompatible bivalent stimuli involved a task and a response conflict. The results showed that the bivalency effect was not affected by this manipulation. This indicates that more conflict does not trigger more adjustment of cognitive control for subsequent performance. Therefore, only the occurrence of conflict – not its amount – is determinant for cognitive control.     

Parallel averaging of size is possible but range-limited: A reply to Marchant,Simons, and De Fockert

In their recent paper, Marchant, Simons, and De Fockert (2013) claimed that the ability to average between multiple items of different sizes is limited by small samples of arbitrarily attended members of a set. This claim is based on a finding that observers are good at representing the average when an ensemble includes only two sizes distributed among all items (regular sets), but their performance gets worse when the number of sizes increases with the number of items (irregular sets). We argue that an important factor not considered by Marchant et al. (2013) is the range of size variation that was much bigger in their irregular sets. We manipulated this factor across our experiments and found almost the same efficiency of averaging for both regular and irregular sets when the range was stabilized. Moreover, highly regular sets consisting only of small and large items (two-peaks distributions) were averaged with greater error than sets with small, large, and intermediate items, suggesting a segmentation threshold determining whether all variable items are perceived as a single ensemble or distinct subsets. Our results demonstrate that averaging can actually be parallel but the visual system has some difficulties with it when some items differ too much from others.     

Stimulus spacing effects in duration perception are larger for auditory stimuli: Data and a model

Models of duration bisection have focused on the effects of stimulus spacing and stimulus modality. However, interactions between stimulus spacing and stimulus modality have not been examined systematically. Two duration bisection experiments that address this issue are reported. Experiment 1 showed that stimulus spacing influenced the classification of auditory, but not visual, stimuli. Experiment 2 used a wider stimulus range, and showed stimulus spacing effects for both visual and auditory stimuli, although the effects were larger for auditory stimuli. A version of Temporal Range Frequency Theory was applied to the data, and was used to demonstrate that the qualitative pattern of results can be captured with the single assumption that the durations of visual stimuli are less discriminable from one another than are the durations of auditory stimuli.     

Garner interference and temporal information processing

The aim of the study was to explore whether temporal information processing can interfere with performance of a non-temporal task. A new methodology based on the Garner paradigm was employed. Participants were asked to classify two-dimensional stimuli according to either length or duration, with and without variation in the other (task-irrelevant) dimension. Garner interference was detected only with respect to classification by length when irrelevant variation in duration was present. Stroop interference was detected only in classification by length across compatible and non-compatible values of length and duration. Classification by length took more time when done with variation in duration than when duration was constant. Classification by length also took more time when length and duration were not compatible than when they were compatible. The findings indicate that the processing of duration is similar to the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The processing of duration consumes attentional resources and can interfere with the processing of other perceptual dimensions. The findings support attentional models of prospective duration judgment.     

Shared and distinct factors driving attention and temporal processing across modalities

In addition to the classic finding that “sounds are judged longer than lights,” the timing of auditory stimuli is often more precise and accurate than is the timing of visual stimuli. In cognitive models of temporal processing, these modality differences are explained by positing that auditory stimuli more automatically capture and hold attention, more efficiently closing an attentional switch that allows the accumulation of pulses marking the passage of time (Penney, Gibbon, & Meck, 2000). However, attention is a multifaceted construct, and there has been little attempt to determine which aspects of attention may be related to modality effects. We used visual and auditory versions of the Continuous Temporal Expectancy Task (CTET; O'Connell et al., 2009) a timing task previously linked to behavioral and electrophysiological measures of mind-wandering and attention lapses, and tested participants with or without the presence of a video distractor. Performance in the auditory condition was generally superior to that in the visual condition, replicating standard results in the timing literature. The auditory modality was also less affected by declines in sustained attention indexed by declines in performance over time. In contrast, distraction had an equivalent impact on performance in the two modalities. Analysis of individual differences in performance revealed further differences between the two modalities: Poor performance in the auditory condition was primarily related to boredom whereas poor performance in the visual condition was primarily related to distractibility. These results suggest that: 1) challenges to different aspects of attention reveal both modality-specific and nonspecific effects on temporal processing, and 2) different factors drive individual differences when testing across modalities.     

Different mechanisms for role relations versus verb–action congruence effects: Evidence from ERPs in picture–sentence verification

Extant accounts of visually situated language processing do make general predictions about visual context effects on incremental sentence comprehension; these, however, are not sufficiently detailed to accommodate potentially different visual context effects (such as a scene–sentence mismatch based on actions versus thematic role relations, e.g., (Altmann & Kamide, 2007; Knoeferle & Crocker, 2007; Taylor & Zwaan, 2008; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998)). To provide additional data for theory testing and development, we collected event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as participants read a subject–verb–object sentence (500 ms SOA in Experiment 1 and 300 ms SOA in Experiment 2), and post-sentence verification times indicating whether or not the verb and/or the thematic role relations matched a preceding picture (depicting two participants engaged in an action). Though incrementally processed, these two types of mismatch yielded different ERP effects. Role–relation mismatch effects emerged at the subject noun as anterior negativities to the mismatching noun, preceding action mismatch effects manifest as centro-parietal N400s greater to the mismatching verb, regardless of SOAs. These two types of mismatch manipulations also yielded different effects post-verbally, correlated differently with a participant's mean accuracy, verbal working memory and visual-spatial scores, and differed in their interactions with SOA. Taken together these results clearly implicate more than a single mismatch mechanism for extant accounts of picture–sentence processing to accommodate.     

Interference resolution in face perception and name retrieval

Selective retrieval is a rather difficult task, and especially so when one attempts to retrieve personal representations such as faces or names. Retrieval of memories under strong competition conditions is pervasive in human memory and some have suggested that inhibitory control is used to overcome interference between competing stimuli. In the present study, we used the retrieval practice paradigm to investigate if competition among personal representations (such as facial features and names) is also resolved by inhibitory mechanisms. This question is theoretically relevant, since personal representations have been said to have a special status on cognition. Moreover, some models of face recognition assume that interference can arise between different representations, but that this interference would be automatically and rapidly solved, with no need for a controlled inhibitory mechanism to act. In two experiments we showed RIF for facial features and familiar names, but only when participants had to actively retrieve some information. This suggests that personal information is subject to mechanisms of inhibitory control, which could help explain everyday life difficulties in processes such as face feature recognition or name retrieval.     

Age of acquisition affects object recognition: evidence from visual duration thresholds

The impact of age of acquisition (AoA) on object recognition was explored in three experiments measuring visual duration threshold (VDT) for the identification of pictures labelled with early and late acquired names. Participants viewed briefly displayed images preceded and followed by a pattern mask. The minimum display duration required for correct identification was shorter for pictures labelled with early names than for those labelled with late names. In Experiments 2 and 3 we explored the effects of two forms of visual degradation on VDT for pictures with early and late acquired names. Both degradation by superimposed visual elements, and degradation by contrast reduction extended VDT, but only the former interacted with AoA. We conclude that both AoA and degradation by superimposed visual elements affect the efficiency of visual object recognition, but only degradation by contrast and not AoA affects the efficiency of earlier pre-recognition processes.     

Maintaining readiness for mental rotation interferes with perceptual processes in children but with response selection in adults

Previous work revealed that mental rotation is not purely inserted into a same-different discrimination task. Instead, response time (RT) is slowed to upright stimuli in blocks containing rotated stimuli compared to RT to the same upright stimuli in pure upright blocks. This interference effect is a result of maintaining readiness for mental rotation. In two experiments we investigated previous evidence that these costs depend upon distinct sub-processes for children and for adults. In Experiment 1, the maintaining costs turned out to be independent of the visual quality of the stimulus for adults but not so for children. Experiment 2 revealed that the maintaining costs were greatly reduced for adults when they performed mental rotation as a go-no-go task, but not so for children. Taken together, both experiments provide evidence that whereas perceptual processes seem to be important for school-age children to maintain readiness for mental rotation, response selection is relevant for adults.