Encoding strategy affects false recall and recognition: Evidence from categorical study material

The present research investigated memory vulnerability to distortions. Different encoding strategies were used when categorized lists were studied. The authors assumed that an imagery strategy would be responsible for decreasing false memories more than a word-whispering strategy, which is consistent with the model of semantic access and previous research in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm (the DRM paradigm; Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). A normative study of category lists and 4 experiments were conducted to verify the memory vulnerability to different encoding strategies (imagery, word-whispering, control). Half of subjects recalled and half recognized previously studied words. The results revealed a marked reduction in false recognition and recall after imagery encoding, relative to after word-whispering encoding.     

解魅、分化与现代性

在前现代社会里,由于人们对生活采取一种一体化的、富有意义的态度,一元论的世界观产生了。在那个时代,人们不能清楚地区分不同的行动和不同的领域。随着世界的“解魅”,这种整体性的“世界图景”开始消解,行动的模式和标准出现分化,与行动相关的制度和系统也相应地分立,这便是现代社会的本质。并且,由于客观的价值秩序消亡了,我们的时代目睹了价值多元论的趋势,而这与自由主义的价值中立的原则紧密相关。     

Action and language: Contextual action theory in counselling

Contextual action theory is presented as a conceptual framework useful for grounding the recent work in counselling and career development called Life Design. Based on the premise of the goal-directed nature of human action, this approach has links to language in theories of naive action and attribution, and theory of mind. Contextual action theory has an associated research method that has been used to generate a range of research studies that have described actions and projects in the career development and counselling domains. The link that contextual action theory provides between research and practice allows the identification of five tasks for the counselling practitioner informed by this approach.     

Simple actions influence pop-out search

Recent research has revealed that a simple action (pressing a computer key) produced in response to a visual object prioritizes features of that object in subsequent visual search. The effects of simple action, however, have only been studied with search displays that required serial search. Here we explored whether simple actions have an effect when the target in visual search is always a salient singleton. Participants viewed a coloured shape at the beginning of each trial, and sometimes they acted (pressed the space bar) in response to it. In the subsequent search task, after acting (but not after viewing), the previously-seen colour affected search performance even though the target was always a salient singleton and the colour was uninformative. The results reveal that prior action can interact with bottom-up salience during search. Implications for our understanding of both visual search and repetition priming are discussed.     

The evolutionary emergence of what we call “emotions”

The term “emotion” is not precise. It refers to an assemblage of processes that contribute to how we relate to the social and physical world. We need to understand the functional bases of such processes, and one such basis is action readiness. Action readiness is the preparation for movement or action. Preparation for movement occurs in all animals. In more recently evolved species, such as birds and mammals, preparation for directed action is found as well. Action readiness is the basis for the states we now call emotions, but its importance goes far beyond emotions: action readiness is an elementary aspect of the way autonomous living beings regulate their interactions with the world.     

How might degrees of belief shift? On action conflicting with professed beliefs

People often act in ways that appear incompatible with their sincere assertions (such as trembling in fear when their death becomes an imminent possibility, despite earlier professing that “Death is not bad!”). But how might we explain such cases? On the shifting view, subjects’ degrees of belief (or degrees of confidence) may be highly sensitive to changes in context. This paper articulates and refines this view, after defending it against recent criticisms. It details two mechanisms by which degrees of beliefs may shift.     

Stimulus–response correspondence effect as a function of temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant information processing

The stimulus–response correspondence (SRC) effect refers to advantages in performance when stimulus and response correspond in dimensions or features, even if the common features are irrelevant to the task. Previous research indicated that the SRC effect depends on the temporal course of stimulus information processing. The current study investigated how the temporal overlap between relevant and irrelevant stimulus processing influences the SRC effect. In this experiment, the irrelevant stimulus (a previously associated tone) preceded the relevant stimulus (a coloured rectangle). The irrelevant and relevant stimuli onset asynchrony was varied to manipulate the temporal overlap between the irrelevant and relevant stimuli processing. Results indicated that the SRC effect size varied as a quadratic function of the temporal overlap between the relevant stimulus and irrelevant stimulus. This finding extends previous experimental observations that the SRC effect size varies in an increasing or decreasing function with reaction time. The current study demonstrated a quadratic function between effect size and the temporal overlap.     

Cognitive costs of encoding novel natural activities: Can “learning by doing” be distracting and deceptive?

Findings from action memory research suggest that the enactment of simple actions and naturalistic activities results in similar memory performance to that from their observation. However, little is known about potential differences between the conditions during the encoding of the to-be-studied actions and activities. We analysed the cognitive costs of encoding two novel naturalistic activities studied via enactment or via observation in four experiments. In addition to memory performance, we measured objective cognitive costs with a secondary task and subjective cognitive costs with repeated ratings of mental effort and estimates of general activity difficulty. Memory performance was comparable across study conditions throughout all experiments. The enactment of activities repeatedly resulted in slower reaction times in the secondary task than did observation, suggesting higher objective costs. In contrast, subjective costs were rated lower after enactment than after observation. Findings from a pantomimic enactment condition suggested that the low ratings of subjective costs after enactment represent a misinterpretation of task demands. Our findings imply that the widespread belief about “learning by doing” as an easy way of learning does not stem from an actual advantage in memory performance, but rather from continuous feedback about one's performance resulting from enactment.     

Integration of spatial information across vision and language

Three experiments investigated whether spatial information acquired from vision and language is maintained in distinct spatial representations on the basis of the input modality. Participants studied a visual and a verbal layout of objects at different times from either the same (Experiments 1 and 2) or different learning perspectives (Experiment 3) and then carried out a series of pointing judgments involving objects from the same or different layouts. Results from Experiments 1 and 2 indicated that participants pointed equally fast on within- and between-layout trials; coupled with verbal reports from participants, this result suggests that they integrated all locations in a single spatial representation during encoding. However, when learning took place from different perspectives in Experiment 3, participants were faster to respond to within- than between-layout trials and indicated that they kept separate representations during learning. Results are compared to those from similar studies that involved layouts learned from perception only.     

内隐和外显记忆任务之间的实验性分离:编码程度和提取要求的作用

通过操纵编码程度(实验1)和提取要求(实验2)比较了内隐和外显记忆任务之间的操作变化.结果表明,编码时的语义和非语义加工之间存在着相互抑制的倾向;提取要求中更多意识成份的参与使先前情节中的语义成份得到更多的提取,而很少影响非语义成份的提取,编码程度和提取要求之间存在着相互作用.