Reduced effects of pictorial distinctiveness on false memory following dynamic visual noise

High levels of false recognition for non-presented items typically occur following exposure to lists of associated words. These false recognition effects can be reduced by making the studied items more distinctive by the presentation of pictures during encoding. One explanation of this is that during recognition, participants expect or attempt to retrieve distinctive pictorial information in order to evaluate the study status of the test item. If this involves the retrieval and use of visual imagery, then interfering with imagery processing should reduce the effectiveness of pictorial information in false memory reduction. In the current experiment, visual-imagery processing was disrupted at retrieval by the use of dynamic visual noise (DVN). It was found that effects of DVN dissociated true from false memory. Memory for studied words was not influenced by the presence of an interfering noise field. However, false memory was increased and the effects of picture-induced distinctiveness was eliminated. DVN also increased false recollection and remember responses to unstudied items.     

EEG and fMRI agree: Mental arithmetic is the easiest form of imagery to detect

fMRI and EEG during mental imagery provide alternative methods of detecting awareness in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) without reliance on behaviour. Because using fMRI in patients with DOC is difficult, studies increasingly employ EEG. However, there has been no verification that these modalities provide converging information at the individual subject level. The present study examined simultaneous EEG and fMRI in healthy volunteers during six mental imagery tasks to determine whether one mental imagery task generates more robust activation across subjects; whether activation can be predicted from familiarity with the imagined activity; and whether EEG and fMRI converge upon the same conclusions about individual imagery performance. Mental arithmetic generated the most robust activation in the majority of subjects for both EEG and fMRI, and level of activation could not be predicted from familiarity, with either modality. We conclude that overall, EEG and fMRI agree regarding individual mental imagery performance.     

Mental time travel ability and the Mental Reinstatement of Context for crime witnesses

Mental time travel ability marks how well the phenomenological aspects of events are mentally re-experienced during recall. The Cognitive Interview (CI) elicits eyewitness information. One of its techniques, Mental Reinstatement of Context (MRC), asks eyewitnesses to reinstate the incident’s context mentally before recall. Fifty-six participants watched a simulated crime video. Self-report measures were then taken to estimate general mental time travel ability. Participants were questioned subsequently about the video. Eyewitness performance under MRC was compared with the CI’s Report Everything (RE) technique, wherein eyewitnesses recall everything they can but with no invitation to mentally reinstate the context. There was no effect of interview condition on accuracy of recall; however, general mental time travel ability was positively associated with the amount of correct and incorrect information produced under MRC, but not RE, conditions. This is the first empirical demonstration that MRC instructions engage the mental time travel capacities they purport to.     

Predictions,precision, and agentive attention

Ransom, Fazelpour, and Mole (this journal - 2017) raise an important puzzle for the ‘prediction error minimization’ account of cognitive processing. That account depicts all cognitive processing as fundamentally in the business of minimizing prediction errors concerning the evolving flow of sensory information. One of the cornerstones of these highly ambitious, would-be unifying accounts is their depiction of attention as nothing other than the process of optimizing the precision (inverse variance) of critical prediction error signals. But that story, Ransom et al. suggest, cannot accommodate voluntary shifts of attention. In this paper, I show why this challenge to the grand unifying project fails. It fails because it locates the origins of voluntary attention in complexes of unanalyzed desire rather than in changing complexes of beliefs.     

Exploring the experience of episodic past,future, and counterfactual thinking in younger and older adults: A study of a Colombian sample

Although extant evidence suggests that many neural and cognitive mechanisms underlying episodic past, future, and counterfactual thinking overlap, recent results have uncovered differences among these three processes. However, the extent to which there may be age-related differences in the phenomenological characteristics associated with episodic past, future and counterfactual thinking remains unclear. This study used adapted versions of the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire and the Autobiographical Interview in younger and older adults to investigate the subjective experience of episodic past, future and counterfactual thinking. The results suggest that, across all conditions, younger adults generated more internal details than older adults. However, older adults generated more external details for episodic future and counterfactual thinking than younger adults. Additionally, younger and older adults generated more internal details, and gave higher sensory and contextual ratings, for memories rather than future and counterfactual thoughts. Methodological and theoretical consequences for extant theories of mental simulation are discussed.     

基于fNIRS的运动执行与运动想象脑激活模式比较

使用《运动想象问卷−修订版》筛选出的30名被试(男女各半), 采用功能性近红外光谱成像技术(fNIRS)监测被试在执行实际举哑铃(男生, 4磅和8磅; 女生, 2磅和4磅)任务和想象举同等重量哑铃任务时, 其大脑皮层氧合血红蛋白浓度的变化。结果发现：男女被试在运动执行与运动想象任务下都激活了主运动皮层; 且运动执行的大脑激活水平高于运动想象。在执行实际运动任务时, 运动强度显著影响大脑皮层血氧浓度的变化, 表现出左半球偏侧化优势; 在执行想象运动任务时, 运动强度没有影响大脑皮层血氧浓度的变化, 且无偏侧化现象。     

Bridging the intention–behavior gap: Inducing implementation intentions through persuasive appeals

The potential of using implementation intentions—action plans that link a critical situational cue to a specific goal-directed behavior—to bridge the intention–behavior gap in consumer behavior has been limited by the practice of using explicit instructions to induce the construct. In two studies, we therefore tested the effectiveness of an indirect, persuasive strategy that benefits from the positive consequences of implementation intentions by ‘mimicking’ their underlying psychological processes. Experiment 1 showed that a strategy presenting vivid information on critical cues and appropriate behavioral responses affected mental imagery. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this strategy affected actual purchase behavior.     

Self-reflection and the temporal focus of the wandering mind

Current accounts suggest that self-referential thought serves a pivotal function in the human ability to simulate the future during mind-wandering. Using experience sampling, this hypothesis was tested in two studies that explored the extent to which self-reflection impacts both retrospection and prospection during mind-wandering. Study 1 demonstrated that a brief period of self-reflection yielded a prospective bias during mind-wandering such that participants’ engaged more frequently in spontaneous future than past thought. In Study 2, individual differences in the strength of self-referential thought — as indexed by the memorial advantage for self rather than other-encoded items — was shown to vary with future thinking during mind-wandering. Together these results confirm that self-reflection is a core component of future thinking during mind-wandering and provide novel evidence that a key function of the autobiographical memory system may be to mentally simulate events in the future.