Heuristics and criterion setting during selective encoding in visual decision making: Evidence from eye movements

When making a decision, people spend longer looking at the option they ultimately choose compared to other options—termed the gaze bias effect—even during their first encounter with the options (Glaholt & Reingold, 2009a, 2009b; Schotter, Berry, McKenzie & Rayner, 2010). Schotter et al. (2010) suggested that this is because people selectively encode decision-relevant information about the options, online during the first encounter with them. To extend their findings and test this claim, we recorded subjects' eye movements as they made judgements about pairs of images (i.e., which one was taken more recently or which one was taken longer ago). We manipulated whether both images were presented in the same colour content (e.g., both in colour or both in black-and-white) or whether they differed in colour content and the extent to which colour content was a reliable cue to relative recentness of the images. We found that the magnitude of the gaze bias effect decreased when the colour content cue was not reliable during the first encounter with the images, but no modulation of the gaze bias effect in remaining time on the trial. These data suggest people do selectively encode decision-relevant information online.     

Trial-by-trial adjustments in control triggered by incidentally encoded semantic cues

Cognitive control mechanisms provide the flexibility to rapidly adapt to contextual demands. These contexts can be defined by top-down goals—but also by bottom-up perceptual factors, such as the location at which a visual stimulus appears. There are now several experiments reporting contextual control effects. Such experiments establish that contexts defined by low-level perceptual cues such as the location of a visual stimulus can lead to context-specific control, suggesting a relatively early focus for cognitive control. The current set of experiments involved a word–word interference task designed to assess whether a high-level cue, the semantic category to which a word belongs, can also facilitate contextual control. Indeed, participants exhibit a larger Flanker effect to items pertaining to a semantic category in which 75% of stimuli are incongruent than in response to items pertaining to a category in which 25% of stimuli are incongruent. Thus, both low-level and high-level stimulus features can affect the bottom-up engagement of cognitive control. The implications for current models of cognitive control are discussed.     

Cognitive load hypothesis of item-method directed forgetting

This study examined the effect of the processing demands of to-be-remembered (TBR) words on item-method directed forgetting. Experiment 1 found that a standard memory group remembered fewer to-be-forgotten (TBF) words than a naming group, in which participants simply named the TBR words during the study phase, even though both groups were equally instructed to forget the TBF words. Experiment 2 manipulated the number of TBR words in the study list, keeping the number of TBF words constant, and found that TBF word forgetting was more difficult in the few TBR words condition than the more TBR words condition. The same pattern was found in the result of Experiment 3 when a cued recall test, instead of a free recall test, was used. In all the experiments, participants were asked to recall the TBF words before the TBR words. These findings are consistent with the cognitive load hypothesis that it is easier to forget when there are fewer cognitive resources available during encoding.     

Context-specific control in the single-prime negative-priming procedure

The current paper examines the applicability of the context-specific control principle to the probe selection dependence of negative-priming effects using the single-prime procedure. In a series of experiments, we highlight the applicability of the context-specific control principle, first by illustrating a key result that implicates the role of context-specific control and challenges the contextual similarity principle. Following this, we show the importance of distinct probe contexts in the single-prime negative-priming procedure and report a novel finding that illustrates a learning effect that can occur within an experimental session. Finally, we test the relation of our novel learning effect to a related learning proposal offered by Frings and Wentura (2006), and we demonstrate that the learning involved in context-specific control is not dependent on contingency learning. Overall, the patterns of results highlight the role of context-sensitive memory in controlling how current perception and action are integrated with prior experience.     

语义饱和现象及其认知机制

大部分人有过长时间注视一个字之后突然不认识这个字,或多次重复背诵一个词语后会发现这个词变得“陌生”的经历.早期的心理学家发现在字词持续注意过程中语义会丢失,他们将这种现象命名为语义饱和.经过100多年的研究,众多心理学家发展了多种语义评价的方法来测量语义饱和,并发现语义饱和可能发生在知觉表征、语义加工或者词语表征与语义的联结阶段.类似的现象在中文等语标文字加工中表现出一种特有的字形饱和.近年来,新的认知心理学实验范式和神经科学技术的发展将有可能使得语义饱和研究取得重要的突破.     

Memory awareness following episodic inhibition

Three experiments used directed forgetting (DF) and retrieval practice (RP) to investigate the relation of inhibited items to states of memory awareness occurring at test. In Experiment 1 using list DF robust inhibitory effects were present in cued recall, but in a recognition test these effects were only present in responses accompanied by recollective experience. In Experiments 2 and 3 using RP reliable effects of inhibition were found but these did not relate systematically to states of memory awareness. It is suggested that in DF the to-be-forgotten items are tagged at study as not to be recollectively experienced and so have a specific, inhibitory, relation to states of recollective experience occurring during test. In RP no tagging takes place, and inhibition is automatic or nonintentional and consequently does not have a specific relation to states of memory awareness at test.     

The role of working memory in tactile selective attention

Load theory suggests that working memory controls the extent to which irrelevant distractors are processed (e.g., Lavie, Hirst, De Fockert, & Viding, 2004). However, so far this proposal has only been tested in vision. Here, we examine the extent to which tactile selective attention also depends on working memory. In Experiment 1, participants focused their attention on continuous target vibrations while attempting to ignore pulsed distractor vibrations. In Experiment 2, targets were always presented to a particular hand, with distractors being presented to the other hand. In both experiments, a high (vs. low) load in a concurrent working memory task led to greater interference by the tactile distractors. These results establish the role of working memory in the control of tactile selective attention, demonstrating for the first time that the principles of load theory also apply to the tactile modality.     

Internal attention to features in visual short-term memory guides object learning

Attending to objects in the world affects how we perceive and remember them. What are the consequences of attending to an object in mind? In particular, how does reporting the features of a recently seen object guide visual learning? In three experiments, observers were presented with abstract shapes in a particular color, orientation, and location. After viewing each object, observers were cued to report one feature from visual short-term memory (VSTM). In a subsequent test, observers were cued to report features of the same objects from visual long-term memory (VLTM). We tested whether reporting a feature from VSTM: (1) enhances VLTM for just that feature (practice-benefit hypothesis), (2) enhances VLTM for all features (object-based hypothesis), or (3) simultaneously enhances VLTM for that feature and suppresses VLTM for unreported features (feature-competition hypothesis). The results provided support for the feature-competition hypothesis, whereby the representation of an object in VLTM was biased towards features reported from VSTM and away from unreported features (Experiment 1). This bias could not be explained by the amount of sensory exposure or response learning (Experiment 2) and was amplified by the reporting of multiple features (Experiment 3). Taken together, these results suggest that selective internal attention induces competitive dynamics among features during visual learning, flexibly tuning object representations to align with prior mnemonic goals.     

Implicit visual learning: How the task set modulates learning by determining the stimulus–response binding

Implicit learning is one of the most fundamental learning mechanisms that enables humans to adapt to regularities inherent in the environment. Despite its high flexibility, it depends on constraints, such as selective attention. Here, we focused on the stimulus-to-response binding which defines the dimensions of the stimuli and the responses participants attend to. In a serial reaction time task with a visual sequence, we investigated whether this stimulus–response binding influences the amount of sequence learning. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that visual sequence learning is reduced when participants do not attend to the relevant response dimension. Furthermore, the findings of Experiment 3 suggest that attention to the relevant response dimension increased the development of explicit knowledge without affecting implicit knowledge. This latter finding is difficult to reconcile with the assumption that explicit learning results from the gradual strengthening of sequence representations.