People flexibly engage either proactive or reactive control to achieve goals in dynamic environments. However, it remains unclear how specific environmental factors determine when proactive control is most effectively used. Across two experiments, this study investigated how environmental predictability influences proactive control. We employed a self-paced task-switching paradigm in which adult participants triggered the target when they felt ready to respond to it and manipulated how reliably contextual cue information predicted the task rule. In Experiment1, a fully predictable environment (100% cue reliability) led to longer preparation times, reflecting spontaneous proactive preparation, faster responses, and reduced switch costs compared with an unpredictable environment (50% reliability), indicating adaptive engagement of proactive control based on cue reliability. Experiment 2 further examined the relations between cue reliability and proactive control by comparing a more reliable condition (85% reliable cues) to a less reliable condition (65% reliable cues). Findings revealed that participants spent more time preparing under 85% reliability and showed larger performance differences between "matched" (cue accurately predicting the task) and "unmatched" trials. These results reinforce the view that adults can detect subtle differences in cue reliability and adjust their proactive control accordingly. Finally, an integration of the findings from Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that two thresholds of cue reliability govern both the decision to engage and the effectiveness of cognitive control when adults modulate their proactive control based on environmental predictability.

Previously reported tests for effects of dividing attention during long-term memory (LTM) retrieval have yielded inconclusive findings. This may be due to most prior work relying on categorical recall or recognition measures, which lack sufficient precision to detect subtle effects. Here, we provide the first test of divided attention effects on LTM retrieval using a continuous report paradigm, allowing retrieval errors to be measured with greater precision. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 44) encoded object-orientation associations and later retrieved object orientations under either full or divided attention while performing a visual search task. On each trial, error was computed as the difference between the reported and studied orientations of the tested object. Dividing attention during retrieval resulted in increased errors. To characterize the nature of these errors, we analyzed error distributions using both a standard mixture model (SMM) and the Target Confusability Competition (TCC) model. The SMM showed that divided attention reduced memory accessibility, while the precision of retrieved memories remained unaffected. The TCC model provided better fits and similarly indicated reduced memory strength under divided attention. Experiment 1 included an additional working memory load due to withholding the divided attention task response throughout the main retrieval task; Experiment 2 (N=44) replicated the main findings while eliminating this load by having participants respond to the secondary task before the retrieval response. Together, these findings show that continuous report measures reveal costs of divided attention on LTM retrieval that primarily reflect reduced retrieval success or strength rather than reduced representational precision.

Embodied views of language comprehension argue that the body's perceptual and motor systems ground linguistic meaning. One source of support for this view comes from the sentence-picture verification (SPV) shape match effect, in which observers read a sentence that implies - but does not explicitly describe - an object's shape and then report whether a pictured object was mentioned in the sentence. Participants are typically faster to verify a sentence mentioned an object when the object's shape matches the shape implied by that sentence's context. However, several high-profile studies have failed to replicate this and other key results supporting the sensorimotor simulation view, raising questions about the extent to which language comprehension relies upon modal representations. One explanation for these conflicting findings is that individuals do not obligatorily tap perceptual and motor systems to understand language but are instead flexible in their use of sensorimotor simulation depending upon contextual factors such as task demands. I investigated this possibility by asking participants to perform the SPV task while concurrently holding either auditory or visual information in working memory. I found that higher working memory loads in both the auditory and the visual domains attenuated the SPV match advantage. This finding suggests that sensorimotor simulation is not necessary for language comprehension but may instead depend in part upon the availability of resources in working memory.

Multitasking research has shown that individuals differ in whether they prefer a more serial or a more parallel mode of task processing at the level of whole tasks. Such preferences can be identified using the task switching with preview (TSWP) paradigm. This paradigm allows, but does not require, individuals to preview the stimulus of the next task switch in a predictable task switching procedure [AAABBB...]. Although several studies have shown that some participants consistently use the preview information, it is still unclear when exactly this information is used and, thus, how parallel processing takes place. The present study is an important step in clarifying this issue. In two experiments, I investigated when exactly individuals who prefer parallel processing during task switching use a preview to prepare for the next task switch. In Experiment 1, the onset and thus the length of the preview was varied within participants. This allowed to disentangle whether parallel processing of the preview depends on the length of the preview (i.e., its likelihood increases with longer preview presentation), or occurs contingent on a single trial (i.e., is a rapid process). Strikingly, parallel processing occurred regardless of preview duration, suggesting that a short preview may be sufficient. In Experiment 2, participants received the preview in discrete steps, i.e., with the same length throughout the sequence. There was a clear peak in the use of the preview immediately before a task switch. This suggests that although individuals who prefer parallel processing are able to process information in parallel throughout a task sequence, they clearly prefer to do so just before the task switch.

The Concealed Information Test (CIT), also known as the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT), is a method of deception detection by presenting the suspects with familiar stimuli that only the culprits would recognize. Because recognition memory is crucial to the success of reaction time-based CIT, in this study we investigated how pictorial and verbal crime-related items (i.e., Probes) of a visually experienced mock crime would perform against time delay and memory deterioration. Participants visually encoded the details of a theft mock crime from a first-person perspective and were randomly assigned to one of the Probe modalities (i.e., verbal vs. pictorial) group and one of the time delays (immediate vs. 2-week delay) group: immediate verbal, immediate pictorial, 2-week verbal, 2-week pictorial. We observed significant Probe-Irrelevant RT difference in all 4 conditions. When we evaluated the ability of each condition to differentiate between guilty and innocent by calculating the area under the curve (AUC) with Receiver Operating Characteristic analysis, we observed a significant effect of time delay, with higher AUCs in the immediate condition compared to the 2-week delay, and no difference between verbal and pictorial modalities. Together, our results suggest that for visually experienced events, CIT effects can be observed 1) both with pictorial or verbal Probes, 2) both immediately and after 2 weeks, and 3) importantly, although pictorial and verbal Probes perform equally well, a 2-week delay would cost CIT efficacy in AUC.

Contextual affective information can influence recognition memory. However, the influence of the order of this information on memory has rarely been studied. To investigate this, a series of faces were shown along with contextual person-based information. Each face was shown twice, manipulating the order of the affective contextual information: (1) emotional then neutral, (2) neutral then emotional, or (3) neutral and then neutral. The first study included negative contextual information and the second included positive information. One week later a recognition test was given for the faces. In both the negative study and the positive study, recognition memory was uninfluenced by condition, suggesting that the order in which affective information is presented is largely irrelevant. Further, exploratory Bayesian analyses revealed that faces paired with the highest arousal sentences at encoding were the least likely to be recognized at retrieval, which may represent a biasing of attention towards the high-arousal sentence and away from the low-arousal face.

Language comprehension involves prediction, but what exactly can comprehenders predict? We ask if bilinguals can consciously predict upcoming code-switches between languages. If predictions focus on a sentence's message, then listeners should not predict code-switches, which alter the language used but not necessarily the meaning. Alternatively, if listeners predict at many levels-including language-then they may predict code-switches. Here, we selected sentences from a corpus of spontaneous bilingual conversations that started in Spanish and removed the final word that would have continued in Spanish or code-switched to English. In two preregistered experiments, Spanish-English bilinguals heard these sentence fragments and predicted the language of the omitted final word. They successfully predicted upcoming code-switches when given 30 seconds of context prior to their predictions (Experiment 1; N = 94), but not when only hearing the sentence fragment (Experiment 2, N = 115). This shows that bilinguals can predict upcoming code-switches when sufficient conversational cues are available.

We investigated the role of surface and structural similarities in the retrieval of everyday life events by means of a novel experimental paradigm in which participants could report any memories that came to mind while reading anecdotes instantiating familiar Schema-Governed Categories (SCGs, e.g., making up an excuse). Based on the idea that the availability of memories sharing both surface and structural similarities may conceal participants' ability to retrieve purely structural matches, we presented participants with short narratives describing associations of surfaces and structures which are either usually encountered (e.g., making up an excuse not to hang out with someone, Experiment 1) or less frequent in everyday life (e.g., making up an excuse not to go to an art exhibition, Experiment 2). The results from Experiment 1 replicated the traditional finding that when they are available, memories combining surface and structural similarities prevail over purely structural matches. However, Experiment 2 revealed that when a more direct competition was set between purely surface and purely structural matches, structurally based retrievals were the most frequent. Experiment 3 showed that target cues deprived of any surface features (e.g., making up an excuse) elicited more retrievals of usual than unusual surface/structure combos, suggesting the influence of association frequency in analogical retrieval. The data provide the first line of evidence suggesting that participants rely on highly familiar SGCs to process structural encodings and retrieve past experiences based on structural similarities. We discuss the implications of these findings regarding current theories of analogical retrieval holding that this process is predominantly guided by surface similarities.

Consensus among sources often signals a claim's trustworthiness. However, when all sources simply echo information from a single origin, an "illusion of consensus" can arise, leading individuals to feel equally convinced by a dependent consensus (a single, repeatedly cited source) as by an independent consensus (corroborated information from multiple sources). This effect may occur because repetition can be perceived as a cue for credibility. We conducted four experiments to test whether a negative explanation (e.g., repetition was intended to sway opinion) or a positive explanation (repetition occurred because a source was especially reliable) for repetition of a claim could reduce or enhance the illusion of consensus. Participants engaged in a political poll-reporting task to assess confidence in claims supported by an independent consensus (news outlets citing different polling companies), a dependent consensus without explanation (news outlets citing the same polling company), or a dependent consensus accompanied by explanations intended to either boost or undermine source credibility. Independent consensus was more persuasive than dependent consensus. However, the persuasiveness of dependent consensus was increased or decreased, respectively, by positive or negative explanations for repetition. These effects were found when the explanations were supplied by the experimenter (Experiments 1-2a, 2b) and when participants generated their own explanations (Experiments 3, 4). These findings suggest that social inference processes contribute to the illusion of consensus, with implications for interventions designed to mitigate the impact of misleading claims repeated in media.

The shift of attention from external stimuli toward task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs), or mind-wandering, has been shown to disrupt encoding and subsequent retrieval of information. The present study examined how TUT during encoding affects memory for visual scenes that vary in memorability, an intrinsic stimulus property reflecting the likelihood of recognition across individuals. In Experiment 1, participants studied images of high or low memorability while intermittently reporting their attentional state. A subsequent recognition test revealed independent effects of mind-wandering and memorability on memory performance: TUT during encoding was associated with lower recognition accuracy and high memorability images were better recognized than lowmemorability images, but there were no interactions. In Experiment 2, we extended this paradigm to free recall using a novel drawing-based methodology. Participants studied and later drew scenes from memory, with recall quantified as the proportion of objects drawn relative to a perception baseline. The results showed that TUT impaired free recall while memorability enhanced free recall. Further evidence suggested that memorability only conferred a benefit to free recall when images were encoded during an on-task state. These findings indicate that both attentional state and image memorability are positively associated with recognition and recall. Although these two factors independently impact recognition, there is some indication that they may interact for recall, suggesting a need for focused attention to harness the mnemonic benefits of highly memorable stimuli.