Episodic memory comprises memory for individual information units (item memory) and for the connections among them (associative memory). In two experiments using an object pair learning task, we examined the effect of visual stimulus complexity on memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms and on item and associative memory performance. Subjects encoded pairs of black monochrome object images (low complexity, LC condition) or color photographs of objects (high complexity, HC condition) via interactive imagery, and subsequently item and associative recognition were tested. In Experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an enhanced frontal N2 during encoding and an enhanced late posterior negativity (LPN) during item recognition in the HC condition, suggesting that memory traces containing visually more complex objects elicited a stronger effort in reconstructing the past episode. Item memory was consistently superior in the HC compared to the LC condition. Associative memory was either statistically unaffected by complexity (Experiment 1) or improved (Experiment 2) in the HC condition, speaking against a tradeoff between resources allocated to item versus associative memory, and hence contradicting results of some prior studies. In Experiment 2, in both young and older adults, both item and associative memory benefitted from stimulus complexity, such that the magnitude of the age-related associative deficit was not influenced by stimulus complexity. Together, these results suggest that if familiar objects are presented in a form that exhibits a higher visual complexity, which may support semantic processing, complexity can benefit both item and associative memory. Stimulus properties that enhance item memory can scaffold associative memory in this situation.

Large-scale collection of lexical-semantic norms for words in a given language has been instrumental in the progress of psycholinguistic research. However, such norms tend to be collected from speakers of the dominant variant or dialect. This research aims to determine if there may be differences across speakers of various dialects of English in the humor of individual words. Engelthaler and Hills (2018, Behavior Research Methods, 50[3], 1116-1124) observed that their humor ratings were most strongly correlated with inverse word frequency: Less frequent words tended to be rated as more humorous. We hypothesized that words that are less frequently occurring in a given English dialect should be perceived as more humorous by speakers of the same dialect. We selected words of relatively higher and lower frequencies across various corpora of North American, British, or Singapore English, and presented these words to participants who were native English speakers of North American, British, or Singapore English. Study 1 compared humor ratings of North Americans and Singaporeans; Study 2 compared humor ratings of North Americans and the British. Analyses of participants' random slope coefficients of frequency extracted from cumulative link mixed-effects models indicated that humor ratings were more strongly (and inversely) associated with the word's frequency in the corpora that aligned with the rater's English dialect. These results provide evidence that people are sensitive to the statistics of their specific language environment, and importantly suggest that creators of lexical-semantic norm databases should consider how the cultural, historical, or sociopolitical context of raters might influence the nature of their ratings.

While abstractionist theories of visual word recognition propose that perceptual elements like font and letter case are filtered out during lexical access, instance-based theories allow for the possibility that these surface details influence this process. To disentangle these accounts, we focused on brand names embedded in logotypes. The consistent visual presentation of brand names may render them much more susceptible to perceptual factors than common words. In the present study, we compared original and modified brand logos, varying in font or letter case. In Experiment 1, participants decided whether the stimuli corresponded to existing brand names or not, regardless of graphical information. In Experiment 2, participants had to categorize existing brand names semantically – whether they corresponded to a brand in the transportation sector or not. Both experiments showed longer response times for the modified brand names, regardless of font or letter-case changes. These findings challenge the notion that only abstract units drive visual word recognition. Instead, they favor those models that assume that, under some circumstances, the traces in lexical memory may contain surface perceptual information.

The pseudocontingency framework provides a parsimonious strategy for inferring the contingency between two variables by assessing the base rates. Frequently occurring levels are associated, as are rarely occurring levels. However, this strategy can lead to different contingency inferences in different contexts, depending on how the base rates vary across contexts. Here, we examine how base-rate consistency influences base-rate learning and reliance by contrasting consistent with inconsistent base rates. We hypothesized that base-rate learning is facilitated, and that people rely more on base rates if base rates are consistent. In Experiment 1, the base rates across four contexts implied the same (consistent) or different (inconsistent) contingencies. Base rates were learned equally accurately, and participants inferred contingencies that followed the base rates but deviated from the genuine contingencies within contexts, regardless of consistency. In Experiment 2, we additionally manipulated whether the context was a plausible moderator of the contingency. While we replicated the first experiment's results when the context was a plausible moderator, base-rate inferences were stronger for consistent base rates when the context was an implausible moderator. Possibly, when a moderation-by-context was implausible, participants also relied on the base-rate correlation across contexts, which implied the same contingency when base rates were consistent but was zero when the base rates were inconsistent. Thus, our findings suggest that contingency inferences from base rates involve top-down processes in which people decide how to use base-rate information.

The present experiments examined whether the temporal distribution of procedural category learning experiences would impact learning outcomes. Participants completed the remote category learning experiments on a smartphone in one of two learning conditions: massed or distributed. Consistent with expectations, distributed learners in both experiments reached higher accuracy levels than massed learners. In Experiment 1 the effect disappeared after accounting for reaction time differences, suggesting that it was driven by attentional mechanisms. In Experiment 2, the spacing advantage was only present for previously studied items during a post-learning test, suggesting a role of consolidation. In both experiments, it seems likely that temporal spacing helped participants discover the optimal information-integration categorization strategy. These results suggest that adult category learning is facilitated by temporal spacing. Future work may further explore the effects of temporal and contextual distinctiveness of learning experiences on category learning outcomes.

Drawing a referent of a to-be-remembered word often results in better recognition and recall of this word relative to a control task in which the word is written, a pattern dubbed the drawing effect. Although this effect is not always found in pure lists, we report three experiments in which the drawing effect emerged in both pure- and mixed-lists on recognition and recall tests, though the effect was larger in mixed lists. Our experiments then compared drawing effects on memory between pure- and mixed-list contexts to determine whether the larger mixed-list drawing effect reflected a benefit to draw items, a cost to write items, or a combination. In delayed recognition and free-recall tests, a mixed-list benefit emerged for draw items in which memory for mixed-list draw items was greater than pure-list draw items. This mixed-list drawing benefit was accompanied by a mixed-list writing cost compared to pure-list write items, indicating that the mixed-list drawing effect does not operate cost-free. Our findings of a pure-list drawing effect are consistent with a memory strength account, however, the larger drawing effect in mixed lists suggest that participants may also deploy a distinctiveness heuristic to aid retrieval of drawn items.

Autobiographical memory specificity is known to contribute to better mental health, social problem-solving, and episodic future thinking. While numerous studies have addressed variables that affect autobiographical memory specificity, little is known regarding the meta-memory processes that underpin memory retrieval. In this study, we introduced two meta-memory constructs, ease of retrieval judgments and anticipation of negative emotion evoked, which potentially affect autobiographical memory specificity. Participants (N = 109) first rated the ease of retrieval and anticipated emotions for positive and negative words used in a subsequent autobiographical memory test. We used the Optional Instructions of the Autobiographical Memory Test, in which participants were instructed that "specific memories are better, but other memories are permissible," allowing them to adjust how much cognitive effort they spent on generative retrieval after a failure of direct retrieval. They also self-judged whether each retrieval was generative (using additional cues with cognitive effort) or direct (immediate recall without much cognitive effort). Results showed that for generative retrieval, ease of retrieval was associated with greater specific and general memories and fewer omissions. A more negative anticipated emotion was associated with fewer specific memories and greater omissions, but was not with general memories. These results suggest that low retrievability and anticipated negative emotion prevent individuals from devoting efforts to generative retrieval. The lack of association between anticipated negative emotion and general memory calls into question the functional avoidance hypothesis regarding autobiographical memory specificity. We discussed how participants judged these meta-memories and directions for future research.

Although previous studies have well established that audiovisual enhancement has a promoting effect on working memory and selective attention, there remains an open question about the influence of audiovisual enhancement on attentional guidance by working memory. To address this issue, the present study adopted a dual-task paradigm that combines a working memory task and a visual search task, in which the content of working memory was presented in audiovisual or visual modalities. Given the importance of search speed in memory-driven attentional suppression, we divided participants into two groups based on their reaction time (RT) in neutral trials and examined whether audiovisual enhancement in attentional suppression was modulated by search speed. The results showed that the slow search group exhibited a robust memory-driven attentional suppression effect, and the suppression effect started earlier and its magnitude was greater in the audiovisual condition than in the visual-only condition. However, among the faster search group, the suppression effect only occurred in the trials with longer RTs in the visual-only condition, and its temporal dynamics were selectively improved in the audiovisual condition. Furthermore, audiovisual enhancement of memory-driven attention evolved over time. These findings suggest that semantically congruent bimodal presentation can progressively facilitate the strength and temporal dynamics of memory-driven attentional suppression, and that search speed plays an important role in this process. This may be due to a synergistic effect between multisensory working memory representation and top-down suppression mechanism. The present study demonstrates the flexible role of audiovisual enhancement on cognitive control over memory-driven attention.

Mind wandering is a common occurrence that can have serious consequences, but estimating when mind wandering occurs is a challenging research question. Previous research has shown that during meditation, people may spontaneously alternate between task-oriented and mind-wandering states without awareness (Zukosky & Wang, 2021, Cognition, 212, Article 104689). However, under what conditions such alternations occur is not clear. The present study examined the effects of task type on spontaneous alternations between task focus and mind wandering. In addition to a meditation task, participants performed either a scene-categorization-based CPT or a visual detection task while attentional orientation was assessed via self-monitoring and intermittent probes. The three tasks differ in the extent of their reliance on continuous monitoring (less required in the detection than meditation and CPT tasks) and attentional orientation (oriented internally in meditation task and externally in CPT and detection tasks). To overcome prior methodological challenges, we applied a technique designed to detect spontaneous alternations between focused and mind-wandering states without awareness, based on how the proportion of "focused" responses/ratings to intermittent probes changes during a focus-to-mind-wandering interval (i.e., the period from one self-report of mind wandering to the subsequent self-report). Our results showed that the proportion of "focused" responses to intermittent probes remained constant with increasing interprobe interval during meditation (consistent with previous work), but declined significantly in the CPT and detection tasks. These findings support the hypothesis that spontaneous alternations of attentional states without self-awareness occur during tasks emphasizing internally but not externally oriented attention.

Signal detection theory (SDT) and two-high threshold models (2HT) are often used to analyze accuracy data in recognition memory paradigms. However, when reaction times (RTs) and/or confidence levels (CLs) are also measured, they usually are analyzed separately or not at all as dependent variables (DVs). We propose a new approach to include these variables based on multinomial processing tree models for discrete and continuous variables (MPT-DC) with the aim to compare fits of SDT and 2HT models. Using Juola et al.’s (2019, Memory & Cognition, 47[4], 855–876) data we have found that including CLs and RTs reduces the standard errors of parameter estimates and accounts for interactions among accuracy, CLs, and RTs that classical versions of SDT and 2HT models do not. In addition, according to the simulations, there is an increase in the proportion of correct model selections when relevant DV are included. We highlight the methodological and substantive advantages of MPT-DC in the disentanglement of contributing processes in recognition memory.