When producing creative ideas (i.e., ideas that are original and useful) two main processes occur: ideation, where people brainstorm ideas, and evaluation, where they decide if the ideas are creative or not. While much is known about the ideation phase, the cognitive processes involved in creativity evaluation are less clear. In this article, we…

In episodic memory research, there is a debate concerning whether decision-making in item recognition and source memory is better explained by models that assume all-or-none retrieval processes or continuous underlying strengths. One aspect in which these classes of models tend to differ is their predictions regarding the ability to retrieve…

A major question for the study of learning and memory is how to tailor learning experiences to promote knowledge that generalizes to new situations. In two experiments, we used category learning as a representative domain to test two factors thought to influence the acquisition of conceptual knowledge: the number of training examples (set size)…

We explored a two-stage recognition memory paradigm in which people first make single-item "studied"/"not studied" decisions and then have a chance to correct their errors in forced-choice trials. Each forced-choice trial included one studied word ("target") and one nonstudied word ("lure") that received the…

A classic issue in the cognitive psychology of human category learning has involved the contrast between exemplar and prototype models. However, experimental tests to distinguish the models have relied almost solely on use of artificially-constructed categories composed of simplified stimuli. Here we contrast the predictions from the models in a…

When remembering over the short-term, long-term knowledge has a large effect on the number of correctly recalled items and little impact on memory for order. This is true, for example, when the effects of semantic category are examined. Contrary to what these findings suggest, Poirier et al. in 2015 proposed that memory for order relies on the…

The samples of evidence we use to make inferences in everyday and formal settings are often subject to selection biases. Two property induction experiments examined group and individual sensitivity to one type of selection bias: sampling frames - causal constraints that only allow certain types of instances to be sampled. Group data from both…

In a novel version of the classic dot-pattern prototype-distortion paradigm of category learning, Homa et al. (2019) tested a condition in which individual training instances never repeated, and observed results that they claimed severely challenged exemplar models of classification and recognition. Among the results was a dissociation in which…

An analysis of the covariance and mean structure of signal detection measures for assessing recognition performance was conducted using data from ratings and repeated k-alternative forced choices (k-AFC). Measures were parameters of the unequal variance signal detection (UVSDT) and dual process signal detection (DPSDT) model and functions thereof,…

Research on quantitative judgments from multiple cues suggests that judgments are simultaneously influenced by previously abstracted knowledge about cue-criterion relations and memories of past instances (or exemplars). Yet extant judgment theories leave 2 questions unanswered: (a) How are past exemplars and abstracted cue knowledge combined to…

A number of studies have found evidence for the so-called "ambiguity advantage," that is, faster processing of ambiguous sentences compared with unambiguous counterparts. While a number of proposals regarding the mechanism underlying this phenomenon have been made, the empirical evidence so far is far from unequivocal. It is compatible…

This article reports an eye-movement experiment in which participants scanned continuous sequences of Landolt-Cs for target circles to examine the visual and oculomotor constraints that might jointly determine where the eyes move in a task that engages many of the perceptual and motor processes involved in Chinese reading but without lexical or…

Change has been described as detrimental for later memory for the original event in research on retroactive interference. Popular accounts of retroactive interference treat learning as the formation of simple associations and explain interference as due to response competition, perhaps along with unlearning or inhibition of the original response.…

Although strokes are the smallest identifiable units in Chinese words, the fact that they are often embedded within larger units (i.e., radicals and/or characters that comprise Chinese words) raises questions about "how" and even "if" strokes are separately represented in lexical memory. The present experiment examined these…

We examined 3 different network models of representing semantic knowledge (5,018-word directed and undirected step distance networks, and an association-correlation network) to predict lexical priming effects. In Experiment 1, participants made semantic relatedness judgments for word pairs with varying path lengths. Response latencies for…