Visual search is faster when a fixed target location is paired with a spatially invariant (vs. randomly changing) distractor configuration, thus indicating that repeated contexts are learned, thereby guiding attention to the target (contextual cueing [CC]). Evidence for memory-guided attention has also been revealed with electrophysiological…

Witnesses to industrial incidents may be asked to recall a single instance of a familiar event. This research systematically tested if deviations to what typically occurs and postevent information (PEI) enhanced reporting of an instance of a repeated event. Across 2 experiments, each participant experienced 5 food-tasting instances; these…

Most studies on spatial memory refer to the horizontal plane, leaving an open question as to whether findings generalize to vertical spaces where gravity and the visual upright of our surrounding space are salient orientation cues. In three experiments, we examined which reference frame is used to organize memory for vertical locations: the one…

Zebrafish are a genetically tractable vertebrate that hold considerable promise for elucidating the molecular basis of behavior. Although numerous recent advances have been made in the ability to precisely manipulate the zebrafish genome, much less is known about many aspects of learning and memory in adult fish. Here, we describe the development…

We examined whether typical developmental trends in suggestion-induced false memories (i.e., age-related decrease) could be changed. Using theoretical principles from the spontaneous false memory field, we adapted 2 often-used false memory procedures: misinformation (Experiment 1) and memory conformity (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, 7- to…

This study explored whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience difficulties with action monitoring. Two experimental tasks examined whether adults with ASD are able to monitor their own actions online, and whether they also show a typical enactment effects in memory (enhanced memory for actions they have performed compared…

We report on the 1st experimental elicitation of nonbelieved memories for childhood events in adults (Study 1) and children (Study 2) using a modified false memory implantation paradigm. Participants received true (trip to a theme park) and false (hot air balloon ride) narratives and recalled these events during 2 interviews. After debriefing, 13%…

Two experiments were conducted investigating the role of visual sequential memory skill in the word recognition efficiency of undergraduate university students. Word recognition was assessed in a lexical decision task using regularly and strangely spelt words, and nonwords that were either standard orthographically legal strings or items made from…

Unsworth and Engle (2007) recently proposed a model of working memory capacity characterized by, among other things, the ability to conduct a strategic, cue-dependent search of long-term memory. Although this ability has been found to mediate individual variation in a number of higher order cognitive tasks, the component processes involved remain…

Can false memories have a positive consequence on human cognition? In two experiments, we investigated whether false memories could prime insight problem-solving tasks. Children and adults were asked to solve compound remote associate task (CRAT) problems, half of which had been primed by the presentation of Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) lists…

Retrieval demand, as implemented through test format and retrieval instructions, was varied across two misinformation experiments. Our goal was to examine whether increasing retrieval demand would improve the relationship between confidence and memory performance, and thereby reduce misinformation susceptibility. We hypothesized that improving the…

Sensitivity to variations in the spacing of features in faces and a class of nonface objects (i.e., frontal images of cars) was tested in 3- and 4-year-old children and adults using a delayed or simultaneous two-alternative forced choice matching-to-sample task. In the adults, detection of spacing information was robust against exemplar…

In a first experiment, adults were asked to solve one-digit additions, subtractions and multiplications. When the sign appeared 150 ms before the operands, addition and subtraction were solved faster than when the sign and the operands appeared simultaneously on screen. This priming effect was not observed for multiplication problems. A second…

When people describe motion events, their path expressions are biased toward inclusion of goal paths (e.g., into the house) and omission of source paths (e.g., out of the house). In this paper, we explored whether this asymmetry has its origins in people's non-linguistic representations of events. In three experiments, 4-year-old children and…

Relatively little attention has been paid thus far in memory research to the effects of measurement instruments intended to assess memory processes on the constructs being measured. The current article investigates the influence of employing the popular remember/know (R/K) measurement procedure on memory performance itself. This measurement…