Recent empirical and theoretical work suggests that visual features such as color and orientation can be stored or retrieved independently in visual working memory (VWM), even in cases when they belong to the same object. Yet it remains unclear whether different feature dimensions have their own capacity limits, or whether they compete for shared…

People can use a content-specific recapitulation strategy to trigger memories (i.e., mentally reinstating encoding conditions), but how people deploy this strategy is unclear. Is recapitulation naturally used to guide all recollection attempts, or is it only used selectively, after retrieving incomplete information that requires additional…

The ability to adjust bias, or preference for an option, allows for great behavioral flexibility. Decision bias is also important for understanding cognition as it can provide useful information about underlying cognitive processes. Previous work suggests that bias can be adjusted in 2 primary ways: by adjusting how the stimulus under…

Previous studies have suggested that both automatic and intentional processes contribute to the learning of grammar and fragment knowledge in artificial grammar learning (AGL) tasks. To explore the relative contribution of automatic and intentional processes to knowledge gained in AGL, we utilized dual-task methodology to dissociate automatic and…

Verbal overshadowing reflects the impairment in memory performance following verbalization of nonverbal stimuli. However, it is not clear whether the same mechanisms are responsible for verbal overshadowing effects observed with different stimuli and task demands. In the present article, we propose a multiprocess view that reconciles the main…

Previous research has shown that disfluency--the subjective experience of difficulty associated with cognitive operations--leads to deeper processing. Two studies explore the extent to which this deeper processing engendered by disfluency interventions can lead to improved memory performance. Study 1 found that information in hard-to-read fonts…

One widely acknowledged way to improve our memory performance is to repeatedly study the to be learned material. One aspect that has received little attention in past research regards the context sensitivity of this repetition effect, that is whether the item is repeated within the same or within different contexts. The predictions of a…

We aimed to clarify the importance of early visual processing deficits for the formation of cognitive deficits in the schizophrenia spectrum. We carried out an event-related potential (ERP) study using a computerised delayed matching to sample working memory (WM) task on a sample of volunteers with high and low scores on the Schizotypal…

The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to monitor infant brain activity during the initial encoding of a previously novel visual stimulus, and examined whether ERP measures of encoding predicted infants' subsequent performance on a visual memory task (i.e., the paired-comparison task). A late slow wave component of the ERP measured…

Eye-movement control during scene viewing can be represented as a series of individual decisions about where and when to move the eyes. While substantial behavioral and computational research has been devoted to investigating the placement of fixations in scenes, relatively little is known about the mechanisms that control fixation durations.…

The information that individuals can hold in working memory is quite limited, but researchers have typically studied this capacity using simple objects or letter strings with no associations between them. However, in the real world there are strong associations and regularities in the input. In an information theoretic sense, regularities…

In human face-to-face communication, the content of speech is often illustrated by coverbal gestures. Behavioral evidence suggests that gestures provide advantages in the comprehension and memory of speech. Yet, how the human brain integrates abstract auditory and visual information into a common representation is not known. Our study investigates…

Many models of learning rely on accessing internal knowledge states. Yet, although infants and young children are recognized to be proficient learners, the ability to act on metacognitive information is not thought to develop until early school years. In the experiments reported here, 3.5-year-olds demonstrated memory-monitoring skills by…

Recent theories of verbal memory have hypothesized that memory for a stimulus is not represented by a unitary memory trace, but rather by a coding on several attributes of the event. The present experiment tested the differential forgetting hypothesis in a unique way. Words were presented either visually (V) or auditorally (A) in a continuous…

This study examined first graders' use of strategic behavior (looking more during study and categorizing during study) in response to perceiving instructions versus remembering instructions. (BRT)