Previous research suggests that statistical learning enhances memory for self-related information at the individual level and that individuals exhibit better memory for partner-related items than they do for irrelevant items in joint contexts (i.e., the joint memory effect, JME). However, whether statistical learning improves memory for…

People perform poorly at sighting missing and wanted persons in simulated searches due to attention and face recognition failures. We manipulated participants' expectations of encountering a target person and the within-person variability of the targets' photographs studied in a laboratory-based and a field-based prospective person memory task. We…

Saving information onto external resources can improve memory for subsequent information--a phenomenon known as the saving-enhanced memory effect. This article reports two preregistered online experiments investigating (A) whether this effect holds when to-be-remembered information is presented before the saved information and (B) whether people…

Outstanding long-term face recognition of suspects is a hallmark of the exceptionally skilled police 'super-recognisers' (SRs). Yet, research investigating SR's memory for faces mainly employed brief retention intervals. Therefore, in Experiment 1, 597 participants (121 SRs) viewed 10 target videos and attempted identification of targets from 10…

How does viewers' knowledge guide their attention while they watch everyday events, how does it affect their memory, and does it change with age? Older adults have diminished episodic memory for everyday events, but intact semantic knowledge. Indeed, research suggests that older adults may rely on their semantic memory to offset impairments in…

Advances in brain imaging have led to a paradigm shift in neuroscience research, moving from focusing on individual brain structures to investigating neural networks and connections. However, neuroanatomy education still tends to concentrate on discrete brain regions. Two separate experiments in undergraduate neuroscience courses investigated…

Prior research suggests that individuals recruit a disease-avoidance system designed to avoid sources of illness through threat detection and memory. Our study evaluated whether disease-related memory benefits reflect the distinctive/salient nature of a diseased state versus the infectious nature of a disease by comparing memory for objects…

Interim tests of previously studied information can potentiate subsequent learning of new information, in part, because retrieval-based processes help to reduce proactive interference from previously learned information. We hypothesized that an effect similar to this forward testing effect would also occur when making judgments of (prior) learning…

Retrieval practice has generally been shown to be an effective study strategy. The benefits of retrieval practice, however, have largely been compared to restudying, a passive and ineffective study strategy. Here, I investigated the memory and metamemory effects of practicing retrieval versus generating mnemonics, an active and effective study…

Judgments of learning (JOL) are often used to assess memory monitoring at encoding. Participants study a cue-target word pair (e.g., mouse-cheese) and are asked to rate the probability of correctly recalling the target in the presence of the cue at test (e.g., mouse -?). Prior research has shown that JOL accuracy is sensitive to perceptual cues.…

Background: Two reasons may explain the discrepant findings regarding declarative memory in developmental language disorder (DLD) in the literature. First, standardized tests are one of the primary tools used to assess declarative memory in previous studies. It is possible they are not sensitive enough to subtle memory impairment. Second, the…

The objective for beginning writers is to learn how to generate alphabet-letters which are recognisable and easy to read. This study investigated the accuracy of Year 1 and 2 children's alphabet-letter-writing by evaluating their alphabet and orthographic knowledge, following evidence which identifies these skills as important for correctly…

Although episodic and semantic memory share overlapping neural mechanisms, it remains unclear how our pre-existing semantic associations modulate the formation of new, episodic associations. When freely recalling recently studied words, people rely on both episodic and semantic associations, shown through temporal and semantic clustering of…

Fake news can impair memory leading to societal controversies such as COVID-19 vaccine efficacy. The pernicious influence of fake news is clear when ineffective corrections leave memories outdated. A key theoretical issue is whether people should recall fake news while reading corrections with contradictory details. The familiarity backfire view…

The extant literature on the use of autonomy support during caregiver-child conversations has focused primarily on conversations about fun, shared experiences, with limited consideration of unshared experiences or attention toward the role of conversation context. The present study examined how autonomy support, conversation context, and child age…