Understanding language requires readers and listeners to cull meaning from fast-unfolding messages that often contain conflicting cues pointing to incompatible ways of interpreting the input (e.g., "The cat was chased by the mouse"). This article reviews mounting evidence from multiple methods demonstrating that cognitive control plays…

Many previous studies observed that higher retrospective confidence ratings about memory performance were associated with shorter response times in memory test. Researchers often interpret response time as a measure of retrieval fluency which is an important cue utilized in confidence formation process. However, the drift diffusion model (DDM)…

This dissertation analyzes the production and perception of lexical stress in trilinguals' first, second, and third languages (L1, L2, and L3) to evaluate how the cue-weighting transfer hypothesis applies to L3 acquisition. According to this hypothesis, acoustic cues to stress have different weights across languages, and results from both…

Purpose: This study compared the use of 2 different types of contextual cues (sentence based and situation based) in 2 different modalities (visual only and auditory only). Method: Twenty young adults were tested with the Illustrated Sentence Test (Tye-Murray, Hale, Spehar, Myerson, & Sommers, 2014) and the Speech Perception in Noise Test…

There is global concern regarding the increased prevalence of math anxiety among college students, which is credited for a decrease in analytical degree completion rates and lower self-confidence among students in their ability to complete analytical tasks in the real world. The present study identified that, as expected, displays of instructional…

Three alternative mechanisms for age-related decline in memory search have been proposed, which result from either reduced processing speed (global slowing hypothesis), overpersistence on categories (cluster-switching hypothesis), or the inability to maintain focus on local cues related to a decline in working memory (cue-maintenance hypothesis).…

Attentional theories of associative learning and categorization propose that learning about the predictiveness of a stimulus influences the amount of attention that is paid to that stimulus. Three experiments tested this idea by looking at the extent to which stimuli that had previously been experienced as predictive or nonpredictive in a…

According to the retrieved context theory of episodic memory, the cue for recall of an item is a weighted sum of recently activated cognitive states, including previously recalled and studied items as well as their associations. We show that this theory predicts there should be compound cuing in free recall. Specifically, the temporal contiguity…

Theories of eating regulation often attribute overweight to a malfunction of homeostatic regulation of body weight. With the goal conflict model of eating, we present a new perspective that attributes the difficulty of chronic dieters (i.e., restrained eaters) in regulating their food intake to a conflict between 2 incompatible goals--namely,…

The role of experience in memory, specifically the word frequency (WF) mirror effect showing higher hit rates and lower false alarm rates for low-frequency words, is one of the hallmarks of memory. However, this "regularity of memory" is limited because normative WF has been treated as discrete (low vs. high). We evaluate the extent to…

We present a signal detection-like model termed the stochastic detection and retrieval model (SDRM) for use in studying metacognition. Focusing on paradigms that relate retrieval (e.g., recall or recognition) and confidence judgments, the SDRM measures (1) variance in the retrieval process, (2) variance in the confidence process, (3) the extent to…

The serial and spatially extended nature of many real-world visual tasks suggests the need for control over the content of visual working memory (VWM). We examined the management of VWM in a task that required participants to prioritize individual objects for retention during scene viewing. There were 5 principal findings: (a) Strategic retention…

Study objective: To describe a successful approach to teaching principles and practices of behaviour change through a behaviour change plan (BCP) initiative to improve personal health while advancing health knowledge and general education intellectual skills. Students' perspectives of obstacles, behaviours important towards goal attainment and the…

The present experiment investigated the relationship between laboratory measures of self-control and delay of gratification in children and explored several other factors that may influence self-control. In the self-control paradigm, 30 four-year-old children repeatedly chose between three reinforcers received after a delay and one reinforcer…

We derive an analytic model of the inter-judge correlation as a function of five underlying parameters. Inter-cue correlation and the number of cues capture our assumptions about the environment, while differentiations between cues, the weights attached to the cues, and (un)reliability describe assumptions about the judges. We study the relative…