Guessing translations of foreign words ("hodei?"), before viewing corrective feedback ("hodei-cloud"), leads to better subsequent memory for correct translations than studying intact pairs ("hodei-cloud"), even when guesses are always incorrect (Potts & Shanks, 2014), but the mechanism underlying this effect is…

Two experiments examined biases in selective attention during contextual cuing of visual search. When participants were instructed to search for a target of a particular color, overt attention (as measured by the location of fixations) was biased strongly toward distractors presented in that same color. However, when participants searched for…

A fundamental principle of learning is that predictive cues or signals compete with each other to gain control over behavior. Associative and propositional reasoning theories of learning provide radically different accounts of cue competition. Propositional accounts predict that under conditions that do not afford or warrant the use of higher…

Testing typically enhances subsequent recall of tested material. In contrast, it has been proposed that consolidated memories can be destabilized when reactivated and then need to be reconsolidated in order to persist. Learning new material immediately after reactivation may disrupt reconsolidation. We investigated whether the well-known benefits…

Multiple cue probability learning studies have typically focused on stationary environments. We present 3 experiments investigating learning in changing environments. A fine-grained analysis of the learning dynamics shows that participants were responsive to both abrupt and gradual changes in cue-outcome relations. We found no evidence that…

A single-system computational model of priming and recognition was applied to studies that have looked at the relationship between priming, recognition, and fluency in continuous identification paradigms. The model was applied to 3 findings that have been interpreted as evidence for a multiple-systems account: (a) priming can occur for items not…

Four experiments are reported that reevaluate P. M. Merikle and E. M. Reingold's (1991) demonstration of unconscious memory: the greater sensitivity to familiarity (repetition) of an indirect (implicit) memory task than of a comparable direct (explicit) task. At study, participants named the cued member of a pair of visually presented words. At…

In two experiments, the authors sought to distinguish between the claim that recognition of an object is treated simply as a cue among others for the purposes of decision making in a cue-learning task from the claim that recognition is attributed a special status with fundamental, noncompensatory properties. Results of both experiments supported…

In multiple-cue learning (also known as probabilistic category learning) people acquire information about cue-outcome relations and combine these into predictions or judgments. Previous researchers claimed that people can achieve high levels of performance without explicit knowledge of the task structure or insight into their own judgment…

A number of studies using trial-by-trial learning tasks have shown that judgments of covariation between a cue c and an outcome o deviate from normative metrics. Parameters based on trial-by-trial predictions were estimated from signal detection theory (SDT) in a standard causal learning task. Results showed that manipulations of P(c) when…