The ability of the brain to extract patterns from the environment and predict future events, known as statistical learning, has been proposed to interact in a competitive manner with prefrontal lobe-related networks and their characteristic cognitive or executive functions. However, it remains unclear whether these cognitive functions also possess…

Distraction embedded in working memory tasks leads to impaired performance. This impairment is mitigated when targets and distractors that follow them share common features--a signature effect of interference by superposition. Here we propose that target-distractor similarity modulates not only forgetting from working memory but also encoding into…

Past work has shown that eye movements are affected by long-term memory across different tasks and instructional manipulations. In the current study, we tested whether these memory-based eye movements persist when memory retrieval is under intentional control. Participants encoded multiple scenes with six objects (three faces; three tools). Next,…

The initial learning experience is a critical opportunity to support conceptual understanding of abstract STEM concepts. Although hands-on activities and physical three-dimensional models are beneficial, they are seldom utilized and are replaced increasingly by digital simulations and laboratory exercises presented on touchscreen tablet computers.…

The trend of podcast and audiobook listening is on the rise, thus paving the way for a new, popular learning environment. It is crucial to deliberate on the influence of multiple-text listening comprehension. This research aimed to explore the impact of conceptual network processing on multiple-text comprehension performance from the perspective…

Verbally reported long-term memory for past events typically improves with age. However, such findings are based exclusively on studies, where children are directly asked to recall. The present study showed that when 3- (n = 113, 59 girls) and 4-year-olds (n = 113, 62 girls), predominantly White, were brought back to a distinct laboratory-setting…

Performance on homework questions was compared with performance on related exam questions querying the same fact or principle, was used to assess the effect of answering online homework questions on subsequent exam performance. A distinctive pattern of performance was found for some students in which superior performance on online homework…

The accuracy of children's long-term memory for distressing events is of theoretical and legal interest. In this longitudinal study, 3- to 5-year-olds and their main parental caretakers individually participated in a mildly distressing event, and 1 h later the children's memory/suggestibility was assessed (Time 1). Six to seven years later (Time…

Dropout refers to the phenomenon of students leaving school before completing their degree or program of study. Dropout is a major concern for educational institutions, as it affects not only the students themselves but also the institutions' reputation and funding. Dropout can occur for a variety of reasons, including academic, financial,…

Peer-led team learning is a socially mediated pedagogy where trained peer leaders, students who have completed a course, return to lead students in groups within a targeted course. The effect of peer-led team learning to improve student success in chemistry has been extensively documented but it is unclear if it is just as effective at…

The ability to learn cause-effect relations from experience is critical for humans to behave adaptively -- to choose causes that bring about desired effects. However, traditional experiments on experience-based learning involve events that are artificially compressed in time so that all learning occurs over the course of minutes. These paradigms…

Adaptive behavior is characterized by our ability to create, maintain, and update (or switch) rules by which we categorize and respond to stimuli across changing contexts ("cognitive flexibility"). Recent research suggests that people can link the control process of task-switching to contextual cues through associative learning, whereby…

Since Brown and Kulik (1977) coined the term 'Flashbulb memories' (FBMs), there are still heated debates about their nature. We thus considered it useful to take stock of almost 50 years of research by reviewing 57 test-retest studies on FBMs for public events. The review aimed to answer six research questions by examining the target events and…

We explored the causal role of individual and age-related differences in working memory (WM) capacity in long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Our sample of 160 participants included 120 children (6-13-years old) and 40 young adults (18-24 years). Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes.…

The concentration in K-12 education on higher-order thinking has diminished the importance of math fact automaticity, which is the ability to deliver a correct answer immediately from long-term memory without impeding the working memory. This quantitative study investigated the influence of automaticity of high school students on their Missouri…