Many modern theories propose that perceptual information is represented by the sensorimotor activity elicited by the original stimulus. Scanpath theory (Noton & Stark, 1971) predicts that reinstating a sequence of eye fixations will help an observer recognize a previously seen image. However, the only studies to investigate this are…

Many models of recognition are derived from models originally applied to perception tasks, which assume that decisions from trial to trial are independent. While the independence assumption is violated for many perception tasks, we present the results of several experiments intended to relate memory and perception by exploring sequential…

Two questions about subjective confidence in perceptual judgments are examined: the bases for these judgments and the reasons for their accuracy. Confidence in perceptual judgments has been claimed to rest on qualitatively different processes than confidence in memory tasks. However, predictions from a self-consistency model (SCM), which had been…

Memory for naturalistic events over short delays is important for visual scene processing, reading comprehension, and social interaction. The research presented here examined relations between how an ongoing activity is perceptually segmented into events and how those events are remembered a few seconds later. In several studies, participants…

People tend to perceive immediate emotions as more intense than previous emotions. This "immediacy bias" in emotion perception occurred for exposure to emotional but not neutral stimuli (Study 1), when emotional stimuli were separated by both shorter (2 s; Studies 1 and 2) and longer (20 min; Studies 3, 4, and 5) delays, and for emotional…

The authors argue that perception is Bayesian inference based on accumulation of noisy evidence and that, in masked priming, the perceptual system is tricked into treating the prime and the target as a single object. Of the 2 algorithms considered for formalizing how the evidence sampled from a prime and target is combined, only 1 was shown to be…

Routine human behavior has often been attributed to plans--mental representations of sequences goals and actions--but can also be attributed to more opportunistic interactions of mind and a structured environment. This study asks whether performance on a task traditionally analyzed in terms of plans can be better understood from a "situated" (or…

Although perceptual information is utilized to judge size or depth, little work has investigated whether such information is used to make memory predictions. The present study examined how the font size of to-be-remembered words influences predicted memory performance. Participants studied words for a free-recall test that varied in font size and…

A time-course analysis of visual attention focusing (attentional constraint) was conducted in groups of participants with high and low working memory spans, a dimension the authors have argued reflects the ability to control attention. In 4 experiments, participants performed the Eriksen flanker paradigm under increasing levels of speed stress.…

This research tested the hypothesis that initial efforts at executive control temporarily undermine subsequent efforts at executive control. Four experiments revealed that controlling the focus of visual attention (Experiment 1), inhibiting predominant writing tendencies (Experiment 2), taking a working memory test (Experiment 3), or exaggerating…

A load theory of attention in which distractor rejection depends on the level and type of load involved in current processing was tested. A series of experiments demonstrates that whereas high perceptual load reduces distractor interference, working memory load or dual-task coordination load increases distractor interference. These findings…

Five experiments are reported concerning the effect on visual information processing of concurrently maintaining verbal information. The results suggest that the left cerebral hemisphere functions as a typical limited-capacity information processing system that can be influenced somewhat separately from the right hemisphere system. (Author/CTM)

Compared five distinct classes of models of how people judge the relative sizes of named objects. Four basic experiments were all concerned with the amount of time necessary to decide which of two named things is larger. (Editor/RK)

Two groups of undergraduates differing in reading ability were tested on a number of reaction-time tasks designed to determine the speed of encoding visual information at several different levels, tests of sensory functions, verbal and quantitative reasoning ability, short-term auditory memory span, and ability to comprehend spoken text.…