Retrospective confidence refers to the phenomenological experience of the level of certainty that retrieved information is, in fact, correct. Retrospective confidence judgments are examined across a range of sub-disciplines in psychology from perception to memory research, and in education and legal applications. This paper focuses on…

Echocardiographers can detect abnormalities accurately and rapidly from dynamic images. This is likely due to the application of cue-based associations resident in memory, a process known as cue utilization. This study investigated whether cue utilization is associated with the ability to apply within-domain capabilities (dynamic) to more degraded…

Our aim in the current study was to examine how different diary methods might impact the results of involuntary memory studies. We compared three different commonly used diary methods, record all memories experienced per day, record up to two memories per day, or record only the first two per day. Results showed that the record-all group had the…

Visual search is faster when a fixed target location is paired with a spatially invariant (vs. randomly changing) distractor configuration, thus indicating that repeated contexts are learned, thereby guiding attention to the target (contextual cueing [CC]). Evidence for memory-guided attention has also been revealed with electrophysiological…

Many recent studies have shown that memory for correct answers is enhanced when an error is committed and then corrected, as compared to when the correct answer is provided without intervening error commission. The fact that the kind of errors that produced such a benefit, in past research, were those that were semantically related to the correct…

Research has observed that monitoring one's own learning modifies memory for some materials but not for others. Specifically, making judgments of learning (JOLs) while learning word pairs improves subsequent cued-recall memory performance for related word pairs but not for unrelated word pairs. Theories that have attempted to explain this pattern…

Echocardiographers are highly specialised, skilled practitioners who play a critical role in medical imaging diagnostics. Yet, little is known about the cognitive and perceptual attributes of experts within this domain. This study was designed to examine the role of individual differences in expertise. Specifically, the contribution of a domain…

Recent context-control learning studies have shown that switch costs are reduced in a particular context predicting a high probability of switching as compared to another context predicting a low probability of switching. These context-specific switch probability effects suggest that control of task sets, through experience, can become associated…

Attempting to guess an answer to a memory question has repeatedly been shown to benefit memory for the answer compared to merely reading what the answer is, even when the guess is incorrect. In this study, we investigate 2 potential explanations for this effect in a single experimental procedure. According to the semantic explanation, the benefits…

A large body of evidence shows an animacy effect on memory in that animate entities are better remembered than inanimate ones. Yet, the reason for this mnemonic prioritization remains unclear. In the survival processing literature, the assumption that richness of encoding is responsible for adaptive memory benefits has received substantial…

In 2 experiments, eye-tracking was used to examine individual differences in attention during encoding and their relation to associative learning. Pupillary responses were used as an indicator of the amount of attention devoted to items, whereas eye fixations provided a means of assessing attentional focus among items within each to-be-remembered…

One experiment with rats explored whether an extinction-cue prevents the recovery of extinguished lever-pressing responses. Initially, rats were trained to perform one instrumental response (R1) for food in Context A, and a different instrumental response (R2) in Context B. Then, responses were extinguished each in the alternate context (R1 in…

Two types of corrective feedback, recasts and prompts, have sparked much research in second language (L2) learning and teaching. However, it is still unclear how these two types of feedback draw learners' attention to the erroneous forms in L2 classes. This study used an open questionnaire to investigate Chinese learners' perceptions of recasts…

Retrieval of an associative memory can lead to different phenomena. Brief reexposure sessions tend to trigger reconsolidation, whereas more extended ones trigger extinction. In appetitive and fear cued Pavlovian memories, an intermediate "null point" period has been observed where neither process seems to be engaged. Here we investigated…

Exposure therapy, which focuses on extinguishing fear-triggering cues and contexts, is widely used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Yet, PTSD patients who received successful exposure therapy are vulnerable to relapse of fear response after a period of time, a phenomenon known as spontaneous recovery (SR). Increasing evidence…