The development of visual expertise is accompanied by enhanced visual object recognition memory within an expert domain. We aimed to understand the relationship between expertise and memory by modeling cognitive mechanisms. Participants with a measured range of birding expertise were recruited and tested on memory for birds (expert domain) and…

Experiments were conducted to test a modern exemplar-familiarity model on its ability to account for both short-term and long-term probe recognition within the same memory-search paradigm. Also, making connections to the literature on attention and visual search, the model was used to interpret differences in probe-recognition performance across…

Memory improves when encoding and retrieval processes overlap. Here, we investigated how the neural bases of long-term memory encoding vary as a function of the degree to which functional processes engaged at study are engaged again at test. In an incidental learning paradigm, electrical brain activity was recorded from the scalps of healthy…

Visual working memory (WM) is traditionally considered a robust form of visual representation that survives changes in object motion, observer's position, and other visual transients. This article presents data that are inconsistent with the traditional view. We show that memory sensitivity is dramatically influenced by small variations in the…

Consolidation is a time-dependent process responsible for the storage of information in long-term memory. As such, it plays a crucial role in motor learning. In two experiments, we sought to determine whether one's performance influences the outcome of the consolidation process. We used a visuomotor adaptation task in which the cursor moved by the…

The modality-match effect in recognition refers to superior memory for words presented in the same modality at study and test. Prior research on this effect is ambiguous and inconsistent. The present study demonstrates that the modality-match effect is found when modality is rendered salient at either encoding or retrieval. Specifically, in…

This paper discusses a mental model of learning based on the processes of attention, perception, processing, and application. The learning process starts with attention, such as curiosity, excitement, expectation, or fear; in pedagogy this is called motivation. New impressions are dependent on and interpreted against the background of previous…