Population coding models provide a quantitative account of visual working memory (VWM) retrieval errors with a plausible link to the response characteristics of sensory neurons. Recent work has provided an important new perspective linking population coding to variables of signal detection, including d-prime, and put forward a new hypothesis: that…

The retro-cue effect (RCE) describes the finding that participants' working memory performance is enhanced when their attention is directed to the to-be-tested position by a spatial cue during the retention interval. Here, we explore the relationship between RCE and working memory consolidation. A sequential display retro-cue paradigm is used for…

The relation between perceptual and conceptual knowledge is a longstanding research question in developmental psychology. Here we tested children's dependence on figurative information with a reaction time/accuracy task. A sample of 151 children from 5 to 10 years were assessed from two multicultural and multiracial schools in the London (UK)…

Challenges to verbal encoding may affect the ability of autistic individuals to express their ideas. Therefore, visuospatial expression may represent a person's knowledge and skills more accurately than spoken language. To test this hypothesis, we asked seven autistic adults to linguistically retell and visuospatially reenact several animated…

The present paper examines possible benefits of spatial audio guides on learning outcomes in the spatial learning setting of an experimental exhibition and attempts to differentiate between different mechanisms underlying such an effect. In Experiment 1, we examined whether the spatial contiguity principle may be such a mechanism. A spatial audio…

Longer free time between presentation of verbal list items often leads to better immediate serial recall. The present series of three experiments demonstrates that this beneficial effect of time is more general than has been known: It is found for verbal items presented visually and auditorily (Experiments 1 and 2), and also when people engage in…

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…

Based on theories of multimedia learning, the present study investigated whether the haptic sense serves as an additional channel to enhance the learning experience and learning outcomes. We therefore set up an experimental exhibition with two showrooms. In the first showroom, the sensory access of the participants to the exhibition objects was…

The ability to concurrently maintain representations of multiple objects and their locations in visual working memory is severely limited. Thus, making optimal use of visual working memory requires continual, moment-to-moment monitoring of its fidelity: High-fidelity representations can be relied upon, whereas incomplete or fuzzy representations…

In 8 experiments, we investigated motion fluency effects on object preference. In each experiment, distinct objects were repeatedly seen moving either fluently (with a smooth and predictable motion) or disfluently (with sudden and unpredictable direction changes) in a task where participants were required to respond to occasional brief changes in…

How do we maintain information about spatial configurations in mind? Many working memory (WM) models assume that rehearsal processes are used to counteract forgetting in WM. Here, we investigated the contributions of gaze-based and attention-based rehearsal for protecting spatial representations from time-based forgetting. Participants memorized 6…

How are scene representations stored in memory? Researchers have often posited that scene representations have a hierarchical structure with background elements providing a scaffold for more detailed foreground elements. To further investigate scene representation and the role of background and foreground information, we introduced a new stimulus…

We investigated whether clustering based on feature similarity improves the representational quality of visual working memory (VWM). We hypothesized that similar items are organized into clusters, and their recall precision increases with fewer clusters because of reduced memory load. In a series of 6 experiments, participants remembered…

Working memory is necessary for a wide variety of cognitive abilities. Developmental work has shown that as working memory capacities increase, so does the ability to successfully perform other cognitive tasks, including language processing. The present work demonstrates the effects of working memory availability on children's language production.…

Bilingual infants from 6- to 24-months of age are more likely to generalize, flexibly reproducing actions on novel objects significantly more often than age-matched monolingual infants are. In the current study, we examine whether the addition of novel verbal labels enhances memory generalization in a perceptually complex imitation task. We…