Historically, much of what we know about human memory has been discovered in experiments using visual and verbal stimuli. In two experiments, participants demonstrated reliably high recognition for nonverbal liquids. In Experiment 1, participants showed high accuracy for recognizing tastes (bitter, salty, sour, sweet) over a 30-s delay in a…

The two-high-threshold (2HT) model of recognition memory assumes that people make memory errors because they fail to retrieve information from memory and make a guess, whereas the continuous unequal-variance (UV) model and the low-threshold (LT) model assume that people make memory errors because they retrieve misleading information from memory.…

Studies on collaborative memory have revealed an interesting phenomenon called collaborative inhibition (CI) (i.e., nominal groups recall more information than collaborative groups). However, the results of studies on false memories in collaborative memory tasks are controversial. This study aimed to understand the production of false memories in…

We examined the manifestation of dyslexia in a cross-linguistic study contrasting English and Greek children with dyslexia compared to chronological age and reading-level control groups on reading accuracy and fluency, phonological awareness, short-term memory, rapid naming, orthographic choice, and spelling. Materials were carefully matched…

Reconstructing memory for sequences is a complex process, likely involving multiple sources of information. In 3 experiments, we examined the source(s) of information that might underlie the ability to accurately place an event within a temporal context. The task was to estimate, after studying each list, the temporal position of a single test…

Hindsight bias is the tendency to overestimate one's prior knowledge of a fact or event after learning the actual fact. Recent research has suggested that age-related differences in hindsight bias may be based on age-related differences in inhibitory control. We tested whether this explanation held for 3 cognitive processes assumed to underlie…

Divided attention during encoding typically produces marked reductions in later memory. The attentional boost effect (ABE) is a surprising variation on this phenomenon. In this paradigm, each study stimulus (e.g., a word) is presented along with a target or a distractor (e.g., different colored circles) in a detection task. Later memory is better…

Long-term fear memory formation in the hippocampus and neocortex depends upon brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) signaling after acquisition. Incremental, appetitive odor discrimination learning is thought to depend substantially on the differentiation of adult-born neurons within the olfactory bulb (OB)--a process that is closely associated…

Episodic memory involves flexible retrieval processes that allow us to link together distinct episodes, make novel inferences across overlapping events, and recombine elements of past experiences when imagining future events. However, the same flexible retrieval and recombination processes that underpin these adaptive functions may also leave…

Three experiments examined the immediate free recall (IFR) of auditory-verbal and visuospatial materials from single-modality and dual-modality lists. In Experiment 1, we presented participants with between 1 and 16 spoken words, with between 1 and 16 visuospatial dot locations, or with between 1 and 16 words "and" dots with synchronized…

We examined the effects of aging on performance in an item-recognition experiment with confidence judgments. A model for confidence judgments and response time (RTs; Ratcliff & Starns, 2013) was used to fit a large amount of data from a new sample of older adults and a previously reported sample of younger adults. This model of confidence…

The article reports 4 experiments that explore the notion of recognition without awareness using words as the material. Previous work by Voss and associates has shown that complex visual patterns were correctly selected as targets in a 2-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) recognition test although participants reported that they were guessing. The…

Many studies have examined how people recall the locations of objects in spatial layouts. However, little is known about how people monitor the accuracy of judgments based on those memories. The goal of the present experiments was to examine the effect of reference frame characteristics on metacognitive accuracy for spatial judgments. Reference…

Serial position functions with marked primacy and recency effects are ubiquitous in episodic memory tasks. The demonstrations reported here explored whether bow-shaped serial position functions would be observed when people ordered exemplars from various categories along a specified dimension. The categories and dimensions were: actors and age;…

There is now abundant evidence that human learning and memory are governed by multiple systems. As a result, research is now turning to the next question of how these putative systems interact. For instance, how is overall control of behavior coordinated, and does learning occur independently within systems regardless of what system is in control?…