Memory & Cognition back issues from March 2008:
Passive tactile feedback facilitates mental rotation of handheld objects
Mar 01, 2008; ... Mental rotation of objects improves when passive tactile information for the rotating object accompanies the imagined rotation (Wraga, Creem, & Proffitt, 2000). We examined this phenomenon further using a within-subjects paradigm involving handheld objects. In Experiment 1, participants ...
Prior knowledge enhances the category dimensionality effect
Mar 01, 2008; ... A study of the combined influence of prior knowledge and stimulus dimensionality on category learning was conducted. Subjects learned category structures with the same number of necessary dimensions but with more or fewer additional, redundant dimensions and with either knowledge-related or ...
Recognition and position information in working memory for visual textures
Mar 01, 2008; ... In three experiments, we examined connections between item-recognition memory and memory for item-position information. With sequences of compound gratings as study and probe items, subjects made either item-position judgments (Experiments 1 and 2), by identifying the serial position of the ...
Processing the presence, placement, and properties of a distractor in spatial language tasks
Mar 01, 2008; ... A common way to describe the location of an object is to spatially relate it to a nearby object For such descriptions, the object being described is referred to as the located object; the object to which it is spatially related is referred to as the reference object. Typically, however, there ...
The effect of Stroop interference on the categorical perception of color
Mar 01, 2008; ... In two experiments, we examined the effects of Stroop interference on the categorical perception (CP; better cross-category than within-category discrimination) of color. Using a successive two-alternative forced choice recognition paradigm (deciding which of two stimuli was identical to a ...
Processing modifier-head agreement in reading: Evidence for a delayed effect of agreement
Mar 01, 2008; ... The present study examined whether type of inflectional case (semantic or grammatical) and phonological and morphological transparency affect the processing of Finnish modifier-head agreement in reading. Readers' eye movement patterns were registered. In Experiment 1, an agreeing modifier ...
Verbalizing events: Overshadowing or facilitation?
Mar 01, 2008; ... Verbal overshadowing refers to the surprising effect whereby additional verbal information about a visual stimulus hinders its subsequent recognition. In two experiments, we analyzed the validity of this effect for event recognition across various conditions of presentation and testing ....
Repetition blindness in sentence contexts: Not just an attribution?
Mar 01, 2008; ... Selective "blindness" to repeated words in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) occurs even when omitting these words compromises sentence syntax and meaning. The contributions of lexical and contextual factors to this repetition blindness (RB) phenomenon were evaluated using three tasks that ...
Individual differences in syntactic ambiguity resolution: Readers vary in their use of plausibility information
Mar 01, 2008; ... Two experiments investigated the relation between individual differences in working memory capacity and differences in the efficiency of syntactic processing. In one experiment, readers comprehended sentences containing main-verb/reduced-relative ambiguities that all resolved to the ...
Conversation, speech acts, and memory
Mar 01, 2008; ... Speakers frequently have specific intentions that they want others to recognize (Grice, 1957). These specific intentions can be viewed as speech acts (Searle, 1969), and I argue that they play a role in long-term memory for conversation utterances. Five experiments were conducted to examine this ...
The role of pragmatic principles in resolving attachment ambiguities: Evidence from eye movements
Mar 01, 2008; ... In an eyetracking experiment, participants read sentences that contained a prepositional phrase (PP) that could be attached to one of two preceding verbs. To understand the sentence, readers had to select which verb would serve as the host for the PP. In some of the sentences, the critical verbs ...
When you name the pizza you look at the coin and the bread: Eye movements reveal semantic activation during word production
Mar 01, 2008; ... Two eyetracking experiments tested for activation of category coordinate and perceptually related concepts when speakers prepare the name of an object. Speakers saw four visual objects in a 2 × 2 array and identified and named a target picture on the basis of either category (e.g., "What is the ...
Awareness in contextual cuing with extended and concurrent explicit tests
Mar 01, 2008; ... The term contextual cuing refers to improved visual search performance with repeated exposure to a configuration of objects. Participants use predictive cues-derived from learned associations between target locations and the spatial arrangement of the surrounding distractors in a ...
Easy comes, easy goes? The link between learning and remembering and its exploitation in metacognition
Mar 01, 2008; ... The cue-utilization view in metacognition assumes that judgments of learning (JOLs) are based on inferences from mnemonic cues deriving from the online processing of items during learning. This view calls for a specification of the underlying heuristics, their validity in predicting memory ...
The reappearance hypothesis revisited: Recurrent involuntary memories after traumatic events and in everyday life
Mar 01, 2008; ... Recurrent involuntary memories are autobiographical memories that come to mind with no preceding retrieval attempt and that are subjectively experienced as being repetitive. Clinically, they are classified as a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder. The present work is the first to ...
The effects of tests on learning and forgetting
Mar 01, 2008; ... In three experiments, we investigated whether memory tests enhance learning and reduce forgetting more than additional study opportunities do. Subjects learned obscure facts (Experiments 1 and 2) or Swahili-English word pairs (Experiment 3) by either completing a test with feedback (test/study) ...
Distinctive encoding reduces the Jacoby-Whitehouse illusion
Mar 01, 2008; ... We investigated the influence of distinctive encoding on the Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) illusion. Subjects studied visually presented words that were associated with either an auditory presentation of the same word (non-distinctive encoding) or a picture of the object (distinctive encoding) ....
Metacognition and learning about primacy and recency effects in free recall: The utilization of intrinsic and extrinsic cues when making judgments of learning
Mar 01, 2008; ... Although memory researchers know about primacy and recency effects, it is unclear whether students are aware of these effects and incorporate them when making judgments of learning (JOLs). The present research examined how participants use serial position information (extrinsic cues) when making ...