Judgments of learning reflect the encoding of contexts, not items: evidence from a test of recognition exclusion.

Two sources of evidence seem to be shared by judgments of past recognition and judgments of future performance: item memory or familiarity (i.e., memory for the item independent of the context in which it was experienced) and context memory or recollection (i.e., memory for the context specific to a particular prior encounter). However, there are few studies investigating the link between these two putative memory processes and judgments of learning (JOLs). We tested memory and metamemory using a continuous exclusion procedure - a modified recognition memory task where study events for two classes of items are interleaved with test trials in which the subject must endorse items from one class and reject items from the other. This procedure allowed us to estimate the influences of memory for context and memory for item on JOLs and licenses conclusions about the relative role of item and context information in supporting JOLs. An analysis of forgetting revealed that JOLs reflect both the initial degree of learning and the rate of forgetting, but only of memory for context and not of memory for items. These findings suggest that JOLs are predictive of memory for context-bound episodes, rather than for the semantic content of those episodes.

Metamnemonic predictions of lineup identification.

After a crime is committed, investigators may query witnesses about whether they believe they will be to identify the perpetrator. However, we know little about how such metacognitive judgments are related to performance on a subsequent lineup identification task. The extant research has found the strength of this relationship to be small or nonexistent, which conflicts with the large body of literature indicating a moderate relationship between predictions and performance on memory tasks. In Studies 1-3, we induce variation in encoding quality by having participants watch a mock crime video with either low, medium, or high exposure quality, and then assess their future lineup performance. Calibration analysis revealed that assessments of future lineup performance were predictive of identification accuracy. This relationship was driven primarily by poor performance following low assessments. Studies 4 and 5 showed that these predictions are not based on a witness's evaluation of their encoding experience, nor on a contemporaneous assessment of memory strength. These results reinforce the argument that variation in memory quality is needed to obtain reliable relationships between predictions and performance. An unexpected finding is that witnesses who made a prediction shortly after encoding evinced superior memory compared to those who made a prediction later.

Strategic regulation of memory in dsyphoria: a quantity-accuracy profile analysis.

The mechanisms underlying a tendency among individuals with depression to report personal episodic memories with low specificity remain to be understood. We assessed a sample of undergraduate students with dysphoria to determine whether depression relates to a broader dysregulation of balancing accuracy and informativeness during memory reports. Specifically, we investigated metamnemonic processes using a quantity-accuracy profile approach. Recall involved three phases with increasing allowance for more general, or coarse-grained, responses: (a) forced-precise responding, requiring high precision; (b) free-choice report with high and low penalty incentives on accuracy; (c) a lexical description phase. Individuals with and without dysphoria were largely indistinguishable across indices of retrieval, monitoring, and control aspects of metamemory. The results indicate intact metacognitive processing in young individuals with dysphoria and provide no support for the view that impaired metacognitive control underlies either memory deficits or bias in memory reports that accompany dysphoria.

MEMCONS: How Contemporaneous Note-Taking Shapes Memory for Conversation.

Written memoranda of conversations, or memcons, provide a near-contemporaneous record of what was said in conversation, and offer important insights into the activities of high-profile individuals. We assess the impact of writing a memcon on memory for conversation. Pairs of participants engaged in conversation and were asked to recall the contents of that conversation 1 week later. One participant in each pair memorialized the content of the interaction in a memcon shortly after the conversation. Participants who generated memcons recalled more details of the conversations than participants who did not, but the content of recall was equally and largely accurate for both participants. Remarkably, only 4.7% of the details of the conversation were recalled by both of the partners after a week delay. Contemporaneous note-taking appears to enhance memory for conversation by increasing the amount of information remembered but not the accuracy of that information. These findings have implications for evaluating the testimony of participants on conversations with major political or legal ramifications.

Lower memory specificity in individuals with dysphoria is not specific to autobiographical memory.

BACKGROUND: A core cognitive attribute of depression is lower specificity in the expression of autobiographical memories. Despite interventions targeting memory specificity in depression, its underlying mechanisms are not yet fully understood. Depression also relates to poorer memory for episodic details; here we examine whether reduced specificity might simply reflect broader episodic memory deficits and weakened memory traces with the passage of time. METHODS: Undergraduate students with and without symptoms of depression completed the Autobiographical Interview and prose-reading episodic memory tasks to assess both same-day and delayed memory. RESULTS: Dysphoria and nondysphoria groups performed similarly on the tasks of immediate episodic and autobiographical memory; notably, the dysphoria group did not display evidence of lower specificity at this time point. After a delay, however, both groups demonstrated less specific memory responses on both memory tasks, and these declines were more pronounced in the group with dysphoria. That is, after a delay, individuals high in dysphoria showed a greater decrease in the quantity of specific event details reported on both the episodic and the autobiographical memory task. Additional analyses incorporating other clinical and cognitive measures indicated that these relations are largely unique to symptoms of depression. LIMITATIONS: The sample comprised mostly female students; the study should be replicated with more diverse samples. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support the claim that lower memory specificity is not peculiar to autobiographical memory, but rather, reflects impoverished memory more generally. This is an important consideration for theories and remedial strategies targeting memory specificity.

Comparing models of learning and relearning in large-scale cognitive training data sets.

Practice in real-world settings exhibits many idiosyncracies of scheduling and duration that can only be roughly approximated by laboratory research. Here we investigate 39,157 individuals' performance on two cognitive games on the Lumosity platform over a span of 5 years. The large-scale nature of the data allows us to observe highly varied lengths of uncontrolled interruptions to practice and offers a unique view of learning in naturalistic settings. We enlist a suite of models that grow in the complexity of the mechanisms they postulate and conclude that long-term naturalistic learning is best described with a combination of long-term skill and task-set preparedness. We focus additionally on the nature and speed of relearning after breaks in practice and conclude that those components must operate interactively to produce the rapid relearning that is evident even at exceptionally long delays (over 2 years). Naturalistic learning over long time spans provides a strong test for the robustness of theoretical accounts of learning, and should be more broadly used in the learning sciences.

Memory Fidelity Reveals Qualitative Changes in Interactions Between Items in Visual Working Memory.

Memory for objects in a display sometimes reveals attraction-the objects are remembered as more similar to one another than they actually were-and sometimes reveals repulsion-the objects are remembered as more different from one another. The conditions that lead to these opposing memory biases are poorly understood; there is no theoretical framework that explains these contrasting dynamics. In three experiments (each N = 30 adults), we demonstrate that memory fidelity provides a unifying dimension that accommodates the existence of both types of visual working memory interactions. We show that either attraction or repulsion can arise simply as a function of manipulations of memory fidelity. We also demonstrate that subjective ratings of fidelity predict the presence of attraction or repulsion on a trial-by-trial basis. We discuss how these results bear on computational models of visual working memory and contextualize these results within the literature of attraction and repulsion effects in long-term memory and perception.

Referential Form and Memory for the Discourse History.

The way we refer to things in the world is shaped by the immediate physical context as well as the discourse history. But what part of the discourse history is relevant to language use in the present? In four experiments, we combine the study of task-based conversation with measures of recognition memory to examine the role of physical contextual cues that shape what speakers perceive to be a part of the relevant discourse history. Our studies leverage the differentiation effect, a phenomenon in which speakers are more likely to use a modified expression to refer to an object (e.g., dotted sock) if they had previously described a similar object (e.g., striped sock) than when they had not described a similar object. Two physical cues-the background that framed the to-be-described pictures and the position of the pictures in the display-were manipulated to alter perceptions about the relevant discourse context. We measured the rate with which speakers modify referring expressions to differentiate current from past referents. Recognition memory measures following the conversation probed what was and was not remembered about past discourse referents and contexts. Analysis of modification rates indicated that these contextual grouping cues shaped perceptions about the relevant discourse context. The contextual cues did not affect memory for the referents, but the memory for past referents was better for speakers than for listeners. Our findings show that perceptions about the relevant discourse history are a key determinant of how language is used in the moment but also that conversational partners form asymmetric representations of the discourse history.

The effect of lineup size on eyewitness identification.

Eyewitness identification via lineup procedures is an important and widely used source of evidence in criminal cases. However, the scientific literature provides inconsistent guidance on a very basic feature of lineup procedure: lineup size. In two experiments, we examined whether the number of fillers affects diagnostic accuracy in a lineup, as assessed with receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Showups (identification procedures with one face) led to lower discriminability than simultaneous lineups. However, in neither experiment did the number of fillers in a lineup affect discriminability. We also evaluated competing models of decision-making from lineups. This analysis indicated that the standard Independent Observations (IO) model, which assumes a decision rule based on the comparison of memory strength signals generated by each face in a lineup, is incapable of reproducing the lower level of performance evident in showups. We could not adjudicate between the Ensemble model, which assumes a decision rule based on the comparison of the strength of each face with the mean strength across the lineup, and a newly introduced Dependent Observations model, which adopts the same decision rule as the IO model, but with correlated signals across faces. We draw lessons for users of lineup procedures and for basic research on eyewitness decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is there a K in capacity? Assessing the structure of visual short-term memory.

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a cognitive structure that temporarily maintains a limited amount of visual information in the service of current cognitive goals. There is active theoretical debate regarding how limits in VSTM should be construed. According to discrete-slot models of capacity, these limits are set in terms of a discrete number of slots that store individual objects in an all-or-none fashion. According to alternative continuous resource models, the limits of VSTM are set in terms of a resource that can be distributed to bolster some representations over others in a graded fashion. Hybrid models have also been proposed. We tackled the classic question of how to construe VSTM structure in a novel way, by examining how contending models explain data within traditional VSTM tasks and also how they generalize across different VSTM tasks. Specifically, we fit theoretical ROCs derived from a suite of models to two popular VSTM tasks: a change detection task in which participants had to remember simple features and a rapid serial visual presentation task in which participants had to remember real-world objects. In 3 experiments we assessed the fit and predictive ability of each model and found consistent support for pure resource models of VSTM. To gain a fuller understanding of the nature of limits in VSTM, we also evaluated the ability of these models to jointly model the two tasks. These joint modeling analyses revealed additional support for pure continuous-resource models, but also evidence that performance across the two tasks cannot be captured by a common set of parameters. We provide an interpretation of these signal detection models that align with the idea that differences among memoranda and across encoding conditions alter the memory signal of representations in VSTM.

Word predictability blurs the lines between production and comprehension: Evidence from the production effect in memory.

Predictions about likely upcoming input may promote rapid language processing, but the mechanisms by which such predictions are generated remain unclear. One hypothesis is that comprehenders use their production system to covertly produce what they would say if they were the speaker. If reading predictable words involves covert production, this act might have consequences for memory. The present study capitalized on the production effect, which is the observation that words read aloud are remembered better than words read silently. Participants read sentence-final predictable and unpredictable words aloud or silently, followed by a surprise recognition memory task. If reading predictable words involves covert production, the memory improvement from actually producing the words should be smaller for predictable words than for unpredictable words. This was confirmed in Experiment 1, which tested item memory using old/new judgments. Experiment 2 followed the same procedure, except that participants now made aloud/silent judgments probing their memory for prior acts of production. Here the hypothesis was that, relative to unpredictable words, it should be more difficult to remember whether predictable words had been read aloud or silently. Indeed, word predictability tended to make it harder to tell the difference, suggesting that predictability blurred the lines between production and comprehension. Taken together, the findings support the idea that reading predictable words can involve covert production and show that this act has consequences for what readers retain.

Long-term inference and memory following retrieval practice.

One exceptional characteristic of the testing effect is its generalizability over time and circumstance. The benefits of testing over rote restudy appear to grow with time, as forgetting occurs, and also have been documented to extend to tasks of inference on previously unstudied stimuli. In the two experiments reported here, we evaluated inference and memory for members of natural categories over time. Rote memory and generalization were tested shortly after the study phase and again after varying delays. Results from both experiments indicate that retrieval practice does indeed enhance inference for novel members of previously learned categories, and that the benefits are maintained over the duration of our experiments-up to 25 days. An analysis of forgetting rates indicates that retrieval practice does not, however, decelerate forgetting when compared with restudy. Rates of forgetting were not discernibly different, for either rote memory or conceptual knowledge, between the two conditions. These results indicate that although testing does not appear to reduce forgetting, it is a potent means of enhancing inference, and the benefits to memory and inference are long lasting.

Techniques for scaffolding retrieval practice: The costs and benefits of adaptive versus diminishing cues.

Testing is a powerful enhancer of memory. However, if initial encoding is poor, and subsequent retrieval practice is likely to fail, then the benefits of testing are diminished or even eliminated. Previous work has suggested that the benefits of testing may be preserved under difficult conditions with a scaffolded technique called diminishing-cues retrieval practice (DCRP; Fiechter & Benjamin, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(5), 1868-1876, 2018). DCRP provides increasing retrieval demands over practice, but does not adapt to individual learners or to materials of varying difficulty. Here, we evaluate a new technique called adaptive-cues retrieval practice (ACRP). ACRP adapts to an individual's moment-to-moment ability by providing within-trial accumulated cuing, generating more demanding retrieval practice for better learned items. Across six experiments, learners practiced English-Iñupiaq word pairs using ACRP, standard retrieval practice, restudy, and DCRP. ACRP is even more effective than DCRP in situations where standard retrieval practice is ineffective. When testing is most effective, ACRP, DCRP, and standard retrieval practice all enhance memory to approximately the same degree, but DCRP requires the least practice time. Our findings suggest that DCRP is a more efficient technique for learning, but that the benefits of ACRP extend to more learning scenarios than those of any other identified practice regimen.

The role of retrieval during study: Evidence of reminding from self-paced study time.

The reminding effect (Tullis, Benjamin, & Ross, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143[4], 1526-1540, 2014) describes the increase in recall of a studied word when a related word is presented later in the study list. However, because the process of reminding is thought to occur during study, measures of test performance are indirect indicators of the process of reminding and are subject to influences that arise during testing. The present research seeks evidence of reminding during encoding. In two experiments, self-paced study times were used to index the online process of reminding. In Experiment 1, pairs of repeated words, related words, and unrelated words were included in a study list. Study times were shorter for words related to prior words in the list, but only when the lag between those two words was short. Relatedness affected study time by inspiring a reduction in the threshold for termination of study for related words under massed conditions. Experiment 2 replicated the reduction in study time for related words and further showed that the study time allotted to an associate of an earlier item predicted better memory for that earlier word on a cued-recall test. In this experiment, an advantage in memory was observed for related words, and self-paced study time of one word during encoding was predictive of later memory for a related word. These results suggest a link between the action of reminding at study, as indexed by changes in the distribution of study time, and later benefits to remembering, as revealed by the reminding effect.

Monitoring the ebb and flow of attention: Does controlling the onset of stimuli during encoding enhance memory?

Central to the operation of the Atkinson and Shiffrin's (Psychology of learning and motivation, 2, 89-195, 1968) model of human memory are a variety of control processes that manage information flow. Research on metacognition reveals that provision of control in laboratory learning tasks is generally beneficial to memory. In this paper, we investigate the novel domain of attentional fluctuations during study. If learners are able to monitor attention, then control over the onset of stimuli should also improve performance. Across four experiments, we found no evidence that control over the onset of stimuli enhances learning. This result stands in notable contrast to the fact that control over stimulus offset does enhance memory (Experiment 1; Tullis & Benjamin, Journal of memory and language, 64 (2), 109-118, 2011). This null finding was replicated across laboratory and online samples of subjects, and with both words and faces as study material. Taken together, the evidence suggests that people either cannot monitor fluctuations in attention effectively or cannot precisely time their study to those fluctuations.

Editorial.

This editorial nudges contributors to Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition (JEP:LMC) in the direction of producing more replicable and reproducible research. This will mean little to no change in practice for many researchers. For others, it will mean paying closer attention to, and being more transparent about, issues of design and analysis. The author would like the journal to provide more tools but few proscriptions for researchers to improve rigor. He encourages author to make data, materials, and analysis scripts openly available when it is feasible to do so. Registered reports are a type of article in which much of the review process and editorial decisions occur prior to data collection. The goal of this editorial policy is to select papers that are valuable by virtue of their rigorous methodology rather than exciting results. Other than Registered Reports, there will no longer be different article types in JEP:LMC. Sections of the journal indicating brief reports, observations, or commentary were appropriate in an era when issues of journals were read. JEP:LMC can remain a standard bearer for high-quality research in cognitive psychology in these heady times. The journal has successfully weathered its collective exuberance over splashy findings and the consequent turn to shorter and shorter articles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Aging and recognition memory: A meta-analysis.

Recognizing a stimulus as previously encountered is a crucial everyday life skill and a critical task motivating theoretical development in models of human memory. Although there are clear age-related memory deficits in tasks requiring recall or memory for context, the existence and nature of age differences in recognition memory remain unclear. The nature of any such deficits is critical to understanding the effects of age on memory because recognition tasks allow fewer strategic backdoors to supporting memory than do tasks of recall. Consequently, recognition may provide the purest measure of age-related memory deficit of all standard memory tasks. We conducted a meta-analysis of 232 prior experiments on age differences in recognition memory. As an organizing framework, we used signal-detection theory (Green & Swets, 1966; Macmillan & Creelman, 2005) to characterize recognition memory in terms of both discrimination between studied items and unstudied lures (d') and response bias or criterion (c). Relative to young adults, older adults showed reduced discrimination accuracy and a more liberal response criterion (i.e., greater tendency to term items new). Both of these effects were influenced by multiple, differing variables, with larger age deficits when studied material must be discriminated from familiar or related material, but smaller when studying semantically rich materials. These results support a view in which neither the self-initiation of mnemonic processes nor the deployment of strategic processes is the only source of age-related memory deficits, and they add to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying those changes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The joint contribution of participation and performance to learning functions: Exploring the effects of age in large-scale data sets.

Large-scale data sets from online training and game platforms offer the opportunity for more extensive and more precise investigations of human learning than is typically achievable in the laboratory. However, because people make their own choices about participation, any investigation into learning using these data sets must simultaneously model performance-that is, the learning function-and participation. Using a data set of 54 million gameplays from the online brain training site Lumosity, we show that learning functions of participants are systematically biased by participation policies that vary with age. Older adults who are poorer performers are more likely to drop out than older adults who perform well. Younger adults show no such effect. Using this knowledge, we can extrapolate group learning functions that correct for these age-related differences in dropout.

Diminishing-cues retrieval practice: A memory-enhancing technique that works when regular testing doesn't.

Retrieval practice has been shown to be a highly effective tool for enhancing memory, a fact that has led to major changes to educational practice and technology. However, when initial learning is poor, initial retrieval practice is unlikely to be successful and long-term benefits of retrieval practice are compromised or nonexistent. Here, we investigate the benefit of a scaffolded retrieval technique called diminishing-cues retrieval practice (Finley, Benjamin, Hays, Bjork, & Kornell, Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 289-298, 2011). Under learning conditions that favored a strong testing effect, diminishing cues and standard retrieval practice both enhanced memory performance relative to restudy. Critically, under learning conditions where standard retrieval practice was not helpful, diminishing cues enhanced memory performance substantially. These experiments demonstrate that diminishing-cues retrieval practice can widen the range of conditions under which testing can benefit memory, and so can serve as a model for the broader application of testing-based techniques for enhancing learning.

The efficacy of learners' testing choices.

Practice tests provide large mnemonic benefits over restudying, but learners judge practice tests as less effective than restudying. Consequently, learners infrequently utilize testing when controlling their study and often choose to be tested only on well-learned items. In 5 experiments, we examined whether learners' choices about testing and restudying are effective for improving subsequent memory performance. Learners studied a list of word pairs and chose which items to restudy and which to test. Some of learners' choices were honored (by assigning those items to the chosen activity) and some of learners' choices were dishonored (by assigning those items to the opposite study activity). Surprisingly, and in contrast with all work to date on the metacognitive monitoring of testing effects, honoring learners' testing choices consistently resulted in better memory performance than dishonoring choices. This effect occurred principally because learners often chose to restudy difficult items, and those items did not benefit from testing. The effectiveness of learners' choices about testing casts the metacognition of testing in a new light: learners may not appreciate the benefits of testing, but they do have an understanding of circumstances in which the benefits of testing are minimal. (PsycINFO Database Record