Effects of Context Changes on Memory Reactivation.

While the influence of context on long-term memory (LTM) is well documented, its effects on the interaction between working memory (WM) and LTM remain less understood. In this study, we explored these interactions using a delayed match-to-sample task, where participants (6 males, 16 females) encountered the same target object across six consecutive trials, facilitating the transition from WM to LTM. During half of these target repetitions, the background color changed. We measured the WM storage of the target using the contralateral delay activity in electroencephalography. Our results reveal that task-irrelevant context changes trigger the reactivation of long-term memories in WM. This reactivation may be attributed to content-context binding in WM and hippocampal pattern separation.

Social emotional processes during the third wave of COVID-19: Results from a close replication study in a Turkish sample.

Until recently, for almost 3 years, we used face masks to protect against COVID-19. Face masks disrupted our perception of socially relevant information, and impacted our social judgements as a result of the new social norms around wearing masks imposed by the pandemic. To shed light on such pandemic-induced changes in social emotional processes, Calbi et al. analysed data from an Italian sample collected in Spring 2020. They assessed valence, social distance and physical distance ratings for neutral, happy and angry male and female faces covered with a scarf or a mask. A year later, we used the same stimuli to investigate the same measures in a Turkish sample. We found that females attributed more negative valence ratings than males to angry faces, and that angry and neutral faces of females were rated more negatively than those of males. Scarf stimuli were evaluated more negatively in terms of valence. Participants attributed greater distance to more negative faces (angry > neutral > happy) and to scarf than the mask stimuli. Also, females attributed greater social and physical distance than males. These results may be explained by gender-stereotypic socialisation processes, and changes in people's perception of health behaviours during the pandemic.