Hanging on the telephone: Maintaining visuospatial bootstrapping over time in working memory.

Visuospatial bootstrapping (VSB) refers to the phenomenon in which performance on a verbal working memory task can be enhanced by presenting the verbal material within a familiar visuospatial configuration. This effect is part of a broader literature concerning how working memory is influenced by use of multimodal codes and contributions from long-term memory. The present study aimed to establish whether the VSB effect extends over a brief (5-s) delay period, and to explore the possible mechanisms operating during retention. The VSB effect, as indicated by a verbal recall advantage for digit sequences presented within a familiar visuospatial configuration (modelled on the T-9 keypad) relative to a single-location display, was observed across four experiments. The presence and size of this effect changed with the type of concurrent task activity applied during the delay. Articulatory suppression (Experiment 1) increased the visuospatial display advantage, while spatial tapping (Experiment 2) and a visuospatial judgment task (Experiment 3) both removed it. Finally, manipulation of the attentional demands placed by a verbal task also reduced (but did not abolish) this effect (Experiment 4). This pattern of findings demonstrates how provision of familiar visuospatial information at encoding can continue to support verbal working memory over time, with varying demands on modality-specific and general processing resources.

Universal Patterns in Color-Emotion Associations Are Further Shaped by Linguistic and Geographic Proximity.

Many of us "see red," "feel blue," or "turn green with envy." Are such color-emotion associations fundamental to our shared cognitive architecture, or are they cultural creations learned through our languages and traditions? To answer these questions, we tested emotional associations of colors in 4,598 participants from 30 nations speaking 22 native languages. Participants associated 20 emotion concepts with 12 color terms. Pattern-similarity analyses revealed universal color-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient r = .88). However, local differences were also apparent. A machine-learning algorithm revealed that nation predicted color-emotion associations above and beyond those observed universally. Similarity was greater when nations were linguistically or geographically close. This study highlights robust universal color-emotion associations, further modulated by linguistic and geographic factors. These results pose further theoretical and empirical questions about the affective properties of color and may inform practice in applied domains, such as well-being and design.

Imagining the future: A cross-cultural perspective on possible selves.

This study examined the impact of culture on the qualitative and quantitative features of possible selves. Young adults from Turkey (n=55), Serbia (n=64), and the United Kingdom (n=73) generated images of eight possible selves (e.g. I will be a doctor) which were dated and rated for vividness, positivity, imagery perspective, rehearsal, and according to whether or not they involved other people. All possible selves were coded according to categories (e.g. job, parenthood, self-improvement). There were cross-cultural differences in the types of possible selves generated and in the ratings for vividness, positivity, and rehearsal. Across all three cultures, specific possible selves were more frequently generated than abstract possible selves. Specific possible selves were rated as significantly more vivid and were dated as emerging later than abstract possible selves. Results are discussed with reference to cultural life scripts and the effects of culture on future cognitions.

Who am I? Autobiographical retrieval improves access to self-concepts.

It is considered that an individual's current self-concept plays a crucial role in guiding the retrieval of autobiographical memory. Using a novel fluency paradigm, the present research examined whether or not the reverse is also true, that is, does memory retrieval influence the description of the conceptual self? Specifically, this study examined the effect of prior autobiographical reverie on the subsequent retrieval of stored self-concepts. Participants wrote a description of a personally relevant memory or a control topic (of no relevance to the self), following which they had 60 seconds to generate as many self-defining statements as possible, each beginning with I am. Participants engaging in autobiographical retrieval generated significantly more statements than those in the control condition, suggesting that autobiographical retrieval increased access to self-concepts. Type of statement also varied according to group. Participants in the autobiographical memory condition were more likely to conceptualise themselves in relation to their psychological traits, and this was replicated in a second experiment conducted online. Findings support the idea that self and episodic memory are highly related constructs, and are discussed in relation to implications for individuals with autobiographical memory deficits.

The ontogeny of visual-motor memory and its importance in handwriting and reading: a developing construct.

Humans have evolved a remarkable ability to remember visual shapes and use these representations to generate motor activity (from Palaeolithic cave drawings through Jiahu symbols to cursive handwriting). The term visual-motor memory (VMM) describes this psychological ability, which must have conveyed an evolutionary advantage and remains critically important to humans (e.g. when learning to write). Surprisingly, little empirical investigation of this unique human ability exists--almost certainly because of the technological difficulties involved in measuring VMM. We deployed a novel technique for measuring this construct in 87 children (6-11 years old, 44 females). Children drew novel shapes presented briefly on a tablet laptop screen, drawing their responses from memory on the screen using a digitizer stylus. Sophisticated algorithms (using point-registration techniques) objectively quantified the accuracy of the children's reproductions. VMM improved with age and performance decreased with shape complexity, indicating that the measure captured meaningful developmental changes. The relationship between VMM and scores on nationally standardized writing assessments were explored with the results showing a clear relationship between these measures, even after controlling for age. Moreover, a relationship between VMM and the nationally standardized reading test was mediated via writing ability, suggesting VMM's wider importance within language development.

Visuospatial bootstrapping: implicit binding of verbal working memory to visuospatial representations in children and adults.

When participants carry out visually presented digit serial recall, their performance is better if they are given the opportunity to encode extra visuospatial information at encoding-a phenomenon that has been termed visuospatial bootstrapping. This bootstrapping is the result of integration of information from different modality-specific short-term memory systems and visuospatial knowledge in long term memory, and it can be understood in the context of recent models of working memory that address multimodal binding (e.g., models incorporating an episodic buffer). Here we report a cross-sectional developmental study that demonstrated visuospatial bootstrapping in adults (n=18) and 9-year-old children (n=15) but not in 6-year-old children (n=18). This is the first developmental study addressing visuospatial bootstrapping, and results demonstrate that the developmental trajectory of bootstrapping is different from that of basic verbal and visuospatial working memory. This pattern suggests that bootstrapping (and hence integrative functions such as those associated with the episodic buffer) emerge independent of the development of basic working memory slave systems during childhood.

Are syntactic representations similar in both reading and listening? Evidence from priming in first and second languages.

It is unclear to what extent natural differences between reading and listening result in differences in the syntactic representations formed in each modality. The present study investigated the occurrence of syntactic priming bidirectionally from reading to listening, and vice versa to examine whether reading and listening share the same syntactic representations in both first language (L1) and second language (L2). Participants performed a lexical decision task in which the experimental words were embedded in sentences with either an ambiguous or a familiar structure. These structures were alternated to produce a priming effect. The modality was manipulated whereby participants (a) first read part of the sentence list and then listened to the rest of the list (reading-listening group), or (b) listened and then read (listening-reading group). In addition, the study involved two within-modality lists in which participants either read or listened to the whole list. The L1 group showed within-modal priming in both listening and reading as well as a cross-modal priming effect. Although L2 speakers showed priming in reading, the effect was absent in listening and weak in the listening-reading condition. The absence of priming in L2 listening was attributed to difficulties in L2 listening rather than to an inability to produce abstract priming.

A comparative analysis of colour-emotion associations in 16-88-year-old adults from 31 countries.

As people age, they tend to spend more time indoors, and the colours in their surroundings may significantly impact their mood and overall well-being. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence to provide informed guidance on colour choices, irrespective of age group. To work towards informed choices, we investigated whether the associations between colours and emotions observed in younger individuals also apply to older adults. We recruited 7393 participants, aged between 16 and 88 years and coming from 31 countries. Each participant associated 12 colour terms with 20 emotion concepts and rated the intensity of each associated emotion. Different age groups exhibited highly similar patterns of colour-emotion associations (average similarity coefficient of .97), with subtle yet meaningful age-related differences. Adolescents associated the greatest number but the least positively biased emotions with colours. Older participants associated a smaller number but more intense and more positive emotions with all colour terms, displaying a positivity effect. Age also predicted arousal and power biases, varying by colour. Findings suggest parallels in colour-emotion associations between younger and older adults, with subtle but significant age-related variations. Future studies should next assess whether colour-emotion associations reflect what people actually feel when exposed to colour.

The effect of value on long-term associative memory.

Items with high value are often remembered better than those with low value. It is not clear, however, whether this value effect extends to the binding of associative details (e.g., word colour) in episodic memory. Here, we explored whether value enhances memory for associative information in two different scenarios that might support a more effective process of binding between identity and colour. Experiment 1 examined incidental binding between item and colour using coloured images of familiar objects, whereas Experiment 2 examined intentional learning of word colour. In both experiments, increasing value led to improvements in memory for both item and colour, and these effects persisted after approximately 24 hr. Experiment 3a and Experiment 3b replicated the value effect on intentional word-colour memory from Experiment 2 while also demonstrating this effect to be less reliable when word colour is incidental to the encoding phase. Thus, value-directed prioritisation can facilitate episodic associative memory when conditions for binding are optimised through the use of appropriate to-be remembered materials and encoding conditions.

Correction to 'Sensorimotor control dynamics and cultural biases: learning to move in the right (or left) direction'.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160806.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1098/rsos.160806.].

Affective norms for 210 British English and Finnish nouns.

This article presents affective ratings for 210 British English and Finnish nouns, including taboo words. The norms were collected with 135 native British English and 304 native Finnish speakers, who rated the words according to their emotional valence, emotional charge, offensiveness, concreteness, and familiarity. The ratings between the two languages were found to be strongly correlated. The present ratings were also strongly correlated with the American English emotional valence and arousal ratings available in the Affective Norms for English Words database (Bradley & Lang, 1999) and the Janschewitz (2008) database for taboo words. These ratings will help researchers to select stimulus materials for a wide range of experiments involving both monolingual and bilingual processing of British English and Finnish emotional words. Materials associated with this article may be accessed as an online supplement from http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Visuospatial bootstrapping: spatialized displays enhance digit and nonword sequence learning.

Visuospatial bootstrapping describes the observation that performance on a verbal memory task is enhanced by presenting the to-be-remembered material in a format with additional embedded spatial information. Thus far, it has only been reported in short-term memory tasks. Here, we report two experiments assessing the impact of spatial information on the learning of sequences in long-term memory. Experiment 1 used digits presented within a familiar numeric keypad as stimuli compared against single digits presented in one location. Experiment 2 used novel nonwords, which were either presented in an unchanging arrangement permitting the building-up of location knowledge or in a constantly changing arrangement. Both experiments demonstrated strong evidence that reliable spatial information facilitated sequence learning, particularly in later sequence positions. It is concluded that the incidental availability of spatialized information during study can facilitate learning of sequences of digits and nonwords. Furthermore, the spatial information can be learned during the task itself and does not need to be preexistent in long-term knowledge.

Living in history: how war, terrorism, and natural disaster affect the organization of autobiographical memory.

Memories of war, terrorism, and natural disaster play a critical role in the construction of group identity and the persistence of group conflict. Here, we argue that personal memory and knowledge of the collective past become entwined only when public events have a direct, forceful, and prolonged impact on a population. Support for this position comes from a cross-national study in which participants thought aloud as they dated mundane autobiographical events. We found that Bosnians often mentioned their civil war and that Izmit Turks made frequent reference to the 1999 earthquake in their country. In contrast, public events were rarely mentioned by Serbs, Montenegrins, Ankara Turks, Canadians, Danes, or Israelis. Surprisingly, historical references were absent from (post-September 11) protocols collected in New York City and elsewhere in the United States. Taken together, these findings indicate that it is personal significance, not historical importance, that determines whether public events play a role in organizing autobiographical memory.

Visuospatial bootstrapping: Binding useful visuospatial information during verbal working memory encoding does not require set-shifting executive resources.

Immediate serial recall of digits is better when the digits are shown by highlighting them in a familiar array, such as a phone keypad, compared with presenting them serially in a single location, a pattern referred to as "visuospatial bootstrapping." This pattern implies the establishment of temporary links between verbal and spatial working memory, alongside access to information in long-term memory. However, the role of working memory control processes like those implied by the "Central Executive" in bootstrapping has not been directly investigated. Here, we report a study addressing this issue, focusing on executive processes of attentional shifting. Tasks in which information has to be sequenced are thought to be heavily dependent on shifting. Memory for digits presented in keypads versus single locations was assessed under two secondary task load conditions, one with and one without a sequencing requirement, and hence differing in the degree to which they invoke shifting. Results provided clear evidence that multimodal binding (visuospatial bootstrapping) can operate independently of this form of executive control process.

A machine learning approach to quantify the specificity of colour-emotion associations and their cultural differences.

The link between colour and emotion and its possible similarity across cultures are questions that have not been fully resolved. Online, 711 participants from China, Germany, Greece and the UK associated 12 colour terms with 20 discrete emotion terms in their native languages. We propose a machine learning approach to quantify (a) the consistency and specificity of colour-emotion associations and (b) the degree to which they are country-specific, on the basis of the accuracy of a statistical classifier in (a) decoding the colour term evaluated on a given trial from the 20 ratings of colour-emotion associations and (b) predicting the country of origin from the 240 individual colour-emotion associations, respectively. The classifier accuracies were significantly above chance level, demonstrating that emotion associations are to some extent colour-specific and that colour-emotion associations are to some extent country-specific. A second measure of country-specificity, the in-group advantage of the colour-decoding accuracy, was detectable but relatively small (6.1%), indicating that colour-emotion associations are both universal and culture-specific. Our results show that machine learning is a promising tool when analysing complex datasets from emotion research.

On the Right Track? Investigating the Effect of Path Characteristics on Visuospatial Bootstrapping in Verbal Serial Recall.

Visuospatial bootstrapping (VSB) occurs when memory for verbal material is enhanced via association with meaningful visuospatial information. Sequences of digits are visually presented either in the center of the screen or within a keypad layout in which the digits may be arranged identically to familiar pin pad and mobile phone layouts, or randomly. Recall is consistently higher when digits are presented in the familiar layout. This "bootstrapping" could involve primarily long-term knowledge of the layout, primarily short-term memory of the unique spatial path, or may depend on both. We manipulated the path complexity of sequences to test whether the VSB effect depends on the quality of spatial representations in conjunction with the familiarity of the spatial layout in two experiments. We consistently observed both VSB effects and path complexity effects on verbal serial recall, but never observed any interaction between these factors, even when articulatory suppression was imposed. Analysis of recall by serial position revealed that the VSB effect was focused on the end-of-list items. Our finding of pervasive path complexity effects on verbal serial recall suggests incidental encoding of spatial path occurs during visually-presented verbal tasks regardless of layout familiarity, confirming that spatial factors can affect verbal recall, but ruling out the notion that incidental spatial paths are uniquely and voluntarily encoded with familiar layouts.

Sensorimotor control dynamics and cultural biases: learning to move in the right (or left) direction.

The nativist hypothesis suggests universal features of human behaviour can be explained by biologically determined cognitive substrates. This nativist account has been challenged recently by evolutionary models showing that the cultural transmission of knowledge can produce behavioural universals. Sensorimotor invariance is a canonical example of a behavioural universal, raising the issue of whether culture can influence not only which skills people acquire but also the development of the sensorimotor system. We tested this hypothesis by exploring whether culture influences the developing sensorimotor system in children. We took kinematic measures of motor control asymmetries in adults and children from differing cultures where writing follows opposite directions. British and Kuwaiti adults (n = 69) and first grade (5-6 year old) children (n = 140) completed novel rightward and leftward tracing tasks. The Kuwaitis were better when moving their arm leftward while the British showed the opposite bias. Bayesian analysis techniques showed that while children were worse than adults, they also showed asymmetries-with the asymmetry magnitude related to accuracy levels. Our findings support the idea that culture influences the sensorimotor system.

Cross-alphabet and cross-modal long-term priming in Serbian and English.

In Experiments 1 and 2, we investigated long-term repetition priming effects in Serbian under cross-alphabet and cross-modal conditions. In both experiments, results followed the same pattern: significant priming in all conditions and no significant reduction in priming in the cross-modal as opposed to the cross-alphabet condition. These results are different from those obtained in English (Experiment 3), in which a modality shift led to a reduction in priming. The findings are discussed within a theoretical framework, in which long-term priming is a by-product of learning within the language system. A full list of word stimuli for all three experiments presented in this article can be found at www.psychonomic.org/archive.

The assembly of phonology from print is serial and subject to strategic control: evidence from serbian.

The Serbian writing system was used to investigate whether a serial procedure is implicated in print-to-sound translation and whether components of the reading aloud system can be strategically controlled. In mixed- and pure-alphabet lists, participants read aloud phonologically bivalent words comprising bivalent letters in initial or final positions. Words with bivalent letters in initial positions were disadvantaged relative to nonbivalent controls to a greater degree than were words with bivalent letters in final positions, and the size of the effect was greater in the mixed-alphabet situations than it was in the pure-alphabet situations. A dual-route theory of bialphabetic reading aloud is proposed in which the nonlexical procedure operates serially and nonlexical spelling-sound correspondences for each script can be strategically emphasized or deemphasized.

Using affective knowledge to generate and validate a set of emotion-related, action words.

Emotion concepts are built through situated experience. Abstract word meaning is grounded in this affective knowledge, giving words the potential to evoke emotional feelings and reactions (e.g., Vigliocco et al., 2009). In the present work we explore whether words differ in the extent to which they evoke 'specific' emotional knowledge. Using a categorical approach, in which an affective 'context' is created, it is possible to assess whether words proportionally activate knowledge relevant to different emotional states (e.g., 'sadness', 'anger', Stevenson, Mikels & James, 2007a). We argue that this method may be particularly effective when assessing the emotional meaning of action words (e.g., Schacht & Sommer, 2009). In study 1 we use a constrained feature generation task to derive a set of action words that participants associated with six, basic emotional states (see full list in Appendix S1). Generation frequencies were taken to indicate the likelihood that the word would evoke emotional knowledge relevant to the state to which it had been paired. In study 2 a rating task was used to assess the strength of association between the six most frequently generated, or 'typical', action words and corresponding emotion labels. Participants were presented with a series of sentences, in which action words (typical and atypical) and labels were paired e.g., "If you are feeling 'sad' how likely would you be to act in the following way?" … 'cry.' Findings suggest that typical associations were robust. Participants always gave higher ratings to typical vs. atypical action word and label pairings, even when (a) rating direction was manipulated (the label or verb appeared first in the sentence), and (b) the typical behaviours were to be performed by the rater themselves, or others. Our findings suggest that emotion-related action words vary in the extent to which they evoke knowledge relevant for different emotional states. When measuring affective grounding, it may then be appropriate to use categorical ratings in conjunction with unimodal measures, which assess the 'magnitude' to which words evoke feelings (e.g., Newcombe et al., 2012). Towards this aim we provide a set of emotion-related action words, accompanied by generation frequency and rating data, which show how strongly each word evokes knowledge relevant to basic emotional states.