Better source memory for remembered to-be-forgotten items than for remembered to-be-remembered items.

When participants study items one-by-one and are directed to either remember or forget the respective item directly after its presentation, retention of to-be-forgotten items is regularly worse than of to-be-remembered items. We tested whether this directed forgetting effect which is regularly observed for item memory generalizes to source memory. In three experiments, participants studied items in two different source colors (N = 101) or at two different source locations (N = 64; N = 81). Sources were manipulated orthogonally to item type (remember vs. forget). At test, we asked participants to recognize all studied items and also to identify their source. We used a multinomial processing tree model to disentangle item memory, source memory, and guessing. In all three experiments, we replicated the directed forgetting effect in item memory. Source memory for to-be-forgotten items that were recognized despite the intention to forget, however, tended to be even better than source memory for to-be-remembered items that were recognized. These results suggest that the directed forgetting effect does not simply translate from item to source memory. Rather source memory seems to be disproportionally increased in to-be-forgotten items that are remembered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The illusory certainty: Information repetition and impressions of truth enhance subjective confidence in validity judgments independently of the factual truth.

People not only judge repeatedly perceived information as more likely being true (the so-called truth effect) they also tend to be more confident after judging the validity of repeated information. These phenomena are assumed to be caused by a higher subjective feeling of ease (i.e., fluency) when processing repeated (vs. new) information. Based on the suggestion that a higher number of coherent mental activations is promoting a fluency experience, we argue that besides repetition an already existing information network, that is (nonspecific) prior knowledge, can enhance fluency. Following this argumentation, information repetition as well as the act of judging incoming information as being true (vs. false) should feed into subjective confidence - independently of the factual truth (when judging under uncertainty). To test this, we reanalyzed two published data sets and conducted a new study. In total, participants (N = 247) gave 29,490 truth judgments and corresponding ratings of subjective confidence while attending two judgement phases (i.e., 10 min and 1 week after the exposure phase in each experiment). Results showed that (a) repetition (in 3 of 3 data sets) and (b) impressions of truth (in 2 of 3 data sets) were systematically related to higher subjective confidence. Moreover, we found (c) a significant positive interaction between repetition and impressions of truth after both intervals in all data sets. Our analyses further underline the moderating effect of time: Influences of repetition significantly decreased with increasing time interval. Notably, the factual truth did not systematically affect any of the above reported effects.

When there is noise on Sherlock Holmes: mind wandering increases with perceptual processing difficulty during reading and listening.

We investigated whether increased perceptual processing difficulty during reading or listening to a Sherlock Holmes novella impacts mind wandering as well as text comprehension. We presented 175 participants with a novella in either a visual or an auditory presentation format and probed their thoughts and motivational states from time to time during reading/listening. For half of the participants in each presentation-format condition (visual or auditory), the story was superimposed by Gaussian noise. For both presentation formats, the participants who were exposed to noise while processing the story mind-wandered more and performed worse in a later comprehension test than the participants who processed the story without added noise. These negative effects of increased perceptual processing difficulty on task focus and comprehension were partly driven by motivational factors: reading/listening motivation mediated the relationship between perceptual processing difficulty and mind wandering.

Construction and Validation of the HeiQ: An Operation-Oriented Figural Matrices Test.

Figural matrices tests are among the most popular and well-investigated tests used to assess inductive reasoning abilities. Solving these tests requires the selection of a target that completes a figural matrix among distractors. Despite their generally good psychometric properties, previous matrices tests have limitations associated with distractor construction that prevent them from realizing their full potential. Most tests allow participants to identify the correct response by eliminating distractors based on superficial features. The goal of this study was to develop a novel figural matrices test which is less prone to the use of response elimination strategies, and to test its psychometric properties. The new test consists of 48 items and was validated with N = 767 participants. Measurement models implied that the test is Rasch scalable, inferring a uniform underlying ability. The test showed good to very good reliability (retest-correlation: r = 0.88; Cronbach's alpha: α = 0.93; split-half reliability: r = 0.88) and good construct validity (r = 0.81 with the Raven Progressive Matrices Test, r = 0.73 with global intelligence scores of the Intelligence Structure Test 2000R, and r = 0.58 with the global score of the Berlin Intelligence Structure Test). It even superseded the Raven Progressive Matrices Tests in criterion-related validity (correlation with final year high school grades (r = -0.49 p < .001)). We conclude that this novel test has excellent psychometric properties and can be a valuable tool for researchers interested in reasoning assessment.

Prospective memories in the wild: Predicting memory for intentions in natural environments.

Prospective memory, the ability to remember an intention at the appropriate future moment, is often investigated in the laboratory to maximize experimental control. However, demands of laboratory prospective memory tasks only partly map onto everyday demands. Therefore, it is an open question whether factors which predict prospective memory in the laboratory also predict prospective memory in the real world. We combined diary and ecological momentary assessment methods to investigate which factors, that have been repeatedly shown to predict prospective memory performance in laboratory tasks, are related to the fulfillment of everyday intentions. Results showed that substantial portions of variance in real-world prospective memory performance could be explained with the factors found to be significant in laboratory. The most powerful predictors were perceived intention importance, the use of external memory aids, delay interval, and conscientiousness. However, some meaningful laboratory predictors (e.g., working memory) played only a minor role in natural environments and a large portion of the variance in everyday intention fulfillment remained unexplained. The results substantially extend the understanding of conditions and personality variables most conducive to remembering intentions, but they also suggest that additional factors influencing real-world prospective memory remain to be discovered.

What is the interference in "verbal interference"?

Research on the interrelation between language and other components of cognition makes frequent use of verbal interference paradigms. In this, participants are engaged in a primary nonverbal task, while simultaneously repeating non-sense syllables from memory or playback to occupy their articulatory buffer, which is assumed to block internal language use. However, language production involves different subprocesses and levels of representation, and no previous study has explicitly investigated which of these are affected by an occupied articulatory buffer. Thus, the current study addresses the question whether an occupied articulatory buffer significantly interferes with conceptualization. In Experiment 1, speakers name simple objects as fast and as accurately as they can under three conditions. In an interference condition, the verbalization task runs in parallel to a secondary, syllable memorization/recall task, which was expected to induce a situation in which the articulatory buffer temporarily holds phonological information while speakers engage in conceptualization. The articulatory buffer was not occupied in two control conditions. In Experiment 2, speakers performed a similar but more complex task. They verbally responded to visual depictions of actions, again under an interference condition and two control conditions. Results obtained in both experiments suggested no interference. Taken together, the findings suggest that an occupied articulatory buffer does not significantly affect conceptualization.

How consistent is mind wandering across situations and tasks? A latent state-trait analysis.

Mind wandering is often defined as the phenomenon of one's attention drifting away from the current activity toward inner thoughts and feelings. In the laboratory, mind wandering is most frequently assessed with thought reports that are collected while people perform some ongoing activity. It is not clear, however, inasmuch the resulting mind-wandering reports are reflective of person-consistent mind-wandering tendencies and/or situation-driven fluctuations in mind-wandering behavior. To shed light on this question, we tested how consistent mind-wandering reports are across different measurement occasions and tasks to investigate to which extent they indicate individual differences in mind wandering. Results from a latent state-trait analysis showed that mind-wandering reports are occasion-consistent to some extent and also somewhat task-specific. Theoretical implications of these findings are that mind wandering in the laboratory is less affected by situational factors than often assumed, but that individual differences in mind wandering partly depend on the currently ongoing task. Future research should investigate the origins of task-specificity effects on mind wandering and researchers should further incorporate the idea of task-specificity in future theory building. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Is it all about the feeling? Affective and (meta-)cognitive mechanisms underlying the truth effect.

People are more likely to judge repeatedly perceived statements as true. A decisive explanation for this so-called truth effect is that the repeated information can be processed more fluently than new information and that this fluency experience renders the information more familiar and trustworthy. Little is known, however, regarding whether and how affective states and dispositional cognitive preferences influence the truth effect. To this end, we conducted two experiments in which we manipulated (a) processing fluency via repetition, (b) the time interval (10 min vs. 1 week) between repetitions, and (c) short-term affective states using the presentation of emotional faces (Experiment 1) or the presence of an irrelevant source for changes in affective states (Experiment 2). Additionally, we assessed the dispositional variables need for cognitive closure (NCC), preference for deliberation (PD) and preference for intuition (PI). Results of Experiment 1 showed that the truth effect was significantly reduced for statements that were followed by a negative prime, although this was the case only for the longer repetition lag. Furthermore, higher NCC and lower PD scores were associated with an increased truth effect. Results of Experiment 2 replicated the moderating role of NCC and further showed that participants, who were provided with an alternative source for changes in their affective states, showed a reduced truth effect. Together, the findings suggest that (a) fluency-related changes in affective states may be (co-)responsible for the truth effect, (b) the truth effect is decreased when the repetition interval is long rather than short, and (c) the truth effect is increased for individuals with a higher need for cognitive closure. Theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

A Fresh Look at the Unconscious Thought Effect: Using Mind-Wandering Measures to Investigate Thought Processes in Decision Problems With High Information Load.

Unconscious Thought Theory (Dijksterhuis, 2004) states that thinking about a complex problem unconsciously can result in better solutions than conscious deliberation. We take a fresh look at the cognitive processes underlying "unconscious" thought by analyzing data of 822 participants who worked on a complex apartment-evaluation task in three experiments. This task's information-presentation and evaluation parts were separated by different kinds of filler-interval activities, which corresponded to standard conscious-thought and unconscious-thought manipulations. Employing experience-sampling methods, we obtained thought reports during and after filler-interval engagement. Evidence concerning the existence of the Unconscious Thought Effect was mixed, with such an effect being present in the first two experiments only. In these experiments, we further found less problem deliberation to be associated with better performance on the apartment task. Interestingly, this benefit disappeared when we probed participants' thoughts during the filler interval. We suggested that explicit thought awareness diminishes the Unconscious Thought Effect.

Do Attentional Lapses Account for the Worst Performance Rule?

The worst performance rule (WPR) describes the phenomenon that individuals' slowest responses in a task are often more predictive of their intelligence than their fastest or average responses. To explain this phenomenon, it was previously suggested that occasional lapses of attention during task completion might be associated with particularly slow reaction times. Because less intelligent individuals should experience lapses of attention more frequently, reaction time distribution should be more heavily skewed for them than for more intelligent people. Consequently, the correlation between intelligence and reaction times should increase from the lowest to the highest quantile of the response time distribution. This attentional lapses account has some intuitive appeal, but has not yet been tested empirically. Using a hierarchical modeling approach, we investigated whether the WPR pattern would disappear when including different behavioral, self-report, and neural measurements of attentional lapses as predictors. In a sample of N = 85, we found that attentional lapses accounted for the WPR, but effect sizes of single covariates were mostly small to very small. We replicated these results in a reanalysis of a much larger previously published data set. Our findings render empirical support to the attentional lapses account of the WPR.

A chronometric model of the relationship between frontal midline theta functional connectivity and human intelligence.

Individual differences in cognitive control have been suggested to act as a domain-general bottleneck constraining performance in a variety of cognitive ability measures, including but not limited to fluid intelligence, working memory capacity, and processing speed. However, owing to psychometric problems associated with the measurement of individual differences in cognitive control, it has been challenging to empirically test the assumption that individual differences in cognitive control underlie individual differences in cognitive abilities. In the present study, we addressed these issues by analyzing the chronometry of intelligence-related differences in midfrontal global theta connectivity, which has been shown to reflect cognitive control functions. We demonstrate in a sample of 98 adults, who completed a cognitive control task while their electroencephalogram was recorded, that individual differences in midfrontal global theta connectivity during stages of higher-order information-processing explained 65% of the variance in fluid intelligence. In comparison, task-evoked theta connectivity during earlier stages of information processing was not related to fluid intelligence. These results suggest that more intelligent individuals benefit from an adaptive modulation of theta-band synchronization during the time-course of information processing. Moreover, they emphasize the role of interregional goal-directed information-processing for cognitive control processes in human intelligence and support theoretical accounts of intelligence, which propose that individual differences in cognitive control processes give rise to individual differences in cognitive abilities. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Inter-trial alpha power indicates mind wandering.

Mind wandering during ongoing tasks can impede task performance and increase the risk of failure in the laboratory as well as in daily-life tasks and work environments. Neurocognitive measures like the electroencephalography (EEG) offer the opportunity to assess mind wandering non-invasively without interfering with the primary task. However, the literature on electrophysiological correlates of mind wandering is rather inconsistent. The present study aims toward clarifying this picture by breaking down the temporal dynamics of mind wandering encounters using a cluster-based permutation approach. Participants performed a switching task during which mind wandering was occasionally assessed via thought probes applied after trial completion at random time points. In line with previous studies, response accuracy was reduced during mind wandering. Moreover, alpha power during the inter-trial interval was a significantly increased on those trials on which participants reported that they had been mind-wandering. This spatially widely distributed effect is theoretically well in line with recent findings linking an increased alpha power to an internally oriented state of attention. Measurements of alpha power may, therefore, be used to detect mind wandering online during critical tasks in traffic and industry in order to prevent failures.

Retrieval-mediated directed forgetting in the item-method paradigm: the effect of semantic cues.

Item-method directed forgetting is widely considered a storage phenomenon. However, by applying a multinomial model, which separates storage and retrieval effect components, Rummel et al. (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 42(10):1526-1543, 2016) recently provided evidence that item-method directed forgetting effects are reflected by both storage and retrieval changes. The current investigation demonstrates that supposedly intentionally forgotten information can still be retrieved to some extent when semantic cuing facilitates retrieval of this information. Participants studied word pairs, with some pairs being followed by a "forget" and others by a "remember" instruction. A subset of items shared the same superordinate semantic category. In Experiment 1, a sub-portion of to-be-forgotten items was semantically related and less forgetting occurred selectively for these items when the category was reinstated during test. This finding was replicated and extended to reinstatement effects for to-be-remembered items in Experiment 2. The application of the storage-retrieval model confirmed that providing a category cue facilitates retrieval of to-be-forgotten as well as to-be-remembered information. The results are discussed in light of existing theories of directed forgetting.

Do your eyes give you away? A validation study of eye-movement measures used as indicators for mindless reading.

Identifying eye-movement measures as objective indicators of mind wandering seems to be a work in progress. We reviewed research comparing eye movements during self-categorized episodes of normal versus mindless reading and found little consensus regarding the specific measures that are sensitive to attentional decoupling during mind wandering. To address this issue of inconsistency, we conducted a new, high-powered eye-tracking experiment and considered all previously identified mind-wandering indicators. In our experiment, only three measures (reading time, fixation count, and first-fixation duration) positively predicted self-categorized mindless reading. Aside from these single measures, the word-frequency effect was found to be generally less pronounced during mindless-reading than during normal-reading episodes. To additionally test for convergent validity between the objective and subjective mind-wandering measures, we utilized eye-movement measures as well as thought reports, to examine the effect of metacognitive awareness on mind-wandering behavior. We expected that participants anticipating a difficult comprehension test would mind wander less during reading than would those anticipating an easy test. Although we were able to induce metacognitive expectancies about task difficulty, we found no evidence that these difficulty expectancies affected either subjectively reported or objectively measured mind wandering.

The validity of the online thought-probing procedure of mind wandering is not threatened by variations of probe rate and probe framing.

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in the measurement of mind wandering during ongoing tasks. The frequently used online thought-probing procedure (OTPP), in which individuals are probed on whether their thoughts are on-task or not while performing an ongoing task, has repeatedly been criticized, because variations in the frequency of thought probes and the order in which on-task and off-task thoughts are referred to have been shown to affect mind-wandering rates. Hitherto, it is unclear whether this susceptibility to measurement variation only affects mean response rates in probe-caught mind wandering or poses an actual threat to the validity of the OTPP, endangering the replicability and generalizability of study results. Here, we show in a sample of 177 students that variations of the frequency or framing of thought probes do not affect the validity of the OTPP. While we found that more frequent thought probing reduced the rate of probe-caught mind wandering, we did not replicate the effect that mind wandering is more likely to be reported when off-task thoughts are referred to first rather than second. Crucially, associations between probe-caught mind wandering and task performance, as well as associations between probe-caught mind wandering and covariates (trait mind wandering, reaction-time variability in the metronome-response task, and working-memory capacity) did not change with variations of the probing procedure. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the great heterogeneity in the way the OTPP is implemented across different studies endangers the replicability and generalizability of study results. Data and analysis code are available at https://osf.io/7w8bm/ .

Heidelberg Risk Sport-Specific Stress Test: A Paradigm to Investigate the Risk Sport-Specific Psycho-Physiological Arousal.

In risk sports with medium to high risks of injury (e.g., surfing, free solo climbing, wingsuit flying), athletes frequently find themselves in unexpected and threatening situations. Elevated psycho-physiological stress responses to these situations might have tremendous consequences for their performance as well as for their long-term health. To gain a better understanding of the psycho-physiological response to such events, innovative, externally valid and standardized stress induction protocols are needed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to introduce and evaluate a risk sport-specific stress protocol, i.e., the Heidelberg Risk Sport-Specific Stress Test (HRSST), which utilizes fear of falling as the stressful event. Climbing novices were asked to climb up a 12 m high wall. Then, participants were requested to "jump into the rope", leading to a secured fall of about 3 m. This imposed physical danger assumed to elicit psycho-physiological responses. Self-reported state anxiety, salivary cortisol, and heart rate/heart rate variability were measured before, during, and after the HRSST. Results of four independent studies that investigated the psycho-physiological response to the HRSST in 214 participants were analyzed, leading to conclusions about the stressor's effectiveness. Results showed that self-reported state anxiety consistently increased after the HRSST in all four experiments (moderate to large effects). The results of the physiological indicators were inconclusive. Salivary cortisol significantly increased after the HRSST in one of four experiments (small effect sizes). Although heart rate significantly increased during the "jump in the rope" in experiment 1, heart rate variability significantly decreased after the HRSST in only one of three experiments (small effect sizes). Findings suggest that the HRSST is a valid method to induce risk sport-specific emotional stress, but effects on physiological stress markers were rather minor. To sum up, in case of appropriate sports climbing facilities, the HRSST appears to be a cost-efficient and promising stress induction protocol: It offers the possibility to investigate risk sport-specific stress responses and their underlying mechanisms in climbing novices. These findings may also find application in professions in which individuals are exposed to risky situations, such as police officers, medical first responders, firefighters and military personnel.

Effects of Coping-Related Traits and Psychophysiological Stress Responses on Police Recruits' Shooting Behavior in Reality-Based Scenarios.

Police officers are often required to perform under high-stress circumstances, in which optimal task performance is crucial for their and the bystanders' physical integrity. However, stress responses, particularly anxiety and increased cortisol levels, shift attention from goal-directed to stimulus-driven control, leaving police officers with poor shooting performance under stress. Cardiac vagal activity and coping-related traits (i.e., self-control, sensation seeking) might help individuals to maintain performance under stress. So far, only few studies have integrated coping-related traits, psychophysiological stress markers and occupationally meaningful measures of behavior to investigate police officers' work performance under stress. Therefore, the present study investigated 19 police recruits (M age = 22.84, SD = 3.30) undergoing a reality-based shooting scenario in two experimental conditions in a within-design: low stress (LS) against a non-threatening mannequin, and high stress (HS), involving physical threat by an opponent. Psychological (i.e., anxiety, mental effort) and physiological stress responses (i.e., salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase, cardiac vagal activity) as well as shooting accuracy were repeatedly assessed. It was hypothesized that under stress, police recruits would demonstrate elevated psychophysiological stress responses and impaired shooting performance. Elevated psychophysiological stress responses would negatively influence shooting performance, whereas self-control, sensation seeking and cardiac vagal activity would positively influence shooting performance. While recruits reported significantly higher anxiety and mental effort in the HS scenario, both scenarios elicited comparable physiological responses. Overall, shooting accuracy was low and did not significantly decrease in the HS scenario. Shooting performance was predicted by self-control in the LS scenario and by post-task cardiac vagal activity in the HS scenario. While increased anxiety hints at a successful stress manipulation, physiological responses suggest similar stress levels for both scenarios, diminishing potential behavioral differences between the scenarios. Performance efficiency decreased under stress, as indicated by increasing mental effort. Findings on self-control suggest that suppressing negative stress responses might lead to impaired goal-directed attention, resulting in performance decrements. For police research and training, high-realism scenarios afford an opportunity to investigate and experience psychophysiological stress responses.

Forgetting Is a Feature, Not a Bug: Intentionally Forgetting Some Things Helps Us Remember Others by Freeing Up Working Memory Resources.

In the present study, we used an item-method directed-forgetting paradigm to test whether instructions to forget or remember one item affect memory for subsequently studied items. In two experiments (Ns = 138 and 33, respectively), recall was higher when a word pair was preceded during study by a to-be-forgotten word pair. This effect was cumulative: Performance increased when more preceding study items were to be forgotten. The effect decreased when memory was conditioned on instructions for items appearing farther back in the study list. Experiment 2 used a dual-task paradigm that suppressed, during encoding, verbal rehearsal or attentional refreshing. Neither task removed the effect, ruling out that rehearsal or attentional borrowing is responsible for the advantage conferred from previous to-be-forgotten items. We propose that memory formation depletes a limited resource that recovers over time and that to-be-forgotten items consume fewer resources, leaving more resources available for storing subsequent items. A computational model implementing the theory provided excellent fits to the data.

Proceeding with care for successful prospective memory: Do we delay ongoing responding or actively monitor for cues?

In prospective memory (PM) research, costs (slowed responding to the ongoing task when a PM task is present relative to when it is not) have typically been interpreted as implicating an attentionally demanding monitoring process. To inform this interpretation, Heathcote, Loft, and Remington (2015), using an accumulator model, found that PM-related costs were associated with changes in a decision threshold parameter. This pattern was interpreted as disfavoring a monitoring process and supporting a non-capacity-consuming delayed responding strategy. The present study combined both behavioral and modeling techniques, as well as embedded parameter validation, to better illuminate the underlying processes involved in PM. We encouraged participants to use either a delayed responding or a monitoring strategy and used these conditions as anchor points for comparing a standard PM condition (with no strategy instructions). The monitoring strategy benefited PM more than did a delayed responding strategy. Most importantly, behaviors and modeling parameters associated with the standard PM instructions more closely reflected footprints of monitoring. Further, we found no individual model parameter that directly implicates monitoring behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

Item-method directed forgetting and working memory capacity: A hierarchical multinomial modeling approach.

Intentional forgetting of information that has recently been encoded is regarded an active and adaptive process and is widely studied using the item-method or the list-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm. In the present research, we tested whether inter-individual differences in working-memory capacity (WMC), that have been identified as a relevant predictor of DF within the list method, are also related to stronger DF effects within the item method. Furthermore, we investigated relationships between WMC and item-method DF at different processing stages by applying the multinomial storage-retrieval model hierarchically to our data. Results showed that individuals with high WMC are better able to store to-be-remembered information than individuals with low WMC, whereas WMC was not related to retrieval of to-be-remembered information or to either storage or retrieval of to-be-forgotten information. Implications for theoretical accounts of item-method DF are discussed.