Semantic relatedness can impair memory for item locations.

While memory for semantically related items is improved over unrelated items in many cases, relatedness can also lead to memory costs. Here we examined how the semantic relatedness of words within a display influenced memory for their locations. Participants learned the locations of words inside grid displays; the words in a given display were either from a single category or were from different assorted categories. When a display containing words from a single category was compared to a scrambled display containing words from multiple categories, location memory performance was rendered worse, while word recall performance was significantly improved. Our results suggest that semantically structured spaces can both help and harm memory within the context of a location memory task. We hypothesize that relatedness can improve memory performance by increasing the likelihood that matching candidates will be retrieved, yet might worsen performance that requires distinguishing between similar target representations.

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing.

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

Semantic partitioning facilitates memory for object location through category-partition cueing.

In our lived environments, objects are often semantically organised (e.g., cookware and cutlery are placed close together in the kitchen). Across four experiments, we examined how semantic partitions (that group same-category objects in space) influenced memory for object locations. Participants learned the locations of items in a semantically partitioned display (where each partition contained objects from a single category) as well as a purely visually partitioned display (where each partition contained a scrambled assortment of objects from different categories). Semantic partitions significantly improved location memory accuracy compared to the scrambled display. However, when the correct partition was cued (highlighted) to participants during recall, performance on the semantically partitioned display was similar to the scrambled display. These results suggest that semantic partitions largely benefit memory for location by enhancing the ability to use the given category as a cue for a visually partitioned area (e.g., toys - top left). Our results demonstrate that semantically structured spaces help location memory across partitions, but not items within a partition, providing new insights into the interaction between meaning and memory.

Revisiting the influence of offloading memory on free recall.

Relying on external memory aids is a common memory strategy that has long allowed us to "remember" vast amounts of information more reliably than with our internal memory alone. However, recent work has provided evidence consistent with the idea that offloading memory demands encourages a reduced engagement in intentional or top-down memory strategies/efforts, leading to lower memory performance in general. Evidence for this view comes from results demonstrating a reduced primacy effect but intact recency and isolation effects when individuals could offload memory demands (but had to unexpectedly rely on their internal memory at test). In the present investigation, we attempt a replication of these critical results, given some inconsistencies in the findings between studies. In addition, we extend the examination of offloading's impact on memory via examining individual differences in reliance on the external store (when available) and different strategies for the use of that store. Results of the replication are generally consistent with previous research. An individual differences analysis yielded results consistent with the notion that increased reliance on an external store can compromise internal/biological memory in the absence of that store. Finally, a verbal model of offloading memory demands within a framework of effort and study time allocation is presented. Together, the results both reinforce extant research and extend it in new directions.

The gist of it: offloading memory does not reduce the benefit of list categorisation.

When we can offload to-be-remembered information to an external store, our ability to recall that information from internal memory can be diminished. However, previous research has suggested that associative memory processes may remain intact in the face of offloading behaviour. In the present investigation, we examine how the opportunity to offload memory demands affects the learning of categorised word lists. Across six experiments, participants studied and wrote down word lists that were either strongly associated with a semantic theme (categorised) or word lists that consisted of the same set of words but shuffled across the categorised lists (shuffled). When participants expected to have access to their written lists during the recall test (i.e., a condition that would encourage offloading) but were not given access to it, we found the typical recall advantage for categorised lists. This effect was found to be the same size or larger compared to a condition where participants did not expect to have access to their written lists during the recall test (i.e., a condition that would not allow offloading). We propose that gist memory supported by semantic associations is not substantially reduced in offloading.

On our susceptibility to external memory store manipulation: examining the influence of perceived reliability and expected access to an external store.

Offloading memory to external stores (e.g., a saved file) allows us to evade the limitations of our internal memory. One cost of this strategy is that the external memory store used may be accessible to others and, thus, may be manipulated. Here we examine how reducing the perceived reliability of an external memory store and manipulating one's expectation for future access to such a store can influence participants' susceptibility to its manipulation (i.e., endorsing manipulated information as authentic). Across three pre-registered experiments, participants were able to store to-be-remembered information in an external store. On a critical trial, we surreptitiously manipulated the information in that store. Results demonstrated that an explicit notification of a previous manipulation of that store and the warning that the store will be inaccessible in the future can decrease susceptibility to manipulation of that store. Results are discussed in the context of the metacognitive monitoring and control of memory reports in situations that involve the distribution of memory demands across both internal and external spaces.

On the relation between reading difficulty and mind-wandering: a section-length account.

In many situations, increasing task difficulty decreases thoughts that are unrelated to the task (i.e., mind-wandering). In the context of reading, however, recent research demonstrated that increasing passage reading difficulty actually increases mind-wandering rates (e.g., Feng et al. in Psychon Bull Rev 20:586-592, 2013). The primary goal of this research was to elucidate the mechanism that drives this positive relation. Across Experiments 1-3, we found evidence that the effect of Flesch-Kincaid reading difficulty on mind-wandering is partially driven by hard passages having longer sections of text (i.e., more words per screen) than easy passages when passages are presented one sentence at a time. In Experiment 4, we controlled for reading difficulty, and found that section length was positively associated with mind-wandering rates. We conclude by proposing that individuals may tend to disengage their attention from passages with relatively long sections of text because they appear to be more demanding than passages with shorter sections (even though objective task demands are equivalent).

Anticipating cognitive effort: roles of perceived error-likelihood and time demands.

Why are some actions evaluated as effortful? In the present set of experiments we address this question by examining individuals' perception of effort when faced with a trade-off between two putative cognitive costs: how much time a task takes vs. how error-prone it is. Specifically, we were interested in whether individuals anticipate engaging in a small amount of hard work (i.e., low time requirement, but high error-likelihood) vs. a large amount of easy work (i.e., high time requirement, but low error-likelihood) as being more effortful. In between-subject designs, Experiments 1 through 3 demonstrated that individuals anticipate options that are high in perceived error-likelihood (yet less time consuming) as more effortful than options that are perceived to be more time consuming (yet low in error-likelihood). Further, when asked to evaluate which of the two tasks was (a) more effortful, (b) more error-prone, and (c) more time consuming, effort-based and error-based choices closely tracked one another, but this was not the case for time-based choices. Utilizing a within-subject design, Experiment 4 demonstrated overall similar pattern of judgments as Experiments 1 through 3. However, both judgments of error-likelihood and time demand similarly predicted effort judgments. Results are discussed within the context of extant accounts of cognitive control, with considerations of how error-likelihood and time demands may independently and conjunctively factor into judgments of cognitive effort.

Increasing participant motivation reduces rates of intentional and unintentional mind wandering.

We explored the possibility that increasing participants' motivation to perform well on a focal task can reduce mind wandering. Participants completed a sustained-attention task either with standard instructions (normal motivation), or with instructions informing them that they could be excused from the experiment early if they achieved a certain level of performance (higher motivation). Throughout the task, we assessed rates of mind wandering (both intentional and unintentional types) via thought probes. Results showed that the motivation manipulation led to significant reductions in both intentional and unintentional mind wandering as well as improvements in task performance. Most critically, we found that our simple motivation manipulation led to a dramatic reduction in probe-caught mind-wandering rates (49%) compared to a control condition (67%), which suggests the utility of motivation-based methods to reduce people's propensity to mind-wander.

On the Clock: Evidence for the Rapid and Strategic Modulation of Mind Wandering.

We examined the hypothesis that people can modulate their mind wandering on the basis of their expectations of upcoming challenges in a task. To this end, we developed a novel paradigm in which participants were presented with an analog clock, via a computer monitor, and asked to push a button every time the clock's hand was pointed at 12:00. Importantly, the time at which the clock's hand was pointed at 12:00 was completely predictable and occurred at 20-s intervals. During some of the 20-s intervals, we presented thought probes to index participants' rates of mind wandering. Results indicated that participants decreased their levels of mind wandering as they approached the predictable upcoming target. Critically, these results suggest that people can and do modulate their mind wandering in anticipation of changes in task demands.

The role of task difficulty in theoretical accounts of mind wandering.

Recent research has indicated that reducing the difficulty of a task by increasing the predictability of critical stimuli produces increases in intentional mind wandering, but, contrary to theoretical expectations, decreases in unintentional mind wandering. Here, we sought to determine whether reducing task difficulty by reducing working-memory load would yield similar results. Participants completed an easy (Choice Response Time; CRT) task and a relatively difficult (Working Memory; WM) task, and intermittently responded to thought probes asking about intentional and unintentional mind wandering. As in prior studies, we found higher rates of intentional mind wandering during the easy compared to the more difficult task. However, we also found more unintentional mind wandering during the difficult compared to the easy task. We discuss these results in the context of theoretical accounts of mind wandering.

Intrusive thoughts: linking spontaneous mind wandering and OCD symptomatology.

One recent line of research in the literature on mind wandering has been concerned with examining rates of mind wandering in special populations, such as those characterized by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, dysphoria, and schizophrenia. To best conceptualize mind wandering in studies examining special populations, it has recently been suggested that researchers distinguish between deliberate and spontaneous subtypes of this experience. Extending this line of research on mind wandering in special populations, in a large non-clinical sample (N = 2636), we examined how rates of deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering vary with symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Results indicate that, whereas deliberate mind wandering is not associated with OCD symptomatology, spontaneous mind wandering is, with higher reports of spontaneous mind wandering being associated with higher reports of OCD symptoms. We discuss the implications of these results for understanding both mind wandering and OCD.

On the Necessity of Distinguishing Between Unintentional and Intentional Mind Wandering.

In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in the number of studies examining mind wandering. Although participants' reports of mind wandering are often assumed to largely reflect spontaneous, unintentional thoughts, many researchers' conceptualizations of mind wandering have left open the possibility that at least some of these reports reflect deliberate, intentional thought. Critically, however, in most investigations on the topic, researchers have not separately assessed each type of mind wandering; instead, they have measured mind wandering as a unitary construct, thereby conflating intentional and unintentional types. We report the first compelling evidence that an experimental manipulation can have qualitatively different effects on intentional and unintentional types of mind wandering. This result provides clear evidence that researchers interested in understanding mind wandering need to consider the distinction between unintentional and intentional occurrences of this phenomenon.

Assessing the associations among trait and state levels of deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering.

Recent research has demonstrated that mind wandering can be subdivided into spontaneous and deliberate types, and this distinction has been found to hold at both the trait and state levels. However, to date, no attempts have been made to link trait-level spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering with state-level assessments of these two subtypes of mind wandering. Here we evaluated whether trait-level deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering map onto state levels of these subtypes of mind wandering. Results showed correspondence between trait-level reports of spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering and their state-level counterparts, indicating that people's reports on the intentionality of their mind wandering in the laboratory correspond to their reports of the intentionality of mind wandering in everyday life. Thus, the trait- and state-level scales of mind wandering were found to validate each other: Whereas the state-level measures provided some construct validity for the trait-level measures, the trait-level measures indicated that the state-level measures may be generalizable to everyday situations.

Storing information in-the-world: Metacognition and cognitive offloading in a short-term memory task.

We often store to-be-remembered information externally (e.g., written down on a piece of paper) rather than internally. In the present investigation, we examine factors that influence the decision to store information in-the-world versus in-the-head using a variant of a traditional short term memory task. In Experiments 1a and 1b participants were presented with to-be-remembered items and either had to rely solely on internal memory or had the option to write down the presented information. In Experiments 2a and 2b participants were presented with the same stimuli but made metacognitive judgments about their predicted performance and effort expenditure. The spontaneous use of external storage was related both to the number of items to be remembered and an individual's actual and perceived short-term-memory capacity. Interestingly, individuals often used external storage despite its use affording no observable benefit. Implications for understanding how individuals integrate external resources in pursuing cognitive goals are discussed.

Answers at your fingertips: Access to the Internet influences willingness to answer questions.

Recent technological advances have given rise to an information-gathering tool unparalleled by any in human history-the Internet. Understanding how access to such a powerful informational tool influences how we think represents an important question for psychological science. In the present investigation we examined the impact of access to the Internet on the metacognitive processes that govern our decisions about what we "know" and "don't know." Results demonstrated that access to the Internet influenced individuals' willingness to volunteer answers, which led to fewer correct answers overall but greater accuracy when an answer was offered. Critically, access to the Internet also influenced feeling-of-knowing, and this accounted for some (but not all) of the effect on willingness to volunteer answers. These findings demonstrate that access to the Internet can influence metacognitive processes, and contribute novel insights into the operation of the transactive memory system formed by people and the Internet.

Dissociations between data-driven and goal-driven effort reports: Performance, metacognition, and affect.

Measuring effort has long been a challenge and this seems particularly true in the case of subjective effort. Koriat et al. compared two types of effort frames, what they call data-driven effort, the amount of effort perceived to be required by a task, and goal-driven effort, the amount of effort one chooses to invest in a task. This study investigates whether self-reports of data- and goal-driven effort are differentially associated with test performance, metacognition, and affect in a complex learning task. Results demonstrate that data- and goal-driven effort have qualitatively different relations with many of these variables. For example, partial correlations revealed data-driven effort was negatively associated with prospective and retrospective performance estimates, but the opposite pattern emerged for goal-driven effort. These results demonstrate that how subjective measures of effort are framed (and interpreted by the respondent) can drastically influence how they relate to other variables of interest.

The prod eff: Partially producing items moderates the production effect.

Current accounts of the production effect suggest that production leads to the encoding of additional production-associated features and/or better feature encoding. Thus, if it is the act of production that leads to the storage and/or enhanced encoding of these features, then less of this act should reduce the resulting production effect. In two experiments, we provide a direct test of this idea by manipulating how much of a given item is produced within a single mode of production (typing). Results demonstrate that such partial production can yield a significant production effect that is smaller than the effect that emerges from producing the entire item. These results suggest that how much of an item is produced can moderate the size of the production effect and are considered in the context of recent modelling efforts.

Productions Need Not Match Study Items to Confer a Production Advantage, But It Helps.

The production effect is the finding that, relative to silent reading, producing information at study (e.g., reading aloud) leads to a benefit in memory. In most studies of this effect, individuals are presented with a set of unique items, and they produce a subset of these items (e.g., they are presented with the to-be-remembered target item TABLE and produce table) such that the production is both unique and representative of the target. Across two preregistered experiments, we examined the influence of a production that is unique but that does not match the target (e.g., producing fence to the target TABLE, producing car to the target TREE, and so on). This kind of production also yielded a significant effect-the mismatching production effect-although it was smaller than the standard production effect (i.e., when productions are both unique and representative of their targets) and was detectable only when targets with standard productions were included in the same study phase (i.e., when the type of production was manipulated within participant). We suggest that target-production matching is an important precursor to the production effect and that the kind of production that brings about a benefit depends on the other productions that are present.

Recurrence quantification analysis of eye movements.

Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) has been successfully used for describing dynamic systems that are too complex to be characterized adequately by standard methods in time series analysis. More recently, RQA has been used for analyzing the coordination of gaze patterns between cooperating individuals. Here, we extend RQA to the characterization of fixation sequences, and we show that the global and local temporal characteristics of fixation sequences can be captured by a small number of RQA measures that have a clear interpretation in this context. We applied RQA to the analysis of a study in which observers looked at different scenes under natural or gaze-contingent viewing conditions, and we found large differences in the RQA measures between the viewing conditions, indicating that RQA is a powerful new tool for the analysis of the temporal patterns of eye movement behavior.