{"title":"Refreshing is effective and can take place spontaneously in working memory, but is unlikely to play a key role in keeping information in mind.","authors":"Evie Vergauwe, Naomi Langerock","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001445","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001445","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory allows us to keep information readily available and accessible over brief periods of time, so that the information can be used for ongoing cognition when it is no longer present in the immediate environment. The amount of information that can be held in working memory is limited, and this has important implications. One prominent theoretical proposal is that the limited capacity of working memory stems from the limited amount of information that can be reactivated before it is lost from working memory, through a reactivation mechanism known as refreshing. Following this proposal, refreshing is a key determinant for working memory capacity. The present study aimed to test this hypothesis extensively. Our reasoning was that, if refreshing is a key determinant of working memory capacity, then we should be able to detect (a) the consequences of instructed refreshing and (b) the spontaneous use of refreshing across a variety of memory materials and task conditions. This would demonstrate the effectiveness and the general, spontaneous use of refreshing, respectively. Across a set of experiments using verbal, spatial, and visual materials in an item recognition task, we showed that refreshing mostly results in increased accessibility for the refreshed information when its use is instructed, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of refreshing. However, the inconsistent spontaneous use of refreshing across materials and task conditions was not in line with a general role of refreshing in keeping information in mind. Therefore, refreshing is unlikely to be a main determinant of working memory capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1213-1237"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143416009","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Merve Ileri-Tayar, Jackson S Colvett, Abhishek Dey, Julie M Bugg
{"title":"Does \"item-specific\" cognitive control operate at the item level?","authors":"Merve Ileri-Tayar, Jackson S Colvett, Abhishek Dey, Julie M Bugg","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001432","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001432","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>People learn and retrieve cognitive control settings (e.g., attentional focus) associated with stimulus and contextual features. It has been theorized that control adjustments occur at the item level (e.g., for a specific picture) and the category level (i.e., for the overarching category represented by the picture), but evidence is lacking for the former. We aimed to determine whether control can truly operate at the item level. In Experiments 1-3, we manipulated item-specific proportion congruencies in a picture-word Stroop task while holding category-specific proportion congruencies constant at 50% congruent. One item in each animal category (e.g., Dog 1, Fish 1) was mostly congruent (MC) and one item (e.g., Dog 2, Fish 2) was mostly incongruent (MI). Item-level control (i.e., larger Stroop effect for MC items compared to MI items) was observed in Experiment 1, but neither Experiment 2 nor 3 replicated this finding. Experiments 4a and 4b used MC and MI categories, with each comprising both MC and MI items, allowing us to potentially index both levels of control. However, the findings indicated that control operated only at the category level and not the item level. Using novel stimuli, Experiment 5 showed Stroop effects differed between items that shared a response but were visually/conceptually dissimilar. This finding suggests that applying item-level control may be difficult when items within a category are visually/conceptually similar (as in Experiments 1-4). Collectively, our findings provided little evidence for item-level control; instead, the findings suggest control primarily operates at the category level in the picture-word Stroop task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1238-1258"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143416087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investigating the effects of semantic radical consistency in chinese character naming with a corpus-based measure.","authors":"Chia-Fang Cheng, Ya-Ning Chang","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001425","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001425","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Semantic transparency refers to the degree to which the meaning of the whole word can be inferred from its constituents. For Chinese, semantic radicals generally carry information about the meanings of Chinese characters and, thus, can be used to reflect semantic transparency of Chinese characters. For those Chinese characters having the same semantic radicals (i.e., neighboring characters), their meanings are assumed to be semantically related to each other. However, to what extent those neighboring characters are close in their meanings remains unclear. A conventional crowdsource approach could provide a coarse measure of semantic relationships between semantic neighbors. However, those approaches are generally limited to a small sample size of characters. Here, we proposed a corpus-based measure of semantic transparency, termed <i>semantic radical consistency</i> (SRC). Specifically, we utilized the Word2Vec models to construct a Chinese semantic space and quantified the SRC for 3,423 characters. To evaluate the SRC, we first conducted linear mixed-effect modeling analyses to verify the explanatory power of SRC on a large-scale Chinese character naming reaction times. Second, we investigated the SRC effect by conducting a word naming task based on traditional factorial designs. Both the linear mixed-effect modeling and factorial naming results demonstrated that SRC was a unique and reliable variable to account for the variance in traditional Chinese character naming reaction times. The results indicated this innovative, corpus-derived SRC was able to effectively reflect the semantic transparency level by measuring semantic distances among characters in the same semantic radical category. Further investigations on the interaction between SRC and phonetic radical consistency demonstrated the cooperative nature between phonological and semantic reading pathways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1347-1362"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143442648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Charlotte E Lee, Hayward J Godwin, Hazel I Blythe, Denis Drieghe
{"title":"Individual differences in skilled reading and the word frequency effect.","authors":"Charlotte E Lee, Hayward J Godwin, Hazel I Blythe, Denis Drieghe","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001428","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001428","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Variation in eye movement patterns can be considerable even within skilled readers. Here, individual differences and eye movements of 88 average-to-very-skilled readers were assessed to examine the reliability of previous observations of a reduced word frequency effect associated with skilled reading. Shorter fixation durations and higher skipping rates were observed for high frequency compared to low-frequency words. High scores on reading ability tests and vocabulary knowledge tests predicted reduced frequency effects in gaze duration in models with single individual differences predictors, demonstrated by faster reading of low-frequency words compared to low scorers. A principal components analysis grouped individual differences tests based on shared variance. High \"lexical proficiency\" predicted shorter gaze durations, reading times, and increased word skipping. \"Lexical proficiency\" and the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-II comprehension test predicted a reduced frequency effect in go past times, and all tests apart from the Nelson Denny Reading Test comprehension test predicted a reduced frequency effect in sentence reading times. Data revealed surprising discrepancies in findings based on two subtests supposedly measuring comprehension (Nelson Denny Reading Test and Wechsler Individual Achievement Test-II), constituting an example of the <i>jingle fallacy</i>: the false assumption that two measures that share a name actually measure the same construct. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1281-1302"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143415711","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lin Chen, Gaisha Oralova, Shannon Clark, Daniela Teodorescu, Alona Fyshe, Carrie Demmans Epp, Maxwell Helfrich, Charles Perfetti
{"title":"Tracking the dynamic word-by-word incremental reading through multimeasures.","authors":"Lin Chen, Gaisha Oralova, Shannon Clark, Daniela Teodorescu, Alona Fyshe, Carrie Demmans Epp, Maxwell Helfrich, Charles Perfetti","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001438","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001438","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Reading relies on the incremental processes that occur across all words in a passage to build a global comprehension of the text. Factorial experimental designs are not well-suited to examine these incremental processes, which are influenced by multilevel factors in an overlapping manner. Exemplifying an alternative approach, we combined event-related potentials, probabilistic language models, authentic texts, and statistical methods to examine the time course of multilevel linguistic influences on the incremental processes which occur during reading each word. We found that indicators of the initial stages of word identification (N170 and P200) are sensitive to context-independent statistical information of a word, for example, word frequency. The later stages of word processing, involving processes related to meaning retrieval and integration (N400), heavily rely on the word's context-dependent information measured by word surprisal. Syntactic processing, reflected by a word's syntactic surprisal and the number of phrase structures it closes, was presented across multiple phases (an early negativity, N400, and a late positivity). Additionally, the effects of position factors at both the word and sentence levels emerged across multiple time windows (including N170, P200, and N400), suggesting their distinct influence beyond linguistic factors. These findings provide a theoretically coherent picture of incremental reading, partly convergent with conclusions from factorial studies but with novel results concerning the time courses and interactions of processing components. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1324-1346"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143416090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Alicia Forsberg, Dominic Guitard, Nathaniel R Greene, Moshe Naveh-Benjamin, Nelson Cowan
{"title":"Differential information transfer and loss between working memory and long-term memory across serial positions.","authors":"Alicia Forsberg, Dominic Guitard, Nathaniel R Greene, Moshe Naveh-Benjamin, Nelson Cowan","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001437","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001437","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory (WM) is the cognitive system that allows the temporary holding of mental representations for use in thought and action. Long-term memory (LTM) refers to our ability to remember a potentially unlimited amount of information over longer time periods. Understanding how these two memory systems interact has important implications for theories of cognition, learning, and education. Here, we examined (a) whether a shared perceptual bottleneck accounts for the relation between WM and LTM accuracy, and (b) whether serial position effects in WM are mirrored in LTM. In two experiments, participants studied sequences of objects at varying set sizes and completed old/new recognition tests for some items immediately after encoding (WM tests) and for other items after all WM trials were completed (LTM tests). In Experiment 1 (<i>N</i> = 80), LTM performance was better for items presented in lower rather than higher set size sequences, indicating that limitations in WM capacity constrain LTM encoding, irrespective of perceptual bottlenecks. In Experiment 2 (<i>N</i> = 120), we observed WM and LTM recency effects, but primacy effects were only present in LTM and not in WM. Thus, serial position effects in WM did not consistently predict the relative rates at which items from different serial positions were preserved in LTM. These results reinforce accounts that view WM and LTM as having at least partially separate mechanisms, shedding light on the nature of these mechanisms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1191-1212"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12234242/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143442647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
David Kellen, Constantin G Meyer-Grant, Henrik Singmann, Karl Christoph Klauer
{"title":"Critical testing in recognition memory: Selective influence, single-item generalization, and the high-threshold hypothesis.","authors":"David Kellen, Constantin G Meyer-Grant, Henrik Singmann, Karl Christoph Klauer","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001434","DOIUrl":"10.1037/xlm0001434","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In recent years, discussions comparing high-threshold and continuous accounts of recognition-memory judgments have increasingly turned their attention toward critical testing. One of the defining features of this approach is its requirement for the relationship between theoretical assumptions and predictions to be laid out in a transparent and precise way. One of the (fortunate) consequences of this requirement is that it encourages researchers to debate the merits of the different assumptions at play. The present work addresses a recent attempt to overturn the dismissal of high-threshold models by getting rid of a background selective-influence assumption. However, it can be shown that the contrast process proposed to explain this violation undermines a more general assumption that we dubbed \"single-item generalization.\" We argue that the case for the dismissal of these assumptions and the claimed support for the proposed high-threshold contrast account does not stand the scrutiny of their theoretical properties and empirical implications. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":"1259-1280"},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143416082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Modeling congruency sequence effects with the revised diffusion model for conflict tasks.","authors":"Ping-Shien Lee, Timothy Ballard, David K Sewell","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001508","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The congruency sequence effect (CSE), or Gratton effect, describes diminished congruency effects (i.e., faster responses for <<<<< vs. <<><< stimuli in a flanker task) on trials following an incongruent trial compared to those following a congruent trial. Traditionally, the CSE is regarded as an index of conflict adaptation. Accounts of the CSE have typically emphasized either top-down (cognitive control) or bottom-up (associative) processes. To disentangle top-down and bottom-up contributions to the CSE, we compared performance on versions of Simon and flanker tasks that control for memory and learning effects present in the standard versions of these tasks with the standard tasks. We analyzed the data using a recently developed model that explains conflict effects in terms of attention-shifting dynamics, the revised diffusion model for conflict tasks. Our modeling analyses suggest the CSEs in both Simon tasks are mainly driven by across-trial changes in the way attention is loaded onto distractor information, consistent with top-down control. In contrast, for both flanker tasks, our model-based analysis does not provide clear evidence favoring either top-down or bottom-up contributions to the CSEs overall. Furthermore, we fit the standard version of these tasks while separately analyzing trials based on whether the response was repeated or alternated across successive trials. Model fits suggest a combination of both influences, with different patterns for congruent and incongruent trials. Performance benefits on congruent trials are driven by adjusting how attention is loaded onto distractor information based on the previous congruency types (i.e., top-down influence). However, on incongruent trials, asymmetrical repetition benefits are mainly due to faster memory retrieval (i.e., bottom-up influence) and reactive attentional control. Our findings highlight that a more nuanced and integrated theoretical framework is necessary to capture the interplay between top-down and bottom-up processes in explaining control mechanisms when analyzing different response sequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144676374","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Daniel G Derksen, Deborah A Connolly, Daniel M Bernstein
{"title":"Testing the fluency account for truth judgments.","authors":"Daniel G Derksen, Deborah A Connolly, Daniel M Bernstein","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001523","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Truthiness is the increased likelihood to rate claims true when claims are paired with conceptually related (but nonprobative) information (usually photos). The fluency account holds that photos facilitate the processing of conceptual information shared between the photos and the claims, increasing the ease of processing the claims relative to no-photo claims (an increase in relative fluency-a cue for familiarity and truth). In three experiments, we tested the fluency account using response time as a separate measure of fluency. In Experiment 1, we manipulated relative fluency by varying the proportion of photo-absent to photo-present claims. Photo-present claims were processed more quickly than photo-absent claims, but our relative fluency manipulation did not impact truthiness. In Experiment 2A, we varied the type of media presented with the claims: photo, audio, or photo + audio. We hypothesized that photo + audio media would better facilitate the processing of the claims and produce larger truthiness effects and faster response times. Instead, in Experiment 2A, we observed equal truthiness across photo, audio, and photo + audio claims and a trend toward faster response times when evaluating photo + audio claims compared to other media types. In Experiment 2B, we replicated the truthiness effect for audio and replicated the response time findings from Experiment 1. Consistent with the fluency account, related photos and audio similarly increase the speed of processing claims and similarly increase belief in claims. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144676375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Investigating the effects of code-switch types on cognitive control.","authors":"Souad Kheder, Rodrigo Mello Medina, Jorge Valdés Kroff, Edith Kaan","doi":"10.1037/xlm0001510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001510","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Code switching, here defined as the use of two languages within a single sentence, has been hypothesized to engage cognitive control such as inhibition and conflict monitoring. The current project investigates whether structurally distinct types of code switching engage cognitive control differently. We tested this in a conflict adaptation paradigm. Early Spanish-English bilinguals in the United States listened to (Experiments 1, 2, 4) or read (Experiment 3) unilingual Spanish sentences and sentences with dense or insertional switches to English. After each sentence, participants saw a Flanker trial and indicated the direction of the center arrow while ignoring the flanking arrows. If processing code switches increases engagement with cognitive control, then subsequent incongruent Flanker trials should demonstrate a reduced Flanker conflict effect. Across four experiments, we found either no effect of code switching on Flanker performance (Experiment 1) or found that the Flanker conflict effect was larger after code switched than after unilingual sentences (Experiments 2-4). We found no evidence that there was a difference between insertional and dense code switching on the Flanker conflict effect or a difference between modalities. We therefore have no evidence that processing code-switched sentences enhances cognitive control. We interpret our finding in terms of resources: Code switches without an interactive context are unexpected and pragmatically odd. This draws resources and attention away from a following Flanker trial, leading to a larger conflict effect after a code switch. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).</p>","PeriodicalId":50194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.2,"publicationDate":"2025-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144676373","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}