{"title":"Updating of information in working memory: Time course and consequences.","authors":"Chenyu Li, Gidon T Frischkorn, Klaus Oberauer","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101702","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101702","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Working memory updating is the process that replaces outdated content in working memory by new content. This requires removing outdated information and encoding new information. It is still unclear whether removal and encoding run sequentially or simultaneously. We explored this question in two experiments investigating the time course of removal and encoding and their consequences for the functioning of working memory. The updating task we used involved three phases: the initial encoding, the processing, and the retrieval phase. Across four conditions, we manipulated whether the processing phase involved encoding, removal, neither, or both (i.e., updating). In Experiment 1, processing time was self-paced, and we measured processing times in each condition. In Experiment 2, we measured accuracy as a function of available processing time. After the processing, participants were asked to recall the final item for each position in the retrieval phase. In combination, the results of the two experiments show that the time required for updating was shorter than the sum of encoding and removal time. Moreover, it was nearly the same as the time taken for either the encoding or removal process, indicating that encoding and removal are concurrent processes during updating. Additionally, we analyzed the proportion of correct responses and of different error types with a memory measurement model to investigate the effects of encoding and removal for information held in working memory. The analysis revealed that removal involves unbinding the outdated information from its context. However, despite the weakened bindings of information to its initial context, the outdated information still remains activated in working memory. Other information held in working memory benefitted little from removal of outdated information.</p>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"156 ","pages":"101702"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142873359","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":"In the United States, children are more likely than adults to condone discrimination.","authors":"Vivian Liu, Andrei Cimpian","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101703","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Discriminatory acts (i.e., harmful acts motivated by the victim's group membership) have outsized consequences for the victim and for society relative to similar harms committed for other reasons. Here, we investigated the development of children's evaluations of discrimination. Specifically, we asked whether children in the U.S., like adults, perceive discriminatory acts as distinctly harmful-that is, more harmful than identical acts that are not motivated by the victim's membership in a particular group. Across 4 studies, we examined children's (N = 588; ages 4-9 years) and adults' (N = 623) perceptions of discriminatory acts versus identical acts motivated by other, personal reasons (Studies 1 and 2). In contrast to adults, children-particularly younger ones-rated the discriminatory acts as least harmful. In addition, whereas adults rated discrimination motivated by the victim's membership in an unfamiliar social category (similar to gender or race) as more harmful than discrimination motivated by membership in an unfamiliar task-based group (a sports team), children did not (Study 3). Finally, both adults and older (but not younger) children rated discrimination against a member of a lower-status (vs. equal-status) group as more harmful (Study 4). These findings advance theory on the development of sociomoral cognition and provide new insight into how children perceive instances of discrimination and bias in their everyday lives.</p>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":" ","pages":"101703"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-12-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142808551","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":"Free time, sharper mind: A computational dive into working memory improvement","authors":"Benjamin Kowialiewski , Steve Majerus","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101701","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101701","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Extra free time improves working memory (WM) performance. This free-time benefit becomes larger across successive serial positions, a phenomenon recently labeled the “fanning-out effect”. Different mechanisms can account for this phenomenon. In this study, we implemented these mechanisms computationally and tested them experimentally. We ran three experiments that varied the time people were allowed to encode items, as well as the order in which they recalled them. Experiment 1 manipulated the free-time benefit in a paradigm in which people recalled items either in forward or backward order. Experiment 2 used the same forward–backward recall paradigm coupled with a distractor task at the end of encoding. Experiment 3 used a cued recall paradigm in which items were tested in random order. In all three experiments, the best-fitting model of the free-time benefit included (1) a consolidation mechanism whereby a just-encoded item continues to be re-encoded as a function of the total free-time available and (2) a stabilization mechanism whereby items become more resistant to output interference with extra free time. Mechanisms such as decay and refreshing, as well as models based on the replenishment of encoding-resources, were not supported by our data.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 101701"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142683034","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":"Building compressed causal models of the world","authors":"David Kinney , Tania Lombrozo","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101682","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101682","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>A given causal system can be represented in a variety of ways. How do agents determine which variables to include in their causal representations, and at what level of granularity? Using techniques from Bayesian networks, information theory, and decision theory, we develop a formal theory according to which causal representations reflect a trade-off between compression and informativeness, where the optimal trade-off depends on the decision-theoretic value of information for a given agent in a given context. This theory predicts that, all else being equal, agents prefer causal models that are as compressed as possible. When compression is associated with information loss, however, all else is not equal, and our theory predicts that agents will favor compressed models only when the information they sacrifice is not informative with respect to the agent’s anticipated decisions. We then show, across six studies reported here (<em>N</em>=2,364) and one study reported in the supplemental materials (N=182), that participants’ preferences over causal models are in keeping with the predictions of our theory. Our theory offers a unification of different dimensions of causal evaluation identified within the philosophy of science (proportionality and stability), and contributes to a more general picture of human cognition according to which the capacity to create compressed (causal) representations plays a central role.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"155 ","pages":"Article 101682"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142479847","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}
{"title":"Doing things efficiently: Testing an account of why simple explanations are satisfying","authors":"Claudia G. Sehl, Stephanie Denison, Ori Friedman","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101692","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101692","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>People often find simple explanations more satisfying than complex ones. Across seven preregistered experiments, we provide evidence that this simplicity preference is not specific to explanations and may instead arises from a broader tendency to prefer completing goals in efficient ways. In each experiment, participants (total <em>N</em>=2820) learned of simple and complex methods for producing an outcome, and judged which was more appealing—either as an explanation why the outcome happened, or as a process for producing it. Participants showed similar preferences across judgments. They preferred simple methods as explanations and processes in tasks with no statistical information about the reliability or pervasiveness of causal elements. But when this statistical information was provided, preferences for simple causes often diminished and reversed in both kinds of judgments. Together, these findings suggest that people may assess explanations much in the same ways they assess methods for completing goals, and that both kinds of judgments depend on the same cognitive mechanisms.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"154 ","pages":"Article 101692"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142394949","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}
{"title":"Perceptual inference corrects function word errors in reading: Errors that are not noticed do not disrupt eye movements","authors":"Adrian Staub, Harper McMurray, Anthony Wickett","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101691","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101691","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Both everyday experience and laboratory research demonstrate that readers often fail to notice errors such as an omitted or repeated function word. This phenomenon challenges central tenets of reading and sentence processing models, according to which each word is lexically processed and incrementally integrated into a syntactic representation. One solution would propose that apparent failure to notice such errors reflects post-perceptual inference; the reader does initially perceive the error, but then unconsciously ’corrects’ the perceived string. Such a post-perceptual account predicts that when readers fail to explicitly notice an error, the error will nevertheless disrupt reading, at least fleetingly. We present a large-scale eyetracking experiment investigating whether disruption is detectable in the eye movement record when readers fail to notice an omitted or repeated two-letter function word in naturalistic sentences. Readers failed to notice both omission and repetition errors over 36% of the time. In an analysis that included all trials, both omission and repetition resulted in pronounced eye movement disruption, compared to reading of grammatical control sentences. But in an analysis including only trials on which readers failed to notice the errors, neither type of error disrupted eye movements on any measure. Indeed, there was evidence in some measures that reading was relatively fast on the trials on which errors were missed. It does not appear that when an error is not consciously noticed, it is initially perceived, and then later corrected; rather, linguistic knowledge influences what the reader perceives.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"154 ","pages":"Article 101691"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142230119","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":"Direct lexical control of eye movements in Chinese reading: Evidence from the co-registration of EEG and eye tracking","authors":"Shuyuan Chen , Erik D. Reichle , Yanping Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101683","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101683","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The <em>direct-lexical-control hypothesis</em> stipulates that some aspect of a word’s processing determines the duration of the fixation on that word and/or the next. Although the direct lexical control is incorporated into most current models of eye-movement control in reading, the precise implementation varies and the assumptions of the hypothesis may not be feasible given that lexical processing must occur rapidly enough to influence fixation durations. Conclusive empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is therefore lacking. In this article, we report the results of an eye-tracking experiment using the boundary paradigm in which native speakers of Chinese read sentences in which target words were either high- or low-frequency and preceded by a valid or invalid preview. Eye movements were co-registered with electroencephalography, allowing standard analyses of eye-movement measures, divergence point analyses of fixation-duration distributions, and fixated-related potentials on the target words. These analyses collectively provide strong behavioral and neural evidence of early lexical processing and thus strong support for the direct-lexical-control hypothesis. We discuss the implications of the findings for our understanding of how the hypothesis might be implemented, the neural systems that support skilled reading, and the nature of eye-movement control in the reading of Chinese versus alphabetic scripts.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"153 ","pages":"Article 101683"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142095702","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":"Ethical choice reversals","authors":"Chenxu Hao , Richard L. Lewis","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101672","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101672","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Understanding the systematic ways that human decision making departs from normative principles has been important in the development of cognitive theory across multiple decision domains. We focus here on whether such seemingly “irrational” decisions occur in <em>ethical</em> decisions that impose difficult tradeoffs between the welfare and interests of different individuals or groups. Across three sets of experiments and in multiple decision scenarios, we provide clear evidence that <em>contextual choice reversals</em> arise in multiples types of ethical choice settings, in just the way that they do in other domains ranging from economic gambles to perceptual judgments (Trueblood et al., 2013; Wedell, 1991). Specifically, we find within-participant evidence for <em>attraction effects</em> in which choices between two options systematically vary as a function of features of a third dominated and unchosen option—a <em>prima facie</em> violation of rational choice axioms that demand consistency. Unlike economic gambles and most domains in which such effects have been studied, many of our ethical scenarios involve features that are not presented numerically, and features for which there is no clear majority-endorsed ranking. We provide empirical evidence and a novel modeling analysis based on individual differences of feature rankings within attributes to show that such individual variations partly explains observed variation in the attraction effects. We conclude by discussing how recent computational analyses of attraction effects may provide a basis for understanding how the observed patterns of choices reflect boundedly rational decision processes.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"153 ","pages":"Article 101672"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010028524000434/pdfft?md5=926f8d9e7adc9dcf68b990858a416020&pid=1-s2.0-S0010028524000434-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141908213","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}
{"title":"Disentangling the roles of age and knowledge in early language acquisition: A fine-grained analysis of the vocabularies of infant and child language learners","authors":"Joseph R. Coffey, Jesse Snedeker","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101681","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101681","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The words that children learn change over time in predictable ways. The first words that infants acquire are generally ones that are both frequent and highly imageable. Older infants also learn words that are more abstract and some that are less common. It is unclear whether this pattern is attributable to maturational factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficiently developed cognitive faculties needed to learn abstract words) or linguistic factors (i.e., younger children lack sufficient knowledge of their language to use grammatical or contextual cues needed to figure out the meaning of more abstract words). The present study explores this question by comparing vocabulary acquisition in 53 preschool-aged children (M = 51 months, range = 30–76 months) who were adopted from China and Eastern Europe after two and half years of age and 53 vocabulary-matched infant controls born and raised in English speaking families in North America (M = 24 months, range = 16–33 months). Vocabulary was assessed using the MB-CDI Words and Sentences form, word frequency was estimated from the CHILDES database, and imageability was measured using adult ratings of how easily words could be pictured mentally. Both groups were more likely to know words that were both highly frequent and imageable (resulting in an over-additive interaction). Knowledge of a word was also independently affected by the syntactic category that it belongs to. Adopted preschoolers’ vocabulary was slightly less affected by imageability. These findings were replicated in a comparison with a larger sample of vocabulary-matched controls drawn from the MB-CDI norming study (<em>M</em> = 22 months, range = 16–30 months; 33 girls). These results suggest that the patterns of acquisition in children’s early vocabulary are primarily driven by the accrual of linguistic knowledge, but that vocabulary may also be affected by differences in early life experiences or conceptual knowledge.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"153 ","pages":"Article 101681"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141890770","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":"How infants predict respect-based power","authors":"Francesco Margoni , Lotte Thomsen","doi":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101671","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.cogpsych.2024.101671","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Research has shown that infants represent legitimate leadership and predict continued obedience to authority, but which cues they use to do so remains unknown. Across eight pre-registered experiments varying the cue provided, we tested if Norwegian 21-month-olds (N=128) expected three protagonists to obey a character even in her absence. We assessed whether bowing for the character, receiving a tribute from or conferring a benefit to the protagonists, imposing a cost on them (forcefully taking a resource or hitting them), or relative physical size were used as cues to generate the expectation of continued obedience that marks legitimate leadership. Whereas bowing sufficed in generating such an expectation, we found positive Bayesian evidence that all the other cues did not. Norwegian infants unlikely have witnessed bowing in their everyday life. Hence, bowing/prostration as cue for continued obedience may form part of an early-developing capacity to represent leadership built by evolution.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":50669,"journal":{"name":"Cognitive Psychology","volume":"152 ","pages":"Article 101671"},"PeriodicalIF":3.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010028524000422/pdfft?md5=d8e9bf2401d31c4cba6a51cfe7ad3b0c&pid=1-s2.0-S0010028524000422-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141856985","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}