People can use a content-specific recapitulation strategy to trigger memories (i.e., mentally reinstating encoding conditions), but how people deploy this strategy is unclear. Is recapitulation naturally used to guide all recollection attempts, or is it only used selectively, after retrieving incomplete information that requires additional…

In nonmonotonic decision problems, the magnitude of outcomes can both increase and decrease over time depending on the state of the decision problem. These increases and decreases may occur repeatedly and result in a variety of possible outcome distributions. In many previously investigated sequential decision problems, in contrast, outcomes (or…

The present study explored the perceptual span (i.e., the physical extent of an area from which useful visual information is extracted during a single fixation) during the reading of Chinese sentences in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, we tested whether the rightward span can go beyond 3 characters when visually similar masks were used. Results…

In 4 word-translation experiments, we examined the different representational frameworks theory (Crutch & Warrington, 2005; 2010) that concrete words are represented primarily by category, whereas abstract words are represented by association. In our experiments, Chinese-English bilingual speakers were presented with an auditory Chinese word…

Three experiments investigated whether navigation is less efficient across boundaries than within boundaries. In an immersive virtual environment, participants learned objects' locations in a large room or a small room. Participants then pointed to the objects' original locations after physically walking a circuitous path without vision.…

A classic discussion in the recognition-memory literature concerns the question of whether recognition judgments are better described by continuous or discrete processes. These two hypotheses are instantiated by the signal detection theory model (SDT) and the 2-high-threshold model, respectively. Their comparison has almost invariably relied on…

We tested the predictions of 2 explanations for retrieval-based learning; while the elaborative retrieval hypothesis assumes that the retrieval of studied information promotes the generation of semantically related information, which aids in later retrieval (Carpenter, 2009), the episodic context account proposed by Karpicke, Lehman, and Aue (in…

In an eye tracking experiment during reading we examined whether preview benefit could be observed from 2 words to the right of the currently fixated word if that word was the 2nd constituent of a spaced compound. The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to orthogonally manipulate whether participants saw an identity or nonword preview of the…

We tested whether imagining another context during encoding would offset context-dependent forgetting. All participants studied a list of words in Context A. Participants who remained in Context A during the test recalled more than participants who were tested in another context (Context B), demonstrating the standard context-dependent forgetting…

Several types of converging evidence have suggested recently that skilled adults solve very simple addition problems (e.g., 2 + 1, 4 + 2) using a fast, unconscious counting algorithm. These results stand in opposition to the long-held assumption in the cognitive arithmetic literature that such simple addition problems normally are solved by fact…

Reading speed is commonly used as an index of reading fluency. However, reading speed is not a consistent predictor of text comprehension, when speed and comprehension are measured on the same text within the same reader. This might be due to the somewhat ambiguous nature of reading speed, which is sometimes regarded as a feature of the reading…

Four experiments examined the decontextualization of memories, the stage of learning in which memories can be recalled in the absence of episodic memory cues. Face--name pairs were studied with video-recorded environmental contexts in the background, and after 5 practice trials, recall of names associated with faces was tested in the absence of…

Four experiments examined the interplay of memory and creative cognition, showing that attempting to think of new uses for an object can cause the forgetting of old uses. Specifically, using an adapted version of the Alternative Uses Task (Guilford, 1957), participants studied several uses for a variety of common household objects before…

Recent research on the overdistribution principle implies that episodic memory is infected by conjunction illusions. These are instances in which an item that was presented in a single context (e.g., List 1) is falsely remembered as having been presented in multiple contexts (e.g., List 1 and List 2). Robust conjunction illusions were detected in…

In self-paced learning, when the regulation of study effort is goal driven (e.g., allocated to different items according to their relative importance), judgments of learning (JOLs) increase with study time. When regulation is data driven (e.g., determined by the ease of committing the item to memory), JOLs decrease with study time (Koriat,…