Encoding colors and tones into working memory concurrently: A developmental investigation.

Working memory serves as a means to accumulate information and reorganize it. Researchers have long assumed that the natural organization of information is one stream at a time. This logic leads to the expectation that, when two different series of stimuli are to be remembered, performance should be superior if the series are presented one before the other in succession, rather than concurrently. Moreover, different accounts of attentional limits lead to different expectations for the change in the ability to encode two sets across age groups in childhood. Testing children from first grade (6-7 years) to adulthood, we presented sequences of colored objects and tones in succession or concurrently (with one color accompanying an unrelated tone) and found that performance was equally good no matter which presentation method was used. The results for both presentation methods closely matched the intricate pattern of development observed by Cowan et al. (2018), who used successive presentation only. We found marked developmental improvement in the ability to retain materials in each modality without an increasing cost of attention-sharing between modalities. Humans at least from the elementary school years through young adulthood thus display an ability to accommodate and organize two concurrent streams of information. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Memory for stimuli from multiple modalities is relevant to school performance and learning; here we investigate how attention is shared between remembering colors and tones. Participants received four colors and/or four tones for subsequent recognition on a trial, with dual modalities presented successively (0.5 s per stimulus) or concurrently (0.5 s per pair). Successive versus concurrent presentation had little effect on recognition, and the marked increase in memory performance with age did not come from dividing attention during encoding or maintenance. Children as young as first grade thus can encode and organize for later recognition colors and concurrently-presented, but unrelated, tones.

A Feature-Space Theory of the Production Effect in Recognition.

Mathematical models explaining production effects assume that production leads to the encoding of additional features, such as phonological ones. This improves memory with a combination of encoding strength and feature distinctiveness, implementing aspects of propositional theories. However, it is not clear why production differs from other manipulations such as study time and spaced repetition, which are also thought to influence strength. Here we extend attentional subsetting theory and propose an explanation based on the dimensionality of feature spaces. Specifically, we suggest phonological features are drawn from a compact feature space. Deeper features are sparsely subselected from a larger subspace. Algebraic and numerical solutions shed light on several findings, including the dependency of production effects on how other list items are encoded (differing from other strength factors) and the production advantage even for homophones. This places production within a continuum of strength-like manipulations that differ in terms of the feature subspaces they operate upon and leads to novel predictions based on direct manipulations of feature-space properties.

The Production Effect Becomes Spatial.

In the verbal domain, it is well established that words read aloud are better remembered than their silently read counterparts. It has been hypothesized that this production effect stems from the addition of distinctive features, with the caveat that the processing that generates added features interferes with rehearsal. Here, we tested the idea that a similar trade-off is found in the visuospatial domain. In all experiments, a short series of single dots sequentially appeared at various locations on a screen. Participants produced the items by clicking on them at presentation, watched the items appear quietly, or produced an irrelevant click after each item to better even out rehearsal opportunities between produced and control conditions. In Experiment 1, the dots appeared within a visible grid and an order reconstruction task was used. Experiment 2 also called upon reconstruction, but with the grid removed. In Experiments 3, a recall task was used. The results show that producing items hindered performance compared to the control condition. Conversely, production improved performance compared to the control condition where rehearsal was hindered. This is the first demonstration of a visuospatial production effect. The key findings were successfully modeled by the Revised Feature Model (RFM).

Working memory limitations constrain visual episodic long-term memory at both specific and gist levels of representation.

Limitations in one's capacity to encode information in working memory (WM) constrain later access to that information in long-term memory (LTM). The present study examined whether these WM constraints on episodic LTM are limited to specific representations of past episodes or also extend to gist representations. Across three experiments, young adult participants (n = 40 per experiment) studied objects in set sizes of two or six items, either sequentially (Experiments 1a and 1b) or simultaneously (Experiment 2). They then completed old/new recognition tests immediately after each sequence (WM tests). After a long study phase, participants completed LTM conjoint recognition tests, featuring old but untested items from the WM phase, lures that were similar to studied items at gist but not specific levels of representation, and new items unrelated to studied items at both specific and gist levels of representation. Results showed that LTM estimates of specific and gist memory representations from a multinomial-processing-tree model were reduced for items encoded under supra-capacity set sizes (six items) relative to within-capacity set sizes (two items). These results suggest that WM encoding capacity limitations constrain episodic LTM at both specific and gist levels of representation, at least for visual objects. The ability to retrieve from LTM each type of representation for a visual item is contingent on the degree to which the item could be encoded in WM.

A lifespan study of the confidence-accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory.

The relation between an individual's memory accuracy and reported confidence in their memories can indicate self-awareness of memory strengths and weaknesses. We provide a lifespan perspective on this confidence-accuracy relation, based on two previously published experiments with 320 participants, including children aged 6-13, young adults aged 18-27, and older adults aged 65-77, across tests of working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). Participants studied visual items in arrays of varying set sizes and completed item recognition tests featuring 6-point confidence ratings either immediately after studying each array (WM tests) or following a long period of study events (LTM tests). Confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses showed that accuracy improved with increasing confidence for all age groups and in both WM and LTM tests. These findings reflect a universal ability across the lifespan to use awareness of the strengths and limitations of one's memories to adjust reported confidence. Despite this age invariance in the confidence-accuracy relation, however, young children were more prone to high-confidence memory errors than other groups in tests of WM, whereas older adults were more susceptible to high-confidence false alarms in tests of LTM. Thus, although participants of all ages can assess when their memories are weaker or stronger, individuals with generally weaker memories are less adept at this confidence-accuracy calibration. Findings also speak to potential different sources of high-confidence memory errors for young children and older adults, relative to young adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Short-term retention of words as a function of encoding depth.

The traditional short- and long-term storage view of information processing and the levels-of-processing view both discuss the forgetting of information over time. In the traditional stage view, there is loss of at least poorly encoded information across several seconds when the information cannot be rehearsed (e.g., Ricker et al., 2020, Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46, 60-76). In the levels-of-processing approach, information that is encoded in a shallow manner is lost more quickly over time than deeply-encoded information (Craik & Lockhart, 1972, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671-684.). Previous studies of the depth of encoding, however, have mostly been conducted using delayed tests, so there are few studies directly comparing the rate of forgetting over time for information as a function of different depths of encoding. We manipulated the level of processing with immediate recall in a modified Brown-Peterson task. An effect of the level of processing was robust, but evidence of forgetting across retention intervals was not always observed. When encoding time was curtailed (in Experiments 3 and 4), we found main effects of both the level of processing and the retention interval, but no interaction between the two variables. The results suggest that the depth-of-encoding effect may occur during the initial encoding of items, but without differential forgetting within the range of retention intervals that we examined (0-18 s), in contrast to the suggestion by Craik and Lockhart. Further work is needed to determine whether the depth-of-processing effect would grow over longer intervals.

Short- and long-term influences of repeated speech examples on segmentation in an unfamiliar language analog.

Because segments in fluent speech (e.g., words and phrases) are not reliably separated by pauses, a key task when listening to an unfamiliar language is to parse the incoming speech into segments to be learned. We aim to understand how working memory contributes to that segmentation learning. One cue to segmentation occurs when a segment is repeated in varying contexts. Cowan (Acta Psychologica, 77(2), 121-135, 1991) explored a language analog to study how segmentation occurs during immediate memory of speech, and found effects of segment presentation frequency, stimulus length, and serial position. Here we ask whether those effects extend from working memory to long-term memory. Overlapping segments were presented (e.g., mah bar slo mi and slo mi geh), varying numbers of times (presentation frequencies) to determine how varying the schedule of repetition patterns would affect perception of a unified test pattern formed from the two of them (e.g., mah bar slo mi geh). These constructions provide an analogy to how segments occur in varying contexts in speech. Participants were to indicate where they heard the boundaries between syllables. In immediate memory, the perceived boundaries more often reflected the most frequently presented pattern, and often reflected both pattern boundaries (in this example, mah bar / slo mi / geh). In a long-term memory follow-up, however, the original presentation frequencies only mattered for certain short test pattern configurations. We suggest that working memory for speech, without a semantic component, may be an incomplete basis to learn longer segments in an unfamiliar language.

Give me enough time to rehearse: presentation rate modulates the production effect.

This paper uses the production effect to test one of the important predictions of a view of memory that is embodied in the Revised Feature Model (RFM). When to-be-recalled lists contain items both read aloud and silently, words read aloud are less well recalled at the beginning of the list and better recalled at the end. According to the RFM, producing the items by reading them aloud adds distinctive features which supports recall, but production also interferes with rehearsal - a process that operates more significantly at the start of a list. This critical role assigned to rehearsal has never been systematically tested. We do this here through a systematic literature review and an experiment that manipulates presentation rate. With a faster presentation rate, rehearsal is less likely; the implication is that the advantage observed for silently read items in the primacy positions should vanish, while the recency advantage for produced items should remain. The systematic review collected an initial sample of 422 unique articles on the production effect in immediate serial recall and revealed the predicted pattern. In addition, in our experiment, the presentation rate was manipulated within an immediate serial recall task (500, 1,000, and 2,000 ms/word). As predicted, the recency advantage for produced items was observed for all presentation speeds. Critically, the production disadvantage for early serial positions was only present for the two slowest rates, but not at the fastest speed. Results were successfully modeled by calling upon the RFM.

The orthographic/phonological neighbourhood size effect and set size.

A growing number of studies have shown that on serial recall tests, words with more orthographic/phonological neighbours are better recalled than otherwise comparable words with fewer neighbours, the so-called neighbourhood size effect. Greeno et al. replicated this result when using a large stimulus pool but found a reverse neighbourhood size effect-better recall of words with fewer rather than more neighbours-when using a small stimulus pool. We report three registered experiments that further examine the role of set size in the neighbourhood size effect. Experiment 1 used the large pool from Greeno et al. and replicated their finding of a large-neighbourhood advantage. Experiment 2 used the small pool from Greeno et al. but found no difference in recall between the large and small neighbourhood conditions. Experiment 3 also used a small pool but the small pool was randomly generated for each subject from the large pool used in Experiment 1. This resulted in a typical large neighbourhood advantage. We suggest that set size is not critical to the direction of the neighbourhood size effect, with a large neighbourhood advantage appearing with both small and large pools.

Set size and the orthographic/phonological neighbourhood size effect in serial recognition: The importance of randomization.

The neighbourhood size effect refers to the finding of better memory for words with more orthographic/phonological neighbours than otherwise comparable words with fewer neighbours. Although many studies have replicated this result with serial recall, only one has used serial recognition. Greeno et al. (2022) found no neighbourhood size effect when a large stimulus pool was used and a reverse effect-better performance for small neighbourhood words-when a small stimulus pool was used. We reexamined these results but made two methodological changes. First, for the large pool, we randomly generated lists for each subject rather than creating one set of lists that all subjects experienced. Second, for the small pool, we randomly generated a small pool for each subject rather than using one small pool for all subjects. In both cases, we observed a neighbourhood size effect consistent with results from the serial recall literature. Implications for methodology and theoretical accounts of both the neighbourhood size effect and serial recognition are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Relation Between Attention and Memory.

The relation between attention and memory has long been deemed important for understanding cognition, and it was heavily researched even in the first experimental psychology laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt and his colleagues. Since then, the importance of the relation between attention and memory has been explored in myriad subdisciplines of psychology, and we incorporate a wide range of these diverse fields. Here, we examine some of the practical consequences of this relation and summarize work with various methodologies relating attention to memory in the fields of working memory, long-term memory, individual differences, life-span development, typical brain function, and neuropsychological conditions. We point out strengths and unanswered questions for our own embedded processes view of information processing, which is used to organize a large body of evidence. Last, we briefly consider the relation of the evidence to a range of other theoretical views before drawing conclusions about the state of the field.

Valence and concreteness in item recognition: Evidence against the affective embodiment account.

The Affective Embodiment Account posits that sensorimotor interactions play an important role in learning and processing concrete words whereas experiences from emotional states play an important role in learning and processing abstract words. Because of this, there should be greater enhancement of valence for abstract than for concrete words and therefore there should be an interaction between valence and concreteness. Although this prediction has been observed in a number of tasks, very few studies have looked specifically at memory. Three experiments are reported that assess whether valence interacts with concreteness in recognition. In Experiment 1, recognition of concrete words was better than abstract, but there was no difference as a function of whether the words were positive or negative and there was no interaction. Experiment 2 compared positive and neutral words and Experiment 3 compared negative and neutral words; in both, there was a concreteness effect but no effect of valence and no interaction. These results replicate previous findings that when positive and negative words are equated more fully, valence has no effect on recognition, and also suggest a limit on the scope of the Affective Embodiment Account.

Aural and written language elicit the same processes: Further evidence from the missing-phoneme effect.

When readers are asked to detect a target letter while reading for comprehension, they miss it more frequently when it is embedded in a frequent function word than in a less frequent content word. This missing-letter effect has been used to investigate the cognitive processes involved in reading. A similar effect, called the missing-phoneme effect has been found in aural language when participants listen to the narration of a text while searching for a target phoneme. In three experiments, we tested the hypothesis that both effects derived from the same cognitive processes, by isolating the role of word frequency and word function. In Experiment 1, we used a paper and pencil procedure for reading and a continuous narration for the listening task. In Experiments 2 and 3, we used a rapid serial visual or auditory presentation procedure to control for the effects of preprocessing upcoming information: parafoveal processing in reading and coarticulation in aural language processing. Parallel findings were observed in the reading and listening tasks. In all experiments, there was an effect of word function, and there was an effect of word frequency in Experiments 1 and 3. Results are interpreted in light of the attentional disengagement model. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Can synchronised tones facilitate immediate memory for printed lists?

In verbal list recall, adding features redundant with the ones to be recalled theoretically could assist recall, by providing additional retrieval cues, or it could impede recall, by draining attention away from the features to be recalled. We examined young adults' immediate memory of lists of printed digits when these lists were sometimes accompanied by synchronised, concurrent tones, one per digit. Unlike most previous irrelevant-sound effects, the tones were not asynchronous with the printed items, which can corrupt the episodic record, and did not repeat within a list. Memory of the melody might bring to mind the associated digits like lyrics in a song. Sometimes there were instructions to sing the digits covertly in the tone pitches. In three experiments, there was no evidence that these methods enhanced memory. Instead, there appeared to be a distraction effect from the synchronised tones, as in the irrelevant sound effect with asynchronised tones.

Working Memory Constrains Long-Term Memory in Children and Adults: Memory of Objects and Bindings.

We explored how individual and age-related differences in working memory (WM) capacity affected subsequent long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Unlike past studies, we tested WM and LTM not only for items, but also for item-color bindings. Our sample included 82 elementary school children and 42 young adults. The participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items presented sequentially at varying set sizes in different colors. Later, we tested LTM for items and item-color bindings from the WM task. The WM load during encoding constrained LTM, and participants with a higher WM capacity retrieved more items in the LTM test. Even when accounting for young children's poor item memory by considering only the items that they did remember, they exhibited an exacerbated difficulty with remembering item-color bindings in WM. Their LTM binding performance, however, as a proportion of remembered objects, was comparable to that of older children and adults. The WM binding performance was better during sub-span encoding loads, but with no clear transfer of this benefit to LTM. Overall, LTM item memory performance was constrained by individual and age-related WM limitations, but with mixed consequences for binding. We discuss the theoretical, practical, and developmental implications of this WM-to-LTM bottleneck.

Modeling verbal short-term memory: A walk around the neighborhood.

When remembering over the short-term, long-term knowledge has a large effect on the number of correctly recalled items and little impact on memory for order. This is true, for example, when the effects of semantic category are examined. Contrary to what these findings suggest, Poirier et al. in 2015 proposed that memory for order relies on the level of activation within long-term networks. Importantly, although their view has been criticized, they showed that manipulating semantic associations led to item migrations that were atypical. In this article, we show that similar migrations can be obtained with another knowledge-based factor: orthographic neighborhood. In three experiments, we manipulated the orthographic neighborhood of to-be-recalled items. The latter is a sublexical factor; as such, it is much less likely than semantic relatedness to involve demand characteristics or grouping strategies. The first experiment established that the neighborhood manipulation produced the pattern of item migrations previously observed with semantic relatedness, confirming that the migration effect can generalize to other variables. The last two experiments suggested that migrations were due to the features shared across list items rather than to item co-activation (as in Poirier et al.). The results were successfully modeled by calling upon the Revised Feature Model, where recall depends on selecting a retrieval candidate based on the features of the cueing information. Overall, our findings underline the usefulness of a model where retrieval is determined by relative distinctiveness and underline that multiple mechanisms can lead to order errors in recall. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Additional evidence that valence does not affect serial recall.

In immediate serial recall, a canonical short-term memory task, it is well established that performance is affected by several sublexical, lexical, and semantic factors. One factor that receives a growing interest is valence, whether a word is categorised as positive (e.g., happy) or as negative (e.g., pain). However, contradictory findings have recently emerged. Tse and Altarriba in two experiments with one set of stimuli and fixed lists concluded that valence affects serial recall performance, while Bireta et al. in three experiments with three sets of stimuli and randomised lists concluded that valence does not affect serial recall performance. Two experiments assessed the experimental discrepancy between Tse and Altarriba and Bireta et al. For both experiments, in one block, every participant saw the exact same lists as those used in Tse and Altarriba, and in the other block, each list was randomly constructed for each participant, as was done in Bireta et al. In Experiment 1, with concrete words varying in valence, we replicated the results of Tse and Altarriba with fixed lists and the results of Bireta et al. with randomised lists. In Experiment 2, with abstract words with both fixed and randomised lists, we replicate the absence of effect valence like Tse and Altarriba and Bireta et al. Overall, we conclude that valence does not affect serial recall and the discrepancy was attributed to the peculiarity of the fixed lists used by Tse and Altarriba.

Attention allocation between item and order information in short-term memory.

In immediate memory for verbal lists, recently it has been shown that participants can choose to carry out encoding that prioritises readiness for an item test at some cost to order information or, conversely, that prioritises readiness for an order test at a cost to item information. Here, we ask whether participants can control attention to items and order in a graded fashion. We examined this issue by manipulating the percentage of order or item test trials participants would receive in a block (for each type of test, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% of the trials in a block). Overall, the results revealed that participants were able to allocate their attention in a fine-grained manner that took into account the trial distribution within the block. However, there was a difference between the effects of allocating attention to item versus order. Divided attention, compared with full attention to one attribute, had an asymmetry, such that divided attention impaired order performance more than item performance. The exact point at which this asymmetry could be seen differed between two experiments, which included different item tests (fragment completion vs. free recall). The results suggest a common resource for item and order encoding and/or retention in working memory, which can be voluntarily allocated to different mixtures of these two attributes.

The tradeoff between item and order information in short-term memory does not depend on encoding time.

Participants can optimize encoding of an immediate verbal memory test for item or for order information, or they can try to be ready for either type of test. Dividing encoding between both kinds of information, however, comes at a cost. Recently, it has been shown that the cost is more severe for order information compared to item information (Guitard et al., 2022). Here, for the first time, we evaluated which factor can better account for this asymmetry by contrasting two hypotheses. According to a rate hypothesis, divided attention affects the rate of encoding more for order than for items. According to an alternative, asymptote hypothesis, divided attention does not affect the rates but diminishes the endpoint, or asymptotic level, of order encoding more than item encoding. In three experiments to distinguish these hypotheses, participants prepared for an item fragment completion test, an order reconstruction test, or both types of tests, in trials with different durations of presentation. Overall, our results were better accounted for by a model which assumes that dividing attention between preparation for item and order testing affects the asymptote of encoding more for order than for items, with no effects on the rates of order or item encoding compared to preparation for a single test. The findings not only replicate our prior results, but also demonstrate that the allocation of attention to item or order processing can be disentangled from the time on task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).