Buildup and release from proactive interference: The forward testing effect in children's spatial memory.

Previous work has indicated that testing can enhance memory for subsequently studied new information by reducing proactive interference from previously studied information. Here, we examined this forward testing effect in children's spatial memory. Kindergartners (5-6 years) and younger (7-8 years) and older (9-10 years) elementary school children studied four successively presented 3 × 3 arrays, each composed of the same 9 objects. The children were asked to memorize the locations of the objects that differed across the four arrays. Following presentation of each of the first three arrays, memory for the object locations of the respective array was tested (testing condition) or the array was re-presented for additional study (restudy condition). Results revealed that testing Arrays 1 to 3 enhanced children's object location memory for Array 4 relative to restudying. Moreover, children in the testing condition were less likely to confuse Array 4 locations with previous locations, suggesting that testing reduces the buildup of proactive interference. Both effects were found regardless of age. Thus, the current findings indicate that testing is an effective means to resolve proactive interference and, in this way, to enhance children's learning and remembering of spatial information even before the time of school entry.

Delayed Metacomprehension Judgments Do Not Directly Improve Learning from Texts.

Making judgments of learning (JOLs) after studying can directly improve learning. This JOL reactivity has been shown for simple materials but has scarcely been investigated with educationally relevant materials such as expository texts. The few existing studies have not yet reported any consistent gains in text comprehension due to providing JOLs. In the present study, we hypothesized that increasing the chances of covert retrieval attempts when making JOLs after each of five to-be-studied text passages would produce comprehension benefits at 1 week compared to restudy. In a between-subjects design, we manipulated both whether participants (N = 210) were instructed to covertly retrieve the texts, and whether they made delayed target-absent JOLs. The results indicated that delayed, target-absent JOLs did not improve text comprehension after 1 week, regardless of whether prior instructions to engage in covert retrieval were provided. Based on the two-stage model of JOLs, we reasoned that participants' retrieval attempts during metacomprehension judgments were either insufficient (i.e., due to a quick familiarity assessment) or were ineffective (e.g., due to low retrieval success).

Can prompts improve self-explaining an online video lecture? Yes, but do not disturb!

In recent years, COVID-19 policy measures massively affected university teaching. Seeking an effective and viable way to transform their lecture material into asynchronous online settings, many lecturers relied on prerecorded video lectures. Whereas researchers in fact recommend implementing prompts to ensure students process those video lectures sufficiently, open questions about the types of prompts and role of students' engagement remain. We thus conducted an online field experiment with teacher students at a German university (N = 124; 73 female, 49 male). According to the randomly assigned experimental conditions, the online video lecture on topic Cognitive Apprenticeship was supplemented by (A) notes prompts (n = 31), (B) principle-based self-explanation prompts (n = 36), (C) elaboration-based self-explanation prompts (n = 29), and (D) both principle- and elaboration-based self-explanation prompts (n = 28). We found that the lecture fostered learning outcomes about its content regardless of the type of prompt. The type of prompt did induce different types of self-explanations, but had no significant effect on learning outcomes. What indeed positively and significantly affected learning outcomes were the students' self-explanation quality and their persistence (i.e., actual participation in a delayed posttest). Finally, the self-reported number of perceived interruptions negatively affected learning outcomes. Our findings thus provide ecologically valid empirical support for how fruitful it is for students to engage themselves in self-explaining and to avoid interruptions when learning from asynchronous online video lectures.

Individual differences fill the uncharted intersections between cognitive structure, flexibility, and plasticity in multitasking.

It has been recently suggested that research on human multitasking is best organized according to three research perspectives, which differ in their focus on cognitive structure, flexibility, and plasticity. Even though it is argued that the perspectives should be seen as complementary, there has not been a formal approach describing or explaining the intersections between the three perspectives. With this theoretical note, we would like to show that the explicit consideration of individual differences is one possible way to elaborate in more detail on how and why the perspectives complement each other. We will define structure, flexibility, and plasticity; describe what constitutes individual differences; will outline selected empirical examples; and raise possible future research questions helping to develop the research field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Age of smile: a cross-cultural replication report of Ganel and Goodale (2018).

Smiling is believed to make people look younger. Ganel and Goodale (Psychon Bull Rev 25(6):612-616, 10.3758/s13423-017-1306-8, 2018) proposed that this belief is a misconception rooted in popular media, based on their findings that people actually perceive smiling faces as older. However, they did not clarify whether this misconception can be generalized across cultures. We tested the cross-cultural validity of Ganel and Goodale's findings by collecting data from Japanese and Swedish participants. Specifically, we aimed to replicate Ganel and Goodale's study using segregated sets of Japanese and Swedish facial stimuli, and including Japanese and Swedish participants in groups asked to estimate the age of either Japanese or Swedish faces (two groups of participants × two groups of stimuli; four groups total). Our multiverse analytical approach consistently showed that the participants evaluated smiling faces as older in direct evaluations, regardless of the facial stimuli culture or their nationality, although they believed that smiling makes people look younger. Further, we hypothesized that the effect of wrinkles around the eyes on the estimation of age would vary with the stimulus culture, based on previous studies. However, we found no differences in age estimates by stimulus culture in the present study. Our results showed that we successfully replicated Ganel and Goodale (2018) in a cross-cultural context. Our study thus clarified that the belief that smiling makes people look younger is a common cultural misconception.

Spatial ability contributes to memory for delayed intentions.

Most everyday activities involve delayed intentions referring to different event structures and timelines. Yet, past research has mostly considered prospective memory (PM) as a dual-task phenomenon in which the primary task to fulfill PM intentions is realized within an ongoing secondary task. We hypothesized that these simplified simulations of PM may have obscured the role of spatial relational processing that is functional to represent and meet the increased temporal demands in more complex PM scenarios involving multiple timelines. To test this spatiotemporal hypothesis, participants monitored four digital clocks, with PM deadlines referring either to the same clock (single-context condition) or different clocks (multiple-context condition), along with separate tests of spatial ability (mental rotation task) and executive functioning (working memory updating). We found that performance in the mental rotation task incrementally explained PM performance in the multiple-context, but not in the single-context, condition, even after controlling for individual differences in working memory updating and ongoing task performance. These findings suggest that delayed intentions occurring in multiple ongoing task contexts reflect independent contributions of working memory updating and mental rotation and that spatial relational processing may specifically be involved in higher cognitive functions, such as complex PM in multiple contexts or multitasking.

Putting action into testing: Enacted retrieval benefits long-term retention more than covert retrieval.

Retrieval practice improves long-term retention. However, it is currently debated if this testing effect can be further enhanced by overtly producing recalled responses. We addressed this issue using a standard cued-recall testing-effect paradigm with verb-noun action phrases (e.g., water the plant) to prompt motor actions as a specifically powerful response format of recall. We then tested whether motorically performing the recalled verb targets (e.g., ?-the plant) during an initial recall test (enacted retrieval) led to better long-term retention than silently retrieving them (covert retrieval) or restudying the complete verb-noun phrases (restudy). The results demonstrated a direct testing effect, in that long-term retention was enhanced for covert retrieval practice compared to restudy practice. Critically, enactment during retrieval further improved long-term retention beyond the effect of covert memory retrieval, both in a congruent noun-cued recall test after 1 week (Experiment 1) and in an incongruent verb-cued recall test of nouns after 2 weeks (Experiment 2). This finding suggests that successful memory retrieval and ensuing enactment contribute to future memory performance in parts via different mechanisms.

Monitoring Multiple Deadlines Relies on Spatial Processing in Posterior Parietal Cortex.

Proactively coordinating one's actions is an important aspect of multitasking performance due to overlapping task sequences. In this study, we used fMRI to investigate neural mechanisms underlying monitoring of multiple overlapping task sequences. We tested the hypothesis that temporal control demands in multiple-task monitoring are offloaded onto spatial processes by representing patterns of temporal deadlines in spatial terms. Results showed that increased demands on time monitoring (i.e., responding to concurrent deadlines of one to four component tasks) increasingly activated regions in the left inferior parietal lobe and the precuneus. Moreover, independent measures of spatial abilities correlated with multiple-task performance beyond the contribution of working memory. Together, these findings suggest that monitoring and coordination of temporally overlapping task timelines rely on cortical processes involved in spatial information processing. We suggest that the precuneus is involved in tracking of multiple task timelines, whereas the inferior parietal lobe constructs spatial representations of the temporal relations of these overlapping timelines. These findings are consistent with the spatial offloading hypothesis and add new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the coordination of multiple tasks.

The effect of feedback on temporal error monitoring and timing behavior.

Metacognitive processes in human timing behavior are rarely investigated, which stands in sharp contrast to the wide research field of metacognition itself. To date, little is known about the sources and the reliability of information that humans possess to judge their own timing abilities and to monitor errors in time-keeping. Here, we intended to fill this gap by determining the degree to which humans depend on external feedback to adjust their timing behavior and make metacognitive accuracy judgments. Two groups of participants performed a time reproduction task under different feedback conditions. After each trial, participants were informed either about the magnitude and the direction of their timing error (signed feedback group) or about its magnitude alone (absolute feedback group). Reproduction errors were related to retrospective, metacognitive judgments on the overall timing performance. The results indicate that the under reproduction effect occurred, rather independently of the type of feedback; however, signed feedback was essential to reduce the bias in metacognitive judgments on timing accuracy. Without being explicitly informed about the direction of timing errors (whether the reproduction interval was stopped too early or too late), participants significantly overestimated their reproduced durations. These results extend previous reports of metacognitive processes in timing behavior measured on a single-trial basis, and provide new insights into the ability of temporal error monitoring in humans.

The Direct Testing Effect Is Pervasive in Action Memory: Analyses of Recall Accuracy and Recall Speed.

Successful retrieval from memory is a desirably difficult learning event that reduces the recall decrement of studied materials over longer delays more than restudying does. The present study was the first to test this direct testing effect for performed and read action events (e.g., "light a candle") in terms of both recall accuracy and recall speed. To this end, subjects initially encoded action phrases by either enacting them or reading them aloud (i.e., encoding type). After this initial study phase, they received two practice phases, in which the same number of action phrases were restudied or retrieval-practiced (Exp. 1-3), or not further processed (Exp. 3; i.e., practice type). This learning session was ensued by a final cued-recall test both after a short delay (2 min) and after a long delay (1 week: Exp. 1 and 2; 2 weeks: Exp. 3). To test the generality of the results, subjects retrieval practiced with either noun-cued recall of verbs (Exp. 1 and 3) or verb-cued recall of nouns (Exp. 2) during the intermediate and final tests (i.e., test type). We demonstrated direct benefits of testing on both recall accuracy and recall speed. Repeated retrieval practice, relative to repeated restudy and study-only practice, reduced the recall decrement over the long delay, and enhanced phrases' recall speed already after 2 min, and this independently of type of encoding and recall test. However, a benefit of testing on long-term retention only emerged (Exp. 3), when prolonging the recall delay from 1 to 2 weeks, and using different sets of phrases for the immediate and delayed final tests. Thus, the direct testing benefit appears to be highly generalizable even with more complex, action-oriented stimulus materials, and encoding manipulations. We discuss these results in terms of the distribution-based bifurcation model.

Time takes space: selective effects of multitasking on concurrent spatial processing.

Many everyday activities require coordination and monitoring of complex relations of future goals and deadlines. Cognitive offloading may provide an efficient strategy for reducing control demands by representing future goals and deadlines as a pattern of spatial relations. We tested the hypothesis that multiple-task monitoring involves time-to-space transformational processes, and that these spatial effects are selective with greater demands on coordinate (metric) than categorical (nonmetric) spatial relation processing. Participants completed a multitasking session in which they monitored four series of deadlines, running on different time scales, while making concurrent coordinate or categorical spatial judgments. We expected and found that multitasking taxes concurrent coordinate, but not categorical, spatial processing. Furthermore, males showed a better multitasking performance than females. These findings provide novel experimental evidence for the hypothesis that efficient multitasking involves metric relational processing.

Learning to recognize younger faces at an older age.

OBJECTIVES: Processing of horizontal face cues has been shown to be an important element in face recognition of adults aged up to 30 years. In contrast, horizontally aligned facial features do not appear to contribute to older adults' (60-75 years) recognition in a similar way. To this end, we investigated potential learning effects on the ability to recognize faces based on horizontal features. Previous research suggests face recognition based on all face information experiences an accelerated decline after the age of 70. However, recognition based only on horizontal face information has not yet been studied in old age (75+ years of age). Thus, we investigated whether older adults (aged up to as well as starting at 75 years) can learn to recognize faces based on horizontal face cues alone. METHOD: One younger and two older adult groups (20-30, 60-75, and 75+ years) were familiarized with a high and a low amount of previously unfamiliar faces-some containing all face cues and others containing only horizontal face cues (reduced information). Subsequently, all groups received a recognition test. RESULTS: Repeated learning increased natural face recognition for all three age groups when all face cues were available. However, increases in face recognition were only observed for younger adults when horizontal face cued were only available. DISCUSSION: The importance of horizontally aligned spatial frequencies for recognizing human faces is lessened before the age of 60 (and plateaus thereon), whereas recognition of stimuli containing all face cues is still capable of improvement.

Test-potentiated learning of motor sequences.

We investigated effects of retrieving body movements from memory on subsequent re-encoding of these movements (i.e., test-potentiated learning). In Experiment 1, participants first learned to perform 12 sequential finger movements as responses to letter stimuli. Eight of these movements then had to be recalled in response to their stimuli (initial test). Subsequently, learning trials were repeated for four of the previously to-be-retrieved movements as well as the previously not-to-be-retrieved movements. Restudy benefited from prior retrieval. In a final test, again requiring motoric recall in response to letter stimuli, performance was better for restudied items that were previously cued for retrieval as compared to items that had been restudied without prior retrieval. However, no such indirect testing benefit occurred when initial and final testing formats were incongruent, that is, when participants had to recall the stimuli in response to movements as cues at the final test. In Experiment 2, we replicated the finding of test-potentiated learning with a different design, manipulating initial-testing status between participants.

Effects of testing on subsequent re-encoding and long-term forgetting of action-relevant materials: On the influence of recall type.

Testing one's memory of previously studied information reduces the rate of forgetting, compared to restudy. However, little is known about how this direct testing effect applies to action phrases (e.g., "wash the car") - a learning material relevant to everyday memory. As action phrases consist of two different components, a verb (e.g., "wash") and a noun (e.g., "car"), testing can either be implemented as noun-cued recall of verbs or verb-cued recall of nouns, which may differently affect later memory performance. In the present study, we investigated the effect of testing for these two recall types, using verbally encoded action phrases as learning materials. Results showed that repeated study-test practice, compared to repeated study-restudy practice, decreased the forgetting rate across 1 week to a similar degree for both noun-cued and verb-cued recall types. However, noun-cued recall of verbs initiated more new subsequent learning during the first restudy, compared to verb-cued recall of nouns. The study provides evidence that testing has benefits on both subsequent restudy and long-term retention of action-relevant materials, but that these benefits are differently expressed with testing via noun-cued versus verb-cued recall.

Individual and combined effects of enactment and testing on memory for action phrases.

We investigated the individual and combined effects of enactment and testing on memory for action phrases to address whether both study techniques commonly promote item-specific processing. Participants (N = 112) were divided into four groups (n = 28). They either exclusively studied 36 action phrases (e.g., "lift the glass") or both studied and cued-recalled them in four trials. During study trials participants encoded the action phrases either by motorically performing them, or by reading them aloud, and they took final verb-cued recall tests over 18-min and 1-week retention intervals. A testing effect was demonstrated for action phrases, however, only when they were verbally encoded, and not when they were enacted. Similarly, enactive (relative to verbal) encoding reduced the rate of forgetting, but only when the action phrases were exclusively studied, and not when they were also tested. These less-than-additive effects of enactment and testing on the rate of forgetting, as well as on long-term retention, support the notion that both study techniques effectively promote item-specific processing that can only be marginally increased further by combining them.

How crucial is the response format for the testing effect?

Combining study and test trials during learning is more beneficial for long-term retention than repeated study without testing (i.e., the testing effect). Less is known about the relative efficacy of different response formats during testing. We tested the hypothesis that overt testing (typing responses on a keyboard) during a practice phase benefits later memory more than covert testing (only pressing a button to indicate successful retrieval). In Experiment 1, three groups learned 40 word pairs either by repeatedly studying them, by studying and overtly testing them, or by studying and covertly testing them. In Experiment 2, only the two testing conditions were manipulated in a within-subjects design. In both experiments, participants received cued recall tests after a short (~19 min) and a long (1 week) retention interval. In Experiment 1, all groups performed equally well at the short retention interval. The overt testing group reliably outperformed the repeated study group after 1 week, whereas the covert testing group performed insignificantly different from both these groups. Hence, the testing effect was demonstrated for overt, but failed to show for covert testing. In Experiment 2, overtly tested items were better and more quickly retrieved than those covertly tested. Further, this does not seem to be due to any differences in retrieval effort during learning. To conclude, overt testing was more beneficial for later retention than covert testing, but the effect size was small. Possible explanations are discussed.

Study for now, but judge for later: delayed judgments of learning promote long-term retention.

Delayed judgments of learning (JOL) are assumed to be based on covert retrieval attempts. A common finding is that testing memory during learning improves later retention (i.e., the testing effect), and even more so than an equivalent amount of study, but only after a longer retention interval. To test the assertion that also delayed JOLs improve memory, the participants either studied Swahili-Swedish word pairs four times, or they both studied (two times) and performed delayed JOLs (two times) alternately. Final cued recall test were given after either five minutes or one week. Results showed a reliable learning-group by retention-interval interaction, with less forgetting in the group that alternated between studying and making JOLs. The results are discussed in relation to the self-fulfilling prophecy account of Spellman and Bjork (1992), and in terms of study advice, the results further underscore the importance of delaying JOLs when studying and evaluating one's ongoing learning.

Exploring the enactment effect from an information processing view: what can we learn from serial position analyses?

The focus of the present article was to analyze processes that determine the enactment and age effect in a multi-trial free recall paradigm by looking at the serial position effects. In an experimental study (see Schatz et al 2010), the performance-enhancing effect of enactive encoding and repeated learning was tested with older and younger participants. As expected, there was a steady improvement of memory performance as a function of repeated learning regardless of age. In addition, enactive encoding led to a better memory performance than verbal encoding in both age groups. Furthermore, younger adults outperformed the elderly regardless of type of encoding. Analyses in the present article show that encoding by enacting seems to profit especially from remembering the last items of a presented list. Regarding age differences, younger outperformed older participants in nearly all item positions. The performance enhancement after task repetition is due to a higher amount of recalled items in the middle positions in a subject performed task (SPT) and a verbal task (VT) as well as the last positions of a learned list in VT.