The influence of movement on negative and positive emotional responses to animals.

Two studies were conducted to explore whether the addition of animal movement would influence the intensity of emotional reactions towards that animal. Both studies compared self-reported emotional reactions with still images and videos for six animal categories (snakes, spiders, rodents, hoofed animals, animals with flippers, and turtles). In Study 1, participants reported fear and disgust to the animal stimuli, which were averaged into a single negative emotion rating. In Study 2, participants reported either fear and disgust or joy and affection to the animal stimuli, which were averaged into either a single negative or positive emotion rating. Upon combining the reported emotions from the two studies, movement was found to increase negative emotion reported to snakes and spiders and decrease negative emotion reported to rodents, hoofed animals, and animals with flippers. Results from Study 2 indicated that movement increased reported positive emotions to all six animal categories. Our findings suggest that animal movement is an important component of emotional reactions to animals.

Effects of Age and Self-Performance on Memory for Who Did What.

OBJECTIVES: This research tested whether performing an action themselves leads young and older adults to false memory for having seen that action performed by another person. It also tested whether observing another person perform an action leads to false memory for self-performance of that action. METHOD: Healthy young and older adults viewed videos involving actors performing different actions. After viewing some of the actions, participants were instructed to perform those same actions themselves. Participants were tested 1 week later on their memory for the actions of the actors in the videos and for their own actions. RESULTS: Older adults were more likely to believe that the actor in a test item had performed the same action previously when they had performed that same action themselves, both when the actor had indeed performed that action and when the actor had not. This effect of self-performance on memory for other people's actions was significantly smaller in young adults. Young adults performed better than older adults at remembering which actors had performed which actions in the videos, although participants had greater difficulty remembering who did what for actions that they had also performed themselves. The 2 groups were equally likely to falsely remember having performed an action that had only appeared in the videos, but young adults were better able than older adults to correctly identify the actions that they had in fact performed. DISCUSSION: Older adults have greater difficulty than young adults at distinguishing self-performed actions from actions performed by other people.

Negative emotion increases false memory for person/action conjunctions.

Two experiments demonstrate that eyewitnesses often falsely recognise an actor performing an action that had actually been performed by someone else, even if the action involves negative emotions and the actor in question had only appeared in emotionally neutral contexts. Participants viewed videos, each involving an actor performing a neutral (e.g. making oatmeal) or negatively valenced (e.g. killing a roach) action, and were asked to remember the events (Experiment 1) or to rate them for valence and arousal (Experiment 2). In both experiments, participants remembered negative actions better than neutral actions. Participants were also especially likely, however, to falsely recognise a different person performing a negative action. Experiment 2 revealed that this effect was modulated by the prior emotional contexts in which an actor had appeared. Participants were still just as likely, however, to falsely recognise an actor who had only appeared in neutral contexts now performing a negative action as they were to falsely recognise this actor performing a different neutral action. These results suggest that even individuals seen only in benign contexts can be falsely remembered as having participated in emotionally charged events (e.g. crimes).

Influences of executive and memory functioning on memory for the sources of actions.

This research provides evidence for similarities and differences between the results of traditional source memory paradigms and results from the Person-Action Conjunction (PAC) test. In the PAC test, participants view actions performed by different actors and are later tested on their memory for which actor performed each action. The PAC test can be construed as a source memory test, with actions serving as target information and actors representing the sources of those actions. Unlike traditional source memory tests, which involve a many-to-few relation of targets to sources, the PAC test involves a many-to-many relation, typically with equal numbers of actors and actions. To test whether the relation of targets to sources influences the cognitive mechanisms underlying memory for the sources of actions, young and older participants in two experiments (N = 217) took part in the PAC test, either in the context of many actors or just two actors. Participants also received Glisky and Kong's (2008) battery of tests of executive and memory functioning. Executive functioning predicted source memory performance in older adults tested in the context of just two actors, whereas memory functioning predicted young adult performance in this context. Moreover, memory functioning predicted the performance of both age groups when tested in the context of many actors, even after controlling for memory for those actors in isolation. Both young and older adults may thus rely on basic associative mechanisms to remember the sources of actions when each actor is only encountered once in the context of performing an individual action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Who was that masked man? Conjoint representations of intrinsic motions with actor appearance.

Motion plays an important role in recognising animate creatures. This research supports a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motions in their relationship to identifying information about the characters performing the motions. Participants viewed events involving costumed human characters. Intrinsic motions involved relative movements of a character's body parts, whereas extrinsic motions involved movements with respect to external landmarks. Participants were later tested for recognition of the motions and who had performed them. The critical test items involved familiar characters performing motions that had previously been performed by other characters. Participants falsely recognised extrinsic conjunction items, in which characters followed the paths of other characters, more often than intrinsic conjunction items, in which characters moved in the manner of other characters. In contrast, participants falsely recognised new extrinsic motions less often than new intrinsic motions, suggesting that they remembered extrinsic motions but had difficulty remembering who had performed them. Modelling of receiver operating characteristics indicated that participants discriminated old items from intrinsic conjunction items via familiarity, consistent with conjoint representations of intrinsic motion and identity information. In contrast, participants used recollection to distinguish old items from extrinsic conjunction items, consistent with separate but associated representations of extrinsic motion and identity information.

Why Are Verbs So Hard to Remember? Effects of Semantic Context on Memory for Verbs and Nouns.

Three experiments test the theory that verb meanings are more malleable than noun meanings in different semantic contexts, making a previously seen verb difficult to remember when it appears in a new semantic context. Experiment 1 revealed that changing the direct object noun in a transitive sentence reduced recognition of a previously seen verb, whereas changing the verb had little impact on noun recognition. Experiment 2 revealed that verbs exhibited context effects more similar to those shown by superordinate nouns rather than basic-level nouns. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the degree of meaning change in a target word resulting from changes in semantic context influenced the magnitude of context effects, but context effects remained larger for verbs than for nouns even when the degree of meaning change was similar for nouns and verbs. These results are discussed with respect to the imageability and grammatical roles played by nouns and verbs in a sentence.

Feelings of familiarity and false memory for specific associations resulting from mugshot exposure.

This research reveals that mugshot viewing accompanied by questions about an action can cause young adults to associate the pictured person and the queried action, leading to later false recollection of having seen that person perform that action. In contrast, mugshot viewing in older adults can lead to vague feelings of familiarity for the pictured person, encouraging older adults to later falsely recognize the pictured person performing any familiar action. Participants viewed events involving actors performing different actions and then were asked verbal questions about which actor had performed each action, with each question accompanied by mugshots of potential "perpetrators" of the action. In a later recognition test, older adults were more likely to falsely recognize a novel conjunction of a familiar actor and action if they had seen a mugshot of that actor, regardless of whether the mugshot had accompanied a question about that action. In contrast, young adults were more likely to falsely recognize a conjunction event only if it involved an actor whose mugshot had accompanied a question about that particular action. This effect remained when the analysis was limited to trials involving actors whose mugshots had not been previously selected, implicating false recollection rather than commitment effects.

Memory for positive, negative and neutral events in younger and older adults: Does emotion influence binding in event memory?

When remembering an event, it is important to remember both the features of the event (e.g., a person and an action) and the connections among features (e.g., who performed which action). Emotion often enhances memory for stimulus features, but the relationship between emotion and the binding of features in memory is unclear. Younger and older adults attempted to remember events in which a person performed a negative, positive or neutral action. Memory for the action was enhanced by emotion, but emotion did not enhance the ability of participants to remember which person performed which action. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to make binding errors in which they incorrectly remembered a familiar actor performing a familiar action that had actually been performed by someone else, and this age-related associative deficit was found for both neutral and emotional actions. Emotion not only increased correct recognition of old events for older and younger adults but also increased false recognition of events in which a familiar actor performed a familiar action that had been performed by someone else. Thus, although emotion may enhance memory for the features of an event, it does not increase the accuracy of remembering who performed which action.

Recollection and unitization in associating actors with extrinsic and intrinsic motions.

Four experiments provide evidence for a distinction between 2 different kinds of motion representations. Extrinsic motions involve the path of an object with respect to an external frame of reference. Intrinsic motions involve the relative motions of the parts of an object. This research suggests that intrinsic motions are represented conjointly with information about the identities of the actors who perform them, whereas extrinsic motions are represented separately from identity information. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants remembered which actor had performed a particular intrinsic motion better than they remembered which actor had performed a particular extrinsic motion. Experiment 2 replicated this effect with incidental encoding of actor information, suggesting that encoding intrinsic motions leads one to automatically encode identity information. The results of Experiments 3 and 4 were fit by Yonelinas's (1999) source-memory model to quantify the contributions of familiarity and recollection to memory for the actors who carried out the intrinsic and extrinsic motions. Successful performance with extrinsic motion items in Experiment 3 required participants to remember in which scene contexts an actor had appeared, whereas successful performance in Experiment 4 required participants to remember the exact path taken by an actor in each scene. In both experiments, discrimination of old and new combinations of actors and extrinsic motions relied strongly on recollection, suggesting independent but associated representations of actors and extrinsic motions. In contrast, participants discriminated old and new combinations of actors and intrinsic motions primarily on the basis of familiarity, suggesting unitized representations of actors and intrinsic motions.

False recollection of the role played by an actor in an event.

Two experiments demonstrated that eyewitnesses more frequently associate an actor with the actions of another person when those two people had appeared together in the same event, rather than in different events. This greater likelihood of binding an actor with the actions of another person from the same event was associated with high-confidence recognition judgments and "remember" responses in a remember-know task, suggesting that viewing an actor together with the actions of another person led participants to falsely recollect having seen that actor perform those actions. An analysis of age differences provided evidence that familiarity also contributed to false recognition independently of a false-recollection mechanism. In particular, older adults were more likely than young adults to falsely recognize a novel conjunction of a familiar actor and action, regardless of whether that actor and action were from the same or from different events. Older adults' elevated rate of false recognition was associated with intermediate confidence levels, suggesting that it stemmed from increased reliance on familiarity rather than from false recollection. The implications of these results are discussed for theories of conjunction errors in memory and of unconscious transference in eyewitness testimony.

Effects of aging, distraction, and response pressure on the binding of actors and actions.

Two experiments provide evidence for an age-related deficit in the binding of actors with actions that is distinct from binding deficits associated with distraction or response pressure. Young and older adults viewed a series of actors performing different actions. Participants returned 1 week later for a recognition test. Older adults were more likely than young adults to falsely recognize novel conjunctions of familiar actors and actions. This age-related binding deficit occurred even when older adults could discriminate old items from new items just as well as could young adults. Young adults who experienced distraction or time pressure also had difficulty discriminating old items from conjunction items, but this deficit was accompanied by a deficit at discriminating old and new items. These results suggest that distraction and response pressure lead to deficits in memory for stimulus components, with any deficits in binding ability commensurate with these deficits in component memory. Aging, in turn, may lead to binding difficulties that are independent of attention-demanding executive processes involved in maintaining individual stimulus components in working memory, likely reflecting declines in hippocampally mediated associative processes.

English speakers attend more strongly than Spanish speakers to manner of motion when classifying novel objects and events.

Three experiments provide evidence that the conceptualization of moving objects and events is influenced by one's native language, consistent with linguistic relativity theory. Monolingual English speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in an English-speaking context performed better than monolingual Spanish speakers and bilingual Spanish/English speakers tested in a Spanish-speaking context at sorting novel, animated objects and events into categories on the basis of manner of motion, an attribute that is prominently marked in English but not in Spanish. In contrast, English and Spanish speakers performed similarly at classifying on the basis of path, an attribute that is prominently marked in both languages. Similar results were obtained regardless of whether categories were labeled by novel words or numbered, suggesting that an English-speaking tendency to focus on manner of motion is a general phenomenon and not limited to word learning. Effects of age of acquisition of English were also observed on the performance of bilinguals, with early bilinguals performing similarly in the 2 language contexts and later bilinguals showing greater contextual variation.

That's the man who did it, or was it a woman? Actor similarity and binding errors in event memory.

Mistakes in eyewitness identification frequently occur when incorrect associations are made between a familiar person and the actions of another person. The present research demonstrates that actors do not need to be similar in appearance for such conjunction errors to occur. The actors can, in fact, be very different in appearance, even of different sexes. Participants attempted to remember a series of brief everyday events, each involving an actor performing an action. Increases in actor similarity led to increases in conjunction errors in which participants incorrectly associated a familiar actor with a familiar action that was actually performed by someone else, but conjunction errors frequently occurred even when the familiar actor was of a different sex than the original actor, arguing against the hypothesis that these conjunction errors are due solely to mistaken identity.

Adult age differences in binding actors and actions in memory for events.

Three experiments provide evidence for an age-related deficit in the binding of actors with their actions. Young and older adults were tested on their memory for a series of events, each involving an actor performing a simple action. Older adults had greater difficulty than did young adults at discriminating old events from novel conjunctions of familiar actors and actions, even when the two groups were equated on memory for each of those features in isolation by using a longer retention interval for young adults. These results are consistent with an age-related associative deficit linked to declines in hippocampal and prefrontal cortical functioning. They further provide evidence that age differences in source monitoring are not limited to speech acts but, rather, generalize to more complex actions. Finally, they provide evidence for age differences in susceptibility to conjunction memory errors, stemming from decreased reliance on recollection and increased reliance on familiarity with increased age. Example videos may be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Aging and memory for self-performed tasks: effects of task difficulty and time pressure.

An increase in task difficulty or time pressure during the performance of cognitive tasks decreased the ability of older adults to recall the tasks. In Experiments 1 and 2, adult age differences in recall of cognitive tasks were smaller for easier than for more difficult tasks, and, in Experiment 3, adult age differences were smaller for recall of cognitive tasks without time pressure than for recall of cognitive tasks with time pressure. During difficult or time-pressured cognitive tasks, older adults may become anxious about their performance, and they may have trouble inhibiting negative self-evaluative thoughts about their performance. Older adults may thus devote less attention to aspects of the cognitive tasks that would be beneficial for task recall.

Semantic context influences memory for verbs more than memory for nouns.

Three experiments revealed that memory for verbs is more dependent on semantic context than is memory for nouns. The participants in Experiment 1 were asked to remember either nouns or verbs from intransitive sentences. A recognition test included verbatim sentences, sentences with an old noun and a new verb, sentences with an old verb and a new noun, and entirely new sentences. Memory for verbs was significantly better when the verb was presented with the same noun at encoding and at retrieval. This contextual effect was much smaller for nouns. Experiments 2 and 3 replicated this effect and provided evidence that context effects reflect facilitation from bringing to mind the same meaning of a verb at encoding and at retrieval. Memory for verbs may be more dependent on semantic context because the meanings of verbs are more variable across semantic contexts than are the meanings of nouns.

Directed forgetting of actions by younger and older adults.

Memory for actions that are performed is substantially better than memory for descriptions of actions (e.g., Earles, 1996). In fact, people may form memories for actions even if they do not intend to or want to remember them. The directed forgetting paradigm was used to test the ability of younger and older adults to intentionally forget simple actions (also known as subject-performed tasks, or SPTs). Participants were asked to perform the action described by a verb-noun pair (e.g., break toothpick) or to read the pair, but not to perform the action. Following each pair, the participants were told either to remember or to forget the pair. Younger adults intentionally forgot verbally encoded pairs significantly better than did older adults. Actions that were performed, however, were difficult for both younger and older adults to intentionally forget. The performance of an action thus seems to result in strong item-specific processing that makes the action difficult to intentionally forget even for younger adults who can successfully intentionally forget verbally encoded items.

Attention to novel objects during verb learning.

Three experiments provided evidence that 3.5- to 4-year-old English-speaking children (N = 72) attend to the appearances of novel objects, not only when they hear a novel noun, but also when they hear a novel verb. Children learning nouns in the context of novel, moving objects attended exclusively to the appearances of objects, even though nouns were also related to the motions of those objects. Children learning verbs attended equally to the appearances of objects and their motions. The latter result contrasted with the results from adults (N = 20), who focused more strongly on motions than on the appearances of objects when learning verbs. When familiar objects were instead employed, child verb learners attended more to motions than to the appearances of objects. Children may attend to novel objects during verb learning because knowledge of an object may be prerequisite to understanding what a verb means in the context of that object.