Local but not global graph theoretic measures of semantic networks generalize across tasks.

"Dogs" are connected to "cats" in our minds, and "backyard" to "outdoors." Does the structure of this semantic knowledge differ across people? Network-based approaches are a popular representational scheme for thinking about how relations between different concepts are organized. Recent research uses graph theoretic analyses to examine individual differences in semantic networks for simple concepts and how they relate to other higher-level cognitive processes, such as creativity. However, it remains ambiguous whether individual differences captured via network analyses reflect true differences in measures of the structure of semantic knowledge, or differences in how people strategically approach semantic relatedness tasks. To test this, we examine the reliability of local and global metrics of semantic networks for simple concepts across different semantic relatedness tasks. In four experiments, we find that both weighted and unweighted graph theoretic representations reliably capture individual differences in local measures of semantic networks (e.g., how related pot is to pan versus lion). In contrast, we find that metrics of global structural properties of semantic networks, such as the average clustering coefficient and shortest path length, are less robust across tasks and may not provide reliable individual difference measures of how people represent simple concepts. We discuss the implications of these results and offer recommendations for researchers who seek to apply graph theoretic analyses in the study of individual differences in semantic memory.

A quantitative model of ensemble perception as summed activation in feature space.

Ensemble perception is a process by which we summarize complex scenes. Despite the importance of ensemble perception to everyday cognition, there are few computational models that provide a formal account of this process. Here we develop and test a model in which ensemble representations reflect the global sum of activation signals across all individual items. We leverage this set of minimal assumptions to formally connect a model of memory for individual items to ensembles. We compare our ensemble model against a set of alternative models in five experiments. Our approach uses performance on a visual memory task for individual items to generate zero-free-parameter predictions of interindividual and intraindividual differences in performance on an ensemble continuous-report task. Our top-down modelling approach formally unifies models of memory for individual items and ensembles and opens a venue for building and comparing models of distinct memory processes and representations.

There Is no Theory-Free Measure of "Swaps" in Visual Working Memory Experiments.

Visual working memory is highly limited, and its capacity is tied to many indices of cognitive function. For this reason, there is much interest in understanding its architecture and the sources of its limited capacity. As part of this research effort, researchers often attempt to decompose visual working memory errors into different kinds of errors, with different origins. One of the most common kinds of memory error is referred to as a "swap," where people report a value that closely resembles an item that was not probed (e.g., an incorrect, non-target item). This is typically assumed to reflect confusions, like location binding errors, which result in the wrong item being reported. Capturing swap rates reliably and validly is of great importance because it permits researchers to accurately decompose different sources of memory errors and elucidate the processes that give rise to them. Here, we ask whether different visual working memory models yield robust and consistent estimates of swap rates. This is a major gap in the literature because in both empirical and modeling work, researchers measure swaps without motivating their choice of swap model. Therefore, we use extensive parameter recovery simulations with three mainstream swap models to demonstrate how the choice of measurement model can result in very large differences in estimated swap rates. We find that these choices can have major implications for how swap rates are estimated to change across conditions. In particular, each of the three models we consider can lead to differential quantitative and qualitative interpretations of the data. Our work serves as a cautionary note to researchers as well as a guide for model-based measurement of visual working memory processes.

Measuring memory is harder than you think: How to avoid problematic measurement practices in memory research.

We argue that critical areas of memory research rely on problematic measurement practices and provide concrete suggestions to improve the situation. In particular, we highlight the prevalence of memory studies that use tasks (like the "old/new" task: "have you seen this item before? yes/no") where quantifying performance is deeply dependent on counterfactual reasoning that depends on the (unknowable) distribution of underlying memory signals. As a result of this difficulty, different literatures in memory research (e.g., visual working memory, eyewitness identification, picture memory, etc.) have settled on a variety of fundamentally different metrics to get performance measures from such tasks (e.g., A', corrected hit rate, percent correct, d', diagnosticity ratios, K values, etc.), even though these metrics make different, contradictory assumptions about the distribution of latent memory signals, and even though all of their assumptions are frequently incorrect. We suggest that in order for the psychology and neuroscience of memory to become a more cumulative, theory-driven science, more attention must be given to measurement issues. We make a concrete suggestion: The default memory task for those simply interested in performance should change from old/new ("did you see this item'?") to two-alternative forced-choice ("which of these two items did you see?"). In situations where old/new variants are preferred (e.g., eyewitness identification; theoretical investigations of the nature of memory signals), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis should be performed rather than a binary old/new task.

Linking computational models of two core tasks of cognitive control.

Cognitive control refers to the ability to maintain goal-relevant information in the face of distraction, making it a core construct for understanding human thought and behavior. There is great theoretical and practical value in building theories that can be used to explain or to predict variations in cognitive control as a function of experimental manipulations or individual differences. A critical step toward building such theories is determining which latent constructs are shared between laboratory tasks that are designed to measure cognitive control. In the current work, we examine this question in a novel way by formally linking computational models of two canonical cognitive control tasks, the Eriksen flanker and task-switching task. Specifically, we examine whether model parameters that capture cognitive control processes in one task can be swapped across models to make predictions about individual differences in performance on another task. We apply our modeling and analysis to a large scale data set from an online cognitive training platform, which optimizes our ability to detect individual differences in the data. Our results suggest that the flanker and task-switching tasks probe common control processes. This finding supports the view that higher level cognitive control processes as opposed to solely strategies in speed and accuracy tradeoffs, or perceptual processing and motor response speed are shared across the two tasks. We discuss how our computational modeling substitution approach addresses limitations of prior efforts to relate performance across different cognitive control tasks, and how our findings inform current theories of cognitive control. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How do people build up visual memory representations from sensory evidence? Revisiting two classic models of choice.

In many decision tasks, we have a set of alternative choices and are faced with the problem of how to use our latent beliefs and preferences about each alternative to make a single choice. Cognitive and decision models typically presume that beliefs and preferences are distilled to a scalar latent strength for each alternative, but it is also critical to model how people use these latent strengths to choose a single alternative. Most models follow one of two traditions to establish this link. Modern psychophysics and memory researchers make use of signal detection theory, assuming that latent strengths are perturbed by noise, and the highest resulting signal is selected. By contrast, many modern decision theoretic modeling and machine learning approaches use the softmax function (which is based on Luce's choice axiom; Luce, 1959) to give some weight to non-maximal-strength alternatives. Despite the prominence of these two theories of choice, current approaches rarely address the connection between them, and the choice of one or the other appears more motivated by the tradition in the relevant literature than by theoretical or empirical reasons to prefer one theory to the other. The goal of the current work is to revisit this topic by elucidating which of these two models provides a better characterization of latent processes in m -alternative decision tasks, with a particular focus on memory tasks. In a set of visual memory experiments, we show that, within the same experimental design, the softmax parameter ß varies across m -alternatives, whereas the parameter d ' of the signal-detection model is stable. Together, our findings indicate that replacing softmax with signal-detection link models would yield more generalizable predictions across changes in task structure. More ambitiously, the invariance of signal detection model parameters across different tasks suggests that the parametric assumptions of these models may be more than just a mathematical convenience, but reflect something real about human decision-making.

You cannot "count" how many items people remember in visual working memory: The importance of signal detection-based measures for understanding change detection performance.

Change detection tasks are commonly used to measure and understand the nature of visual working memory capacity. Across three experiments, we examine whether the nature of the memory signals used to perform change detection are continuous or all-or-none and consider the implications for proper measurement of performance. In Experiment 1, we find evidence from confidence reports that visual working memory is continuous in strength, with strong support for an equal variance signal detection model with no guesses or lapses. Experiments 2 and 3 test an implication of this, which is that K should confound response criteria and memory. We found K values increased by roughly 30% when criteria are shifted despite no change in the underlying memory signals. Overall, our data call into question a large body of work using threshold measures, like K, to analyze change detection data. This metric confounds response bias with memory performance and is inconsistent with the vast majority of visual working memory models, which propose variations in precision or strength are present in working memory. Instead, our data indicate an equal variance signal detection model (and thus, d')-without need for lapses or guesses-is sufficient to explain change detection performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Amplification in the evaluation of multiple emotional expressions over time.

Social interactions are dynamic and unfold over time. To make sense of social interactions, people must aggregate sequential information into summary, global evaluations. But how do people do this? Here, to address this question, we conducted nine studies (N = 1,583) using a diverse set of stimuli. Our focus was a central aspect of social interaction-namely, the evaluation of others' emotional responses. The results suggest that when aggregating sequences of images and videos expressing varying degrees of emotion, perceivers overestimate the sequence's average emotional intensity. This tendency for overestimation is driven by stronger memory of more emotional expressions. A computational model supports this account and shows that amplification cannot be explained only by nonlinear perception of individual exemplars. Our results demonstrate an amplification effect in the perception of sequential emotional information, which may have implications for the many types of social interactions that involve repeated emotion estimation.

Memory Fidelity Reveals Qualitative Changes in Interactions Between Items in Visual Working Memory.

Memory for objects in a display sometimes reveals attraction-the objects are remembered as more similar to one another than they actually were-and sometimes reveals repulsion-the objects are remembered as more different from one another. The conditions that lead to these opposing memory biases are poorly understood; there is no theoretical framework that explains these contrasting dynamics. In three experiments (each N = 30 adults), we demonstrate that memory fidelity provides a unifying dimension that accommodates the existence of both types of visual working memory interactions. We show that either attraction or repulsion can arise simply as a function of manipulations of memory fidelity. We also demonstrate that subjective ratings of fidelity predict the presence of attraction or repulsion on a trial-by-trial basis. We discuss how these results bear on computational models of visual working memory and contextualize these results within the literature of attraction and repulsion effects in long-term memory and perception.

The effect of lineup size on eyewitness identification.

Eyewitness identification via lineup procedures is an important and widely used source of evidence in criminal cases. However, the scientific literature provides inconsistent guidance on a very basic feature of lineup procedure: lineup size. In two experiments, we examined whether the number of fillers affects diagnostic accuracy in a lineup, as assessed with receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Showups (identification procedures with one face) led to lower discriminability than simultaneous lineups. However, in neither experiment did the number of fillers in a lineup affect discriminability. We also evaluated competing models of decision-making from lineups. This analysis indicated that the standard Independent Observations (IO) model, which assumes a decision rule based on the comparison of memory strength signals generated by each face in a lineup, is incapable of reproducing the lower level of performance evident in showups. We could not adjudicate between the Ensemble model, which assumes a decision rule based on the comparison of the strength of each face with the mean strength across the lineup, and a newly introduced Dependent Observations model, which adopts the same decision rule as the IO model, but with correlated signals across faces. We draw lessons for users of lineup procedures and for basic research on eyewitness decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is there a K in capacity? Assessing the structure of visual short-term memory.

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a cognitive structure that temporarily maintains a limited amount of visual information in the service of current cognitive goals. There is active theoretical debate regarding how limits in VSTM should be construed. According to discrete-slot models of capacity, these limits are set in terms of a discrete number of slots that store individual objects in an all-or-none fashion. According to alternative continuous resource models, the limits of VSTM are set in terms of a resource that can be distributed to bolster some representations over others in a graded fashion. Hybrid models have also been proposed. We tackled the classic question of how to construe VSTM structure in a novel way, by examining how contending models explain data within traditional VSTM tasks and also how they generalize across different VSTM tasks. Specifically, we fit theoretical ROCs derived from a suite of models to two popular VSTM tasks: a change detection task in which participants had to remember simple features and a rapid serial visual presentation task in which participants had to remember real-world objects. In 3 experiments we assessed the fit and predictive ability of each model and found consistent support for pure resource models of VSTM. To gain a fuller understanding of the nature of limits in VSTM, we also evaluated the ability of these models to jointly model the two tasks. These joint modeling analyses revealed additional support for pure continuous-resource models, but also evidence that performance across the two tasks cannot be captured by a common set of parameters. We provide an interpretation of these signal detection models that align with the idea that differences among memoranda and across encoding conditions alter the memory signal of representations in VSTM.

Tutorial: Nuisance or Substance? Leveraging Heterogeneity of Preferences.

Psychology and neighboring disciplines are currently consumed with a replication crisis. Recent work has shown that replication can have the unintended consequence of perpetuating unwarranted conclusions when repeating an incorrect line of scientific reasoning from one study to another. This tutorial shows how decision researchers can derive logically coherent predictions from their theory by keeping track of the heterogeneity of preference the theory permits, rather than dismissing such heterogeneity as a nuisance. As an illustration, we reanalyze data of Barron and Ursino (2013). By keeping track of the heterogeneity of preferences permitted by Cumulative Prospect Theory, we show how the analysis and conclusions of Barron and Ursino (2013) change. This tutorial is intended as a blue-print for graduate student projects that dig deeply into the merits of prior studies and/or that supplement replication studies with a quality check.

The construct-behavior gap revisited: Reply to Hertwig and Pleskac (2018).

The most eye-catching feature of Hertwig and Pleskac's (2018) comment is their virtual silence about Regenwetter and Robinson's (2017) core message. Regenwetter and Robinson warn of a logical disconnect between some psychological constructs and certain types of theoretical predictions about human behavior. Scientific "predictions" that do not actually follow from the underlying theory can, in turn, lead to completely uninformative behavioral measures. Regenwetter and Robinson trace this construct-behavior gap to logical reasoning fallacies that seem common in behavioral decision research. They also document how a logically flawed line of scientific reasoning is often immune to discovery by replication. Hence, 'successful' replication can perpetuate unwarranted conclusions and, consequently, obfuscate science. Hertwig and Pleskac's commentary is striking in that it says almost nothing about the construct-behavior gap, it barely touches on logical reasoning fallacies, and it ignores Regenwetter and Robinson's core warning that replication and repetition of unsubstantiated conclusions hinder science. In this reply, we also point out errors and misinterpretations in Hertwig and Pleskac's commentary, and we rebut alleged problems with Regenwetter and Robinson's approach and findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Tutorial: nuisance or substance? leveraging heterogeneity of preferences

Psychology and neighboring disciplines are currently consumed with a replication crisis. Recent work has shown that replication can have the unintended consequence of perpetuating unwarranted conclusions when repeating an incorrect line of scientific reasoning from one study to another. This tutorial shows how decision researchers can derive logically coherent predictions from their theory by keeping track of the heterogeneity of preference the theory permits, rather than dismissing such heterogeneity as a nuisance. As an illustration, we reanalyze data of Barron and Ursino (2013). By keeping track of the heterogeneity of preferences permitted by Cumulative Prospect Theory, we show how the analysis and conclusions of Barron and Ursino (2013) change. This tutorial is intended as a blue-print for graduate student projects that dig deeply into the merits of prior studies and/or that supplement replication studies with a quality check

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How post-saccadic target blanking affects the detection of stimulus displacements across saccades.

When a visual stimulus is displaced during a saccade the displacement is often not noticed unless it is large compared to the amplitude of the eye movement. Displacement detection is improved, however, if a blank intervenes between saccade target offset and the presentation of the displaced post-saccadic stimulus. This has been interpreted as evidence that precise information about eye position and accurate memory for the position of the pre-saccadic target are available immediately after saccade offset, but are overridden by the presence of the post-saccadic stimulus if it is present when the eyes land. In the current set of experiments we examined in more detail how blanking contributes to the increase in displacement sensitivity. In two experiments we showed that the presentation of a blank interval between saccade offset and the presentation of the displaced stimulus improved people's ability to detect that the stimulus had been displaced and also their ability to judge the direction that it had been displaced, but only for displacements opposite to the direction of the saccade (backward displacements). A third experiment suggested that this improvement in the detection of backward displacements was due in part to subjects misremembering the saccade target location as being closer to the initial fixation point than it actually was immediately after the saccade but remembering its location more veridically 50 ms later. This has the effect of improving the detection of displacements as well as their direction of displacement, but preferentially for backwards vs. forward displacements.

The action is in the task set, not in the action.

In 7 experiments we contrasted two accounts for novel sources of attentional bias. According to the action-based account, executing a motor response towards an object causes people to allocate attention preferentially towards properties of that object in a subsequent task even when properties of the acted-on object are task irrelevant. This remarkable view entails that motor processing is in itself sufficient to affect later attentional processing, in the absence of stimulus evaluation and motor preparation. In contrast, the attentional template matching account posits that observing an external object that matches one's prior attentional settings increases processing of that object even when properties of the item are no longer task relevant. Our findings indicate that when properties of a stimulus are task irrelevant, acting towards that object does not produce priming effects over and above what is observed from passive viewing of the object. Furthermore, when properties of the stimulus are task relevant, effects on attention are observed only when participants have sufficient information to generate a task based attentional template of the upcoming stimulus, regardless of whether they act towards the stimulus or not. Finally, effects on attention are found under conditions when participants are likely to experience an attentional template match but do not produce a response. Collectively, these results reveal that previously reported motor-based effects on attention instead reflect the effects of attentional bias towards objects that serve as prior targets. Our findings thus provide strong support for the attentional template view and no support for the action-based view.

The construct-behavior gap in behavioral decision research: A challenge beyond replicability.

Behavioral decision research compares theoretical constructs like preferences to behavior such as observed choices. Three fairly common links from constructs to behavior are (1) to tally, across participants and decision problems, the number of choices consistent with one predicted pattern of pairwise preferences; (2) to compare what most people choose in each decision problem against a predicted preference pattern; or (3) to enumerate the decision problems in which two experimental conditions generate a 1-sided significant difference in choice frequency 'consistent' with the theory. Although simple, these theoretical links are heuristics. They are subject to well-known reasoning fallacies, most notably the fallacy of sweeping generalization and the fallacy of composition. No amount of replication can alleviate these fallacies. On the contrary, reiterating logically inconsistent theoretical reasoning over and again across studies obfuscates science. As a case in point, we consider pairwise choices among simple lotteries and the hypotheses of overweighting or underweighting of small probabilities, as well as the description-experience gap. We discuss ways to avoid reasoning fallacies in bridging the conceptual gap between hypothetical constructs, such as, for example, "overweighting" to observable pairwise choice data. Although replication is invaluable, successful replication of hard-to-interpret results is not. Behavioral decision research stands to gain much theoretical and empirical clarity by spelling out precise and formally explicit theories of how hypothetical constructs translate into observable behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record

Conscious error perception: The impact of response interference from a secondary task.

An erroneous response is not always accompanied by the conscious perception of the error being made. We examined whether increased response interference on a manual task improved the conscious perception of erroneous eye movements on a concurrent oculomotor task. In the first experiment, we examined whether a correlate of response interference, increased task difficulty alone, could improve perception of errors. We found no effect of task difficulty on self-monitoring. Results from a second experiment suggested that participants' ability to monitor their eye movements improved with increased response interference, but post hoc analyses indicated that this was due to a decrease in corrective behaviors. Experiment 3 required participants to report directly on whether they had made an eye movement error, and we found that response interference perturbed, rather than improved, participants' ability to report on their errors. Together, these findings contribute to models of error monitoring, revealing little support for the view that general increases in response interference or task difficulty are signals that contribute to the conscious detection of errors.

Perceiving a continuous visual world across voluntary eye blinks.

People blink their eyes every few seconds, but the changes in retinal illumination that accompany eyeblinks are hardly noticed. Furthermore, despite the loss of visual input, visual experience remains continuous across eyeblinks. Two hypotheses were investigated to account for these phenomena. The first proposes that perceptual information is maintained across a blink whereas the second proposes that perceptual information is not maintained but rather postblink perceptual experience is antedated to the beginning of the blink. Two experiments found no evidence for temporal antedating of a stimulus presented during a voluntary eyeblink. In a third experiment subjects judged the temporal duration of a stimulus that was interrupted by a voluntary eyeblink with that of a stimulus presented while the eyes were open. The duration of stimuli that were interrupted by eyeblinks was judged to be 117 ms shorter than that of stimuli presented while the eyes remained open, indicating that blink duration was not accounted for in the perception of stimulus duration. This suggests that perceptual experience is neither maintained nor antedated across eyeblinks, but rather is ignored, perhaps in response to the extraretinal signal that accompanies the eyeblink. (PsycINFO Database Record