Does familiarity-detection flip attention inward? The familiarity-flip-of-attention account of the primacy effect in memory for repetitions.

In cognitive psychology, research on attention is shifting from focusing primarily on how people orient toward stimuli in the environment toward instead examining how people orient internally toward memory representations. With this new shift the question arises: What factors in the environment send attention inward? A recent proposal is that one factor is cue familiarity-detection (Cleary, Irving & Mills, Cognitive Science, 47, e13274, 2023). Within this theoretical framework, we reinterpret a decades-old empirical pattern-a primacy effect in memory for repetitions-in a novel way.

Opening a conceptual space for metamemory experience.

The experiences associated with remembering, including metamemory feelings about the act of remembering and attempts at remembering, are not often integrated into general accounts of memory. For example, David Rubin (2022) proposes a unified, three-dimensional conceptual space for mapping memory states, a map that does not systematically specify metamemory feelings. Drawing on Rubin's model, we define a distinct role for metamemory in relation to first-order memory content.

A possible shared underlying mechanism among involuntary autobiographical memory and déjà vu.

We propose that IAM and déjà vu may not share a placement on the same gradient, per se, but the mechanism of , and a major differentiating factor between the two metacognitive experiences is whether the resulting inward directed search of memory yields retrieved content or not. Déjà vu may manifest when contentless familiarity detection is inexplicable by the experiencer.

A virtual reality paradigm with dynamic scene stimuli for use in memory research.

Episodic memory may essentially be memory for one's place within a temporally unfolding scene from a first-person perspective. Given this, pervasively used static stimuli may only capture one small part of episodic memory. A promising approach for advancing the study of episodic memory is immersing participants within varying scenes from a first-person perspective.

Piquing Curiosity: Déjà vu-Like States Are Associated with Feelings of Curiosity and Information-Seeking Behaviors.

Curiosity during learning increases information-seeking behaviors and subsequent memory retrieval success, yet the mechanisms that drive curiosity and its accompanying information-seeking behaviors remain elusive. Hints throughout the literature suggest that curiosity may result from a metacognitive signal-possibly of closeness to a not yet accessible piece of information-that in turn leads the experiencer to seek out additional information that will resolve a perceptibly small knowledge gap. We examined whether metacognition sensations thought to signal the likely presence of an as yet unretrieved relevant memory (such as familiarity or déjà vu) might be involved.

What Flips Attention?

A central feature of our waking mental experience is that our attention naturally toggles back and forth between "external" and "internal" stimuli. In the midst of an externally demanding task, attention can involuntarily shift internally with no clear reason how or why thoughts momentarily shifted inward. In the case of external attention, we are typically exploring and encoding aspects of our external world, whereas internal attention often involves searching for and retrieving potentially relevant information from our memory networks.

Detecting a familiar person behind the surgical mask: recognition without identification among masked versus sunglasses-covered faces.

Previous research has shown that even when famous people's identities cannot be discerned from faces that have been filtered with monochromatic noise, these unidentifiable famous faces still tend to receive higher familiarity ratings than similarly filtered non-famous faces. Experiment 1 investigated whether a similar face recognition without identification effect would occur among faces whose identification was hindered through the wearing of a surgical mask. Among a mixture of famous and non-famous faces wearing surgical masks and hoods, participants rated how familiar each person seemed then attempted to identify the person.

On the relationship between tip-of-the-tongue states and partial recollective experience: Illusory partial recollective access during tip-of-the-tongue states.

Most people have experienced the sensation of having a word on the tip of the tongue. A common assumption is that a major driving force underlying the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is conscious partial recollective access to some of the unretrieved word's attributes, such as its first letter. In the present study, under free-report conditions, participants provided more partial recollection responses during TOTs than non-TOTs without being more accurate among their provided responses.

Do first and last letters carry more weight in the mechanism behind word familiarity?

Previous research has suggested a role of letter location information in familiarity-detection that occurs with word stimuli, but no studies have yet investigated whether certain letter positions are weighted more heavily in the feature-based mechanism behind word familiarity-detection. Based on psycholinguistic research suggesting that first and last letters are weighted more heavily than interior letters when it comes to reading words, we investigated whether first and last letters carry more weight in the mechanism behind word familiarity that results from feature familiarization in a list-learning paradigm. In two experiments, participants studied word fragments (e.

Can cue familiarity during recall failure prompt illusory recollective experience?

Recognition memory is thought to involve two bases: familiarity (a sense that something was encountered previously) and recollection (retrieval of specifics or context). The present study investigated the hypothesis that a sensation of familiarity during cued-recall failure might increase illusory recollective experience. This hypothesis was driven, in part, by the suggestion in the literature that the type of familiarity-driven recollective confabulation often seen in populations experiencing memory impairment might actually be a common feature of normal human memory.

Subjective distinguishability of seizure and non-seizure Déjà Vu: A case report, brief literature review, and research prospects.

Roughly two-thirds of all people report having experienced déjà vu-the odd feeling that a current experience is both novel and a repeat or replay of a previous, unrecalled experience. Reports of an association between déjà vu and seizure aura symptomatology have accumulated for over a century, and frequent déjà vu is also now known to be associated with focal seizures, particularly those of a medial temporal lobe (MTL) origin. A longstanding question is whether seizure-related déjà vu has the same basis and is the same subjective experience as non-seizure déjà vu.

Specifying a relationship between semantic and episodic memory in the computation of a feature-based familiarity signal using MINERVA 2.

Approaches to modeling episodic recognition memory often imply a separability from semantic memory insofar as an implicit tabula rasa (i.e., blank slate) assumption is apparent in many simulations.

The tip-of-the-tongue state as a form of access to information: Use of tip-of-the-tongue states for strategic adaptive test-taking.

Though tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states are traditionally viewed as instances of retrieval failure, some suggest that they are a unique form of retrieval success. The state indicates the presence of relevant in memory as opposed to nothing. TOTs potentially present an opportunity to indicate that more knowledge is present than is currently accessible, which might have relevance for how tests are designed.

Increased pupil dilation during tip-of-the-tongue states.

Tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) are feelings of impending word retrieval success during a current failure to retrieve a target word. Though much is known and understood about TOT states from decades of research, research on potential psychophysiological correlates of the TOT state is still in its infancy, and existing studies point toward the involvement of neural processes that are associated with enhanced attention, motivation, and information-seeking. In the present study, we demonstrate that, during instances of target retrieval failure, TOT states are associated with greater pupillary dilation (i.

The tip-of-the-tongue state bias permeates unrelated concurrent decisions and behavior.

The tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state-the feeling of being near accessing an as yet inaccessible word from memory-is associated with cognitive bias. For example, prior work has shown that TOTs are associated with a bias toward inferring positive qualities of the unretrieved information. People are biased during TOTs to indicate that the unretrieved target has a greater likelihood of being positively valenced and to have been associated with a higher value number earlier in the experiment.

A postdictive bias associated with déjà vu.

Recent research links reports of déjà vu - the feeling of having experienced something before despite knowing otherwise - with an illusory feeling of prediction. In the present study, a new finding is presented in which reports of déjà vu are associated not only with a predictive bias, but also with a postdictive bias, whereby people are more likely to feel that an event unfolded as expected after the event prompted déjà vu than after it did not. During a virtual tour, feelings of predicting the next turn were more likely during reported déjà vu, as in prior research.

The biasing nature of the tip-of-the-tongue experience: When decisions bask in the glow of the tip-of-the-tongue state.

The present study demonstrates a counterintuitive pattern regarding the affective nature of the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon (when a currently inaccessible word feels right on the verge of retrieval). First, TOT reports were more likely for questions corresponding to positively valenced than negatively valenced targets. Second, TOT states were associated with a bias toward inferring positive characteristics regarding the unretrieved information.

Déjà vu and the feeling of prediction: an association with familiarity strength.

A recent laboratory study by Cleary and Claxton [2018. Déjà vu: An illusion of prediction. , (4), 635-644.

Déjà Vu: An Illusion of Prediction.

Déjà vu is beginning to be scientifically understood as a memory phenomenon. Despite recent scientific advances, a remaining puzzle is the purported association between déjà vu and feelings of premonition. Building on research showing that déjà vu can be driven by an unrecalled memory of a past experience that relates to the current situation, we sought evidence of memory-based predictive ability during déjà vu states.

Recognition during recall failure: Semantic feature matching as a mechanism for recognition of semantic cues when recall fails.

Research suggests that a feature-matching process underlies cue familiarity-detection when cued recall with graphemic cues fails. When a test cue (e.g.

The tip-of-the-tongue heuristic: How tip-of-the-tongue states confer perceptibility on inaccessible words.

This study shows that the presence of a tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state--the sense that a word is in memory when its retrieval fails--is used as a heuristic for inferring that an inaccessible word has characteristics that are consistent with greater word perceptibility. When reporting a TOT state, people judged an unretrieved word as more likely to have previously appeared darker and clearer (Experiment 1a), and larger (Experiment 1b). They also judged an unretrieved word as more likely to be a high frequency word (Experiment 2).

The use of cue familiarity during retrieval failure is affected by past versus future orientation.

Cue familiarity that is brought on by cue resemblance to memory representations is useful for judging the likelihood of a past occurrence with an item that fails to actually be retrieved from memory. The present study examined the extent to which this type of resemblance-based cue familiarity is used in future-oriented judgments made during retrieval failure. Cue familiarity was manipulated using a previously-established method of creating differing degrees of feature overlap between the cue and studied items in memory, and the primary interest was in how these varying degrees of cue familiarity would influence future-oriented feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments given in instances of cued recall failure.

Intuitively detecting what is hidden within a visual mask: familiar-novel discrimination and threat detection for unidentified stimuli.

Recognition without identification is the finding that, among recognition test items that go unidentified (as when a word is unidentified from a fragment), participants can discriminate those that were studied from those that were unstudied. In the present study, we extended this phenomenon to the more life-like situation of discriminating known from novel stimuli. Pictures of famous and nonfamous faces (Exp.

Recall versus familiarity when recall fails for words and scenes: the differential roles of the hippocampus, perirhinal cortex, and category-specific cortical regions.

This fMRI study examined recall and familiarity for words and scenes using the novel recognition without cued recall (RWCR) paradigm. Subjects performed a cued recall task in which half of the test cues resembled studied items (and thus were familiar) and half did not. Subjects also judged the familiarity of the cue itself.