Timing of pre-retrieval warnings matters in reducing memory errors in a repeated testing misinformation study.

Individuals are often exposed to information regarding previously witnessed events. The misinformation effect occurs when inaccurate post-event information impairs accuracy on a subsequent test of memory for the original event. The misinformation effect is increased when a test is given prior to exposure to post-event information, a phenomenon termed Retrieval Enhanced Suggestibility (RES).

Timing of testing affects earwitness memory.

The present experiments investigated how interpolated testing and postevent misinformation affected earwitness memory. We examined how the number of tests and when tests occurred affected memory for an overheard event and source monitoring. Across three experiments, participants overheard a crime (i.

Warning before misinformation exposure modulates memory encoding.

Exposure to misleading information after witnessing an event can impair future memory reports about the event. This pervasive form of memory distortion, termed the misinformation effect, can be significantly reduced if individuals are warned about the reliability of post-event information before exposure to misleading information. The present fMRI study investigated whether such prewarnings improve subsequent memory accuracy by influencing encoding-related neural activity during exposure to misinformation.

Metacognitive judgment formation during map learning: Evidence for global monitoring.

Street maps are sometimes complex. They may show landmark names, locations, routes between landmarks, and where landmarks are relative to one another. Map learners may aim to learn one map component, like landmark locations, but later must remember a different component, such as routes.

Intrinsic functional connectivity in medial temporal lobe networks is associated with susceptibility to misinformation.

Memory is notoriously fallible and susceptible to misinformation. Yet little is known about the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms that render individuals vulnerable to this type of false memory. The current experiments take an individual differences approach to examine whether susceptibility to misinformation reflects stable underlying factors related to memory retrieval.

The Underappreciated Benefits of Interleaving for Category Learning.

The present study examined the effects of study schedule (interleaving vs. blocking) and feature descriptions on category learning and metacognitive predictions of learning. Across three experiments, participants studied exemplars from different rock categories and later had to classify novel exemplars.

What the Acute Stress Response Suggests about Memory.

Research suggests that stress has immediate and long-term effects on attention and memory. Rather than disrupting memory formation and consolidation, acute stress has been shown to shift attention processes resulting in a tradeoff between prioritized and nonprioritized information. Both arousal and stress result in cognitive and neurobiological shifts that often support memory formation.

Exploration of human cognitive universals and human cognitive diversity.

In this editorial, the editors briefly introduce the aims of the Special Issue. If the goal of the scientific field of Cognitive Psychology is to improve our understanding of human cognition, then research needs to be conducted on a much broader slice of humanity than it has mostly been doing. The first aim of this Special Issue was to examine cognitive processes in populations that are different from the typical Western young adult samples often used in previously published studies.

On the proposed role of metacognition in environment learning: recommendations for research.

Metacognition plays a role in environment learning (EL). When navigating, we monitor environment information to judge our likelihood to remember our way, and we engage in control by using tools to prevent getting lost. Yet, the relationship between metacognition and EL is understudied.

When Memory and Metamemory Align: How Processes at Encoding Influence Delayed Judgment-of-Learning Accuracy.

Judgments of learning are most accurate when made at a delay from the initial encoding of the assessed material. A wealth of evidence suggests that this is because a delay encourages participants to base their predictions on cues retrieved from long-term memory, which are generally the most diagnostic of later memory performance. We investigated the hypothesis that different types of study techniques affect delayed JOL accuracy by influencing the accessibility of cues stored in long-term memory.

Thinking about thinking about thinking … & feeling: A model for metacognitive and meta-affective processes in task engagement.

Metacognition, or thinking about thinking, is a phenomenon that has received much attention across the numerous fields of Psychological Science. The overarching goal has centered on understanding how humans monitor their internal mental processes and exert control over these processes. However, discipline-focused approaches with little generalized discussion across the field have yielded an incomplete understanding of the construct of metacognition.

What Can Cognitive Science Do for People?

The critical question for cognitive scientists is what does cognitive science do, if anything, for people? Cognitive science is primarily concerned with human cognition but has fallen short in continuously and critically assessing the who in human cognition. This complacency in a world where white supremacist and patriarchal structures leave cognitive science in the unfortunate position of potentially supporting those structures. We take it that many cognitive scientists operate on the assumption that the study of human cognition is both interesting and important.

Are witnesses able to avoid highly accessible misinformation? Examining the efficacy of different warnings for high and low accessibility postevent misinformation.

The reliability of eyewitness memory continues to be an area of concern, particularly in situations that involve conflicting sources of information (e.g., the misinformation effect; Loftus et al.

The Dynamic and Fragile Nature of Eyewitness Memory Formation: Considering Stress and Attention.

Eyewitnesses are often susceptible to recollection failures and memory distortions. These failures and distortions are influenced by several factors. The present review will discuss two such important factors, attention failures and stress.

Understanding Older Adults' Memory Distortion in the Light of Stereotype Threat.

Numerous studies have documented the detrimental impact of age-based stereotype threat (ABST) on older adults' cognitive performance and especially on veridical memory. However, far fewer studies have investigated the impact of ABST on older adults' memory distortion. Here, we review the subset of research examining memory distortion and provide evidence for the role of stereotype threat as a powerful socio-emotional factor that impacts age-related susceptibility to memory distortion.

Visual category learning: Navigating the intersection of rules and similarity.

Visual categorization is fundamental to expertise in a wide variety of disparate domains, such as radiology, art history, and quality control. The pervasive need to master visual categories has served as the impetus for a vast body of research dedicated to exploring how to enhance the learning process. The literature is clear on one point: no category learning technique is always superior to another.

Effects of Survival Processing on Item and Context Memory: Enhanced Memory for Survival-Relevant Details.

Due to the natural selection pressure, certain aspects of memory may have been selected to give humans a survival advantage. Research has demonstrated that processing information for survival relevance leads to better item memory (i.e.

Protecting memory from misinformation: Warnings modulate cortical reinstatement during memory retrieval.

Exposure to even subtle forms of misleading information can significantly alter memory for past events. Memory distortion due to misinformation has been linked to faulty reconstructive processes during memory retrieval and the reactivation of brain regions involved in the initial encoding of misleading details (cortical reinstatement). The current study investigated whether warning participants about the threat of misinformation can modulate cortical reinstatement during memory retrieval and reduce misinformation errors.

How prior testing impacts misinformation processing: A dual-task approach.

Research suggests that testing prior to the presentation of misinformation influences how that misinformation is processed. The present study examined the relationship between testing, the demands of misinformation narrative processing, and memory for original and post-event information. Using response latencies to a secondary task, we tested whether prior testing influenced the available resources for secondary task processing.

Using Practice Testing, Public Speaking, and Source Monitoring to Examine the Influences of Learning Strategies and Stress on Episodic Memory.

Prior research demonstrated that learning information via retrieval practice, which entails studying and taking practice tests, resulted in less memory impairment under stress than learning information via repeated studying. The present experiment combined three experimental procedures to further examine the memory mechanisms underlying the efficacy of retrieval practice in the context of stress. A list-discrimination task was implemented, in which participants learned two distinct wordlists.

Acute stress enhances general-knowledge semantic memory.

Acute psychological stress consistently impairs episodic memory, which consists of memory for events that are associated with a specific context. However, researchers have not yet established how stress influences semantic memory, which consists of general knowledge that is devoid of context. In the present study, participants either underwent stress induction or a control task prior to taking a trivia test that was designed to measure semantic memory.

Retrieval practice improves item memory but not source memory in the context of stress.

Smith, Floerke, and Thomas (2016) demonstrated that learning by repeated testing, or retrieval practice, reduced stress-related memory impairment when compared to learning by repeatedly studying material. In the present experiment, we tested whether, relative to study practice, retrieval practice would improve post-stress memory by increasing access to both item and source information. Participants learned two wordlists, which were temporally segregated to facilitate distinction between the two lists.

Verbal long-term memory is enhanced by retrieval practice but impaired by prefrontal direct current stimulation.

Retrieval practice involves repeatedly testing a student during the learning experience, reliably conferring learning advantages relative to repeated study. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) has also been shown to confer learning advantages for verbal memory, though research is equivocal. The present study examined the effects of retrieval versus study practice with or without left dlPFC tDCS on verbal episodic memory.