The effects of divided attention at encoding and at retrieval on multidimensional source memory.

Dividing attention (DA) between a memory task and a secondary task results in deficits in memory performance across a wide array of memory tasks, but these effects are larger when DA occurs at encoding than at retrieval. Although some research suggests the effects of DA are equal for item and associative memory, thereby suggesting that DA disrupts all components of an episode to the same extent, there have been relatively few studies directly examining the effects of DA on multiple features of the same episode. In addition, no studies have examined how DA may affect the stochastic dependency between multiple source dimensions of a given episode, which is central to theories of source memory, and episodic memory in general.

Eyes-on training and radiological expertise: an examination of expertise development and its effects on visual working memory.

Objective: Our aim was to examine the specificity of the effects of acquiring expertise on visual working memory (VWM) and the degree to which higher levels of experience within the domain of expertise are associated with more efficient use of VWM.

Background: Previous research is inconsistent on whether expertise effects are specific to the area of expertise or generalize to other tasks that also involve the same cognitive processes. It is also unclear whether more training and/or experience will lead to continued improvement on domain-relevant tasks or whether a plateau could be reached.

Ongoing task delays affect prospective memory more powerfully than filler task delays.

The effect of delay on prospective memory (PM) is mixed. Research has typically shown that PM either decreases or remains unchanged as the time increases between intention formation and encounter with a PM cue. However, the results of one study demonstrated that PM sometimes increases with increasing delays (Hicks, Marsh, & Russell, 2000).

Differing types of cellular phone conversations and dangerous driving.

This study sought to investigate the relationship between cell phone conversation type and dangerous driving behaviors. It was hypothesized that more emotional phone conversations engaged in while driving would produce greater frequencies of dangerous driving behaviors in a simulated environment than more mundane conversation or no phone conversation at all. Participants were semi-randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) no call, (2) mundane call, and, (3) emotional call.

Source memory for unrecognized items: predictions from multivariate signal detection theory.

We report three experiments investigating source memory for words that were called "new" on a recognition test. In each experiment, participants could accurately specify the source of words that they failed to recognize. Results also demonstrated that source memory for unrecognized items varied with the bias to respond "old" in recognition decisions: Participants displayed unrecognized source memory when they were told that 25% of the recognition test words were old (promoting conservative responding) but not when they were told that 75% of the test words were old (promoting liberal responding).

Fan effects in event-based prospective memory.

Three experiments investigated whether event-based prospective memory was affected by the associative fan of the cues to be detected. The associative fan was operationally defined as the number of associates paired with event-based cues in a paired associate learning phase. Subsequent to the paired associate learning, participants were given a lexical decision task in which event-based cues were embedded.