Second Chances in Learning: Does a Resit Prospect Lower Study-Time Investments on a First Test?

Previous studies have shown that the prospect of a resit opportunity lowers hypothetical study-time investments for a first exam, as compared to a single-chance exam (i.e., the resit effect).

Towards a unified understanding of lateralized vision: A large-scale study investigating principles governing patterns of lateralization using a heterogeneous sample.

While functional lateralization of the human brain has been a widely studied topic in the past decades, few studies to date have gone further than investigating lateralization of single, isolated processes. With the present study, we aimed to arrive at a more unified view by investigating lateralization patterns in face and word processing, and associated lower-level visual processing. We tested a large and heterogeneous participant group, and used a number of tasks that had been shown to produce replicable indices of lateralized processing of visual information of different types and complexity.

Media multitasking, mind-wandering, and distractibility: A large-scale study.

Previous studies suggest that frequent media multitasking - the simultaneous use of different media at the same time - may be associated with increased susceptibility to internal and external sources of distraction. At the same time, other studies found no evidence for such associations. In the current study, we report the results of a large-scale study (N=261) in which we measured media multitasking with a short media-use questionnaire and measured distraction with a change-detection task that included different numbers of distractors.

Reproducibility of visual-field asymmetries: Nine replication studies investigating lateralization of visual information processing.

Numerous behavioral studies suggest that the processing of various types of visual stimuli and features may be more efficient in either the left or the right visual field. However, not all of these visual-field asymmetries (VFAs) have been observed consistently. Moreover, it is typically unclear whether a failure to observe a particular VFA can be ascribed to certain characteristics of the participants and stimuli, to a lack of statistical power, or to the actual absence of an effect.

Controlling the Resit Effect by Means of Investment Depreciation.

In accordance with a rational model of study-time investment, we previously found that the prospect of a resit exam leads to lower investments of fictional study-time for a first exam opportunity in an investment game utilizing simulated exams. In the current study, we investigated whether the depreciation of one's first-exam investment reduces the resit effect. Specifically, we investigated study-time investments for a simulated multiple-choice exam in which 0, 50, or 100% of the initial study-time investment was lost before the resit exam.

Working memory consolidation: insights from studies on attention and working memory.

Working memory, the system that maintains a limited set of representations for immediate use in cognition, is a central part of human cognition. Three processes have recently been proposed to govern information storage in working memory: consolidation, refreshing, and removal. Here, we discuss in detail the theoretical construct of working memory consolidation, a process critical to the creation of a stable working memory representation.

Correction to: Cognitive control in media multitaskers: Two replication studies and a meta-Analysis.

In the original article, the number of HMMs and LMMs who took part in the first study was reported to have been 13and 10, respectively (p. 2624).

Hemispheric specialization for global and local processing: A direct comparison of linguistic and non-linguistic stimuli.

It is often assumed that the human brain processes the global and local properties of visual stimuli in a lateralized fashion, with a left hemisphere (LH) specialization for local detail, and a right hemisphere (RH) specialization for global form. However, the evidence for such global-local lateralization stems predominantly from studies using linguistic stimuli, the processing of which has shown to be LH lateralized in itself. In addition, some studies have reported a reversal of global-local lateralization when using non-linguistic stimuli.

Cognitive control in media multitaskers: Two replication studies and a meta-Analysis.

Ophir, Nass, and Wagner (2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(37), 15583-15587) found that people with high scores on the media-use questionnaire-a questionnaire that measures the proportion of media-usage time during which one uses more than one medium at the same time-show impaired performance on various tests of distractor filtering. Subsequent studies, however, did not all show this association between media multitasking and distractibility, thus casting doubt on the reliability of the initial findings. Here, we report the results of two replication studies and a meta-analysis that included the results from all published studies into the relationship between distractor filtering and media multitasking.

Enhanced recognition of memorable pictures in ultra-fast RSVP.

Long-term recognition memory for some pictures is consistently better than for others (Isola, Xiao, Parikh, Torralba, & Oliva, IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), 36(7), 1469-1482, 2014). Here, we investigated whether pictures found to be memorable in a long-term memory test are also perceived more easily when presented in ultra-rapid RSVP. Participants viewed 6 pictures they had never seen before that were presented for 13 to 360 ms per picture in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) sequence.

Digit-color synaesthesia only enhances memory for colors in a specific context: A new method of duration thresholds to measure serial recall.

For digit-color synaesthetes, digits elicit vivid experiences of color that are highly consistent for each individual. The conscious experience of synaesthesia is typically unidirectional: Digits evoke colors but not vice versa. There is an ongoing debate about whether synaesthetes have a memory advantage over non-synaesthetes.

Retro-Active Emotion: Do Negative Emotional Stimuli Disrupt Consolidation in Working Memory?

While many studies have shown that a task-irrelevant emotionally arousing stimulus can interfere with the processing of a shortly following target, it remains unclear whether an emotional stimulus can also retro-actively interrupt the ongoing processing of an earlier target. In two experiments, we examined whether the presentation of a negative emotionally arousing picture can disrupt working memory consolidation of a preceding visual target. In both experiments, the effects of negative emotional pictures were compared with the effects of neutral pictures.

Do Resit Exams Promote Lower Investments of Study Time? Theory and Data from a Laboratory Study.

Although many educational institutions allow students to resit exams, a recently proposed mathematical model suggests that this could lead to a dramatic reduction in study-time investment, especially in rational students. In the current study, we present a modification of this model in which we included some well-justified assumptions about learning and performance on multiple-choice tests, and we tested its predictions in two experiments in which participants were asked to invest fictional study time for a fictional exam. Consistent with our model, the prospect of a resit exam was found to promote lower investments of study time for a first exam and this effect was stronger for participants scoring higher on the cognitive reflection test.

Red, green, blue equals 1, 2, 3: Digit-color synesthetes can use structured digit information to boost recall of color sequences.

Digit-color synesthetes report experiencing colors when perceiving letters and digits. The conscious experience is typically unidirectional (e.g.

Irrelevant auditory and visual events induce a visual attentional blink.

In the present study we investigated whether a task-irrelevant distractor can induce a visual attentional blink pattern. Participants were asked to detect only a visual target letter (A, B, or C) and to ignore the preceding auditory, visual, or audiovisual distractor. An attentional blink was observed regardless of the distractor modality.

Temporal target integration underlies performance at Lag 1 in the attentional blink.

When two targets follow each other directly in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), they are often identified correctly but reported in the wrong order. These order reversals are commonly explained in terms of the rate at which the two targets are processed, the idea being that the second target can sometimes overtake the first in the race toward conscious awareness. The present study examined whether some of these order reversals might alternatively be due to a mechanism of temporal integration whereby targets appearing closely in time may be merged into a single representation.

Quick minds slowed down: effects of rotation and stimulus category on the attentional blink.

Background: Most people show a remarkable deficit to report the second of two targets when presented in close temporal succession, reflecting an attentional restriction known as the 'attentional blink' (AB). However, there are large individual differences in the magnitude of the effect, with some people showing no such attentional restrictions.

Methodology/principal Findings: Here we present behavioral and electrophysiological evidence suggesting that these 'non-blinkers' can use alphanumeric category information to select targets at an early processing stage.

Audiovisual semantic interference and attention: evidence from the attentional blink paradigm.

In the present study we investigate the role of attention in audiovisual semantic interference, by using an attentional blink paradigm. Participants were asked to make an unspeeded response to the identity of a visual target letter. This target letter was preceded at various SOAs by a synchronized audiovisual letter-pair, which was either congruent (e.

Unmasking the attentional blink.

When asked to identify 2 visual targets (T1 and T2 for the 1st and 2nd targets, respectively) embedded in a sequence of distractors, observers will often fail to identify T2 when it appears within 200-500 ms of T1--an effect called the attentional blink. Recent work shows that attention does not blink when the task is to encode a sequence of consecutive targets, suggesting that distractor interference plays a causal role in the attentional blink. Here, however, the authors show that an attentional blink occurs even in the absence of distractors, with 2 letter targets separated by a blank interval.

Cross-task repetition amnesia: Impaired recall of RSVP targets held in memory for a secondary task.

People often fail to select and encode the second of two targets presented within less than 500ms in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), an effect known as the attentional blink. We investigated how report of the two targets is affected when one of them is maintained in working memory for a secondary, memory-search task. The results showed that report of either target was impaired when it was a member of the memory set relative to when it was not.

Top-down controlled, delayed selection in the attentional blink.

In a previous study, it was shown that the attentional blink (AB)--the failure to recall the 2nd of 2 visual targets (T1 and T2) presented within 500 ms in rapid serial visual presentation--is reduced when T2 is preceded by a distractor that shares a feature with T2 (e.g., color; Nieuwenstein, Chun, van der Lubbe & Hooge, 2005).

Temporal limits of selection and memory encoding: A comparison of whole versus partial report in rapid serial visual presentation.

People often fail to recall the second of two visual targets presented within 500 ms in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). This effect is called the attentional blink. One explanation of the attentional blink is that processes involved in encoding the first target into memory are slow and capacity limited.

Delayed attentional engagement in the attentional blink.

Observers often miss the 2nd of 2 visual targets (first target [T1] and second target [T2]) when these targets are presented closely in time; the attentional blink (AB). The authors hypothesized that the AB occurs because the attentional response to T2 is delayed by T1 processing, causing T2 to lose a competition for attention to the item that follows it. The authors investigated this hypothesis by determining whether the AB is attenuated when T2 is precued.