False Memories of Familiar Faces.

Prior familiarity has been shown to increase memory for faces, but different effects emerge depending on whether the face is experimentally or pre-experimentally familiar to the observer. Across two experiments, we compared the effect of experimental and pre-experimental familiarity on recognition and source memory. Pre-experimentally familiar faces were nameable US celebrities, and unfamiliar faces were unnamable European celebrities.

Spotting missing or wanted people: racial biases in prospective person memory.

Searching for missing or wanted people is a crucial task in our society. Previous work on prospective person memory (PPM) has demonstrated that performance on this type of search task is worse relative to standard prospective memory tasks. Importantly, this process may be further affected by the race of the missing person, yet this has never been tested in laboratory settings.

High target prevalence may reduce the spread of attention during search tasks.

Target prevalence influences many cognitive processes during visual search, including target detection, search efficiency, and item processing. The present research investigated whether target prevalence may also impact the spread of attention during search. Relative to low-prevalence searches, high-prevalence searches typically yield higher fixation counts, particularly during target-absent trials.

Encoding of Race Categories by Single Neurons in the Human Brain.

Previous research has suggested that race-specific features are automatically processed during face perception, often with out-group faces treated categorically. Functional imaging has illuminated the hemodynamic correlates of this process, with fewer studies examining single-neuron responses. In the present experiment, epilepsy patients undergoing microwire recordings in preparation for surgical treatment were shown realistic computer-generated human faces, which they classified according to the emotional expression shown.

Two kinds of memory signals in neurons of the human hippocampus.

Prior studies of the neural representation of episodic memory in the human hippocampus have identified generic memory signals representing the categorical status of test items (novel vs. repeated), whereas other studies have identified item specific memory signals representing individual test items. Here, we report that both kinds of memory signals can be detected in hippocampal neurons in the same experiment.

The Oddity Detection in Diverse Scenes (ODDS) database: Validated real-world scenes for studying anomaly detection.

Many applied screening tasks (e.g., medical image or baggage screening) involve challenging searches for which standard laboratory search is rarely equivalent.

Flexible attention allocation dynamically impacts incidental encoding in prospective memory.

Remembering to fulfill an intention at a later time often requires people to monitor the environment for cues that it is time to act. This monitoring involves the strategic allocation of attentional resources, ramping attention up more in some contexts than others. In addition to interfering with ongoing task performance, flexibly shifting attention may affect whether task-irrelevant information is later remembered.

Eye movements reflect expertise development in hybrid search.

Domain-specific expertise changes the way people perceive, process, and remember information from that domain. This is often observed in visual domains involving skilled searches, such as athletics referees, or professional visual searchers (e.g.

The detail is in the difficulty: Challenging search facilitates rich incidental object encoding.

When searching for objects in the environment, observers necessarily encounter other, nontarget, objects. Despite their irrelevance for search, observers often incidentally encode the details of these objects, an effect that is exaggerated as the search task becomes more challenging. Although it is well established that searchers create incidental memories for targets, less is known about the fidelity with which nontargets are remembered.

Spiking activity in the human hippocampus prior to encoding predicts subsequent memory.

Encoding activity in the medial temporal lobe, presumably evoked by the presentation of stimuli (postonset activity), is known to predict subsequent memory. However, several independent lines of research suggest that preonset activity also affects subsequent memory. We investigated the role of preonset and postonset single-unit and multiunit activity recorded from epilepsy patients as they completed a continuous recognition task.

Not all information in visual working memory is forgotten equally.

To improve maintenance of task-relevant information in visual working memory (VWM), previously encoded, but no longer relevant, information can be suppressed or forgotten. However, it is unclear whether a cue directing attention to a subset of stimuli leads to complete forgetting for non-cued stimuli. The current study utilized a novel method of testing to-be forgotten information to determine if the effectiveness of forgetting differs depending on the type of encoded stimuli.

Spotting rare items makes the brain "blink" harder: Evidence from pupillometry.

In many visual search tasks (e.g., cancer screening, airport baggage inspections), the most serious search targets occur infrequently.

Incidental memory following rapid object processing: The role of attention allocation strategies.

When observers search for multiple (rather than singular) targets, they are slower and less accurate, yet have better incidental memory for nontarget items encountered during the task (Hout & Goldinger, 2010). One explanation for this may be that observers titrate their attention allocation based on the expected difficulty suggested by search cues. Difficult search cues may implicitly encourage observers to narrow their attention, simultaneously enhancing distractor encoding and hindering peripheral processing.

Retrieval dynamics of recognition and rejection.

Recognition memory is often viewed as the end-product of discrete cognitive events, involving the combination of latent operations such as the assessment of memory strength, the decision time, and the memory judgement. Recently, researchers have begun using the physical dynamics of memory retrieval to provide insight into the dynamic, possibly non-discrete, processes that underlie memory decisions. In this study, the underlying distributional properties of targets and lures were manipulated by populating lists with items drawn from either homogeneous or heterogeneous word frequency and context variability ranges.

Response dynamics of event-based prospective memory retrieval in mouse tracking.

Prospective memory (PM) is typically measured using keypresses in laboratory paradigms, which therefore assess only discrete, stage-like processes. In the present study we manipulated focal and nonfocal PM cue conditions, as well as participants' focus on different aspects of the PM/ongoing task set, using the methodology to capture dynamic computer mouse movements. The software captured mouse trajectories during lexical decisions and PM responses.

Expectancy effects in the Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response.

The Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) is a tingling, almost euphoric, sensation often elicited following certain visual or auditory stimulations (Barratt & Davis, 2015). Despite considerable media attention, little empirical work has investigated the underlying mechanisms. In the present study, ASMR enthusiasts and naïve observers listened to audio clips with and without ASMR-eliciting characteristics.

Photo ID verification remains challenging despite years of practice.

Background: Matching unfamiliar faces to photographic identification (ID) documents occurs across many domains, including financial transactions (e.g., mortgage documents), controlling the purchase of age-restricted goods (e.

The persistent low-prevalence effect in unfamiliar face-matching: The roles of feedback and criterion shifting.

In visual search, relatively infrequent targets are more likely to be "missed," a phenomenon known as the low-prevalence effect (LPE). Across five experiments, we examined the LPE in unfamiliar face matching, focusing on the roles of feedback and criterion shifting. Across experiments, observers made identity match/mismatch decisions to photograph pairs, and we manipulated target (i.

Modern Speed-Reading Apps Do Not Foster Reading Comprehension.

New computer apps are gaining popularity by suggesting that reading speeds can be drastically increased when eye movements that normally occur during reading are eliminated. This is done using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), where words are presented 1 at a time, thus preventing natural eye movements such as saccades, fixations, and regressions from occurring. Al- though the companies producing these apps suggest that RSVP reading does not yield comprehension deficits, research investigating the role of eye movements in reading documents shows the necessity of natural eye movements for accurate comprehension.

Coding of episodic memory in the human hippocampus.

Neurocomputational models have long posited that episodic memories in the human hippocampus are represented by sparse, stimulus-specific neural codes. A concomitant proposal is that when sparse-distributed neural assemblies become active, they suppress the activity of competing neurons (neural sharpening). We investigated episodic memory coding in the hippocampus and amygdala by measuring single-neuron responses from 20 epilepsy patients (12 female) undergoing intracranial monitoring while they completed a continuous recognition memory task.

The poverty of embodied cognition.

In recent years, there has been rapidly growing interest in embodied cognition, a multifaceted theoretical proposition that (1) cognitive processes are influenced by the body, (2) cognition exists in the service of action, (3) cognition is situated in the environment, and (4) cognition may occur without internal representations. Many proponents view embodied cognition as the next great paradigm shift for cognitive science. In this article, we critically examine the core ideas from embodied cognition, taking a "thought exercise" approach.

Eye movements reveal fast, voice-specific priming.

In spoken word perception, voice specificity effects are well-documented: When people hear repeated words in some task, performance is generally better when repeated items are presented in their originally heard voices, relative to changed voices. A key theoretical question about voice specificity effects concerns their time-course: Some studies suggest that episodic traces exert their influence late in lexical processing (the time-course hypothesis; McLennan & Luce, 2005), whereas others suggest that episodic traces influence immediate, online processing. We report 2 eye-tracking studies investigating the time-course of voice-specific priming within and across cognitive tasks.

Just out of reach: On the reliability of the action-sentence compatibility effect.

The action-sentence compatibility effect (ACE; Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002), a hallmark finding in Embodied Cognition, implicates the motor system in language comprehension. In the ACE, people process sentences implying movement toward or away from themselves, responding with actions toward or away from their bodies. These processes interact, implying a linkage between linguistic and motor systems.

Distributed representation of visual objects by single neurons in the human brain.

It remains unclear how single neurons in the human brain represent whole-object visual stimuli. While recordings in both human and nonhuman primates have shown distributed representations of objects (many neurons encoding multiple objects), recordings of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe, taken as subjects' discriminated objects during multiple presentations, have shown gnostic representations (single neurons encoding one object). Because some studies suggest that repeated viewing may enhance neural selectivity for objects, we had human subjects discriminate objects in a single, more naturalistic viewing session.

Sparse and distributed coding of episodic memory in neurons of the human hippocampus.

Neurocomputational models hold that sparse distributed coding is the most efficient way for hippocampal neurons to encode episodic memories rapidly. We investigated the representation of episodic memory in hippocampal neurons of nine epilepsy patients undergoing intracranial monitoring as they discriminated between recently studied words (targets) and new words (foils) on a recognition test. On average, single units and multiunits exhibited higher spike counts in response to targets relative to foils, and the size of this effect correlated with behavioral performance.