Modeling collaborative memory with SAM.

While humans often encode and retrieve memories in groups, the bulk of our knowledge of human memory comes from paradigms with individuals in isolation. The primary phenomenon of interest within the relatively new field of collaborative memory is collaborative inhibition: the tendency for collaborative groups to underperform in free recall tasks compared with noncollaborative groups of the same size. This effect has been found in a variety of materials and group compositions.

Validation of a rodent model of episodic memory replay.

Vivid episodic memories in humans have been described as the replay of the flow of past events in sequential order. Recently, Panoz-Brown et al. Current Biology, 28, 1628-1634, (2018) developed an olfactory memory task in which rats were presented with a list of trial-unique odors in an encoding context; next, in a distinctive memory assessment context, the rats were rewarded for choosing the second to last item from the list while avoiding other items from the list.

Function estimation: Quantifying individual differences of hand-drawn functions.

Graphical perception is an important part of the scientific endeavour, and the interpretation of graphical information is increasingly important among educated consumers of popular media, who are often presented with graphs of data in support of different policy positions. However, graphs are multidimensional and data in graphs are comprised not only of overall global trends but also local perturbations. We presented a novel function estimation task in which scatterplots of noisy data that varied in the number of data points, the scale of the data, and the true generating function were shown to observers.

Recognition memory decisions made with short- and long-term retrieval.

In the present research, we produce a coherent account of the storage and retrieval processes in short- and long-term event memory, and long-term knowledge, that produce response accuracy and response time in a wide variety of conditions in our studies of recognition memory. Two to nine pictures are studied sequentially followed by a target or foil test picture in four conditions used in Nosofsky et al. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47, 316-342, (2021) and in our new paradigm: VM: target and foil responses to a given stimulus change from trial to trial; CM: the responses do not change from trial to trial; AN: every trial uses new stimuli; MIXED: combinations of VM, CN, and AN occur on each trial.

Against naïve induction from experimental data.

This commentary argues against the indictment of current experimental practices such as piecemeal testing, and the proposed integrated experiment design (IED) approach, which we see as yet another attempt at automating scientific thinking. We identify a number of undesirable features of IED that lead us to believe that its broad application will hinder scientific progress.

The distinction between long-term knowledge and short-term control processes is valid and useful.

The binary distinction De Neys questions has been put forward many times since the beginnings of psychology, in slightly different forms and under different names. It has proved enormously useful and has received detailed empirical support and careful modeling. At heart the distinction is that between knowledge in long-term memory and control processes in short-term memory.

Two case studies of very long-term retention.

Here, we present two case studies of extremely long-term retention. In the first, Richard C. Atkinson (RCA) had learned word sequences during experiments for his dissertation.

Extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence? A discussion.

Roberts (2020, Learning & Behavior, 48[2], 191-192) discussed research claiming honeybees can do arithmetic. Some readers of this research might regard such claims as unlikely. The present authors used this example as a basis for a debate on the criterion that ought to be used for publication of results or conclusions that could be viewed as unlikely by a significant number of readers, editors, or reviewers.

Is it Reasonable to Study Decision-Making Quantitatively?

Scientists studying decision-making often provide a set of choices, each specified with values or distributions of values, and probabilities or distributions of probabilities. For example, "Would you prefer $100 with probability 1.0 or $1 with probability .

What are the appropriate axioms of rationality for reasoning under uncertainty with resource-constrained systems?

When constrained by limited resources, how do we choose axioms of rationality? The target article relies on Bayesian reasoning that encounter serious tractability problems. We propose another axiomatic foundation: quantum probability theory, which provides for less complex and more comprehensive descriptions. More generally, defining rationality in terms of axiomatic systems misses a key issue: rationality must be defined by humans facing vague information.

Modeling short- and long-term memory contributions to recent event recognition.

Participants gave recognition judgments for short lists of pictures of everyday objects. Pictures in a given list were an equal mixture of three types that varied according to the way they were used as targets and foils earlier in the same session. Under consistent-mapping (CM), targets and foils never switch roles; under varied-mapping (VM), targets and foils switch roles randomly across trials; whereas all-new (AN) items are novel on each trial of the experiment.

50 years of research sparked by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968).

In this article we review the framework proposed in 1968 by Atkinson and Shiffrin. We discuss the prior context that led to its production, including the advent of cognitive and mathematical modeling, its principal concepts, the subsequent refinements and elaborations that followed, and the way that the framework influenced other researchers to test the ideas and, in some cases, propose alternatives. The article illustrates the large amount of research and the large number of memory models that were directly influenced by this chapter over the past 50 years.

Scientific progress despite irreproducibility: A seeming paradox.

It appears paradoxical that science is producing outstanding new results and theories at a rapid rate at the same time that researchers are identifying serious problems in the practice of science that cause many reports to be irreproducible and invalid. Certainly, the practice of science needs to be improved, and scientists are now pursuing this goal. However, in this perspective, we argue that this seeming paradox is not new, has always been part of the way science works, and likely will remain so.

Item frequency in probe-recognition memory search: Converging evidence for a role of item-response learning.

In short-term probe-recognition tasks, observers make speeded old-new recognition judgments for items that are members of short lists. However, long-term memory (LTM) for items from previous lists influences current-list performance. The current experiment pursued the nature of these long-term influences-in particular, whether they emerged from item-familiarity or item-response-learning mechanisms.

A dynamic approach to recognition memory.

We present a dynamic model of memory that integrates the processes of perception, retrieval from knowledge, retrieval of events, and decision making as these evolve from 1 moment to the next. The core of the model is that recognition depends on tracking changes in familiarity over time from an initial baseline generally determined by context, with these changes depending on the availability of different kinds of information at different times. A mathematical implementation of this model leads to precise, accurate predictions of accuracy, response time, and speed-accuracy trade-off in episodic recognition at the levels of both groups and individuals across a variety of paradigms.

The rational status of quantum cognition.

Classic probability theory (CPT) is generally considered the rational way to make inferences, but there have been some empirical findings showing a divergence between reasoning and the principles of classical probability theory (CPT), inviting the conclusion that humans are irrational. Perhaps the most famous of these findings is the conjunction fallacy (CF). Recently, the CF has been shown consistent with the principles of an alternative probabilistic framework, quantum probability theory (QPT).

The development of automaticity in short-term memory search: Item-response learning and category learning.

In short-term-memory (STM)-search tasks, observers judge whether a test probe was present in a short list of study items. Here we investigated the long-term learning mechanisms that lead to the highly efficient STM-search performance observed under conditions of consistent-mapping (CM) training, in which targets and foils never switch roles across trials. In item-response learning, subjects learn long-term mappings between individual items and target versus foil responses.

Models that allow us to perceive the world more accurately also allow us to remember past events more accurately via differentiation.

Differentiation is a theory that originally emerged from the perception literature and proposes that with experience, the representation of stimuli becomes more distinct from or less similar to the representation of other stimuli. In recent years, the role of differentiation has played a critical role in models of memory. Differentiation mechanisms have been implemented in episodic memory models by assuming that information about new experiences with a stimulus in a particular context accumulates in a single memory trace and these updated memory traces become more distinct from the representations of other stimuli.

A Bootstrapping Model of Frequency and Context Effects in Word Learning.

Prior research has shown that people can learn many nouns (i.e., word-object mappings) from a short series of ambiguous situations containing multiple words and objects.

The Dilution Effect and Information Integration in Perceptual Decision Making.

In cognitive science there is a seeming paradox: On the one hand, studies of human judgment and decision making have repeatedly shown that people systematically violate optimal behavior when integrating information from multiple sources. On the other hand, optimal models, often Bayesian, have been successful at accounting for information integration in fields such as categorization, memory, and perception. This apparent conflict could be due, in part, to different materials and designs that lead to differences in the nature of processing.

Salience, Perceptual Dimensions, and the Diversion of Attention.

Parallel and automatic processing is evidenced in visual search by what is commonly called popout. An object of search (a target) that differs widely from all other display objects on some simple visual dimension is commonly called a singleton; an example is search for a red circle when all other displayed circles are green. A singleton attracts attention to the degree that it is salient, and highly salient singletons produce search that is almost independent of display size.

Familiarity and categorization processes in memory search.

A fundamental distinction in tasks of memory search is whether items receive varied mappings (targets and distractors switch roles across trials) or consistent mappings (targets and distractors never switch roles). The type of mapping often produces markedly different performance patterns, but formal memory-based models that account quantitatively for detailed aspects of the results have not yet been developed and evaluated. Experiments were conducted to test a modern exemplar-retrieval model on its ability to account for memory-search performance involving a wide range of memory-set sizes in both varied-mapping (VM) and consistent-mapping (CM) probe-recognition tasks.