Two experiments examined the extent to which erroneous recall blocks veridical recall using, as a vehicle for study, the disruptive impact of distractors that are semantically similar to a list of words presented for free recall. Instructing participants to avoid erroneous recall of to-be-ignored spoken distractors attenuated their recall but this…

The authors have, for some years, studied the concept of "possibility thinking" (PT), or "what if" and "as if" thinking in children aged 3-11, which generates novelty -- and the pedagogical strategies which foster it. They have argued, on the basis of previous qualitative studies, that "PT" is at the core of…

Any individual's response intended to be random should be as probable as any other. However, 3 experiments show that many people's independent responses depart from the expected chance distribution. Participants responding to instructions of chance and related concepts favor the available options unequally in a similar way. Consequently, in…