This article proposes that visual encoding learning improves reading fluency by widening the span over which letters are recognized from a fixated text image so that fewer fixations are needed to cover a text line. Encoder is a connectionist model that learns to convert images like the fixated text images human readers encode into the…

Discovering the function of phenomenal states remains a formidable scientific challenge. Research on consciously penetrable conflicts (e.g., "pain-for-gain" scenarios) and impenetrable conflicts (as in the pupillary reflex, ventriloquism, and the McGurk effect [H. McGurk & J. MacDonald, 1976]) reveals that these states integrate diverse kinds of…

P. N. Johnson-Laird and R. M. J. Byrne proposed an influential theory of conditionals in which mental models represent logical possibilities and inferences are drawn from the extensions of possibilities that are used to represent conditionals. In this article, the authors argue that the extensional semantics underlying this theory is equivalent to…

Some theorists, ranging from W. James (1890) to contemporary psychologists, have argued that forgetting is the key to proper functioning of memory. The authors elaborate on the notion of beneficial forgetting by proposing that loss of information aids inference heuristics that exploit mnemonic information. To this end, the authors bring together 2…

The task of causal learning concerns figuring out the laws that govern how the world works. The goal of a reasoner who engages in this task is to gain an understanding of the empirical world that would guide decisions regarding actions to achieve the reasoner's objectives. The comments by P. A. White and C. Luhmann and W.-k. Ahn on P. W. Cheng and…

The author concentrates on two components of memory which contribute to the reproduction and recognition of melodies, namely, melodic contour and musical scale. A new experiment is reported that shows the interdependence of both components. (Author/RK)

It is proposed that many phenomena of human hypothesis testing can be understood in terms of a general positive test strategy. With this strategy, there is a tendency to test cases that are expected to have the property of interest rather than those expected to lack that property. (Author/LMO)

A number of models are considered that specify how children and adults solve single-digit addition problems. (Authors)

Information processing research offers a solution to the ambiguity of many concepts in cognitive psychology. The author's definition of intelligence and the structure-of-intellect model offer a systematic collection of rigorously and operationally defined concepts. New evidence for discriminability of the model categories and views of memory and…

A new analysis, based on the concept of the ideal observer in signal detection theory, is described. It allows: tracing of the flow of discrimination information through the initial physiological stages of visual processing for arbitrary spatio-chromatic stimuli, and measurement of the information content of said visual stimuli. (TJH)

Neuropsychological findings relevant to the question of whether visual imagery is visual or perceptual are reviewed and compared to cognitive psychology theories. Imagery does not appear to represent information acquired through visual sensory channels; rather, it seems to use some of the same neural representational machinery as does vision. (SLD)

Current theories and research on distributed activation in sleep are reviewed, and a neurocognitive theory of sleep is presented that is based on distributed activation. Neural and cognitive relationships described by the theory are translated into connectionist models, and simulations are described. (SLD)

Results of a 15-year research program on how implicitly activated memories affect remembering are presented, and a model is proposed to describe such influences. Experiments with 240 college students to evaluate the exclusivity of sources of information in the models are described, and implications of the findings are discussed. (SLD)

A neural theory of visual attention (NTVA) is presented. NTVA is a neural interpretation of C. Bundesen's (1990) theory of visual attention (TVA). In NTVA, visual processing capacity is distributed across stimuli by dynamic remapping of receptive fields of cortical cells such that more processing resources (cells) are devoted to behaviorally…

Reports a series of experiments that give evidence for retention of information about color in very short-term visual memory, commonly termed "iconic memory". (Author)