In three experiments, we investigated the role of automatic and controlled inhibitory retrieval processes in true and false memory development in children and adults. Experiment 1 incorporated a directed forgetting task to examine controlled retrieval inhibition. Experiments 2 and 3 used a part-set cue and retrieval practice task to examine…

This study examined the within-subject stability of 150 participants who performed both a sorting task and a property-generation task over multiple sessions, focusing on three concrete concept categories (food, animals and bathroom products). We hypothesized that (1) the within-subject stability would be higher in the sorting task than in the…

The current experiments explored the parafoveal processing of transposed-letter (TL) neighbors by using an eye-movement-contingent boundary change paradigm. In Experiment 1 readers received a parafoveal preview of a target word (e.g., "calm") that was either (1) identical to the target word ("calm"), (2) a TL-neighbor ("clam"), or (3) a…

The present study examined the impact of divided attention on children's and adults' neutral and negative true and false memories in a standard Deese/Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Children (7- and 11-year-olds; n = 126) and adults (n = 52) received 5 neutral and 5 negative Deese/Roediger-McDermott word lists; half of each group also received a…

Adults ask children questions in a variety of contexts, for example, in the classroom, in the forensic context, or in experimental research. In such situations children will inevitably be asked some questions to which they do not know the answer, because they do not have the required information ("unanswerable" questions). When asked unanswerable…

Selectively retrieving a subset of previously studied information enhances memory for the retrieved information but causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved information. Such retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) has often been attributed to inhibitory executive-control processes that supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items' memory…

Recent research in working memory has highlighted the similarities involved in retrieval from complex span tasks and episodic memory tasks, suggesting that these tasks are influenced by similar memory processes. In the present article, the authors manipulated the level of processing engaged when studying to-be-remembered words during a reading…

Stimulus over-selectivity refers to behavior being controlled by one element of the environment at the expense of other equally salient aspects of the environment. This is a common problem for many individuals, including those with autism spectrum disorders, and learning difficulties, and presents a considerable problem for information processing…

Does extensive practice reduce or eliminate central interference in dual-task processing? We explored the reorganization of task architecture with practice by combining interference analysis (delays in dual-task experiment) and random-walk models of decision making (measuring the decision and non-decision contributions to RT). The main delay…

Load theory of attention proposes that distractor processing is reduced in tasks with high perceptual load that exhaust attentional capacity within task-relevant processing. In contrast, tasks of low perceptual load leave spare capacity that spills over, resulting in the perception of task-irrelevant, potentially distracting stimuli. Tsal and…

The current authors reply to a postscript by Coltheart, Tree, and Saunders which was in response to the current authors response on a comment by the current authors on the original article. The current authors begin by responding to the final challenge posed by Coltheart, Tree, and Saunders (2010). They believe that both experimental and…

We explored whether rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) share one important feature of human essentialist reasoning: the capacity to track category membership across radical featural transformations. Specifically, we examined whether monkeys--like children (Keil, 1989)--expect a transformed object to have the internal properties of its original…

Adults can be adapted to a particular facial distortion in which both eyes are shifted symmetrically (Robbins, R., McKone, E., & Edwards, M. (2007). "Aftereffects for face attributes with different natural variability: Adapter position effects and neural models." "Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33," 570-592),…

We investigated the processing of threat-related, positive, and neutral words in parafoveal and in foveal vision as a function of individual differences in trait anxiety. In a lexical-decision task, word primes were presented for 150 ms either parafoveally (2.2[degrees] away from fixation; Experiment 1) or foveally (at fixation; Experiment 3)…

This study investigates the impact of working memory (WM) load on response conflicts arising from spatial (non) correspondence between irrelevant stimulus location and response location (Simon effect). The dominant view attributes the Simon effect to automatic processes of location-based response priming. The automaticity view predicts…