Henson (1996) provided a number of demonstrations of error patterns in serial recall that contradict chaining models. One such error pattern concerned when participants make intrusions from prior lists: Rather than originating from random positions in the prior list, intrusions tend to be recalled in the same position as their position in the…

Repeating an item in a list benefits recall performance, and this benefit increases when the repetitions are spaced apart (Madigan, 1969; Melton, 1970). Retrieved context theory incorporates 2 mechanisms that account for these effects: contextual variability and study-phase retrieval. Specifically, if an item presented at position "i" is…

Factors that affect categorical and associative false memory illusions were investigated in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, backward associative strength (BAS) from the list word to the critical lure and interitem connectivity were manipulated in Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) and category list types. For both recall and recognition tasks, the…

Three experiments investigated whether a negativity bias in social perception extends to preschool-aged children's memory for the details of others' social actions and experiences. After learning about individuals who committed nice or mean social actions, children in Experiment 1 were more accurate at remembering who was mean compared with who…

The role of memory in behavioral distraction by auditory attentional capture was investigated: We examined whether capture is a product of the novelty of the capturing event (i.e., the absence of a recent memory for the event) or its violation of learned expectancies on the basis of a memory for an event structure. Attentional capture--indicated…

These experiments examined the effects of the NMDA-receptor (NMDAr) antagonist MK801 on reacquisition and re-extinction of a conditioned fear that had been previously extinguished before injection of fibroblast growth factor-2 (FGF2) or vehicle. Recent findings have shown that relearning and re-extinction, unlike initial learning and extinction,…

Two experiments tested the effect of temporal interference on order memory for fixed and random sequences in young adults and nondemented older adults. The results demonstrate that temporal order memory for fixed and random sequences is impaired in nondemented older adults, particularly when temporal interference is high. However, temporal order…

Four experiments examined the roles of extended surfaces and the number of points in the boundary superiority effect in goal localization. Participants learned the locations of 4 objects in the presence of a boundary, landmarks, or both in an immersive virtual environment by reproducing the locations with feedback. Participants then localized the…

Research has shown that consistently right-handed individuals have poorer memory than do inconsistently right- or left-handed individuals under baseline conditions but more reliably exhibit enhanced memory retrieval after making a series of saccadic eye movements. From this it could be that consistent versus inconsistent handedness, regardless of…

The slope of the z-transformed receiver-operating characteristic (zROC) in recognition memory experiments is usually less than 1, which has long been interpreted to mean that the variance of the target distribution is greater than the variance of the lure distribution. The greater variance of the target distribution could arise because the…

In 5 experiments, the authors examined the influence of associative information in list-method directed forgetting, using the extralist cuing procedure (Nelson & McEvoy, 2005). Targets were studied in the absence of cues, but during retrieval, related cues were used to test their memory. Experiment 1 manipulated the degree of resonant…

Three studies explored whether younger and older adults' free recall performance can benefit from prior exposure to distraction that becomes relevant in a memory task. Participants initially read stories that included distracting text. Later, they studied a list of words for free recall, with half of the list consisting of previously distracting…

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…

One might assume that familiarity with a scene or previous encounters with objects embedded in a scene would benefit subsequent search for those items. However, in a series of experiments we show that this is not the case: When participants were asked to subsequently search for multiple objects in the same scene, search performance remained…

In an effort to assess the relations between reasoning and memory, in 8 experiments, the authors examined how well responses on an inductive reasoning task are predicted from responses on a recognition memory task for the same picture stimuli. Across several experimental manipulations, such as varying study time, presentation frequency, and the…