Stage theories are prominent and controversial in science. One possible reason for their appeal is that they provide order and predictability. Participants in Experiment 1 rated stage theories as more orderly and predictable (but less credible) than continuum theories. In Experiments 2-5, we showed that order threats increase the appeal of stage…

In the current set of studies, a new hypothesis regarding the cause of the commonly observed U-shaped serial position effect (SPE) in spelling is introduced and tested. Instead of greater competition during output or weaker positional representation for word-medial letters, commonly accepted explanations for the cause of the SPE, the…

The influence of top-down cognitive control on 2 putatively distinct forms of distraction was investigated. Attentional capture by a task-irrelevant auditory deviation (e.g., a female-spoken token following a sequence of male-spoken tokens)--as indexed by its disruption of a visually presented recall task--was abolished when focal-task engagement…

The finding that participants leave a pause between groups when attempting serial recall of temporally grouped lists has been taken to indicate access to a hierarchical representation of the list in working memory. An alternative explanation is that the dynamics of serial recall solely reflect output (rather than memorial) processes, with the…

Verbal short-term memory (STM) is highly sensitive to learning effects: digit sequences or nonword sequences which have been rendered more familiar via repeated exposure are recalled more accurately. In this study we show that sublist-level, incidental learning of item co-occurrence regularities affects immediate serial recall of words and…

The present study was designed to test for item order effects by measuring four distinct constructs that contribute substantively to anxiety-related psychopathology (i.e., anxiety sensitivity, fear of negative evaluation, injury/illness sensitivity, and intolerance of uncertainty). Participants (n = 999; 71% women) were randomly assigned to…

We examined the contribution of the phonological loop to immediate free recall (IFR) and immediate serial recall (ISR) of lists of between one and 15 words. Following Baddeley (1986, 2000, 2007, 2012), we assumed that visual words could be recoded into the phonological store when presented silently but that recoding would be prevented by…

This article examines possibilities associated with the cultivation of balanced regional images via the use of simple methods. Two experiments based on the primacy effect and the painting picture rule, or visual depiction of regions, were conducted. The results show significant differences in the formation of regional images. More specifically,…

Much of Stewart Hulse's career was spent analyzing how animals can extract patterned information from sequences of stimuli. Yet an additional form of information contained in a sequence may be the number of times different elements occurred. Experiments that required numerical discrimination between different stimulus items presented in sequence…

Studies of the effect of word frequency in the serial recall task show that lists of high-frequency words are better recalled than lists of low-frequency words; however, when high- and low-frequency words are alternated within a list, there is no difference in the level of recall for the two types of words, and recall is intermediate between lists…

If school admission committees use alphabetically sorted lists of applicants in their evaluations, one's position in the alphabet according to last name initial may be important in determining access to selective schools. Jurajda and Münich (2010) "Admission to Selective Schools, Alphabetically". "Economics of Education…

The formula [image omitted] is closely related to combinatorics through an elementary geometric exercise. This approach can be expanded to the formulas [image omitted], [image omitted] and [image omitted]. These formulas are also nice examples of showing two approaches, one algebraic and one combinatoric, to a problem of counting. (Contains 6…

The response-signal speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) procedure was used to provide an in-depth investigation of the impact of aging on the dynamics of short-term memory retrieval. Young and older adults studied sequentially presented 3-item lists, immediately followed by a recognition probe. Analyses of composite list and serial position SAT…

In practice, the sum of the item scores is often used as a basis for comparing subjects. For items that have more than two ordered score categories, only the partial credit model (PCM) and special cases of this model imply that the subjects are stochastically ordered on the common latent variable. However, the PCM is very restrictive with respect…

The law of prior entry states that attended objects come to consciousness more quickly than unattended ones. This has been well established in spatial cueing paradigms, where two task-relevant stimuli are presented near-simultaneously at two different locations. Here, we suggest that prior entry also plays a pivotal role in temporal attention…