Beyond Recognition: Visual Contributions to Verbal Working Memory

Purpose: It is well recognized that adding the visual to the acoustic speech signal improves recognition when the acoustic signal is degraded, but how that visual signal affects postrecognition processes is not so well understood. This study was designed to further elucidate the relationships among auditory and visual codes in working memory, a postrecognition process. Design: In a main experiment, 80 young adults with normal hearing were tested using an immediate serial recall paradigm. Three types of signals were presented (unprocessed speech, vocoded speech, and environmental sounds) in three conditions (audio-only, audio–video with dynamic visual signals, and audio–picture with static visual signals). Three dependent measures were analyzed: (a) magnitude of the recency effect, (b) overall recall accuracy, and (c) response times, to assess cognitive effort. In a follow-up experiment, 30 young adults with normal hearing were tested largely using the same procedures, but with a slight change in order of stimulus presentation. Results: The main experiment produced three major findings: (a) unprocessed speech evoked a recency effect of consistent magnitude across conditions; vocoded speech evoked a recency effect of similar magnitude to unprocessed speech only with dynamic visual (lipread) signals; environmental sounds never showed a recency effect. (b) Dynamic and static visual signals enhanced overall recall accuracy to a similar extent, and this enhancement was greater for vocoded speech and environmental sounds than for unprocessed speech. (c) All visual signals reduced cognitive load, except for dynamic visual signals with environmental sounds. The follow-up experiment revealed that dynamic visual (lipread) signals exerted their effect on the vocoded stimuli by enhancing phonological quality. Conclusions: Acoustic and visual signals can combine to enhance working memory operations, but the source of these effects differs for phonological and nonphonological signals. Nonetheless, visual information can support better postrecognition processes for patients with hearing loss.

Sequence structure organizes items in varied latent states of working memory neural network

In memory experiences, events do not exist independently but are linked with each other via structure-based organization. Structure context largely influences memory behavior, but how it is implemented in the brain remains unknown. Here, we combined magnetoencephalogram (MEG) recordings, computational modeling, and impulse-response approaches to probe the latent states when subjects held a list of items in working memory (WM). We demonstrate that sequence context reorganizes WM items into distinct latent states, i.e., being reactivated at different latencies during WM retention, and the reactivation profiles further correlate with recency behavior. In contrast, memorizing the same list of items without sequence task requirements weakens the recency effect and elicits comparable neural reactivations. Computational modeling further reveals a dominant function of sequence context, instead of passive memory decaying, in characterizing recency effect. Taken together, sequence structure context shapes the way WM items are stored in the human brain and essentially influences memory behavior.

Fragile Memories for Fleeting Percepts

Our perceptual systems are exceptionally good at searching our sensory environments for salient stimuli. A key question is the extent to which this search is performed subliminally. We explore this using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP), by comparing detection performance with the memory left for distractors, the stimuli that have to be rejected as non-targets in the process of searching for targets. Our findings are that “immediate” free recall of arbitrary distractors at RSVP rates is very poor, with a severe recency effect. Recognition performance was higher and less subject to recency, but still substantially lower than detection performance. We argue that these findings suggest that the brain subliminally searches for salient stimuli, and are also consistent with a theory we call the tokenized-percept hypothesis, which links conscious perception to the process of episodically marking experiences.

Detecting unreported recalls in memory experiments

We investigate the role of discarded memory retrievals in experiments on free recall from lists of items. Such retrievals are not explicitly reported but testable predictions can be derived by assuming that they correlate with a delay in the timings of recall. We report on three situations where such a delay occurs: if the final item was already recalled (“silent recency effect”); if the item that, within the list, follows the latest recalled item was already recalled (“silent contiguity effect”); and in sequential recalls within highly performing trials (“sequential slowdown”). All these effects can be reproduced by a minimal model where the discarding of memories (“bouncing”) occurs either if they are repetitious or, in strategically organized trials, if they are not sequential. Based on our findings we propose various approaches to further probing the submerged dynamics of memory retrieval.

Counterfactual Thinking and Recency Effects in Causal Judgment

People tend to judge more recent events, relative to earlier ones, as the cause of some particular outcome. For instance, people are more inclined to judge that the last basket, rather than the first, caused the team to win the basketball game. This recency effect, however, reverses in cases of overdetermination: people judge that earlier events, rather than more recent ones, caused the outcome when the event is individually sufficient but not individually necessary for the outcome. In five experiments (N = 5507), we find evidence for the recency effect and the primacy effect for causal judgment. Traditionally, these effects have been a problem for counterfactual views of causal judgment. However, an extension of a recent counterfactual model of causal judgment explains both the recency and the primacy effect. In line with the predictions of the extended counterfactual model, we also find that, regardless of causal structure, people tend to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event rather than to the earlier one (Experiment 2). Moreover, manipulating this tendency affects causal judgments in the ways predicted by this extended model: asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the earlier event weakens (and sometimes eliminates) the interaction between recency and causal structure, and asking participants to imagine the counterfactual alternative to the more recent event strengthens the interaction between recency and causal structure (Experiments 3 & 5). We discuss these results in relation to work on counterfactual thinking and causal modeling.

“In the land of elections, the populist man is king”: The online communication of Basta and Vox in the 2019 European elections

This article, having an Iberian circumscription, focuses on populist parties – the Portuguese Basta and the Spanish Vox –, specifically on their online communication conducted in the context of the 2019 European elections. Using the mixed method and having a corpus comprised of Facebook posts (n=40) and videos (n=4), a triple content analysis was conducted: quantitative, qualitative, and rhetorical. The results show that, in terms of substance in Facebook, the two political actors focus more on the building of a sense of ingroup favoritism – in order to explore the feeling of inclusion, being the posts with this thematic substance the most liked, shared, and commented –, are unequivocal in presenting themselves as representatives of popular sovereignty and do not denote conflict in national and European entities. In terms of style, the use of visual image reveals that there are more posts focused on positive emotionality. In the videos, the tone against Europe is more critical and the use of rhetorical diversity is noted, such as emotional bipolarity, Manichaeism, exemplification, use of question mark, recency effect, repetition, factual evidence.

The influence of narrative disclosure readability, information ordering and graphical representations on non-professional investors' judgment: evidence from an emerging market

PurposeThis study examines whether manipulation in attributes of corporate narrative disclosures and the use of graphical representations can bias non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance, in an emerging market context.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct three different experiments with a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, using accounting and finance senior undergraduate students to proxy for the non-professional investors.FindingsResults show that simple (more readable) disclosures improve non-professional investors' judgment towards firms' future performance. In addition, it is found that non-professional investors are prone to a recency effect from the intentional ordering of narrative information, when using complex (less readable) narratives. However, no primacy effect is found, when using simple (more readable) disclosures. The results further provide evidence that the inclusion of graphical representations, along with the manipulated narrative disclosures, can moderate the recency effect of information order, when using less readable and complex narrative disclosures.Research limitations/implicationsThe results reveal that although the content of corporate disclosures can be objective, neutral and relevant, manipulation in textual features and the use of graphical presentations, can interact to impact how non-professional investors perceive and process the disclosed information. This study provides an Egyptian evidence regarding this issue, as the majority of prior studies concentrate on developed capital markets. In addition, it contributes to prior studies evaluating the appropriateness of the Belief Adjustment Model predictions about the effect of textual presentation order on decision-making, by providing evidence from an emerging market.Practical implicationsResults attempt to increase the awareness of investors and encourage them to use multiple sources of information to avoid the probable bias that can result from management's manipulation of narratives. In addition, the study could be of interest to regulators and standard-setters, where the results reveal the need for guidelines and regulations to guide the disclosure of narrative information and the use of graphical information in corporate reports.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effect of two impression management strategies in narrative disclosures (readability and information order), along with the use of graphical representations, on non-professional investors' judgment in an emerging market, like Egypt.

PARSING AMBIGUOUS RELATIVE CLAUSES IN L2 ENGLISH

We investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference (RC modifies NP1). We conducted an interpretation task with auditorily presented stimuli to examine whether prosodic cues determine attachment. Target items were manipulated for position of break and length of RC, NP1, and NP2. For both groups, break and length are significant. For the learners, proficiency interacts with break suggesting L1 transfer: lower proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to LA; higher proficiency learners choose HA more when break points to HA. Lower proficiency learners are more likely to choose LA overall, suggesting a recency effect. Our results confirm the importance of using aural stimuli when testing interpretation of ambiguous sentences.

Fooling Father Time

This chapter discusses varied methods for achieving what psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow,” the feeling that all members of a team are working smoothly and effectively together. In order to achieve flow in rehearsal, instructions must be delivered clearly and efficiently. Based on music education research and the author’s many years of experience, this chapter examines the mechanics of giving short and cogent instructions. It further explores lessons from thin-slicing research about the importance of one’s tone of voice when delivering instructions and the impact of non-verbal behaviors. Conductors can benefit from research on interleaving, which involves taking advantage of spaced practice and the mixing of learning activities when structuring rehearsals. The chapter further examines how rehearsal efficiency will increase when conductors understand the primacy/recency effect, the phenomenon that people remember best what happens first in a learning episode, and they remember second best what happens last.