Short-term memory (STM) for serially presented visual items is disrupted by task-irrelevant, to-beignored speech. Five experiments investigated the extent to which irrelevant speech is processed semantically by contrasting the following two hypotheses: (1) semantic processing of irrelevant speech is limited and does not interfere with serial STM…

Remembering the order of a sequence of events is a fundamental feature of episodic memory. Indeed, a number of formal models represent temporal context as part of the memory system, and memory for order has been researched extensively. Yet, the nature of the code(s) underlying sequence memory is still relatively unknown. Across 4 experiments that…

Counterfactual thinking refers to imaginative thoughts about what might have been ("if only" or "what if") which are intrinsically linked to self-conscious emotions (regret and guilt) and social judgements (blame). Research in adults suggests that the focus of these thoughts is influenced by order (temporal and causal). Little…

Serial ordering mechanisms have been investigated extensively in psychology and psycholinguistics. It has also been demonstrated repeatedly that long-term phonological knowledge contributes to serial ordering. However, the mechanisms that contribute to serial ordering have yet to be fully understood. To understand these mechanisms, we demonstrate…

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…

In transparent orthographies like German, isolated learning disabilities in either reading or spelling are common and occur as often as a combined reading and spelling disability. However, most issues surrounding the cognitive causes of these isolated or combined literacy difficulties are yet unresolved. Recently, working memory dysfunctions have…

Recent evidence suggests substantial response-time costs associated with lag-2 repetitions of tasks within explicitly controlled task sequences [Koch, I., Philipp, A. M., Gade, M. (2006). Chunking in task sequences modulates task inhibition. "Psychological Science," 17, 346-350; Schneider, D. W. (2007). Task-set inhibition in chunked task…

The mechanisms underlying the poorer serial recall of talker-variable lists (e.g., alternating female-male voices) as compared with single-voice lists were examined. We tested the novel hypothesis that this "talker variability effect" arises from the tendency for perceptual organization to partition the list into streams based on voice…

Studies of monolingual speakers have shown a strong association between lexical learning and short-term memory (STM) capacity, especially STM for serial order information. At the same time, studies of bilingual speakers suggest that phonological knowledge is the main factor that drives lexical learning. This study tested these two hypotheses…

The present study extends the literature base that is answering the call to examine the validity of J. L. Holland's (1959, 1997) 6 types of themes (realistic [R], investigative [I], artistic [A], social [S], enterprising [E], and conventional [C]) in his typology when applied to populations that are culturally different from the populations with…

The focus of the present study is on students' experiences of enjoyment, an emotion largely neglected in educational research. We present a model in which specific levels of generalization of the construct of enjoyment are differentiated. Based on their extent of generalization, these differentiated constructs of enjoyment are located in a…