The forgetting curve is one of the most well known and established findings in memory research. Knowing the pattern of memory change over time can provide insight into underlying cognitive mechanisms. The default understanding is that forgetting follows a continuous, negatively accelerating function, such as a power function. We show that this…

Successful language comprehension requires the rapid deployment of working memory resources alongside the capacity to predict upcoming linguistic input. While previous research views these as competing factors, this dissertation explores a unified theory of processing complexity and evaluates the interaction between memory and prediction. The…

Research investigating pragmatic abilities in healthy aging suggests that both production and comprehension might be compromised; however, it is not clear how pragmatic abilities evolve in late adulthood, as well as when difficulties are more likely to arise. The aim of this study is to investigate the decline of pragmatic skills in aging, and to…

Since the Middle Ages, Augustine and the wealth of his writings have had an enormous impact on Western philosophical thinking. His approach to time and memory, which he sets out in his eleventh book of the "Confessions," is one of the most important sources for research about the philosophy of time. Augustine describes time as a…

The animacy effect refers to the memory advantage of words denoting animate beings over words denoting inanimate objects. Remembering animate beings may serve important evolutionary functions, but the cognitive mechanism underlying the animacy effect has remained elusive. According to the richness-of-encoding account, animate words stimulate…

Previous research revealed associations between an individual's occupation and cognitive abilities. However, the underlying causal relation is not always clear and only few studies focused on a critical component of executive functioning, namely working memory updating (WMU). Study 1 examined whether restaurant ticket collectors (N = 53) have a…

The relationship between working memory (WM) and language processing has been extensively investigated in cognitive research. Previous studies mostly obtain evidence from measuring the involvement of WM in complex syntactic structures reported with well-established processing asymmetry, e.g., relative clauses (RCs) in English. Rarely considered is…

We examined potentially selective offloading decisions when the external store has a limited capacity and how the surprising unavailability of offloaded information influences subsequent offloading decision-making and memory. In three experiments, learners were presented with to-be-remembered words paired with point values counting towards their…

Numerous studies have found better memory for multimodal than unimodal stimuli. In these studies, however, multimodal stimuli consist not only of multiple modalities, but also of more varied information than unimodal. Therefore, in the present study, we investigated encoding variability as an explanation for the multisensory benefit. Written words…

Evidence implicating theta rhythms in declarative memory encoding and retrieval, together with the notion that both retrieval and consolidation involve memory reinstatement or replay, suggests that post-learning theta rhythm modulation can promote early consolidation of newly formed memories. Building on earlier work employing theta neurofeedback,…

Generated information is better recognized and recalled than information that is read. This generation effect has been replicated several times for different types of material, including texts. Perhaps the most influential demonstration is by McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, and Cobb ("Journal of Memory and Language," 1986, 25(6), 645-656;…

Current views posit that forming and retrieving memories of ongoing events influences action control. However, the organizational structure of these memories, or event files, remains unclear. The "hierarchical coding view" posits a hierarchical structure, wherein task sets occupy a high level of the hierarchy. Here, the contents of an…

It is said that our species use mnemonics -- that "magic of memorization" -- to engrave an enormous amount of information in the brain. Yet, it is unclear how mnemonics affect memory and what the neural underpinnings are. In this electroencephalography study, we examined the hypotheses whether mnemonic training improved…

This study examines the relationship between the habits of young adults in the use of information technologies and the cognitive processes involved in learning. It was found that information technologies have become an irreplaceable part of modern education, offering vast opportunities to access information and resources, thus promoting the…

The concepts of technical feeling, perception, awareness, experience, consciousness and memory play a prominent role in those analogical moments within the technical aspect deriving from the sensitive dimension of our experience. These notions involve subjective technical sensitivities and feelings, belonging to the factual side of the technical…