We tested whether people are attuned to critical memory factors, such as age at the timing of encoding and hedge words when judging the credibility of testimony. In two experiments, participants read a 19-year-old's testimony regarding a sexual assault. We manipulated whether participants learned that the assault occurred 4 years ago (when the…

In the 1990s, repressed and recovered memories were at the heart of intense debates within the clinical field as well as in academia. Recent data suggest that this controversy has not yet been resolved in the clinical field. However, it is unclear to what extent repressed and recovered memories are studied in peer-reviewed outcomes in the 21st…

We experimentally examined the effects of alcohol consumption and exposure to misleading postevent information on memory for a hypothetical interactive rape scenario. We used a 2 beverage (alcohol vs. tonic water) × 2 expectancy (told alcohol vs. told tonic) factorial design. Participants (N = 80) were randomly assigned to conditions. They…

There is accumulating evidence that readers continually evaluate the consistency, congruence, and coherence of text by processes of validation. Validation is initiated immediately on stimulus presentation, may proceed nonstrategically, and serves as a criterion for representational updating. However, validation exhibits a variety of deficiencies.…

A large literature suggests that the organization of words in semantic memory, reflecting meaningful relations among words and the concepts to which they refer, supports many cognitive processes, including memory encoding and retrieval, word learning, and inferential reasoning. The co-activation of related items has been proposed as a mechanism by…

Formation of long-term synaptic plasticity that underlies long-term memory requires new protein synthesis. Years of research has elucidated some of the transcriptional and translational mechanisms that contribute to the production of new proteins. Early research on transcription focused on the transcription factor cAMP-responsive element binding…

Background: The Snoezelen room provides a multisensory environment for people with learning disabilities. Method: Thirty-five residents were recruited from a convenience sample of people living in a residential centre. A repeated-measures, within-subject design was used to evaluate the participants during three conditions: a) Snoezelen room, b)…

With all the discussion about what best prepares students for work and life, two candidates are interdisciplinary thinking and international awareness. This summer, exactly 30 years after the author graduated from college, her favorite professor at Bates College retired, which led her to think about her own early experiences with these ways of…

Children do not understand the meanings of count words like "two" and "three" until the preschool years. But even before knowing the meanings of these individual words, might they recognize that counting is "about" the dimension of number? Here in five experiments, we asked whether infants already associate counting…

Repeated study typically improves episodic memory performance. Two different types of explanations of this phenomenon have been put forward: (1) reactivating the same representations strengthens and stabilizes memories, or (2) greater encoding variability benefits memory by promoting richer traces. The present experiment directly compared these…

Research has shown that retrieval activities, that is, actively recalling previously studied information, may substantially contribute to learning from complex educational materials, sometimes more so than other more popular techniques such as rereading and elaborative study. In this context, recent studies (Blunt and Karpicke, J Educ Psychol…

Objects learned within single enclosed spaces (e.g., rooms) can be represented within a single reference frame. Contrarily, the representation of navigable spaces (multiple interconnected enclosed spaces) is less well understood. In this study we examined different levels of integration within memory (local, regional, global), when learning object…

Humans are extremely susceptible to social influence. Here, we examine whether this susceptibility is altered in autism, a condition characterized by social difficulties. Autistic participants (N = 22) and neurotypical controls (N = 22) completed a memory test of previously seen words and were then exposed to answers supposedly given by four other…

In a single large-scale study, we demonstrate that verbal sequence learning as studied using the classic Hebb repetition effect (Hebb, 1961)--the improvement in the serial recall of a repeating sequence compared to nonrepeated sequences--is resilient to both wide and irregular spacing between sequence repetitions. Learning of a repeated sequence…

Beta-adrenergic receptor (ß-AR) activation by norepinephrine (NE) enhances memory and stabilizes long-term potentiation (LTP), a form of synaptic plasticity believed to underlie some forms of hippocampal memory. LTP can occur at multiple synaptic pathways as a result of strong stimulation to one pathway preceding milder stimulation of an adjacent,…