Experimental Psychology

<b/>According to the instance-based approach, each novel word encounter is encoded as an episodic trace, including different aspects of word knowledge (orthography, semantics, phonology) and context. Experiencing the novel word again leads to reactivating the previous instances to support word identification. Accordingly, once a link between orthography and meaning is established through several instances of co-occurrence, presenting the novel word form enhances semantic learning even if the contexts are uninformative about the meaning (Eskenazi et al...

<b/>Selective attention might be space-, feature-, and/or object-based. Clear support for the involvement of an object-based mechanism is rather scarce, possibly because the predictions of models from these different classes often overlap. Yet, only object-based models can account for a larger congruency effect (CE) in the Eriksen flanker task when flankers are more (vs. less) strongly grouped to the target, but spacing and other response-irrelevant features of target and flankers are held constant. Exactly this was observed by Kramer and Jacobson (1991)...

<b/>Regular self-weighing is associated with more effective weight control, yet many individuals avoid weight-related information. Implicit theories about weight, or perceptions of how malleable weight is, predict more effortful weight management and may also influence weight-related information avoidance. Participants ( N = 209) were randomly assigned to read an article stressing an incremental theory of weight (i.e., weight is malleable), an article stressing an entity theory (i.e., weight is fixed), or to a control condition...

<b/>The forward testing effect refers to the finding that testing of previously studied information improves memory for subsequently studied newer information. Recent research showed that the effect is immune to acute psychosocial encoding/retrieval stress, i.e., stress that is induced before initial encoding. The present study investigated whether the forward testing effect is also robust to acute psychosocial retrieval stress, i.e., stress that is induced after encoding but before retrieval of the critical item list...

<b/>Previous studies observed differences between men and women in terms of their financial risk-taking. However, these differences may stem not only from the gender of the decision-maker but also from other factors, such as stereotypical gender social roles. Media content exposes both men and women to stereotypical portrayals of their gender, and this might temporarily activate thoughts related to their social roles. A question arises whether such activation might impact the way people make risky financial decisions...

<b/>The close link between number and space is illustrated by the Spatial Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. The current research focuses on the flexibility of the SNARC across three dimensions. Shaki and Fischer (2018) pointed out that spatial attributes of stimuli and response effectors can favor an ad hoc spatial representation. In this paper, we aimed to broaden this perspective using two Go/NoGo experiments with digits being presented at two spatial locations while a central response was required...

<b/>As political information becomes increasingly prevalent in all forms of media, it is becoming increasingly important to understand when and why biases in remembering such information occur. Using an item-method directed forgetting procedure, we conducted two online experiments to determine the efficacy of admonitions to forget politically charged stimuli that were either congruent or incongruent with participants' political beliefs. Participants viewed slideshows wherein each item combined the face of a famous politician (Donald Trump or Joe Biden) with a word that was positive, negative, or neutral in emotional valence...

<b/>Current research describes a particular component of the self-concept that influences a wide variety of cognitive processes while it depicts a rather basic component of the self-concept. However, this minimal self seems to be anything but simple ; in fact, it seems to be highly functional. Based on previous findings on newly formed self-associations, we put the postulated functionality of this minimal self to another test by retesting its protection mechanisms against negative content. In a pilot experiment, we did not find an overall reduction of negative self-assignments against neutral self-assignments...

<b/>Two experiments examined effects of including an information about a disability in a person description on memory about that person's traits. In Experiment 1, this information impaired correct recognition of traits of a person that had been described in correspondence to gender stereotypes. In Experiment 2, it induced false memories in accordance with stereotypes about people with disabilities. Participants' false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of warmth increased, whereas false alarms for traits belonging to the dimension of competence decreased...

<b/>A conditional statement If P then Q is formed by combining the two propositions P and Q together with the conditional connective If ··· then ···. When embedded under the conditional connective, the two propositions P and Q describe hypothetical events that are not actualized. It remains unclear when such hypothetical thinking is activated in the real-time comprehension of conditional statements. To tackle this problem, we conducted an eye-tracking experiment using the visual world paradigm...

<b/>The dual-route model explains the SNARC (Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes) effect assuming two routes of parallel information processing: the unconditional route (automatic activation of pre-existing links) and the conditional route (activation of task-specific links). To test predictions derived from this model, we evaluated whether response latency in superficial number processing modulates the SNARC effect in a color task (participants judged the color of a number). In Experiment 1, participants performed a parity task, an easy color task (short RTs), and a difficult color task (RTs similar to those of the parity task)...

<b/>Two distinct literatures have evolved to study within-person changes in affect over time. One literature has examined affect dynamics with millisecond-level resolution under controlled laboratory conditions, and the second literature has captured affective dynamics across much longer timescales (e.g., hours or days) within the relatively uncontrolled but more ecologically valid conditions of daily life. Despite the importance of linking these literatures, very little research has been done so far...

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No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

<b/>Somewhat counterintuitively, alcohol consumption following learning of new information has been shown to enhance performance on a delayed subsequent memory test. This phenomenon has become known as the retrograde facilitation effect (Parker et al., 1981). Although conceptually replicated repeatedly, serious methodological problems are associated with most previous demonstrations of retrograde facilitation. Moreover, two potential explanations have been proposed, the interference and the consolidation hypothesis...

<b/>Smith et al. (2019) found standing resulted in better performance than sitting in three different cognitive control paradigms: a Stroop task, a task-switching, and a visual search paradigm. Here, we conducted close replications of the authors' three experiments using larger sample sizes than the original work. Our sample sizes had essentially perfect power to detect the key postural effects reported by Smith et al. The results from our experiments revealed that, in contrast to Smith et al., the postural interactions were quite limited in magnitude in addition to being only a fraction of the size of the original effects...

<b/>Semantic and syntactic prediction effects were investigated in a word naming task using semantic or syntactic contexts that varied between three and six words. Participants were asked to read the contexts silently and name a target word, which was indicated by a color change. Semantic contexts were composed of lists of semantically associated words without any syntactic information. Syntactic contexts were composed of semantically neutral sentences, in which the grammatical category but not the lexical identity of the final word was highly predictable...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

<b/>Some argue that visual working memory operates on integrated object representations. Here, we contend that obligatory feature integration occurs with intrinsic but not extrinsic object features. Working memory for shapes and colors was assessed using a change-detection task with a central test probe, while recording event-related potentials (ERPs). Color was either an intrinsic surface feature of a shape or connected to the shape via a proximal but spatially disjunct extrinsic frame. There were two types of test: The direct test required memory for shape and color; the indirect test required only shape memory...