How Reading Difficulty Influences Mind-Wandering: The Theoretical Importance of Measuring Interest

In many situations, increasing task difficulty decreases thoughts that are unrelated to the task (i.e., mind-wandering; see Smallwood & Schooler, 2006, for a review). However, Feng, D’Mello, and Graesser (2013) recently reported a discrepant finding in the context of reading. They showed that increasing the objective reading difficulty of passages (by decreasing word frequency and complicating sentence structure) actually increased mind-wandering. The primary goal of this work was to gain insight into the mechanism that drives this positive relation between objective reading difficulty and mind-wandering. This effect is investigated over three chapters. Chapter 1 demonstrates that the effect of objective difficulty on mind-wandering is confounded by differences in passage section-length between easy and hard passages when they are presented one sentence at a time. Chapter 2 more broadly explores the possibility that distinctive processing influences subjective impressions of passage difficulty and interest (which may consequently influence mind-wandering). And Chapter 3 shows that mind-wandering increases over time spent reading, which may be related to decreasing subjective interest. This research builds to the conclusion that subjective interest is of central theoretical importance to research on difficulty and mind-wandering: A manipulation designed to influence the difficulty of a task may also influence participants’ subjective interest in the task, which may in turn influence their tendency to mind-wander

Forrin, N. D., Jonker, T. R., & MacLeod, C. M. (2014). Production improves memory equivalently following elaborative vs non-elaborative processing.

Memory, 22, 470-480. Abstract: Words that are read aloud are better remembered than those read silently. Recent research has suggested that, rather than reflecting a benefit for produced items, this production effect may reflect a cost to reading silently in a list containing both aloud and silent items (Bodner, Taikh, & Fawcett, 2013). This cost is argued to occur because silent items are lazily read, receiving less attention than aloud items which require an overt response. We examined the possible role of lazy reading in the production effect by testing whether the effect would be reduced under elaborative encoding, which precludes lazy reading of silent items. Contrary to a lazy reading account, we found that production benefited generated words as much as read words (Experiment 1) and deeply imagined words as much as shallowly imagined words (Experiment 2). We conclude that production stands out as equally distinct--and consequently as equally memorable--regardless of whether it accompanies deep or shallow processing, evidence that is inconsistent with a lazy reading account

Forrin, N. D., Groot, B., & MacLeod, C. M. (2016). The d-Prime directive: Assessing costs and benefits in recognition by dissociating mixed-list false alarm rates.

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42, 1090-1111. Abstract: It can be difficult to judge the effectiveness of encoding techniques in a within-subject design. Consider the production effect—the finding that words read aloud are better remembered than words read silently. In the absence of a baseline, a within-subject production effect in a mixed study list could reflect a benefit of reading aloud, a cost of reading silently, or both. To help interpret within-subject data, memory researchers have compared within-subject and between-subjects designs, with the between-subjects (i.e., pure list) conditions serving as baselines against which the within-subject (i.e., mixed-list) conditions are compared. In the present article, the authors highlight a shortcoming of using this comparison to assess costs and benefits in recognition. Unlike between-subjects experiments where separate false alarm rates are obtained for each condition, the typical within-subject experiment yields a collapsed false alarm rate, which, the authors argue, can potentially bias calculations of memory discrimination (d=). Across 3 experiments that used production as the encoding manipulation, they used a typical mixed-list versus pure-list design (Experiment 1) and then made modifications to this design (Experiments 2 and 3) that yielded separate mixed-list false alarm rates. The results of the latter 2 experiments demonstrated that words that are read aloud in a mixed list have an overall memorial benefit over words that are read aloud in a pure list— both in terms of increased hits and reduced false alarms. The authors frame these results in terms of the distinctiveness heuristic

Forrin, N. D., & MacLeod, C.M. (2017). Relative speed of processing determines color–word contingency learning.

Memory and Cognition, 45, 1206-1222. Abstract: In three experiments, we tested a relative-speed-of processing account of color–word contingency learning, a phenomenon in which color identification responses to high contingency stimuli (words that appear most often in particular colors) are faster than those to low-contingency stimuli. Experiment 1 showed equally large contingency-learning effects whether responding was to the colors or to the words, likely due to slow responding to both dimensions because of the unfamiliar mapping required by the key press responses. For Experiment 2, participants switched to vocal responding, in which reading words is considerably faster than naming colors, and we obtained a contingency-learning effect only for color naming, the slower dimension. In Experiment 3, previewing the color information resulted in a reduced contingency learning effect for color naming, but it enhanced the contingency-learning effect for word reading. These results are all consistent with contingency learning influencing performance only when the nominally irrelevant feature is faster to process than the relevant feature, and therefore are entirely in accord with a relative-speed-of-processing explanation

Forrin, N. D., & MacLeod, C.M. (2018). Contingency proportion systematically influences contingency learning.

Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 80, 155-165. Abstract: In the color-word contingency learning paradigm, each word appears more often in one color (high contingency) than in the other colors (low contingency). Shortly after beginning the task, color identification responses become faster on the high-contingency trials than on the low-contingency trials—the contingency learning effect. Across five groups, we varied the high-contingency proportion in 10% steps, from 80% to 40%. The size of the contingency learning effect was positively related to high-contingency proportion, with the effect disappearing when high contingency was reduced to 40%. At the two highest contingency proportions, the magnitude of the effect increased over trials, the pattern suggesting that there was an increasing cost for the low-contingency trials rather than an increasing benefit for the high-contingency trials. Overall, the results fit a modified version of Schmidt’s (2013, Acta Psychologica, 142, 119–126) parallel episodic processing account in which prior trial instances are routinely retrieved from memory and influence current trial performance

Forrin, N. D., & MacLeod, C.M. (2018). Cross-modality translations improve recognition by reducing false alarms.

Memory, 26, 53-58. Abstract: Conway and Gathercole [(1990). Writing and long-term memory: Evidence for a “translation” hypothesis. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 42, 513–527] proposed a translation account to explain why certain types of encoding produce benefits in memory: Switching modalities from what is presented to what is encoded enhances item distinctiveness. We investigated this hypothesis in a recognition experiment in which the presentation modality of a study list (visual vs. auditory) and the encoding activity (speaking vs. typing vs. passive encoding) were manipulated between-subjects. Manipulating encoding activity between-subjects ruled out any potential influence of the relationally distinct processing that can occur in a within-subject manipulation (in which all previous translation effects have been demonstrated). We found no overall difference in memory for words presented auditorily vs. visually nor for visual vs. auditory encoding, but critically presentation modality and encoding activity did interact. Translating from one modality to another – particularly from auditory presentation to visual encoding (typing) – led to the best memory discrimination. This was largely because of reduced false alarms, not increased hits, consistent with the distinctiveness heuristic

Forrin, N.D., Risko, E.F. & Smilek, D. (2017). On the relation between reading difficulty and mind-wandering: a section-length account.

Psychological Research. doi: 10.1007/s00426-017-0936-9. Abstract: In many situations, increasing task difficulty decreases thoughts that are unrelated to the task (i.e., mind-wandering). In the context of reading, however, recent research demonstrated that increasing passage reading difficulty actually increases mind-wandering rates (e.g., Feng et al. in Psychon Bull Rev 20:586–592, 2013). The primary goal of this research was to elucidate the mechanism that drives this positive relation. Across Experiments 1–3, we found evidence that the effect of Flesch–Kincaid reading difficulty on mind-wandering is partially driven by hard passages having longer sections of text (i.e., more words per screen) than easy passages when passages are presented one sentence at a time. In Experiment 4, we controlled for reading difficulty, and found that section length was positively associated with mind-wandering rates. We conclude by proposing that individuals may tend to disengage their attention from passages with relatively long sections of text because they appear to be more demanding than passages with shorter sections (even though objective task demands are equivalent)

Forrin, N. D., Ozubko, J. D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2012). Widening the boundaries of the production effect.

Memory & Cognition, 40, 1046-1055. Abstract: Words that are read aloud are more memorable than words that are read silently. The boundaries of this production effect (MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, & Ozubko, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 36, 671–685, 2010) have been found to extend beyond speech. MacLeod and colleagues demonstrated that mouthing also facilitates memory, leading them to speculate that any distinct, item-specific response should result in a production effect. In Experiment 1, we found support for this conjecture: Relative to silent reading, three unique productions—spelling, writing, and typing—all boosted explicit memory. In Experiment 2, we tested the sensitivity of the production effect. Although mouthing, writing, and whispering all improved explicit memory when compared to silent reading, these other production modalities were not as beneficial as speech. We argue that the enhanced distinctiveness of speech relative to other productions—and of other productions relative to silent reading—underlies this pattern of results

Forrin, N. D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2016). Order information is used to guide recall of long lists: Further evidence for the item-order account.

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 125-138. Abstract: Differences in memory for item order have been used to explain the absence of between-subjects (i.e., pure-list) effects in free recall for several encoding techniques, including the production effect, the finding that reading aloud benefits memory compared with reading silently. Notably, however, evidence in support of the item-order account (Nairne, Riegler, & Serra, 1991) has derived primarily from short-list paradigms. We provide novel evidence that the item-order account also applies when recalling long lists. In Experiment 1, participants studied and then free recalled 3 different long lists of words: pure aloud, pure silent, and mixed (half aloud, half silent). A Bayesian analysis supported a null pure-list production effect, and subsequent order analyses were largely consistent with the item-order account. These findings indicate that order information is retained in long-term memory and is useful in guiding subsequent free recall. In Experiment 2, a distractor task was inserted between the study and test phases, ensuring that only long-term memory processes were involved in recall: The pattern of results remained consistent with the item-order account. Order information can be retained in long-term memory for long lists, and is useful in guiding subsequent free recall, extending the domain of the item-order account

The costs and benefits of production (Forrin & MacLeod, 2012; unpublished)

Both of these experiments had a within-subject vs. between-subjects design. Participants studied a list of 40 words. Following the study phase there was a free recall test and then an old/new recognition test. With respect to the recognition data collected in this research, we realized that there was a shortcoming that we had not initially considered: Namely, that FA rates can not be dissociated in a mixed-list design, which meant that these data could not provide an accurate measure of costs and benefits (in our view). In Forrin, Groot, & MacLeod (JEP:LMC; 2016), we collected a new data set that tested the above claim