Distinctive Sans Forgetica Font Does Not Benefit Memory Accuracy In the DRM Paradigm

A common method used by memory scholars to enhance retention is to make materials more challenging to learn—a benefit termed desirable difficulties. Recently, researchers have investigated the efficacy of Sans Forgetica, a perceptually disfluent/distinctive font which may increase processing effort required at study and enhance memory as a result. We examined the effects of Sans Forgetica relative to a standard control font (Arial) on both correct memory and associative memory errors using the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (DRM) false memory paradigm, to evaluate Sans Forgetica effects on overall memory accuracy. Across four experiments, which included nearly 300 participants, Sans Forgetica was found to have no impact on correct or false memory of DRM lists relative to a standard Arial control font, regardless of whether font type was manipulated within or between subjects or whether memory was assessed via free recall or recognition testing. Our results indicate that Sans Forgetica is ineffective for improving memory accuracy even when accounting for associative memory errors

Reducing False Recognition in the Deese-Roediger/McDermott Paradigm: Related Lures Reveal How Distinctive Encoding Improves Encoding and Monitoring Processes

In the Deese-Roediger/McDermott (DRM) paradigm, distinctive encoding of list items typically reduces false recognition of critical lures relative to a read-only control. This reduction can be due to enhanced item-specific processing, reduced relational processing, and/or increased test-based monitoring. However, it is unclear whether distinctive encoding reduces false recognition in a selective or global manner. To examine this question, participants studied DRM lists using a distinctive item-specific anagram generation task and then completed a recognition test which included both DRM critical lures and either strongly related lures (Experiment 1) or weakly related lures (Experiment 2). Compared to a read-control group, the generate groups showed increased correct recognition and decreased false recognition of all lure types. We then estimated the separate contributions of encoding and retrieval processes using signal-detection indices. Generation improved correct recognition by both increasing encoding of memory information for list words and by increasing memory monitoring at test. Generation reduced false recognition by reducing the encoding of memory information and by increasing memory monitoring at test. The reduction in false recognition was equivalent for critical lures and related lures, indicating that generation globally reduces the encoding of related non-presented items at study (not just critical lures), while globally increasing list-theme-based monitoring at test

Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire:development and psychometric evaluation

We document the development of the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire—for use in multiple areas of psychology. It is designed to measure current feelings of and memory of love towards a specific parent during important time periods in childhood. In all samples (total N = 1527), we consistently found high internal reliability. We report the basic psychometrics of the 28-item subscale version in both undergraduate and US nonclinical adult samples and identified 10-item and 4-item subscale versions. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire has eight subscales: assessing mother and father separately during first, sixth, and ninth grade, as well as current feelings. We found a pattern of correlations that one would expect between existing attachment scales and the Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire. A factor analysis demonstrated that Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire items capture something different from the factors in established attachment measures. We found that the order of the subscales can be presented in a fixed order (mother-first and chronologically) without large order effects. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire demonstrated a single factor within subscales, reliability, and validity. The Memory of Love towards Parents Questionnaire can be used in clinical, social, developmental, and cognitive psychology

Ecological Validity of Don\u27t Remember and Don\u27t Know For Distinguishing Accessibility-Versus Availability-Based Retrieval Failures In Older and Younger Adults: Knowledge For News Events

With pursuit of incremental progress and generalizability of findings in mind, we examined a possible boundary for older and younger adults’ metacognitive distinction between what is not stored in memory versus merely inaccessible with materials that are not process pure to knowledge or events: information regarding news events. Participants were asked questions about public events such as celebrity news, tragedies, and political events that were widely experienced in the previous 10–12 years, responding “I don’t know” (DK) or “I don’t remember” (DR) when retrieval failed. Memories of these events are relatively recently acquired in rich, naturalistic contexts and are likely not fully separated from episodic details. When retrieval failed, DR items were recognized with higher accuracy than DK items, both immediately and 2 years later, confirming that self-reported not remembering reflects failures of accessibility, whereas not knowing better captures a lack of availability. In fact, older adults distinguished between the causes of retrieval failures more precisely than younger adults. Together, these findings advance the reliability, validity, and generalizability of using DR and DK as a metacognitive tool to address the phenomenological experience and behavioral consequences of retrieval failures of information that contains both semantic and episodic features. Implications for metacognition in aging and related constructs like familiarity, remembering, and knowing are discussed

An Abundance of Riches: Cross-Task Comparisons of Semantic Richness Effects in Visual Word Recognition

There is considerable evidence (e.g., Pexman et al., 2008) that semantically rich words, which are associated with relatively more semantic information, are recognized faster across different lexical processing tasks. The present study extends this earlier work by providing the most comprehensive evaluation to date of semantic richness effects on visual word recognition performance. Specifically, using mixed effects analyses to control for the influence of correlated lexical variables, we considered the impact of number of features, number of senses, semantic neighborhood density, imageability, and body–object interaction across five visual word recognition tasks: standard lexical decision, go/no-go lexical decision, speeded pronunciation, progressive demasking, and semantic classification. Semantic richness effects could be reliably detected in all tasks of lexical processing, indicating that semantic representations, particularly their imaginal and featural aspects, play a fundamental role in visual word recognition. However, there was also evidence that the strength of certain richness effects could be flexibly and adaptively modulated by task demands, consistent with an intriguing interplay between task-specific mechanisms and differentiated semantic processing