"I Remember Having Chicken Pox at Age 3":How Can Age Manipulations Affect One's Earliest Childhood Memories?

Adults' reports of earliest autobiographical memories from before the age of 3 are typically scarce. However, recent research suggests that the age range of this childhood amnesia is flexible when participant instructions provide a context in which earlier or later ages of childhood events are plausible (Kingo et al., 2013). This age manipulation may be more or less effective depending on the type of memories, i.e., event memories that describe a specific event, or fragments / snapshots that describe elements of a past event. One earlier study showed that after reading an early age example, the age in event memories was younger than after a late age example, whereas this difference was less pronounced in snapshot memories (Wessel et al., 2019). The present aim was to examine the malleability of the age in earliest childhood memories and replicate this age manipulation by memory type interaction as well as the overall effects of the age manipulation demonstrated earlier (Wessel et al., 2019). Three studies varied the age in example event memories and fragments (early, late, or no age). Overall, the results suggested that age information affects the reported age, but not necessarily more for event memories than for fragments. That is, all present studies failed to replicate the age manipulation by memory type interaction reflecting that relative to the early condition, event memories in the late condition were older than snapshot memories (Wessel et al., 2019). Even though we cannot conclude that a true effect does not exist, the original finding may be taken as reflecting a false positive

Mechanisms of embodiment

This paper is a critical review of recent studies demonstrating the mechanism of sensorimotor simulation in different cognitive domains. Empirical studies that specify conditions under which embodiment occurs in different domains will be discussed and evaluated. Examples of relevant domains are language comprehension (Tucker and Ellis, 1998), autobiographical memory (Dijkstra et al., 2007), gestures (Alibali et al., 2014), facial mimicry (Stel and Vonk, 2010), and problem solving (Wiemers et al., 2014). The focus of the review is on supporting claims regarding sensorimotor simulation as well as on factors that modulate dynamic relationships between sensorimotor components in action and cognitive domains, such as expertise (Boschker et al., 2002). This discussion takes place within the context of currently debated issues, specifically the need to specify the underlying mechanisms of embodied representations (Zwaan, 2014; Körner et al., 2015)

Moderate contrast in the evaluation of paintings is liked more but remembered less than high contrast

Many visual aspects of paintings, as well as exposure to art and cultural norms, contribute to the aesthetic evaluation of paintings. The current study looked at heightened visual contrast as an important factor in the appreciation of paintings. Participants evaluated abstract digitized paintings that were manipulated in contrast for an appreciation task and were later presented with these paintings in a memory task. The results indicated that for art appreciation, a moderate increase in contrast resulted in the highest appreciation for paintings whereas recognition memory was better for paintings with a higher increase in contrast. These results replicate earlier findings with regard to the role of contrast in aesthetic perception and extend these findings by demonstrating a surprising different effect of contrast manipulation for recognition memory. Confidence with which memory decisions were made was in line with art appreciation decisions not memory performance

Hand Shape Affects Access to Memories

The present study examined the ways that body posture facilitated retrieval of autobiographical memories in more detail by focusing on two aspects of congruence in position of a specific body part: hand shape and hand orientation. Hand shape is important in the tactile perception and manipulation of objects. We manipulated two aspects of hand shape: orientation (vertical vs. horizontal) and aperture (grip vs. no-grip). We manipulated orientation and aperture to create memory-congruent and memory-incongruent hand shapes. For example, a horizontal-grip shape is congruent with pushing a shopping cart, but inconsistent with doing a karate chop. We predicted that memory-congruent hand shapes would produce faster access to autobiographical memories than memory-incongruent hand shapes

The Influence of utterance-related factors on the use of direct and indirect speech

People routinely shift between direct and indirect speech in everyday communication. The factors that impact the selection between these two modes of reporting during language production are under-investigated. The present study examined how utterance-related factors (the vividness of non-verbal information and the utterance type) influence the use of direct and indirect reported speech in narratives. Participants were asked to watch and retell four movie clips. All narratives were videotaped and then transcribed verbatim for analyses. The data were analyzed using a mixed effects logistic regression model. The results showed that the utterances accompanied by vivid voice were more likely to be reported in direct speech. The vividness of facial expressions did not influence the form in which utterances were reported. In addition, we found that utterances that belonged to so-called Main Clause Phenomena were more likely to be reported in direct speech than in indirect speech. The current study helps us further understand the factors that influence structure choices during language production

The Role of Photographs and Time Lag on Positivity Ratings of Vacation and Weekend Memories

Two studies examined the question of whether photograph taking of an event influences the positivity of the evaluations of the event at a later point in time. Memories of photographed events yielded higher positivity ratings than memories that were not photographed. Although we expected fading of positivity ratings to occur more slowly over a period of two months for memories of photographed events, we found faster affect fading for those memories in Study 2 instead. The findings of the two studies support the idea that taking photographs of events sustains the affective reconstruction of autobiographical memories, regardless of whether these events are special, such as vacation memories, or more mundane, such as memories of the past weekend