Research on category learning shows that people gradually allocate attention to deterministic features. Categorization models formalize this shift in attention as a process of "stretching" and "shrinking" dimensions of an internal representation, such that attended features bear a greater influence on choice than those ignored. Consistent with this view, gaze allocated to deterministic features increases alongside categorization accuracy. Going beyond the established relationship between gaze and performance, this work investigates whether gaze determines which features are encoded in the first place, as would be predicted by theories in which attention gates access to memory. Undergraduate participants (N=120) completed a category learning task while gaze was recorded, followed by tests of feature memory and category generalization. A baseline group (1) was cued to deterministic features to encourage selective gaze. Two additional groups tested manipulations intended to broaden gaze during learning: (2) was not cued to deterministic features; (3) was cued, but was also forewarned of the upcoming memory test. Mixed effects model analyses showed that gaze allocation during learning predicted both immediate categorization performance and the breadth of features encoded into memory. Effects were most robust when comparing groups (1) and (2). These findings suggest that selective attention constrains the representational content acquired during learning, but this cost is mitigated by early uncertainty about which features are most task-relevant.

Prior research on recognition memory has commonly used static cues (e.g., images) to evaluate familiarity-based item memory and recollection-based associative memory. Dynamic cues (e.g., videos) offer spatiotemporal information that may alter retrieval processes. In the present study, we examined how retrieval cue type (images vs. videos) and presentation duration affect memory accuracy and reaction times (RTs). Participants (N = 188) encoded video clips of actors performing actions. At retrieval, they viewed images or videos for a short (733 ms) or long (1,466 ms) duration. Test items included old (intact actor-action pairings) and conjunction (recombined actor-action pairings) items to evaluate associative memory, and new actor (unfamiliar actor, familiar action) and new action (familiar actor, unfamiliar action) items to assess item memory. Analyses of memory performance revealed that videos at retrieval facilitated the rejection of new action items, while simultaneously promoting a greater tendency to endorse new actor items compared to images. A hierarchical ex-Gaussian model indicated that short viewing durations at retrieval led to slower average RTs and increased the frequency of very long RTs, whereas static image cues were associated with greater RT variability and increased the prevalence of prolonged memory searches. Longer viewing durations reduced the occurrence of extended memory searches for associative decisions, particularly for conjunction items. Dynamic and static retrieval cues thus differentially influenced the familiarity of individual features of an event, whereas the associative binding of those features was primarily influenced by stimulus duration, regardless of whether those stimuli were static or dynamic.

Subjective confidence is an important factor in our decision making, but how confidence arises is a matter of debate. A number of computational models have been proposed that integrate confidence into sequential sampling models of decision making, in which evidence accumulates across time to a threshold. An influential example of this approach is the relative balance of evidence hypothesis, in which confidence is determined by the amount of evidence for the choice that was made compared to the evidence for all possible choices. Here, we modify this approach by mapping distance from a decision threshold to confidence via a sigmoid function. This allows for individual differences in bias toward lower or higher levels of confidence, as well as sensitivity to differences in evidence between choices. We apply several variants of the model to assess potential age differences between young and older adults in source memory decision making in an existing data set (Dodson, Bawa, & Slotnick, 2007). We compare our model to the relative balance of evidence approach, and the results indicate that the sigmoidal method substantially improves model fit. We also consider models in which memory errors can arise from a misrecollection process that involves associating items with the incorrect source, a process that has been proposed to account for age differences in source memory confidence and accuracy, but find no evidence that misrecollection is necessary to account for the results. This work provides a viable model of subjective confidence that is integrated with well-established models of decision making and provides insights into effects of aging on source memory decisions. Public Significance Statement This study presents a theory of how subjective levels of confidence in memory decisions are determined in young and older adults by comparing evidence for different choice options. The findings suggest that the way confidence is calculated differs between people and may change across the lifespan

Computational models of episodic memory provide tools to better understand the latent neurocognitive processes underlying retention of information about specific events from one’s life. This chapter discusses the representations, associations, and dynamics of influential models of episodic memory, with particular emphasis on models of recognition and free recall tasks. In-depth discussion and model-fitting results of four models – the retrieving effectively from memory (REM) model, the bind cue decide model of episodic memory (BCDMEM), the search of associative memory (SAM) model, and the temporal context model (TCM) – are provided to facilitate understanding of these models, as well as similarities and differences between them. Alternative modeling frameworks, including neural network models, are discussed. Throughout, the importance of context in models of episodic memory is emphasized, particularly for free recall tasks.

The ability to bind, or link, different aspects of an experience in memory undergoes protracted development across childhood. Most studies of memory binding development have assessed extraobject binding between an object and some external element such as another object, whereas little work has examined the development of intraobject binding, such as between shape and color features within the same object. In this work, we investigate the development of intra- and extraobject memory binding in five-year-olds, eight-year-olds, and young adults with a memory interference paradigm. Between two experiments, we manipulate whether stimuli are presented as coherent objects (Experiment 1: n5-year-olds = 32, 19 males, 13 females; n8-year-olds = 30, 15 males, 15 females; nadults = 30, 15 males, 15 females), requiring intraobject binding between shape and color features, or as spatially separated features (Experiment 2: n5-year-olds = 24, 16 males, 8 females; n8-year-olds = 41, 19 males, 22 females; nadults = 31, 13 males, 18 females), requiring extraobject binding. To estimate the contributions of different binding structures to performance, we present a novel computational model that mathematically instantiates the memory binding, forgetting, and retrieval processes we hypothesize to underlie performance on the task. The results provide evidence of substantial developmental improvements in both intraobject and extraobject binding of shape and color features between 5 and 8 years of age, as well as stronger intraobject compared with extraobject binding of features in all age groups. These findings provide key insights into memory binding across early development. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Healthy aging is associated with deficits in performance on episodic memory tasks. Popular verbal theories of the mechanisms underlying this decrement have primarily focused on inferred changes in associative memory. However, performance on any task is the result of interactions between different neurocognitive mechanisms, such as perceptuomotor, memory, and decision-making processes. As a result, age-related differences in performance could arise from multiple processes, which could lead to incomplete or incorrect conclusions about the sources of aging effects. In addition, standard statistical comparisons of group-level summary statistics, such as mean accuracy, may not provide sufficient information to allow detailed mechanistic explanations of age-related change. We argue that these and other drawbacks of relying exclusively on verbal theories can hamper replicability, transparency, and scientific progress in aging research and psychological science more generally, and that computational modeling is a tool that can address many of these limitations. Computational models make mathematically transparent claims about how latent processes give rise to observed behavior and decompose an individual's performance into model parameters governing hypothesized mechanisms. In this work, we present a short memory task designed for and analyzed with mechanistic model-based approaches. We provide an example of a computational model and fit the model to data from young and older adults with hierarchical Bayesian techniques in order to (a) detect differences in latent cognitive processes between young and older adults (as well as individual participants), (b) quantitatively compare models to assess different processes that could underlie performance, and (c) simulate data to make predictions for future experiments based on model mechanisms. We argue that computational modeling is a powerful tool to examine age differences in latent processes, make theories more transparent, and facilitate discovery in cognitive aging research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Although there have been major strides toward uncovering the neurobehavioral mechanisms involved in cognitive functions like memory and decision making, methods for measuring behavior and accessing latent processes through computational means remain limited. To this end, we have created SUPREME (Sensing to Understanding and Prediction Realized via an Experiment and Modeling Ecosystem): a toolbox for comprehensive cognitive assessment, provided by a combination of construct-targeted tasks and corresponding computational models. SUPREME includes four tasks, each developed symbiotically with a mechanistic model, which together provide quantified assessments of perception, cognitive control, declarative memory, reward valuation, and frustrative nonreward. In this study, we provide validation analyses for each task using two sessions of data from a cohort of cognitively normal participants (N = 65). Measures of test-retest reliability (r: 0.58–0.75), stability of individual differences (ρ: 0.56–0.70), and internal consistency (α: 0.80–0.86) support the validity of our tasks. After fitting the models to data from individual subjects, we demonstrate each model’s ability to capture observed patterns of behavioral results across task conditions. Our computational approaches allow us to decompose behavior into cognitively interpretable subprocesses, which we can compare both within and between participants. We discuss potential future applications of SUPREME, including clinical assessments, longitudinal tracking of cognitive functions, and insight into compensatory mechanisms.

Selective attention is the ability to focus on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information. This work examined the development of selective attention to natural scenes and objects with a rapid serial visual presentation paradigm. Children (N = 69, ages 4-6 years) and adults (N = 80) were asked to attend to either objects or scenes, while ignoring the other type of stimulus. A multinomial processing tree model was used to decompose selective attention into focusing and filtering components. The results suggest that attention is object-biased in children, due to difficulty filtering attention to goal-irrelevant objects, whereas attention in adults is relatively unbiased. The findings suggest important developmental asymmetries in selective attention to scenes and objects.

This work examines cognitive flexibility using a comparative approach. Pigeons (Experiment 1), human children (Experiment 2a), and human adults (Experiment 2b) performed a task that required changing responses to the same stimuli twice across the experiment. The results indicate that all three groups demonstrated robust memory for learned information. In addition, pigeons showed comparable and substantial perseveration following both response shifts. In contrast, both children and adults exhibited some perseveration following a first response shift, while exhibiting no cost following the second response shift. These findings are discussed in relation to memory-based theories of cognitive flexibility, according to which perseveration occurs as a result of competition between long-term and working memory, revealing important differences in memory and cognitive flexibility between species.

This work investigates the development and causes of memory interference effects. Specifically, we measured proactive and retroactive interference effects in children and adults when learning multiple sets of contingencies, as well as individuals’ memory binding for the same contingencies. We measured proactive interference by examining memory for a second set of contingencies after learning a first set, and retroactive interference by examining memory for the first set of contingencies after learning the second set. We measured memory binding by presenting participants with partial information about each contingency and measuring their accuracy and pattern of errors when asked to identify the completed contingency. Results indicate that both children and adults experienced substantial interference effects, but children were more prone to interference and substantially worse at memory binding. Additionally, individuals’ memory binding abilities were predictive of the magnitude of interference effects, suggesting that memory binding is an important mechanism modulating memory interference.

Memory is critical for learning, cognition, and cognitive development. Recent work has suggested that preschool-age children are vulnerable to catastrophic levels of memory interference, in which new learning dramatically attenuates memory for previously acquired knowledge. In the work reported here, we investigated the effects of consolidation on children’s memory by introducing a 48-hr delay between learning and testing. In Experiment 1, the delay improved children’s memory and eliminated interference. Results of Experiment 2 suggest that the benefit of this delay is limited to situations in which children are given enough information to form complex memory structures. These findings have important implications for understanding consolidation processes and memory development.

Learning often affects future learning and memory for previously learned information by exerting either facilitation or interference effects. Several theoretical accounts of interference effects have been proposed, each making different developmental predictions. This research examines interference effects across development, with the goal of better understanding mechanisms of interference and of memory development. Preschool-aged children and adults participated in a 3-phased associative learning paradigm containing stimuli that were either unique or repeated across phases. Both age groups demonstrated interference effects, but only for repeated items. Whereas proactive interference effects were comparable across age groups, retroactive interference reached catastrophic-like levels in children. Additionally, retroactive interference increased in adults when contextual differences between phases were minimized (Experiment 2), and decreased in adults who were more successful at encoding repeated pairs of stimuli during a training phase (Experiment 3). These results are discussed with respect to theories of memory and memory development.

The contextual cueing effect is a robust phenomenon in which repeated exposure to the same arrangement of random elements guides attention to relevant information by constraining search. The effect is measured using an object search task in which a target (e.g., the letter T) is located within repeated or nonrepeated visual contexts (e.g., configurations of the letter L). Decreasing response times for the repeated configurations indicates that contextual information has facilitated search. Although the effect is robust among adult participants, recent attempts to document the effect in children have yielded mixed results. We examined the effect of search speed on contextual cueing with school-aged children, comparing three types of stimuli that promote different search times in order to observe how speed modulates this effect. Reliable effects of search time were found, suggesting that visual search speed uniquely constrains the role of attention toward contextually cued information.

The Cost of Learning: Interference Effects on Early Learning and Memory Kevin P. Darby (darby.60@osu.edu) Department of Psychology, 1835 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43215 USA Vladimir M. Sloutsky (sloutsky.1@osu.edu) Department of Psychology, 1835 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43215 USA Abstract Interference effects have been found to empirically influ- ence a number of developmental phenomena. For exam- ple, some work suggests that young infants demonstrate PI in a face-recognition paradigm (Tyrrell, Snowman, Beier, & Blanck, 1990), and RI in the mobile-reinforcement paradigm (Rossi-George & Rovee-Collier, 1999). Additionally, a long tradition of developmental work has investigated early perse- veration effects with tasks such as A-not-B and the Dimen- sional Change Card Sort task (Piaget, 1963; Zelazo, 2006), in which infants and children learn a set of contingencies and have difficulty responding appropriately after these contin- gencies change, similar to PI. Interference effects can also in- fluence findings in unexpected ways. One recent study (Opfer & Thompson, 2008) concluded that previous work reporting a surprising lack of transfer of numerical concept learning in children may have stemmed from PI induced by the pre-test, and that transfer effects could be found with proper experi- mental design mitigating PI. Clearly, interference effects are essential topics of study for researchers interested in learning, memory, and cognitive development. A great deal of work in cognitive science has focused on how learning and memory can interact through proactive and retroactive interference effects. However, the mechanisms un- derlying these effects are still debated, and little is known re- garding how interference affects learning in human develop- ment. This work addresses these questions by comparing chil- dren’s and adults’ performance on a new associative learning task in which information was either unique or overlapping across three phases. Robust interference effects were found for overlapping, but not unique information. Additionally, proac- tive interference was comparable between age groups, while retroactive interference was more robust in child participants. Results of two experiments suggest that interference is likely not driven primarily by differences in consolidation or active inhibitory processes, but may be influenced by configural en- coding processes. Keywords: Memory development; learning; proactive inter- ference; retroactive interference. Interference People learn almost constantly. Most of the information that we learn, however, contains a great deal of overlap with pre- vious experiences. Most of the words that we read are already familiar, for example, and have been experienced in many dif- ferent contexts. Previous knowledge clearly influences how and what information we learn in the present, which in turn can affect our memory for past learning, such that learning and memory are not independent processes but interact in dif- ferent ways. In some cases these interaction are facilitative. Expertise in a particular domain, for example, increases memory capac- ity for information within that domain (Chi, Glaser, & Rees, 1982). At the same time, interactions between learning and memory can also produce interference effects, in which learn- ing new information attenuates subsequent learning (proac- tive interference, or PI) or memory for previous learning (retroactive interference, or RI). Consider a child in a bilin- gual environment who learns from her mother that the new family pet is called a “cat,” but later hears her father referring to the animal as “el gato.” It will likely be difficult to learn the “gato” label since the concept of cat has already been as- sociated with a label, resulting in PI (Markman & Wachtel, 1988). Similarly, when the new label has been successfully mapped onto the concept, the association with the initial la- bel (“cat”) is likely more difficult to recall since two labels are now mapped onto the same concept, resulting in RI. Proposed Mechanisms of Interference Interference effects have been studied extensively in adults (Anderson & Neely, 1996; Wixted, 2004), and a number of mechanisms have been proposed to account for PI and RI. M. C. Anderson and colleagues (Anderson, 2003; Anderson & Spellman, 1995) have argued that interference does not re- sult from learning per se, but rather from active engagement of inhibitory processes during retrieval. Specifically, when a cue activates memory, the strongest competitor may not be contextually appropriate and so must be inhibited in order to retrieve the weaker but appropriate response. This inhibition enables one to overcome PI and learn new contingencies but makes it more difficult to retrieve the original association that has been inhibited, producing RI. Another theory of interference has been proposed by Wixted (2004). According to this account, interference arises when new learning disrupts the consolidation pro- cess, in which memories gradually migrate from the hip- pocampus to cortical regions (McClelland, McNaughton, & O’Reilly, 1995). New learning results in interference of re- cently learned information still contained in the hippocampus (Wixted, 2004). As a result, this account predicts that any effortful new learning should produce interference (Wixted,

Proactive and Retroactive Interference Effects in Development Kevin Darby (darby.60@osu.edu) Department of Psychology, 1835 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43210 USA Vladimir M. Sloutsky (sloutsky.1@osu.edu) Department of Psychology, 1835 Neil Ave. Columbus, OH 43210 USA Abstract Infants and children are avid learners. This constant aggregation of new knowledge, however, can interfere with past and future learning. Proactive interference (PI) occurs when past learning interferes with new learning, while retroactive interference (RI) is the attenuation of memory for previous learning as a result of new knowledge. Previous work has demonstrated that adults and children display PI and RI effects, but the developmental trajectories of these effects are less clear. The current study developed a new associative learning paradigm to concurrently test PI and RI in preschoolers and adults. Results demonstrated the presence of RI, and these effects were stable across age groups, suggesting that the mechanisms that modulate RI effects may already be mature in these age groups. No PI effects were found in either group, however. This surprising result suggests the role of associative complexity as a possible modulator of PI in these age groups. Keywords: Learning; memory development; proactive interference; retroactive interference. Interference effects have been the focus of a great deal of research. It is clear, for example, that interference occurs in many different learning systems, including connectionist networks (French, 1999; Ratcliff, 1990) and human adults (Bower, Thompson-Schill, & Tulving, 1994; Wixted, 2004). In adults, RI effects may be modulated by similarity between learning sets as well as mental effort, such that more interference is demonstrated with greater similarity and increased cognitive load (Dewar, Cowan, & Della Sala, 2007; French, 1999; Wixted, 2004). Additionally, RI seems to be modulated by the engagement of networks in the hippocampal region and surrounding cortices (McClelland, McNaughton, & O’Reilly, 1995; Wiskott, Rasch, & Kempermann, 2006). Conversely, PI effects seem to be modulated by executive functions such as attentional control and inhibition of prepotent responses (Baker, Friedman, & Leslie, 2010; Dick, 2012; Kiesel et al., 2010), and appear to be attenuated by activity in prefrontal regions of the cortex (Badre & Wagner, 2005). Interference effects Interference in development Infants and children are avid learners: they constantly acquire new knowledge. This new knowledge not only expands their sense of the world, but also affects what they already know and what they will learn in the future (Wixted, 2004). Some of these effects are counterintuitive: (1) acquired knowledge may interfere with future learning, the process known as proactive interference (PI), and (2) acquired knowledge may attenuate memory for previously learned information, the process known as retroactive interference (RI). PI and RI effects are particularly important to study in early development because doing so will help determine what factors benefit or detract from the aggregation of early knowledge. These sources of forgetting may play a role in many early cognitive domains, such as categorization (Mareschal, Quinn, & French, 2002) and word learning (Levy-Gigi & Vakil, 2010). Imagine, for example, that a child with bilingual parents learns the word “cat,” but is later introduced to the word “gato.” Mapping “gato” onto the child’s category of cats may be more difficult than learning an entirely new concept in Spanish since the category is already associated with “cat” (PI). Additionally, the mapping between the word “cat” and the category of cats will likely be weakened as a result of learning to associate the category with a second word (RI). Although the majority of research concerning PI and RI has focused on adults, some evidence suggests that interference effects may also be present early in human development. For example, infants demonstrate RI in a visual recognition task (Turati, 2008) as well as a mobile reinforcement paradigm (Rossi-George & Rovee-Collier, 1999), and demonstrate PI in visual facial recognition (Tyrrell, Snowman, Beier, & Blanck, 1990). Despite the fact that interference occurs across development, the development of the ability to resist each kind of interference is less clear. There is some evidence that RI effects are relatively stable between preschool and school years. Howe (1995) demonstrated that RI effects were similar in preschoolers (approximately 4.5 years) and kindergarteners (approximately 6 years old) in a paired- associate recall task. Similar findings were reported in 4- and 7-year-olds, using a game-based paradigm (Lee & Bussey, 2001). It is unclear, however, whether there are developmental differences in RI if a wider age range is considered. In contrast, developmental differences in PI have been reported. Kail (2002) performed a meta-analysis on PI effects in children ages 4-13 years old, as well as an experiment with children in grades 3-6 and undergraduate adults. Both the meta-analysis and experimental results

Cued Attention and Learning of Spatial Context in Children Hanako Yoshida (yoshida@uh.edu) Kevin Darby (kpdarby@uh.edu) Joseph Burling (jmburling@uh.edu) Department of Psychology, University of Houston, 126 Heyne Building Houston, TX 77204-5022 USA Abstract The contextual cuing effect refers to a robust phenomenon in which repeated visual context guides attention to relevant information by constraining search (Brady & Chun, 2007; Chun & Jiang, 1998). The effect is measured by an object search task in which a target (e.g., the letter T) is located within repeated or non-repeated visual contexts (e.g., configurations of the letter L). Shorter response times for the repeated configurations indicate that contextual information has facilitated search. Though the effect is robust among adult participants, recent attempts testing the effect with children yielded mixed results (e.g., Vaidya, Huger, Howard & Howard, 2007). Because contextual cuing could play a critical role in cognitive development, resolving this issue is important. The present study used child friendly paradigms to investigate whether children are sensitive to repeated contextual information. The study suggests that children as young as 3 and half year olds successfully show the contextual cuing effect when visual search tasks are age appropriate. Keywords: Contextual cuing; development of attentional learning; visual search task The Contextual Cuing Effect Selectively attending to relevant information is central to efficient learning, because there are many objects and events competing for attention at any moment (Luck & Vogel, 1997). Attentional mechanisms can help people selectively attend to a specific set of objects and events (Chun & Wolfe, 2001; Kanwisher & Wojciulik, 2000; Pashler, 1998; Treisman & Gelade, 1980) and therefore help organize visual processing and experience. Several factors have been shown to be relevant in organizing adult attention. Results in visual search tasks, for example, suggest that some objects enter attention because they are simply salient in a given scene (Egeth, Jonides, & Wall, 1972; Treisman & Gelade, 1980; Wolfe, 1994; Yantis, 1998), are unique (Bravo & Nakayama, 1992), or relatively novel (Johnston et al., 1990). Other research and models, most relevant to the present study, suggest effects of learning—such as the learning of predictive relations— on attention (Kruschke, 2001; Le Pelley & McLaren, 2003; Mackintosh, 1975; Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). The idea is that cues in the environment provide relevant and irrelevant information, and that learning guides attention to the most relevant cues presented. Though this benficial learning effect has been robustly demonstrated in a number of phenomena with adult participants (Kruschke, 2003; Vidnyanszky & Sohn, 2003), little is known about how early learning interacts with attentional allocation, and further support subsequent learning. The present study directly tests integrated attention in early learning in the context of object search. The present study considers one process known as the contextual cuing effect. The contextual cuing effect is the process of encoding the context surrounding a target, which guides attention toward a target item among distracting stimuli in a visual search task. Sensitivity to such contextual information has been documented in a visual search paradigm, known as the contextual cuing task. In the original contextual cuing paradigm developed by Chun & Jiang (1998), computer-based search displays present adult participants with various configurations of stimuli. Some configurations were repeated across blocks, such that the spatial context of all of the distracters in a display predicted an embedded target location. Half of the configurations were novel and half were repeated throughout the experiment. The task used a T-shaped object as a target and L-shaped objects as distracters surrounding the target. Results indicated that participants found the target faster when configurations of distracters were repeated, indicating that contextual information facilitates search of the target. Along with other learning effects, this effect has been documented robustly and has been tested by a number of research findings. Investigating the development of contextual cuing is important as this pervasive phenomenon in adult search could lead to greater insight into the development of attention and the underlying neural mechanisms of learning and attention more generally.

Implicit Learning of Spatial Context by School-Age Children Hanako Yoshida University of Houston Kevin Darby University of Houston Joseph Burling University of Houston Abstract: The contextual cuing effect refers to a robust phenomenon in which a repeated context guides attention to relevant information by constraining search. The effect is measured by an object search task in which a target is located within repeated or nonrepeated visual contexts. Shorter response times with repeated configurations indicate that contextual information has facilitated search. Though the effect is robust among adult participants, recent tests of the effect with children yielded mixed results. Because contextual cuing could play a critical role in cognitive development, resolving this issue is important. The present study used child-friendly paradigms to investigate whether children show the effect. The study suggests that adult participants show the effect regardless of stimulus type; 9- to 12-year-old children’s contextual cuing effect was limited to certain stimuli types. The results are discussed in terms of the relation between visual complexity of stimuli and the recognition of search items.