Memory

Although prospective memory (PM) has been studied extensively, relatively little research has addressed errors in different steps of PM performance. The aim of this study was to examine errors occurring in different phases of the microstructure model in PM performance and whether verbalisation can serve in their measurement. We report the results of two experiments in which young adults were divided into experimental and control groups. Both groups solved either a 3-day (Experiment 1) or a 5-day (Experiment 2) version of the Virtual week (VW) task. Experimental groups had to verbalise each PM task before performing it. The results of Experiment 1 showed that verbalisation may prolong the time to execute the task, but in both experiments, verbalisation did not affect the PM performance. In analysing different types of errors, we found that: (1) prospective component errors are more often caused by tasks requiring greater strategic monitoring (only Experiment 1), (2) recall component errors are evident in irregular tasks, and (3) execution errors are more often evidenced in tasks with greater response competition. This confirms that there is a wide range of processes that can lead to PM failures, and verbalisation is one method by which we can detect them.

Curiosity, an intrinsic desire to seek new information, benefits motivation and learning. While curiosity is associated with novelty, less is known about how the repetition of a question without its answer affects curiosity and memory. In two experiments, participants viewed 60 trivia questions, half of which were repeated, and rated their curiosity to learn the answers. Repeated questions had their answers revealed during the second presentation, and participants were given a cued-recall test after 24 h. We found that curiosity ratings remained constant across presentations, but when repeated and non-repeated questions were intermixed, participants were more curious about non-repeated questions, which were relatively more novel (Experiment 1). However, when participants guessed answers before studying them (pretesting), they were more curious about repeated questions (Experiment 2). Curiosity ratings also increased across presentations, perhaps reflecting greater cognitive agency motivated by an eagerness to verify one’s guess. Overall, the subjective experience of curiosity appears to be influenced by both relative novelty, as manipulated through repetition, and task demands, specifically whether individuals engage in pretesting, indicating that curiosity-based learning is shaped by various cognitive operations.

The relationship between sports expertise and working memory (WM) has garnered increasing attention in experimental research. However, no meta-analysis has compared WM performance between athletes and non-athletes. This study addresses this gap by comparing WM performance between these groups and investigating potential moderators. A comprehensive literature search identified 21 studies involving 1455 participants from seven databases, including PubMed, Embase, and ProQuest. Athletes primarily engaged in basketball, football, and fencing, while non-athletes included some identified as sedentary. The risk of bias assessment indicated low risk across most domains. Publication bias, assessed through a funnel plot and statistical tests, showed no significant evidence of bias. The forest plot, using a random effects model, revealed moderate heterogeneity. The overall effect size indicated a statistically significant, albeit small, advantage for athletes over non-athletes (Hedges' g = 0.30), persisting across sports types and performance levels. Notably, this advantage was more pronounced when athletes were contrasted with a sedentary population (Hedges' g = 0.63), compared to the analysis where the sedentary population was excluded from the non-athlete reference group (Hedges' g = 0.15). Our findings indicate a consistent link between sports expertise and improved WM performance, while sedentary lifestyles appear to be associated with WM disadvantages.

Many witnesses are intoxicated at crime scenes, yet little is known of their ability to accurately describe perpetrators to police. We therefore explored the impact of alcohol on delayed verbal face recall across two experiments. Participants were administered an alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage prior to viewing either one or two unfamiliar female faces, which they described from memory the following day while in a sober state. Each to-be-remembered model had long hair worn either loose (i.e., visible), or tied behind the head (i.e., concealed). Testing the hypothesis that alcohol narrows the focus of attention to the external (hairstyle) region of faces, we expected intoxicated participants to have poorer memory of internal face features (eyes, nose, mouth) than sober controls for stimulus faces with visibly long hair. Results revealed poorer recall accuracy for internal face details following alcohol consumption (Exp. 2), but the effect was uninfluenced by hairstyle. Findings are therefore consistent with the more general view that alcohol is associated with a bias to the external (hairstyle) region of faces during face learning, irrespective of hair visibility.