Familiar Objects Research Articles

Rauvolfia vomitoria phenol extract relieves pentylenetetrazol-induced seizures in Swiss mice and protects some temporal lobe structures

BackgroundRauvolfia vomitoria (R. vomitoria) is a plant of economic importance due to its diverse ethnomedicinal properties, including the anticonvulsant effect. In this study, we studied the antiseizure and neuroprotective potentials of R. vomitoria extracts against pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced kindling.MethodsTwenty-five adult Swiss mice (25–30 g) were assigned to five groups (n = 5): control group, PTZ treatment group, and PTZ treatment after receiving oral R. vomitoria crude extract (100 mg/kg), R. vomitoria phenol extract (50 mg/kg) or sodium valproate (15 mg/kg) every 48 h for 28 days. Seizure scores, cognitive behavioral tests including novel object test, Y-maze test, and the elevated plus maze test, as well as brain neurochemicals and histomorphology studies, were performed.ResultsCompared with the control group, the PTZ group showed comparable body weight and durations in closed and open arms (P > 0.05), but preference for familiar objects, significant (P < 0.05) spontaneous alternation, increased monoamine oxidase activity and nitric oxide level, and Nissl chromatolysis in the temporal lobe structures including the cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala. R. vomitoria phenol extract pretreatment significantly (P < 0.05) reduced seizures, prevented adverse cognitive behaviors, decreased the nitric oxide level, and reduced the temporal lobe Nissl chromatolysis compared with the R. vomitoria crude extract pretreatment group and the sodium valproate pretreatment groups.ConclusionsThus, R. vomitoria phenol extract showed promising results against seizures and potential for general brain protection, suggesting that the anticonvulsant property of R. vomitoria may be attributed to its phenol constituent. More studies are needed to delineate the mechanisms of its action.

Design and Evaluation of the Digital Algebra Game for Children

Children may find learning algebra challenging as the algebraic concepts are abstract for them. To address this challenge, contextualizing algebraic concepts through storytelling and gamification can foster a more enjoyable and comprehensive learning experience. In this study, we introduced the Digital Algebra Game (DAG), a low-fidelity prototype designed to leverage digital game-based learning and storytelling frameworks. Our evaluation involved 96 children aged 9 to 11, along with four teachers, in a primary school setting. Thematic analysis of interview data revealed a positive reception of DAG among both children and teachers. The most unique feature of this game lies in students' ability to transform equations into stories. This approach is believed to not only enhance students' creative thinking but also contribute to their success in mathematics Furthermore, the narratives constructed by students around equations within their daily lives with familiar objects are particularly noteworthy. These insights underscore the potential of incorporating personal experiences into educational game design to enhance engagement and understanding. By bridging the gap between abstract concepts and tangible experiences, educational games like DAG have the potential to enhance learning processes and make mathematics more accessible and enjoyable for children.

An Early Ofan for Hanukkah, the Temple Menorah, and the Visual Culture of Late Antique Synagogues

Abstract This contribution focuses on an anonymous poem for Hanukkah and its wealth of visual imagery as a window on the interrelationship between liturgical texts and the art of the ancient synagogue. It sets this poem in conversation with the image of the menorah in synagogues excavated in the Land of Israel, as both reflect Jewish liturgical creativity during late antiquity, between the fourth and seventh or eighth centuries. It explores how the visual culture of Jewish late antiquity provided an early medieval payyetan (synagogue poet) with a rich library of objects, symbols, and metaphors for a composition celebrating the Festival of Lights; the poetic synthesis, in turn, yields a richly resonant symbolic matrix of meaning. Attention to light sources (lamps) and the symbolism of light more generally reveals how the material and visual culture of antiquity – particularly the menorah – suffused the piyyut, and how the piyyut could have colored perceptions of familiar experiences and objects. After examining lamps (and particularly menorahs) from a variety of perspectives, we will return to the poem to consider more closely the role that illumination plays in the short, festive lyric.

Intersection between person-centred practice and Montessori for dementia and ageing in residential aged care.

Internationally, person-centred care (PCC) is embedded in the language of regulations and mandated to be practised in residential aged care (RAC). Despite this, PCC has not been fully adopted in RAC in Australia and internationally, and concerns about the quality of care persist. Over the past 2 decades, Montessori for dementia and ageing has been introduced in RAC to support and inform a cultural change towards PCC. This study aimed to examine the intersection between the goals and approaches of Montessori and PCC in RAC. This qualitative descriptive study reports on a secondary analysis of qualitative data from focus groups (FGs) and interviews with residents, family-members, staff, and volunteers from eight RAC homes in Victoria, Australia. Sixteen FGs and 36 interviews were conducted. A qualitative deductive approach using researcher-developed Montessori for dementia and ageing framework for data analysis was applied. Findings provide support for the intersection between PCC and Montessori with participants' descriptions of PCC aligning with many of the goals and approaches of Montessori. Participants most commonly described Montessori approaches of engagement in daily tasks with purposeful roles and promoting cognitive abilities through multi-sensory stimulation. Least frequently-described approaches included focusing on residents' strengths/abilities, maintaining function, using familiar objects, and guided repetition. Findings have important implications for practice to use Montessori as a vehicle that supports and upskills the workforce to deliver care that is person-centred. Future research must examine the resources required to support the implementation and sustainability of Montessori as a vehicle for PCC.

Personality may modulate learning and memory differences in two taxa of the African striped mouse genus Rhabdomys

AbstractDifferent environments place different cognitive demands on constituent taxa. Learning and memory involve cognitive processes with associated costs, and it is expected that different levels of learning will occur in taxa from different environments. Greater memory loads linked to increased environmental complexity require greater learning and memory capacities. We investigated the variation in learning and memory in sister taxa of striped mice (genus Rhabdomys). We studied two populations each of the mesic grassland‐occurring R. d. chakae and the mostly arid‐occurring R. pumilio. We conducted two sets of experiments. (1) In a novel object recognition (NOR) test, we assessed memory by recording the duration of exploration of similar and novel objects by test mice. (2) In an associative learning task, we assessed whether mice could associate specific scents with or without a food incentive or with different quantities of the food incentive in previous training phases. We measured the latency of mice to contact scents in a two‐sample choice in the test phase. In the NOR test, R. pumilio spent less time investigating similar objects in a training trial than R. d. chakae but increased absolute exploration of the novel object when presented with a novel and a familiar object in the retention trial, suggesting a sensitization to the novel object by R. pumilio. In the associative learning experiments, R. pumilio approached the stimuli faster than R. d. chakae, whereas mice from both taxa preferred scents associated with a seed versus no seed and scents associated with 5 seeds versus 1 seed. The data provide evidence of taxon‐level differences in learning and memory, likely related to environmentally modulated personality differences between the taxa.

Assessing processing-based measures of implicit statistical learning: Three serial reaction time experiments do not reveal artificial grammar learning.

Implicit statistical learning, whereby predictable relationships between stimuli are detected without conscious awareness, is important for language acquisition. However, while this process is putatively implicit, it is often assessed using measures that require explicit reflection and conscious decision making. Here, we conducted three experiments combining an artificial grammar learning paradigm with a serial reaction time (SRT-AGL) task, to measure statistical learning of adjacent and nonadjacent dependencies implicitly, without conscious decision making. Participants viewed an array of six visual stimuli and were presented with a sequence of three auditory (nonsense words, Expt. 1; names of familiar objects, Expt. 2) or visual (abstract shapes, Expt. 3) cues and were asked to click on the corresponding visual stimulus as quickly as possible. In each experiment, the final stimulus in the sequence was predictable based on items earlier in the sequence. Faster responses to this predictable final stimulus compared to unpredictable stimuli would provide evidence of implicit statistical learning, without requiring explicit decision making or conscious reflection. Despite previous positive results (Christiansen et al. 2009 and Misyak et al. 2010) we saw little evidence of implicit statistical learning in any of the experiments, suggesting that in this case, these SRT-AGL tasks were not an effective measure implicit statistical learning.

Estimating Visual Acuity Without a Visual Acuity Chart.

This study explored whether visual acuity (VA) can be inferred from self-reported ability to recognize everyday objects using a set of yes/no questions. Participants answered 100 yes/no questions designed to assess their ability to recognize familiar objects at typical viewing distances, such as distinguishing between a full moon and a half moon on a clear night. The questions demanded VA ranging from normal to severe vision impairment. Responses were analyzed using item response theory, and the results were compared with participants' VA values. We recruited 385 participants from 4 sites in the United States. Participants had a mean age of 56.7years with VA ranging from -0.3 to 2.0 logarithm of the minimum angle of resolution (logMAR) (mean = 0.58). A strong relationship was observed between participants' estimated vision ability and their VA (r = -0.72). The linear relationship can be used to predict each participant's VA based on their estimated vision ability. The average signed and unsigned prediction errors were 0 and 0.24 logMAR, respectively, with a coefficient of repeatability of 0.59 logMAR between the estimated VA and measured VA. The same linear function was used to determine the VA limit required for each question. For instance, the VA limit for the moon question was 1.0 logMAR. Yes/no questions about everyday visual activities have the potential to estimate an individual's VA. Future refinements may enhance reliability. The survey provides insights into the real-world visual capabilities of people with low vision, making it potentially useful for telehealth applications.

Caregivers as experimenters: Reducing unfamiliarity helps shy children learn words.

Previous work has found that shy children show chance-level disambiguation and retention of novel word meanings in a typical lab-based word learning task. This effect could be explained in terms of shy children's aversion to unfamiliarity disrupting the requisite attentional processes, because the task is marked by a high degree of unfamiliarity. To test this argument, we examined whether increasing the familiarity of the task facilitates shy children's ability to form and retain word meanings. Two-year-old children (N=23) took part in a word learning task in which their caregiver acted as the experimenter. On referent selection trials, children were presented with sets of three objects, one novel and two familiar, and were asked for either a familiar object using its known label, or a novel object using a novel word. Children were then tested on their retention of the previously formed novel word-object mappings. In this context of increased familiarity, shyness was unrelated to performance on referent selection trials. However, shyness was positively related to children's retention of the word-object mappings, meaning that shyer children outperformed less-shy children on this measure of word learning. These findings show that context-based familiarity interacts with intrinsic individual differences to affect word learning performance.

A dynamic and critical approach to belonging as a dimension of occupation

ABSTRACT Doing, being, becoming, and belonging have been theorized as dimensions of occupation, yet belonging has received comparatively less attention from occupational scientists. The occupation-based literature tends to equate belonging with connectedness and to take a sedentarist approach in which (transnational) mobilities are considered as a challenge for occupational engagement and belonging. This paper critically examines belonging as developed through occupations and considers its constructed, dynamic, and multifaceted nature in the context of migration. Our theoretical framework is informed by transnational approaches, the mobilities paradigm, and transculturality. We draw from a cross-national comparative ethnography including 86 interviews with recent Vietnamese migrants in Vancouver, Canada, and Paris, France, as well as returning migrants in Vietnam. Our findings address participants’ belonging with regards to 1) routines, social ties, and familiarity; 2) mobile and immobile occupations; and 3) (post-)colonial politics of belonging. This study deepens understandings of the dynamic nature of occupation and belonging as well as how both are shaped by and can reproduce power dynamics. First, we contend that occupation and belonging are inherently situated, yet are not necessarily bounded to a single location. Belonging develops through routine occupations involving familiar people, objects, and amenities, which can themselves be mobile or accessible in multiple settings. Second, we emphasize how some occupations can become benchmarks for belonging, particularly in Western immigrant-receiving countries influenced by assimilationist and (post-)colonial dynamics. Lastly, we underscore individuals’ agency in employing occupations in ways to negotiate and claim belonging to their receiving and/or sending countries.

THE ORIGINS OF THE PROVINCIAL PHOTOGRAPHER’S CREATIVITY EARLY XX CENTURY A.A. ZIRAH

The work of the provincial Ufa photographer of the early XX century A.A. Zirakh does not go beyond the descriptive discourse in the literature of local lore. However, we believe that it is a phenomenon that needs to be interpreted from a historical and cultural point of view. We tried to understand what a small insurance employee was motivated by to selflessly give the last decade of his life to photography. The very analysis of photographs by A.A. Zirakh led to an appeal to the problem of the difference between history and memory. The surviving photographs indicate that A.A. Zirakh was more interested in the architecture and landscape of the city than in the events. This confirms the thesis that the artist considered his collection as a tool of memory, but not as a historical source. Memory, unlike history, is an area of individual perception. In this regard, our attitude differs from the one of the representatives of the "place of memory" concept. The nature of A.A. Zirakh's work is associated with the problem of the attitude of the Russian intelligentsia to the province. We believe that monotony is the defining mood of the provincial chronotope. But a creative person can’t control the time. A scholar is deprived of the opportunity to act as a subject of historical processes in province. The monotony and eventlessness of backwater time are changed only under the influence of the center. On the contrary, the monotony and, consequently, the meaninglessness of the landscape of the outskirts are amenable to creative transformation. Breaking out of the monotonous environment of familiar urban objects through photography, A.A. Zirakh forces to focus attention on them, to notice the uniqueness and thereby destroy the anonymity of the urban landscape.

Determining underlying influences of data variability in the novel object recognition paradigm as used with young pigs.

The novel object recognition (NOR) paradigm is a cognitive test that has been used with many species to detect differences in ability. Various iterations of the paradigm have been implemented, making it difficult to compare results both within and across species. Interpretations of the results are equally diverse, threatening the integrity of the paradigm. These inconsistencies have prompted a deeper dive into the variability of the resultant data. For the purposes of this meta-analysis, data originated from 12 studies involving 367 pigs that were subjected to the same NOR paradigm beginning between postnatal days 21 and 24. The main cognitive measure from the NOR paradigm is recognition index (RI), which was the focus of most of the analyses in this meta-analysis. RI was chosen as the main outcome as it determines a pig's preference for novelty, an innate behavior of cognitively intact pigs. A histogram of RI values (range 0 to 1) showed a bimodal distribution skewed to the right, suggesting that the interpretation of positive performance on the task may need to be stricter. Correlational analyses proved that the number of investigations and investigation time with both the novel and familiar objects were the strongest predictors of resultant RI values. Objective data inclusion criteria were then considered to eliminate non-compliant pigs. Results indicated that requiring at least 5 s of investigation over a minimum of 3 investigations with the novel object reduced overall variability for RI with a concomitant increase in the mean. Further analyses showed that pigs preferred to spend more time with and interact more with the novel object across the entire testing trial, especially in the first minute. Together, these findings suggest that future interpretations of NOR should consider applying stricter statistical analyses as well as additional data processing, such as binning, with emphasis on novel object and familiar object investigation. Overall, modifications to the existing iterations of the NOR paradigm are necessary to improve paradigm reliability.

Everyday Memory Disturbance in Primary Progressive Aphasia

Introduction: Mounting evidence indicates distinct memory profiles among the primary progressive aphasia (PPA) variants. Neuropsychological tests reveal disproportionate memory impairments in the logopenic variant PPA (lv-PPA) relative to the non-fluent variant PPA (nfv-PPA) and semantic variant PPA (sv-PPA). The real-world experience of day-to-day memory disturbances in PPA, however, remains poorly understood. Methods: Everyday expressions of memory in 26 lv-PPA, 24 nfv-PPA, and 40 sv-PPA patients, and 70 healthy controls were examined using the Cambridge Behavioural Inventory-Revised (CBI-R) carer questionnaire. Kruskal-Wallis tests compared CBI-R Memory items (1–8) across groups. Receiver operating characteristic curves evaluated the most discriminative items to distinguish lv-PPA from nfv-PPA. Results: Compared to controls, lv-PPA and sv-PPA patients were reported to experience more day-to-day memory issues (item 1), increased repetition of questions (2), forgetting the names of familiar people and objects (4, 5), and poor concentration (6). lv-PPA patients were also reported to exhibit more occurrences of losing or misplacing items (3) and forgetting the day (7). All PPA groups experienced more confusion in unfamiliar environments (8) than controls. Direct comparisons among PPA groups revealed distinct profiles, with lv-PPA and sv-PPA patients exhibiting more frequent forgetting of names and objects (3, 4) than nfv-PPA, and sv-PPA demonstrating greater day-to-day memory impairment (1), repeated questions (2), and poor concentration (6) compared to nfv-PPA. Forgetting the names of familiar objects (5) was the most sensitive and specific item to distinguish lv-PPA from nfv-PPA. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate distinct day-to-day memory profiles in PPA. Future research should explore the influence of language impairments on these profiles.

Partner-Specific Adaptation in Disfluency Processing.

Speakers tend to produce disfluencies when naming unexpected or complex items; in turn, when perceiving disfluency, listeners tend to expect upcoming reference to items that are unexpected or complex to name. In two experiments, we examined if these disfluency-based expectations are routine, or instead, if they adapt to the way the speaker uses disfluency in the current context in a talker-specific manner. Participants listened to instructions to look at objects in contexts with several images, some of which lacked conventional names. We manipulated the co-occurrence of disfluency and reference to novel versus familiar objects in a single talker situation (Experiment 1) and in a multi-talker situation (Experiment 2). In the predictive condition, disfluent expressions referred to novel objects, and fluent expressions referred to familiar objects. In the nonpredictive condition, fluent and disfluent trials referred to either familiar or novel objects. Participants' gaze revealed that listeners more readily predicted familiar images for fluent trials and novel images for disfluent trials in the predictive condition than in the nonpredictive condition. In sum, listeners adapted their expectations about upcoming words based on recent experience with disfluency. Disfluency is not invariably processed, but instead a cue that is flexibly interpreted depending on the local context even in a multi-talker setting.

Examining the role of stimulus complexity in item and associative memory.

Episodic memory comprises memory for individual information units (item memory) and for the connections among them (associative memory). In two experiments using an object pair learning task, we examined the effect of visual stimulus complexity on memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms and on item and associative memory performance. Subjects encoded pairs of black monochrome object images (low complexity, LC condition) or color photographs of objects (high complexity, HC condition) via interactive imagery, and subsequently item and associative recognition were tested. In Experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an enhanced frontal N2 during encoding and an enhanced late posterior negativity (LPN) during item recognition in the HC condition, suggesting that memory traces containing visually more complex objects elicited a stronger effort in reconstructing the past episode. Item memory was consistently superior in the HC compared to the LC condition. Associative memory was either statistically unaffected by complexity (Experiment 1) or improved (Experiment 2) in the HC condition, speaking against a tradeoff between resources allocated to item versus associative memory, and hence contradicting results of some prior studies. In Experiment 2, in both young and older adults, both item and associative memory benefitted from stimulus complexity, such that the magnitude of the age-related associative deficit was not influenced by stimulus complexity. Together, these results suggest that if familiar objects are presented in a form that exhibits a higher visual complexity, which may support semantic processing, complexity can benefit both item and associative memory. Stimulus properties that enhance item memory can scaffold associative memory in this situation.

‘Don’t educate me—move me!’ Why we need art and artists (especially films and filmmakers) to love education into existence

Abstract This paper explores the anthropological and ontological conditions of our ‘educational movement’ in aesthetic experience and illustrates these through a range of examples from popular cinema/film (the Empire Strikes Back; Memento; David Lynch’s musings). For the anthropological framing of education, I enlist the help of German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer and his notion of ‘formation’ as it unfolds in the aesthetic appearance of the cultural world—with film’s moving images’ coming-into-form-and-meaning as my key example. For Gadamer, the artwork’s formative potential is bound up in its capacity to move our senses and intellect into an encounter with what is other to our subjectivity. Drawn into a mode of paying attention to what appears (e.g. in film’s moving images), we are called to lose ourselves and be present in a new way to familiar world objects and relations. The second part of the paper imagines the ontological conditions that make possible our formative movement in the cultural world: the mode of the beautiful. Why do certain artworks shine forth and summon us to be present to them? To pursue this question, I turn to French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain’s notion of Beauty and craftsmanship. He turns us (like Gadamer) to a neo-Platonic notion of Beauty rooted in St Thomas Aquinas’ notion of the mystery of B/being (i.e. God). In Maritain’s reading, our hermeneutic aesthetic experience—and with that our movement into self-formation—is held in existence through the artist’s participation in the mode of the beautiful and their loss of self in the labour of love of craftsmanship.

Shared neural codes of recognition memory

Recognition memory research has identified several electrophysiological indicators of successful memory retrieval, known as old-new effects. These effects have been observed in different sensory domains using various stimulus types, but little attention has been given to their similarity or distinctiveness and the underlying processes they may share. Here, a data-driven approach was taken to investigate the temporal evolution of shared information content between different memory conditions using openly available EEG data from healthy human participants of both sexes, taken from six experiments. A test dataset involving personally highly familiar and unfamiliar faces was used. The results show that neural signals of recognition memory for face stimuli were highly generalized starting from around 200 ms following stimulus onset. When training was performed on non-face datasets, an early (around 200–300 ms) to late (post-400 ms) differentiation was observed over most regions of interest. Successful cross-classification for non-face stimuli (music and object/scene associations) was most pronounced in late period. Additionally, a striking dissociation was observed between familiar and remembered objects, with shared signals present only in the late window for correctly remembered objects, while cross-classification for familiar objects was successful in the early period as well. These findings suggest that late neural signals of memory retrieval generalize across sensory modalities and stimulus types, and the dissociation between familiar and remembered objects may provide insight into the underlying processes.

The roles of symmetry and elongation in developing reference frames.

Previous studies showed that elongation and symmetry (two ubiquitous aspects of natural stimuli) are important attributes in object perception and recognition, which in turn suggests that these geometrical factors may contribute to the selection of perceptual reference-frames. However, whether and how these attributes guide the selection of reference-frames is still poorly understood. The goal of this study was to examine systematically the roles of elongation and symmetry, as well as their combination, in the selection of reference axis and how these axes are developed for unfamiliar objects. We designed our experiments to eliminate two potential confounding factors: (i) extraneous environmental cues, such as edges of the screen, etc. (by using VR) and (ii) pre-learned cues for familiar objects and shapes (by using reinforcement learning of novel shapes). We used algorithmically generated textures with different orientations having specified levels of symmetry and elongation as the stimuli. In each trial, we presented only one stimulus and asked observers to report if the stimulus was in its original form or a flipped (mirror-image) one. Feedback was provided at the end of each trial. Based on previous studies on mental rotation, we hypothesized that the selection of a reference-frame defined by symmetry and/or elongation would be revealed by a linear relationship between reaction-times and the angular-deviation from either the most symmetrical or the most elongated orientation. Our results are consistent with this hypothesis. We found that subjects performed mental rotation to transform images to their reference axes and used the most symmetrical or elongated orientation as the reference axis when only one factor was presented, and they used a "winner-take-all" strategy when both factors were presented, with elongation being more dominant than symmetry. We discuss theoretical implications of these findings, in particular in the context of "canonical sensorimotor theory."

Speaker Competence Affects Prefrontal Theta and Occipital Alpha Power during Selective Word Learning in Preschoolers.

In the present study, we investigated the cognitive processes underlying selective word learning in preschoolers. We measured rhythmic neural activity in the theta (4-8 Hz) and alpha frequency range (7-12 Hz) in 67 four-year-olds. EEG was recorded during anticipation and encoding of novel labeling events performed by a speaker who had previously shown either competence (correct) or incompetence (incorrect) in labeling familiar objects. In both groups, children selected the target object equally often upon recall. However, children observing the incompetent speaker revealed weaker representations of novel words indicated by an increased likelihood for selecting familiar but incorrect items upon recall. Modulations in theta and alpha power suggest differential processing of novel label-object pairs depending on the speakers' competence. In the incompetent, but not the competent, speaker condition, increases in prefrontal theta power during anticipation and encoding were related to increased recall success. Findings suggest that theta power in the present study reflects cognitive control. In both conditions, occipital alpha power-indicating attentional processes-reflected familiarity with novel items, but in opposite directions. In familiar item trials, alpha power was increased observing the incompetent and decreased observing the competent speaker. Thus, both cognitive control and attention processes during word learning are differentially affected by speaker characteristics.

Religious infrastructure: designations, transformations, entanglements

ABSTRACT Infrastructures are ensembles of social and technical components that make practices and relations possible. In this contribution, I develop a notion of ‘religious infrastructure’ and delineate why I find it to be a generative analytical category. Thinking with religious infrastructure spotlights new sites of empirical inquiry for scholarship on religion, as well as fresh ways of apprehending familiar objects of analysis. It brings into focus how religiously marked arrangements support, depend on, and mutually transform wider landscapes of action and relation. These lines of inquiry point to dynamics that cut across different religious boundaries, and they uncover sometimes surprising entanglements between religiously and secularly marked domains of practice. They also help to foreground the multiple modalities of religious operation that a given arrangement can perform, beyond that of mediating transcendent encounters. Accordingly, religious infrastructure elicits questions about what qualifies as ‘infrastructure’, but also about what qualifies as ‘religion’.

Behavioral signatures of the rapid recruitment of long-term memory to overcome working memory capacity limits.

Working- and long-term memory are often studied in isolation. To better understand the specific limitations of working memory, effort is made to reduce the potential influence of long-term memory on performance in working memory tasks (e.g., asking participants to remember artificial, abstract items rather than familiar real-world objects). However, in everyday life we use working- and long-term memory in tandem. Here, our goal was to characterize how long-term memory can be recruited to circumvent capacity limits in a typical visual working memory task (i.e., remembering colored squares). Prior work has shown that incidental repetitions of working memory arrays often do not improve visual working memory performance - even after dozens of incidental repetitions, working memory performance often shows no improvement for repeated arrays. Here, we used a whole-report working memory task with explicit rather than incidental repetitions of arrays. In contrast to prior work with incidental repetitions, in two behavioral experiments we found that explicit repetitions of arrays yielded robust improvement to working memory performance, even after a single repetition. Participants performed above chance at recognizing repeated arrays in a later long-term memory test, consistent with the idea that long-term memory was used to rapidly improve performance across array repetitions. Finally, we analyzed inter-item response times and we found a response time signature of chunk formation that only emerged after the array was repeated (inter-response time slowing after two to three items); thus, inter-item response times may be useful for examining the coordinated interaction of visual working and long-term memory in future work.