Forced-choice Recognition Task Research Articles

Serial position, output order, and list length effects for words presented on smartphones over very long intervals.

Three experiments examined whether or not benchmark findings observed in the immediate retrieval from episodic memory are similarly observed over much greater time-scales. Participants were presented with experimentally-controlled lists of words at the very slow rate of one word every hour using an iPhone recall application, RECAPP, which was also used to recall the words in either any order (free recall: Experiments 1 to 3) or the same order as presented (serial recall: Experiment 3). We found strong temporal contiguity effects, weak serial position effects with very limited recency, and clear list length effects in free recall; clear primacy effects and classic error gradients in serial recall; and recency effects in a final two-alternative forced choice recognition task (Experiments 2 and 3). Our findings extend the timescales over which temporal contiguity effects have been observed, but failed to find consistent evidence for strong long-term recency effects with experimenter-controlled stimuli.

Evidence for Anger Saliency during the Recognition of Chimeric Facial Expressions of Emotions in Underage Ebola Survivors.

One of the crucial features defining basic emotions and their prototypical facial expressions is their value for survival. Childhood traumatic experiences affect the effective recognition of facial expressions of negative emotions, normally allowing the recruitment of adequate behavioral responses to environmental threats. Specifically, anger becomes an extraordinarily salient stimulus unbalancing victims’ recognition of negative emotions. Despite the plethora of studies on this topic, to date, it is not clear whether this phenomenon reflects an overall response tendency toward anger recognition or a selective proneness to the salience of specific facial expressive cues of anger after trauma exposure. To address this issue, a group of underage Sierra Leonean Ebola virus disease survivors (mean age 15.40 years, SE 0.35; years of schooling 8.8 years, SE 0.46; 14 males) and a control group (mean age 14.55, SE 0.30; years of schooling 8.07 years, SE 0.30, 15 males) performed a forced-choice chimeric facial expressions recognition task. The chimeric facial expressions were obtained pairing upper and lower half faces of two different negative emotions (selected from anger, fear and sadness for a total of six different combinations). Overall, results showed that upper facial expressive cues were more salient than lower facial expressive cues. This priority was lost among Ebola virus disease survivors for the chimeric facial expressions of anger. In this case, differently from controls, Ebola virus disease survivors recognized anger regardless of the upper or lower position of the facial expressive cues of this emotion. The present results demonstrate that victims’ performance in the recognition of the facial expression of anger does not reflect an overall response tendency toward anger recognition, but rather the specific greater salience of facial expressive cues of anger. Furthermore, the present results show that traumatic experiences deeply modify the perceptual analysis of philogenetically old behavioral patterns like the facial expressions of emotions.

What is the Melody of That Voice? Probing Unbiased Recognition Accuracy with the Montreal Affective Voices

The present study aimed to clarify how listeners decode emotions from human nonverbal vocalizations, exploring unbiased recognition accuracy of vocal emotions selected from the Montreal Affective Voices (MAV) (Belin et al. in Trends Cognit Sci 8:129–135, 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2004.01.008 ). The MAV battery includes 90 nonverbal vocalizations expressing anger, disgust, fear, pain, sadness, surprise, happiness, sensual pleasure, as well as neutral expressions, uttered by female and male actors. Using a forced-choice recognition task, 156 native speakers of Portuguese were asked to identify the emotion category underlying each MAV sound, and additionally to rate the valence, arousal and dominance of these sounds. The analysis focused on unbiased hit rates (Hu Score; Wagner in J Nonverbal Behav 17(1):3–28, 1993. doi: 10.1007/BF00987006 ), as well as on the dimensional ratings for each discrete emotion. Further, we examined the relationship between categorical and dimensional ratings, as well as the effects of speaker’s and listener’s sex on these two types of assessment. Surprise vocalizations were associated with the poorest accuracy, whereas happy vocalizations were the most accurately recognized, contrary to previous studies. Happiness was associated with the highest valence and dominance ratings, whereas fear elicited the highest arousal ratings. Recognition accuracy and dimensional ratings of vocal expressions were dependent both on speaker’s sex and listener’s sex. Further, discrete vocal emotions were not consistently predicted by dimensional ratings. Using a large sample size, the present study provides, for the first time, unbiased recognition accuracy rates for a widely used battery of nonverbal vocalizations. The results demonstrated a dynamic interplay between listener’s and speaker’s variables (e.g., sex) in the recognition of emotion from nonverbal vocalizations. Further, they support the use of both categorical and dimensional accounts of emotion when probing how emotional meaning is decoded from nonverbal vocal cues.

Effects of varying presentation time on long-term recognition memory for scenes: Verbatim and gist representations.

Konkle, Brady, Alvarez and Oliva (Psychological Science, 21, 1551-1556, 2010) showed that participants have an exceptional long-term memory (LTM) for photographs of scenes. We examined to what extent participants' exceptional LTM for scenes is determined by presentation time during encoding. In addition, at retrieval, we varied the nature of the lures in a forced-choice recognition task so that they resembled the target in gist (i.e., global or categorical) information, but were distinct in verbatim information (e.g., an "old" beach scene and a similar "new" beach scene; exemplar condition) or vice versa (e.g., a beach scene and a new scene from a novel category; novel condition). In Experiment 1, half of the list of scenes was presented for 1s, whereas the other half was presented for 4s. We found lower performance for shorter study presentation time in the exemplar test condition and similar performance for both study presentation times in the novel test condition. In Experiment 2, participants showed similar performance in an exemplar test for which the lure was of a different category but a category that was used at study. In Experiment 3, when presentation time was lowered to 500ms, recognition accuracy was reduced in both novel and exemplar test conditions. A less detailed memorial representation of the studied scene containing more gist (i.e., meaning) than verbatim (i.e., surface or perceptual details) information is retrieved from LTM after a short compared to a long study presentation time. We conclude that our findings support fuzzy-trace theory.

A benefit of context reinstatement to recognition memory in aging: the role of familiarity processes

ABSTRACTReinstatement of encoding context facilitates memory for targets in young and older individuals (e.g., a word studied on a particular background scene is more likely to be remembered later if it is presented on the same rather than a different scene or no scene), yet older adults are typically inferior at recalling and recognizing target–context pairings. This study examined the mechanisms of the context effect in normal aging. Age differences in word recognition by context condition (original, switched, none, new), and the ability to explicitly remember target–context pairings were investigated using word–scene pairs (Experiment 1) and word–word pairs (Experiment 2). Both age groups benefited from context reinstatement in item recognition, although older adults were significantly worse than young adults at identifying original pairings and at discriminating between original and switched pairings. In Experiment 3, participants were given a three-alternative forced-choice recognition task that allowed older individuals to draw upon intact familiarity processes in selecting original pairings. Performance was age equivalent. Findings suggest that heightened familiarity associated with context reinstatement is useful for boosting recognition memory in aging.

Effects of Instructor Attractiveness on Learning

ABSTRACTAlthough a considerable body of research has examined the impact of student attractiveness on instructors, little attention has been given to the influence of instructor attractiveness on students. This study tested the hypothesis that persons would perform significantly better on a learning task when they perceived their instructor to be high in physical attractiveness. To test the hypothesis, participants listened to an audio lecture while viewing a photograph of instructor. The photograph depicted either a physically attractive instructor or a less attractive instructor. Following the lecture, participants completed a forced choice recognition task covering material from the lecture. Consistent with the predictions; attractive instructors were associated with more learning. Finally, we replicated previous findings demonstrating the role attractiveness plays in person perception.

When anger dominates the mind: Increased motor corticospinal excitability in the face of threat

Threat demands fast and adaptive reactions that are manifested at the physiological, behavioral, and phenomenological level and are responsive to the direction of threat and its severity for the individual. Here, we investigated the effects of threat directed toward or away from the observer on motor corticospinal excitability and explicit recognition. Sixteen healthy right‐handed volunteers completed a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) task and a separate three‐alternative forced‐choice emotion recognition task. Single‐pulse TMS to the left primary motor cortex was applied to measure motor evoked potentials from the right abductor pollicis brevis in response to dynamic angry, fearful, and neutral bodily expressions with blurred faces directed toward or away from the observer. Results showed that motor corticospinal excitability increased independent of direction of anger compared with fear and neutral. In contrast, anger was better recognized when directed toward the observer compared with when directed away from the observer, while the opposite pattern was found for fear. The present results provide evidence for the differential effects of threat direction on explicit recognition and motor corticospinal excitability. In the face of threat, motor corticospinal excitability increases independently of the direction of anger, indicative of the importance of more automatic reactions to threat.

Subjective experience guides betting decisions beyond accuracy: evidence from a metamemory illusion

ABSTRACTThe goal of this research was to test whether subjective memory experiences drive accuracy regulation decisions above and beyond objective memory indices. In four experiments (n = 115) subjective recollection (i.e., reporting “Remember” in the Remember-Know task) was dissociated from memory accuracy by manipulating retrieval during a two-alternative forced-choice recognition task: in the Match condition the distracter was a novel exemplar of the target (e.g., a studied and an unstudied toaster) and in the Non-match condition the distracter was a novel exemplar of another studied but untested item (e.g., a studied toaster and an unstudied birdhouse). Participants were more accurate on Match trials, but reported subjective recollection more frequently on Non-match trials. Critically, participants also bet more often on Non-match trials to the detriment of their score (Experiment 1). This pattern persisted when participants were additionally required to retrieve details about items (Experiment 2) and when confidence assessments were collected (Experiment 3). Finally, participants bet more on Non-match trials even when subjective judgments were not elicited, suggesting that the decision process does not require reporting on subjective experience (Experiment 4). These results indicate that subjective memory experiences guide decision-making independent of objective accuracy and thus are critical to accuracy regulation.

Electrical stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improves memory monitoring

The ability to accurately monitor one's own memory is an important feature of normal memory function. Converging evidence from neuroimaging and lesion studies have implicated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in memory monitoring. Here we used high definition transcranial direct stimulation (HD-tDCS), a non-invasive form of brain stimulation, to test whether the DLPFC has a causal role in memory monitoring, and the nature of that role. We used a metamemory monitoring task, in which participants first attempted to recall the answer to a general knowledge question, then gave a feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgment, followed by a forced choice recognition task. When participants received DLPFC stimulation, their feeling-of-knowing judgments were better predictors of memory performance, i.e., they had better memory monitoring accuracy, compared to stimulation of a control site, the anterior temporal lobe (ATL). Effects of DLPFC stimulation were specific to monitoring accuracy, as there was no significant increase in memory performance, and if anything, there was poorer memory performance with DLPFC stimulation. Thus we have demonstrated a causal role for the DLPFC in memory monitoring, and showed that electrically stimulating the left DLPFC led people to more accurately monitor and judge their own memory.

Introducing a forced-choice recognition task to the California Verbal Learning Test – Children’s Version

ABSTRACTThe importance of performance validity tests (PVTs) is increasingly recognized in pediatric neuropsychology. To date, research has focused on investigating whether PVTs designed for adults function similarly in children. The downward extension of adult cutoffs is counter-intuitive considering the robust effect of age-related changes in basic cognitive skills in children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to examine the signal detection properties of a forced-choice recognition trial (FCR-C) for the California Verbal Learning Test – Children’s Version. A total of 72 children aged 6–15 years (M = 11.1 , SD = 2.6) completed the FCR-C as part of a larger neuropsychological assessment battery. Cross-validation analyses revealed that the FCR-C had good signal detection performance against reference PVTs. The first level of failure (≤14/15) produced the best combination of overall sensitivity (.31) and specificity (.87). A more conservative FCR-C cutoff (≤13) resulted in a predictable trade-off between sensitivity (.15) and specificity (.94), but also a net loss in discriminant power. Lowering the cutoff to ≤12 resulted in a slight improvement in specificity (.97) but further deterioration in sensitivity (.14). These preliminary findings suggest that the FCR-C has the potential to become the newest addition to a growing arsenal of pediatric PVTs.

Impact of Childhood Maltreatment on the Recognition of Facial Expressions of Emotions.

The development of the explicit recognition of facial expressions of emotions can be affected by childhood maltreatment experiences. A previous study demonstrated the existence of an explicit recognition bias for angry facial expressions among a population of adolescent Sierra Leonean street-boys exposed to high levels of maltreatment. In the present study, the recognition bias for angry facial expressions was investigated in a younger population of street-children and age-matched controls. Participants performed a forced-choice facial expressions recognition task. Recognition bias was measured as participants’ tendency to over-attribute anger label to other negative facial expressions. Participants’ heart rate was assessed and related to their behavioral performance, as index of their stress-related physiological responses. Results demonstrated the presence of a recognition bias for angry facial expressions among street-children, also pinpointing a similar, although significantly less pronounced, tendency among controls. Participants’ performance was controlled for age, cognitive and educational levels and for naming skills. None of these variables influenced the recognition bias for angry facial expressions. Differently, a significant effect of heart rate on participants’ tendency to use anger label was evidenced. Taken together, these results suggest that childhood exposure to maltreatment experiences amplifies children’s “pre-existing bias” for anger labeling in forced-choice emotion recognition task. Moreover, they strengthen the thesis according to which the recognition bias for angry facial expressions is a manifestation of a functional adaptive mechanism that tunes victim’s perceptive and attentive focus on salient environmental social stimuli.

The Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test forced-choice recognition task: Base-rate data and norms

ABSTRACTThe present study describes a novel Forced-Choice Response (FCR) index for detecting poor effort on the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT). This retrospective study analyzes the performance of 4 groups on the new index: clinically referred patients with suspected dementia, forensic patients identified as not exhibiting adequate effort on other measures of response bias, students who simulated poor effort, and a large normative sample collected in the Gulf State of Oman. Using sensitivity and specificity analyses, the study shows that much like the California Verbal Learning Test-Second Edition FCR index, the RAVLT FCR index misses a proportion of individuals with inadequate effort (low sensitivity), but those who fail this measure are highly likely to be exhibiting poor effort (high specificity). The limitations and benefits of utilizing the RAVLT FCR index in clinical practice are discussed.

You are that smiling guy I met at the party! Socially positive signals foster memory for identities and contexts

The emotional influence of facial expressions on memory is well-known whereas the influence of emotional contextual information on memory for emotional faces is yet to be extensively explored. This study investigated the interplay between facial expression and the emotional surrounding context in affecting both memory for identities (item memory) and memory for associative backgrounds (source memory).At the encoding fearful and happy faces were presented embedded in fear or happy scenes (i.e.: fearful faces in fear-scenes, happy faces in happy-scenes, fearful faces in happy-scenes and happy faces in fear-scenes) and participants were asked to judge the emotional congruency of the face-scene compounds (i.e. fearful faces in fear-scenes and happy faces in happy-scenes were congruent compounds).In the recognition phase, the old faces were intermixed with the new ones: all the faces were presented isolated with a neutral expression. Participants were requested to indicate whether each face had been previously presented (item memory). Then, for each old face the memory for the scene originally compounded with the face was tested by a three alternative forced choice recognition task (source memory).The results evidenced that face identity memory is differently modulated by the valence in congruent face-context compounds with better identity recognition (item memory) for happy faces encoded in happy-scenarios. Moreover, also the memory for the surrounding context (source memory) benefits from the association with a smiling face. Our findings highlight that socially positive signals conveyed by smiling faces may prompt memory for identity and context.

Implicit learning of gaze-contingent events.

In a novel implicit learning task, participants responded to a target stimulus that could appear in one of three locations. Unknown to participants, the location in which the target appeared was probabilistically determined on the basis of the location of eye-gaze immediately prior to the appearance of the target. Participants' response times to the appearance of the target in a high-probability location were faster than when it appeared in a low-probability location, revealing that participants were able to learn these gaze-contingent events. Furthermore, there was no difference in the cuing score between those participants classified as aware or unaware of the contingencies on a subsequent forced-choice recognition task. These data suggest the task involves implicit learning of instrumental (action-outcome) contingencies, which has potential implications for our understanding of gaze-contingent processes in social interaction.

False memories in patients suffering from obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS)

We assessed the propensity for false memories among patients with obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS). Twenty-one patients with OSAS and 21 controls matched for sex, age and education were recruited. At encoding, an adaptation of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm was used to induce false memories. At retrieval, participants completed a forced-choice recognition task to distinguish memories based on verbatim traces from those based on gist traces. When the task encouraged retrieval based on either gist or verbatim traces, the groups performed similarly. However, when the task required retrieval based solely on verbatim traces, OSAS patients exhibited poor discrimination and produced more false memories. Our finding that OSAS leads to an increased propensity to produce false memories is discussed within the framework of both fuzzy-trace theory and activation-monitoring theory.

Facial mimicry interference affects reaction time but not accuracy on an emotion recognition task in children, adolescents and adults

Adults display superior performance on tasks of facial expression recognition when compared to children and adolescents. Embodied simulation strategies contribute to emotion recognition performance in adults. To date however, the use of such strategies in children and adolescents has not been examined. The present study investigated the development of facial expression recognition from an embodied perspective in a sample of 43 children (Mean age = 8.02 years), 35 adolescents (Mean age = 12.69 years) and 39 adults (Mean age = 19.92 years). In a three-alternative forced-choice emotion recognition task, children and adolescents were less accurate at recognising faces displaying sadness than they were at recognising happiness. Adults were equally as accurate at identifying happiness and sadness. All groups were less accurate at recognising fear than recognising both happiness and sadness. In trials in which the emotions were accurately recognised, all age groups were significantly slower at recognising fear t...

Poster #T58 LOWER ANTERIOR CINGULATE VOLUME IN SERIOUSLY VIOLENT MEN WITH ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITY DISORDER OR SCHIZOPHRENIA AND A HISTORY OF CHILDHOOD ABUSE

Three experiments examined whether or not benchmark findings observed in the immediate retrieval from episodic memory are similarly observed over much greater time-scales. Participants were presented with experimentally-controlled lists of words at the very slow rate of one word every hour using an iPhone recall application, RECAPP, which was also used to recall the words in either any order (free recall: Experiments 1 to 3) or the same order as presented (serial recall: Experiment 3). We found strong temporal contiguity effects, weak serial position effects with very limited recency, and clear list length effects in free recall; clear primacy effects and classic error gradients in serial recall; and recency effects in a final two-alternative forced choice recognition task (Experiments 2 and 3). Our findings extend the timescales over which temporal contiguity effects have been observed, but failed to find consistent evidence for strong long-term recency effects with experimenter-controlled stimuli.

The actual and potential use of gestures for communication in aphasia

Background: Two main conflicting positions exist concerning the relationship of gesture and speech. The first claims that gesture and speech constitute a single bimodal production process that leads to an impairment of both communication channels in the case of aphasia. The second accounts for two independent but tightly coordinated processes with a trade-off relationship of gesture and speech. According to the latter assumption, speakers who have aphasia should be able to compensate for their verbal deficiencies through gesture. Studies provide evidence for both accounts. Furthermore, non-verbal capacities like semantic processing or manual praxis have been shown to influence the gestural performance of speakers who have aphasia.Aims: The first aim of the current study was to clarify the relationship between gesture and speech production in aphasia by exploring how much information speakers with aphasia conveyed by gesture versus speech in narrations. The second aim was to evaluate if these speakers make use of their full communicative potential through gesture. We compared gesture use in a verbal narration with gesture use in a silent condition, where participants were not allowed to speak. Furthermore, the influence of language and non-verbal cognitive capacities on gesture was examined.Methods & Procedures: Sixteen participants with varying degrees of aphasia severity retold short video clips in a verbal and a silent condition. In the latter, participants were asked to retell the stories by exclusively using gestures. Subsequently, healthy speakers judged the comprehensibility of gestures and of the spoken expression in the verbal narration in a forced-choice recognition task. Comprehensibility scores were compared between conditions and influencing linguistic and non-verbal factors were evaluated.Outcomes & Results: In the verbal condition, two participants conveyed more information through gesture than through spoken expression. Furthermore, half of the participants could augment gestural comprehensibility in the silent condition. Communicative efficiency of gesture was predicted by the pantomime-to-command test.Conclusions: Findings support the view that gesture and speech have a trade-off relationship resulting from two separate but tightly coordinated communication channels. Not all participants fully exploited their gestural potential in the verbal condition. Some of them produced more informative gestures in the silent condition, where they had been explicitly asked to solely convey messages through gesture. Among different linguistic and non-verbal tests, pantomime of object use, which is a test of limb apraxia, was the main influencing factor on the comprehensibility of co-speech and speech-replacing gesture.

Transcranial direct current stimulation over multiple days improves learning and maintenance of a novel vocabulary

IntroductionRecently, growing interest emerged in the enhancement of human potential by means of non-invasive brain stimulation. In particular, anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS) has been shown to exert beneficial effects on motor and higher cognitive functions. However, the majority of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) studies have assessed effects of single stimulation sessions that are mediated by transient neural modulation. Studies assessing the impact of multiple stimulation sessions on learning that may induce long-lasting behavioural and neural changes are scarce and have not yet been accomplished in the language domain in healthy individuals. MethodThe present study probed the potential of atDCS to enhance language learning over multiple days by employing an explicit word learning paradigm. Forty healthy young participants were randomized to learning with either simultaneous atDCS or sham stimulation (N = 20/group; comparable regarding demographic variables and neurocognitive status). All participants acquired a novel vocabulary (familiar and novel object picture – non-word pairs) over five consecutive days. Two memory tasks (free recall; forced choice recognition tasks) were administered immediately after each training session. A one week follow-up tested the maintenance of learning success. ResultsLinear mixed effects model analysis revealed superior learning during atDCS compared to sham stimulation for both familiar and novel objects. atDCS yielded a steeper learning curve and significantly more pronounced learning at the end of the training during the recall task. During the recognition task, the atDCS group reached ceiling levels earlier and overall learning success was greater. For both tasks, beneficial atDCS effects were maintained during the follow-up assessment. ConclusionsThe present study provides direct evidence that atDCS administered during multiple learning sessions facilitates language learning and that effects are maintained over time. This study contributes important novel information about the extent of stimulation effects in the healthy brain, thereby highlighting the potential of atDCS to enhance language recovery after stroke.

The effect of mood on confidence in false memories

The goal of this study was to examine the effect of mood on suggestibility in the misinformation paradigm. To investigate the relative effects of valence and arousal, as well as affect-specific influences, six mood conditions were included: positive mood with low/high arousal (serene/happy), negative mood with low/high arousal (sad/angry), neutral mood, and a control condition. Participants watched a movie and were exposed to misleading information by means of a narrative. Memory was tested in a surprise forced-choice recognition task, with confidence judgements. The mood induction procedure was shown to be effective. A significant misinformation effect confirmed that participants were misled by the false information provided. Mood did not affect susceptibility to the misinformation effect, but did significantly influence participants’ belief in their false memories. Feeling sad induced the highest confidence ratings. Results are discussed in terms of different problem-solving strategies associated with discrete affective states, and have implications for both legal and clinical settings.