Probability Of Recall Research Articles

Icon Arrays for Medical Risk Communication: Do Icon Type and Color Influence Cardiovascular Risk Perception and Recall?

Icon arrays have been shown to be an effective method for communicating medical risk information. However, in practice, icon arrays used to visualize personal risks often differ in the type and color of the icons. The aim of this study was to examine the influence of icon type and color on the perception and recall of cardiovascular risk, as little is known about how color affects the perception of icon arrays. A total of 866 participants aged 40 to 90 years representative of the German population in terms of gender and age completed an online experiment. Using a 2 × 2 between-subjects design, participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental groups. They received their hypothetical 10-year cardiovascular risk using an icon array that varied by icon type (smiley v. person) and color (black/white v. red/yellow). We measured risk perception, emotional response, intentions of taking action to reduce the risk (e.g., increasing one's physical activity), risk recall, and graph evaluation/trustworthiness, as well as numeracy and graphical literacy. Icon arrays using person icons were evaluated more positively. There was no effect of icons or color on risk perception, emotional response, intentions of taking action to reduce the risk, or trustworthiness of the graph. While more numerate/graphical literate participants were more likely to correctly recall the presented risk estimate, icon type and color did not influence the probability of correct recall. Differences in the perception of the tested icon arrays were rather small, suggesting that they may be equally suitable for communicating medical risks. Further research on the robustness of these results across other colors, icons, and risk domains could add to guidelines on the design of visual aids. The use of different icons and colors did not influence the perception and the probability of recalling the 10-year cardiovascular risk, the emotional response, or the intentions to reduce the presented risk.Icon arrays with person icons were evaluated more positively.There was no evidence to suggest that the effectiveness of the studied icon arrays varied based on individuals' levels of numerical or graphical literacy, nor did it differ between people with or without a history of CVD or on medication for an increased CVD risk.

Value-directed retrieval: The effects of divided attention at encoding and retrieval on memory selectivity and retrieval dynamics.

Value-directed remembering refers to the tendency to best remember important information at the expense of less valuable information, and this ability may draw on strategic attentional processes. In six experiments, we investigated the role of attention in value-directed remembering by examining memory for important information under conditions of divided attention during encoding and retrieval. We presented participants with lists of words of varying objective or subjective value and compared participants completing the study phase under full or divided attention, in addition to participants completing the testing phase under full or divided attention. Results revealed that certain forms of selectivity were impaired when attention was divided during encoding but not when attention was divided during retrieval. Participants initiated recall (i.e., probability of first recall [PFR]) with high-value words as well as with words they subjectively deemed important; these value-mediated PFR retrieval dynamics resisted influence from reduced attentional resources during encoding and retrieval. Thus, while value-directed remembering involves both strategic encoding and retrieval operations, attentional resources during encoding appear crucial for subsequent recollection of valuable and important information; however, attentional resources during retrieval may be less influential in strategic selective memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Hiding operational problems that need to be revealed – a study linking environmental accidents and product recalls

PurposeThis study investigates whether a firm that has experienced an environmental accident (EA) is less likely to conduct a product recall. If true, it would indicate that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. The logic is that both events are operational failures that damage a firm's reputation and share price. Following an EA, a firm may avoid a discretionary product recall to avoid providing additional evidence of operational incapability and social irresponsibility and thereby triggering amplified reputational and market penalties.Design/methodology/approachThe dataset is compiled from several public and private sources and includes 4,355 product recalls, 153 EAs and 120 firms from the industries that often recall products, including automotive, pharma, medical device, food and consumer products. The study timeframe is 2002–2013. Empirical models are evaluated using hazard modeling.FindingsResults show that EAs reduce the probability of a product recall by 32%, on average. Effect sizes are larger when accidents are more frequent or more severe and when recalls are less severe. Through post hoc analyses, the study finds support for the proposed mechanism that firms avoid recalls due to reputational concerns, provides evidence that EAs can have a lengthy impact on recall behavior, and shows that firms are more likely to avoid recalls managed by the CPSC and NHTSA than recalls managed by the FDA.Originality/valuePrior studies in operations management (OM) have not examined the impact of one negative event on another. This study finds that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. While recalling fewer defective products is of concern to consumers and regulators, should EAs influence a broader set of discretionary operational decisions, such as closing/relocating a production facility, outsourcing production or conducting a layoff, study implications increase significantly.

The environmental basis of memory.

Memory should make more available things that are more likely to be needed. Across multiple environmental domains, it has been shown that such a system would match qualitatively the memory effects involving repetition, delay, and spacing (Schooler & Anderson, 2017). To obtain data of sufficient size to study how detailed patterns of past appearance predict probability of being needed again, we examined the patterns with which words appear in large two data sets: tweets from popular sources and comments on popular subreddits. The two data sets show remarkably similar statistics, which are also consistent with earlier, smaller studies of environmental statistics. None of a candidate set of mathematical models of memory do well at predicting the observed patterns in these environments. A new model of human memory based on the environmental model proposed by Anderson and Milson (1989) did better at predicting the environmental data and a wide range of behavioral studies that measure memory availability by probability of recall and speed of retrieval. A critical variable in this model was range, the span of time over which an item occurs, which was discovered in mining the environmental data. These results suggest that theories of memory can be guided by mining of the statistical structure of the environment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Price and quality competition while envisioning a quality-related product recall

Many product recalls are caused by quality-related product failures. When such recalls occur, the effects may not only be limited to the firm selling the product but also extend to competing firms in the category. This paper analyzes quality and pricing strategies for competing firms facing the risk of a severe quality-related recall making the product hazardous and leading to its removal from the market. We develop a two-stage Nash game where the probability of recall depends on the firms’ chosen quality investments, and either firm can experience a recall. We consider a utility-based model where consumers’ sensitivity to price and quality can change following the recall. Our results indicate that the competitor should lower its price after a recall if consumers’ price sensitivity changes enough and may increase or keep its price the same otherwise. Surprisingly, considering the risk of a recall does not always lead firms to enhance their product quality. If the change in consumer quality sensitivity is low enough, firms adopt an inferior product quality level than when they overlook the product recall risk, even if consumer quality sensitivity increases and/or consumer price sensitivity decreases after the recall. These results can help companies plan their pricing and quality decisions in competitive industries with potential product quality failures leading to recalls.

General knowledge norms: Updated and expanded for German.

The general knowledge questions introduced by Nelson and Narens (Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19(3), 338-368, 1980) have been a valuable research tool in various areas of cognitive research. We translated, updated, and expanded the set of questions for German. We present a total set of 356 general knowledge questions with their recall probability as well as metacognitive measures-confidence and peer judgments-based on a university student sample (N = 512). Furthermore, we present response latencies, pairwise correlations between recall probability and metacognitive judgments as well as the most common commission errors. These general knowledge questions can be used in studies with German speaking participants in a broad range of research fields, such as memory, illusory truth, misinformation, and metacognitive processes.

Association Between Regulatory Submission Characteristics and Recalls of Medical Devices Receiving 510(k) Clearance

Most regulated medical devices enter the US market via the 510(k) regulatory submission pathway, wherein manufacturers demonstrate that applicant devices are "substantially equivalent" to 1 or more "predicate" devices (legally marketed medical devices with similar intended use). Most recalled medical devices are 510(k) devices. To examine the association between characteristics of predicate medical devices and recall probability for 510(k) devices. In this exploratory cross-sectional analysis of medical devices cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between 2003 and 2018 via the 510(k) regulatory submission pathway, linear probability models were used to examine associations between a 510(k) device's recall status and characteristics of its predicate medical devices. Public documents for the 510(k) medical devices were collected using FDA databases. A text extraction algorithm was applied to identify predicate medical devices cited in 510(k) regulatory submissions. Algorithm-derived metadata were combined with 2003-2020 FDA recall data. Citation of predicate medical devices with certain characteristics in 510(k) regulatory submissions, including the total number of predicate medical devices cited by the applicant device, the age of the predicate medical devices, the lack of similarity of the predicate medical devices to the applicant device, and the recall status of the predicate medical devices. Class I or class II recall of a 510(k) medical device between its FDA regulatory clearance date and December 31, 2020. The sample included 35 176 medical devices, of which 4007 (11.4%) were recalled. The applicant devices cited a mean of 2.6 predicate medical devices, with mean ages of 3.6 years and 7.4 years for the newest and oldest, respectively, predicate medical devices. Of the applicant devices, 93.9% cited predicate medical devices with no ongoing recalls, 4.3% cited predicate medical devices with 1 ongoing class I or class II recall, 1.0% cited predicate medical devices with 2 ongoing recalls, and 0.8% cited predicate medical devices with 3 or more ongoing recalls. Applicant devices citing predicate medical devices with 3 or more ongoing recalls were significantly associated with a 9.31-percentage-point increase (95% CI, 2.84-15.77 percentage points) in recall probability compared with devices without ongoing recalls of predicate medical devices, or an 81.2% increase in recall probability relative to the mean recall probability. A 1-SD increase in the total number of predicate medical devices cited by the applicant device was significantly associated with a 1.25-percentage-point increase (95% CI, 0.62-1.87 percentage points) in recall probability, or an 11.0% increase in recall probability relative to the mean recall probability. A 1-SD increase in the newest age of a predicate medical device was significantly associated with a 0.78-percentage-point decrease (95% CI, 1.29-0.30 percentage points) in recall probability, or a 6.8% decrease in recall probability relative to the mean recall probability. This exploratory cross-sectional study of 510(k) medical devices cleared by the FDA between 2003 and 2018 demonstrated significant associations between 510(k) submission characteristics and recalls of medical devices. Further research is needed to understand the implications of these associations.

Memorability of Word-Pairs: Developing a Method for Generation of Calibrated Stimulus Sets for Repeat, Remote, Automated Testing.

Verbal-Paired Associates (VPA) is widely used measure of memory. However, the memorability characteristics of the word-pairs are not well-understood, and the task currently suffers from ceiling effects (Uttl et al. 2002). Here we describe a data driven process for word-pair selection, yielding precise estimates of memorability at the item and list level. This allows tuning of task difficulty to participant characteristics, and the development of many well-calibrated parallel forms for longitudinal automated testing. For model development we recruited a total of 185 participants aged 18-40 years without psychiatric diagnoses, chronic medication, or historical head injury using the Prolific online testing platform. We used Cambridge Cognition's NeuroVocalix software to automatically deliver and score Learning and Recall phases of VPA. In a series of experiments, we explored the contributions of item-level, pair-level, list-level, and study-level properties to the probability of subsequent recall. At the item-level, we considered word-concreteness and word-frequency. To capture the semantic relatedness of word-pairs, we trained the GloVe neural network model (Pennington et al, 2014) to predict the co-occurrence of words from a corpus of transcribed English. This yields high-dimensional vectors, from which we could calculate the semantic cosine distance between items in a word-pair. At the list-level we considered order effects (primacy and recency), and at the study level we considered practice effects. Data from these experiments was combined in a linear mixed effects logistic regression model to yield predicted memorability estimates for new sets of word-pairs. These test sets were then deployed with a cohort of 43 older adults (aged 55 years and upwards) to evaluate this prediction. Modelling showed significant contributions of item-level, pair-level, list-level, and study-level factors to probability of recall. When applied to the new set of words and tested with our older cohort, we found that this model-derived measure was a robust predictor of recall (r = .931, p < 10-6 ). We have a robust method of predicting, for a given word-pair, what the likelihood of recall will be. This enables the generation of sets of word-pairs with well-understood memorability characteristics, for use in automated, repeat, remote assessment.

Memorability of Word‐Pairs: Developing a Method for Generation of Calibrated Stimulus Sets for Repeat, Remote, Automated Testing

AbstractBackgroundVerbal‐Paired Associates (VPA) is widely used measure of memory. However, the memorability characteristics of the word‐pairs are not well‐understood, and the task currently suffers from ceiling effects (Uttl et al. 2002). Here we describe a data driven process for word‐pair selection, yielding precise estimates of memorability at the item and list level. This allows tuning of task difficulty to participant characteristics, and the development of many well‐calibrated parallel forms for longitudinal automated testing.MethodFor model development we recruited a total of 185 participants aged 18–40 years without psychiatric diagnoses, chronic medication, or historical head injury using the Prolific online testing platform. We used Cambridge Cognition’s NeuroVocalix software to automatically deliver and score Learning and Recall phases of VPA.In a series of experiments, we explored the contributions of item‐level, pair‐level, list‐level, and study‐level properties to the probability of subsequent recall. At the item‐level, we considered word‐concreteness and word‐frequency. To capture the semantic relatedness of word‐pairs, we trained the GloVe neural network model (Pennington et al, 2014) to predict the co‐occurrence of words from a corpus of transcribed English. This yields high‐dimensional vectors, from which we could calculate the semantic cosine distance between items in a word‐pair. At the list‐level we considered order effects (primacy and recency), and at the study level we considered practice effects.Data from these experiments was combined in a linear mixed effects logistic regression model to yield predicted memorability estimates for new sets of word‐pairs. These test sets were then deployed with a cohort of 43 older adults (aged 55 years and upwards) to evaluate this prediction.ResultModelling showed significant contributions of item‐level, pair‐level, list‐level, and study‐level factors to probability of recall. When applied to the new set of words and tested with our older cohort, we found that this model‐derived measure was a robust predictor of recall (r = .931, p &lt; 10−6).ConclusionWe have a robust method of predicting, for a given word‐pair, what the likelihood of recall will be. This enables the generation of sets of word‐pairs with well‐understood memorability characteristics, for use in automated, repeat, remote assessment.

Object-based visual working memory: an object benefit for equidistant memory items presented within simple contours

Previous research has shown that more information can be stored in visual working memory (VWM) when multiple items belong to the same object. Here, in four experiments, we investigated the object effect on memory for spatially equidistant features by manipulating simple, task-irrelevant contours that combined these features. In Experiments 1, 3, and, 4, three grating orientations, and in Experiment 2, one color and two orientations, were presented simultaneously to be memorized. Mixture modeling was applied to estimate both the precision and the guess rates of recall errors. Overall results showed that two target features were remembered more accurately when both were part of the same object. Further analysis showed that the probability of recall increased in particular when both features were extracted from the same object. In Experiment 2, we found that the object effect was greater for features from orthogonal dimensions, but this came at the cost of lower memory precision. In Experiment 3, when we kept the locations of the features perfectly consistent over trials so that the participants could attend to these locations rather than the contour, we still found object benefits. Finally, in Experiment 4 when we manipulated the temporal order of the object and the memory features presentations, it was confirmed that the object benefit is unlikely to stem from the strategical usage of object information. These results suggested that the object benefit arises automatically, likely at an early perceptual level.

Why Ebbinghaus’ savings method from 1885 is a very ‘pure’ measure of memory performance

This paper analyzes the savings measures introduced by Ebbinghaus in his monograph of 1885. He measured memory retention in terms of the learning time saved in subsequent study trials relative to the time spent on the first learning trial. We prove mathematically that Ebbinghaus’ savings measure is independent of initial encoding strength, learning time, and relearning times. This theoretical model-free result demonstrates that savings is in a sense a very ‘pure’ measure of memory. Considering savings as an old-fashioned and unwieldy measure of memory may be unwarranted given this interesting property, which hitherto seems to have been overlooked. We contrast this with often used forgetting functions based on recall probability, such as the power function, showing that we should expect a lower forgetting rate in the initial portion of the curve for material that has been learned less well.

Cumulative Probability of False-Positive Results After 10 Years of Screening With Digital Breast Tomosynthesis vs Digital Mammography

Breast cancer screening with digital breast tomosynthesis may decrease false-positive results compared with digital mammography. To estimate the probability of receiving at least 1 false-positive result after 10 years of screening with digital breast tomosynthesis vs digital mammography in the US. An observational comparative effectiveness study with data collected prospectively for screening examinations was performed between January 1, 2005, and December 31, 2018, at 126 radiology facilities in the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium. Analysis included 903 495 individuals aged 40 to 79 years. Data analysis was conducted from February 9 to September 7, 2021. Screening modality, screening interval, age, and Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System breast density. Cumulative risk of at least 1 false-positive recall for further imaging, short-interval follow-up recommendation, and biopsy recommendation after 10 years of annual or biennial screening with digital breast tomosynthesis vs digital mammography, accounting for competing risks of breast cancer diagnosis and death. In this study of 903 495 women, 2 969 055 nonbaseline screening examinations were performed with interpretation by 699 radiologists. Mean (SD) age of the women at the time of the screening examinations was 57.6 (9.9) years, and 58% of the examinations were in individuals younger than 60 years and 46% were performed in women with dense breasts. A total of 15% of examinations used tomosynthesis. For annual screening, the 10-year cumulative probability of at least 1 false-positive result was significantly lower with tomosynthesis vs digital mammography for all outcomes: 49.6% vs 56.3% (difference, -6.7; 95% CI, -7.4 to -6.1) for recall, 16.6% vs 17.8% (difference, -1.1; 95% CI, -1.7 to -0.6) for short-interval follow-up recommendation, and 11.2% vs 11.7% (difference, -0.5; 95% CI, -1.0 to -0.1) for biopsy recommendation. For biennial screening, the cumulative probability of a false-positive recall was significantly lower for tomosynthesis vs digital mammography (35.7% vs 38.1%; difference, -2.4; 95% CI, -3.4 to -1.5), but cumulative probabilities did not differ significantly by modality for short-interval follow-up recommendation (10.3% vs 10.5%; difference, -0.1; 95% CI, -0.7 to 0.5) or biopsy recommendation (6.6% vs 6.7%; difference, -0.1; 95% CI, -0.5 to 0.4). Decreases in cumulative probabilities of false-positive results with tomosynthesis vs digital mammography were largest for annual screening in women with nondense breasts (differences for recall, -6.5 to -12.8; short-interval follow-up, 0.1 to -5.2; and biopsy recommendation, -0.5 to -3.1). Regardless of modality, cumulative probabilities of false-positive results were substantially lower for biennial vs annual screening (overall recall, 35.7 to 38.1 vs 49.6 to 56.3; short-interval follow-up, 10.3 to 10.5 vs 16.6 to 17.8; and biopsy recommendation, 6.6 to 6.7 vs 11.2 to 11.7); older vs younger age groups (eg, among annual screening in women ages 70-79 vs 40-49, recall, 39.8 to 47.0 vs 60.8 to 68.0; short-interval follow-up, 13.3 to 14.2 vs 20.7 to 20.9; and biopsy recommendation, 9.1 to 9.3 vs 13.2 to 13.4); and women with entirely fatty vs extremely dense breasts (eg, among annual screening in women aged 50-59 years, recall, 29.1 to 36.3 vs 58.8 to 60.4; short-interval follow-up, 8.9 to 11.6 vs 19.5 to 19.8; and biopsy recommendation, 4.9 to 8.0 vs 15.1 to 15.3). In this comparative effectiveness study, 10-year cumulative probabilities of false-positive results were lower on digital breast tomosynthesis vs digital mammography. Biennial screening interval, older age, and nondense breasts were associated with larger reductions in false-positive probabilities than screening modality.

I Don’t “Recall”: The Decision to Delay Innovation Launch to Avoid Costly Product Failure

Innovations embody novel features or cutting-edge components aimed at delivering desired customer benefits. Oftentimes, however, we observe the need to recall new products shortly after their introduction. Indeed, a firm may rush an innovation to market in an attempt to pre-empt rivals and capture early demand, yet in so doing forgo rigorous testing, thus subjecting itself to the risk of a product recall. To shed light on this phenomenon, we construct a dynamic game-theoretic model in which firms plan to launch their innovations. Each firm must decide whether to conduct time-consuming quality assurance testing, which ensures no defects or safety problems but delays the launch. If the innovation is released without such testing and a recall occurs, the firm incurs pecuniary costs and faces future reputation damage in marketing the recalled innovation. We investigate the strategic forces behind firms’ testing and launch-timing decisions in this context. The analysis uncovers a novel mechanism, linked to the possibility of a rival going bankrupt, that causes firms to become more inclined to rush to market and take on the risk of product failure even as the negative consequences of a recall increase. The results further demonstrate how firms’ desire to forgo testing exhibits an inverse-U pattern as consumers become more heterogeneous and how competitive forces may induce both firms to forgo testing, although the resulting profits are lower than had they both committed to conduct testing. The framework is extended to examine how product recall considerations affect firms’ research and development (R&amp;D) investments. Although, in general, post-innovation product failure discourages R&amp;D effort, we identify conditions under which an increase in the recall probability stimulates firms to innovate. Several model extensions are presented, and managerial implications are discussed. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4303 .

The influence of attentional biases on multiple working memory precision parameters for children and adults.

Working memory (WM) improves dramatically during childhood but what drives this improvement is not well understood. One influential account thus far has proposed a simple increase in storage capacity. However, recent findings have shown that multiple factors, such as differences in the ability to use attention to enhance the maintenance of internal representations, as well as changes in WM precision, also interact in influencing age-related differences in WM capacity. We aimed to examine whether and how the developing ability to orient attention retrospectively to internal representations influences WM precision. To do so, we employed a paradigm that combined the continuous-recall WM task with the partial-cueing report task. Specifically, 7-year-olds and young adults were asked to reproduce the colour of a probe item in a colour wheel. The initial memory array, which included the probe item, could be followed by a spatial cue that directed participants' attention to a location in the memory array (a 'retro-cue'). Results showed that attentional biases engendered by retro-cues facilitated overall precision compared to uncued baseline performance, for both age groups, although to a smaller degree in 7-year-olds compared to adults. Importantly, investigation of modelling parameters suggested that children demonstrate lower representational quality of items in WM but that spatial attentional cues improve overall precision by increasing the probability of target storage, maintenance and recall, and by reducing misbinding errors as well as random guessing, not by changing representational quality. These results add significantly to our knowledge on the relation between retrospective attention and WM development.

Past and Present Subjective Well-being: the Role of Contrast and Memory

This study is an attempt to analyse the interrelationships between current, past and expected future subjective well-being (SWB) through the intermediating role of memory using the National Income Dynamics Study panel dataset for South Africa. The contribution of this study is in exploring the role of contrast (intertemporal and social) in determining (a) the current levels of SWB and (b) the drivers of recall bias, within a causal framework in the context of a country with low average SWB and high SWB inequality. The results indicate significant presence of hedonic adaptation and reveals past and future contrast as important correlates of current subjective well-being. In addition, a perceived improvement in current happiness from the past is associated with higher levels of current SWB, highlighting the intermediating role of memory. Memory, however, is observed to be biased with only 42% accuracy. Higher levels of current subjective well-being are found to enhance the probability of correct recall of the past. An overall improvement bias is evident among those in the lower segment of the SWB distribution. The results reinforce the hypothesised simultaneous relationships between current SWB, intertemporal contrast and recall behaviour. Furthermore, the differences in our findings from European studies emphasize the relevance of context in driving these relationships.

Animate and Inanimate Words Demonstrate Equivalent Retrieval Dynamics Despite the Occurrence of the Animacy Advantage.

People demonstrate a memory advantage for animate (living) concepts over inanimate (nonliving) concepts in a variety of memory tasks, including free recall, but we do not know the mechanism(s) that produces this effect. We compared the retrieval dynamics (serial-position effects, probability of first recall, output order, categorical clustering, and recall contiguity) of animate and inanimate words in a typical free recall task to help elucidate this effect. Participants were more likely to recall animate than inanimate words, but we found few, if any, differences in retrieval dynamics by word type. The animacy advantage was obtained across serial position, including occurring in both the primacy and recency regions of the lists. Participants were equally likely to recall an animate or inanimate word first on the tests and did not prioritize recalling words of one type earlier in retrieval or demonstrate strong clustering by animacy at recall. Participants showed some greater contiguity of recall for inanimate words, but this outcome ran counter to the animacy effect. Together, the results suggest that the animacy advantage stems from increased item-specific memory strength for animate over inanimate words and is unlikely to stem from intentional or strategic differences in encoding or retrieval by word type, categorical strategies, or differences in temporal organization. Although the present results do not directly support or refute any current explanations for the animacy advantage, we suggest that measures of retrieval dynamics can help to inspire or constrain future accounts for this effect and can be incorporated into relevant hypothesis testing.

Assessing the robustness of feature-based selection in visual working memory.

Visual working memory (VWM) is a capacity-limited system to temporarily maintain visual information. Attending to information in VWM conveys a benefit, as revealed by the retro-cue effect. For example, when the location of one memory item is retro-cued during VWM maintenance, memory accuracy for that item improves. Attentional selection in VWM can also be feature-based: One feature (e.g., shape) may serve as a retrieval cue for another feature (e.g., color) of the same item. Here, we assessed the scope of feature retro-cue benefits with continuous report of colors and orientations. Across six experiments, we observed robust feature retro-cue benefits with manipulations of the cued and recalled feature dimensions, as well as against different baselines controlling for temporal and interference effects. Furthermore, we replicated with continuous report the hallmark of external feature-based attention-concurrent selection of multiple items. Mixture modeling indicated that feature retro-cue benefits increased recall probability and sometimes precision, paralleling findings on spatial attention. Importantly, cuing multiple items did not produce costs, indicating that concurrently attended items did not interfere with each other. Lastly, manipulation constraining spatial location to a single position suggested that feature retro-cue benefits persist even when spatial context is not singular, but take longer to emerge. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Categorical distinctiveness constrains the labeling benefit in visual working memory

• Visual working memory (VWM) has a limited capacity to store visual information. • Labels categorize the visual stimuli, increasing categorical representations in VWM. • Labeling also increases continuous information about the stimulus in VWM. • The increase in continuous information depends on the distinctiveness of the labels. • Labels that are used to categorize many stimuli, reduce memory precision. Describing our visual experiences improves their retention in visual working memory, yielding a labeling benefit. Labels vary, however, in categorical distinctiveness: they can be applied broadly or narrowly to categorize stimuli. Does categorical distinctiveness constrain the labeling benefit? Here, we varied the number of terms used to label continuously varying colors (Experiment 1) and shapes (Experiment 2). Participants memorized four items, and later recalled them using a continuous color or shape wheel. During study, participants articulated “bababa” or labeled the items with two, four, or their preferred term. Recall error decreased with increases in the number of labels. Mixture modeling showed that labeling increased the probability of recall. Memory precision, however, varied with categorical distinctiveness: broad labels reduced precision, whereas categorically distinct labels increased precision compared to no-labels. In sum, in-the-moment labeling activates categorical knowledge that facilitates the storage of visual details. Data and analysis scripts are available at: https://osf.io/mqg4k/

Contract Design in a Supply Chain With Product Recall and Demand Uncertainty

The product recall is becoming a challenging issue in supply chain management, and both suppliers and manufacturers are motivated to exert recall efforts to improve supply chain performance. Considering a supply chain composed of one supplier and one manufacturer with product recalls and demand uncertainty, we investigate the contract design by integrating the revenue sharing contract with three cost sharing policies, namely, fixed-rate cost sharing (Contract F), linear cost sharing (Contract L), and threshold-based cost sharing (Contract T), to coordinate the production quantity and recall efforts. Results show that cost sharing could improve the product recall probability and supply chain profits, but only Contract T can coordinate the supply chain in both production quantity and recall efforts. Moreover, the cost sharing rate in Contract T first decreases and then increases as the recall cost increases. When the recall cost is small (large), Contract T (Contract F) is optimal for the manufacturer. In contrast to our intuition, we find Contract L could overmotivate supply chain members to exert a recall effort that is greater than the first-best when the cost coefficient of recall efforts is large enough. However, demand uncertainty will mitigate the impact of product recalls on motivating recall efforts.

A compressibility account of the color-sharing bonus in working memory.

It has been established that objects sharing color in a visual display can boost working memory. The capacity to encode singletons particularly benefits from the repetition of colors encoded as perceptual groups. We manipulated the algorithmic complexity of visual displays to test whether compressibility of information could account for the color-sharing bonus. This study used a free recall working memory task in which the participants were shown displays of 2 to 8 color items. We examined the influence of set size, complexity, number of same-color clusters and amount of color redundancy. The results showed that the probability of correct recall of the pattern and the proportion of similarity between the pattern and the response decreased with an increase of each manipulated variable, except for color redundancy in terms of probability of correct recall. The model performance of complexity did not differ from that of clusters, but complexity was found more accurate than either set size or color redundancy. The results also showed that similar items were more often recalled adjacently, and complexity correlated strongly with the number of extra color repetitions in the response, suggesting that more complex patterns encouraged the use of information compression. Moreover, color repetitions were more often recalled first and the probability of correct recall for singletons and sub-patterns could be predicted by the compressibility measure. We discuss the potential advantage of using compressibility measures to capture the effects of regularities in visual patterns, in particular to refine analysis of the color-sharing bonus.