Confessions are routinely offered as evidence and are potentially damning to defendants. However, not all confessions are truthful. Suspects can be coerced into falsely confessing to crimes that they did not commit, and in a subset of cases, the confessors come to genuinely believe they committed the crimes and sometimes create vivid ‘memories’ of their activities. Against the backdrop of a mod...

Recent literature has demonstrated the usefulness of fitness and computer-based cognitive training as a means to enhance cognition and brain function. However, it is unclear whether the combination of fitness and cognitive training that results from years of extensive sport training also results in superior performance on tests of cognitive processes. In this study we examine, in a quantitative...

The relation of linguistics to psychology is [...] implied in the basic position of the latter among the mental sciences. [...] As language is in its forms the least deliberate of human activities, the one in which rationalizing explanations are most grossly out of place, linguistics is, of all the mental sciences, most in need of guidance at every step by the best psychologic insight available...

Early adolescents recounted experiences when they felt ‘especially good’ or ‘especially bad’ about themselves in the past year. Consistent with prior research using adult participants, negative memories focused primarily on social themes, whereas positive memories also prominently included achievement themes. Girls described more social themes than did boys for both positive and negative memori...

Neurology. Oxford University Press, New York Moody S L, Wise S P, di Pellegrino G, Zipser D 1998 A model that accounts for activity in primate frontal cortex during a delayed matching-to-sample task. Journal of Neuroscience 18(1): 399–410 Olson C R, Gettner N 1995 Object-centered direction selectivity in the supplementary eye field of the macaque monkey. Science 269: 985–8 Petersen S E, Fox P T...

The spacing effect—that is, the benefit of spacing learning events apart rather than massing them together—has been demonstrated in hundreds of experiments, but is not well known to educators or learners. I investigated the spacing effect in the realistic context of flashcard use. Learners often divide flashcards into relatively small stacks, but compared to a large stack, small stacks decrease...

After previously encoding lists of related words (e.g. bed, rest, awake, etc.) associated with one critical word (e.g. sleep), participants frequently falsely recognize critical words as having been previously presented. Past research indicates that warning participants of this memory illusion can reduce false recognition of critical words. However, the memory processes responsible for this red...

Two experiments examined the testing effect with open-book tests, in which students view notes and textbooks while taking the test, and closed-book tests, in which students take the test without viewing notes or textbooks. Subjects studied prose passages and then restudied or took an openor closed-book test. Taking either kind of test, with feedback, enhanced long-term retention relative to con...

Students learned toy assembly sequences presented in picture, text, or one of three multimedia formats, and completed order verification, recall, and object assembly tasks. Experiment 1 compared repetitious (i.e. dual format presentations each conveying similar information) with complementary (i.e. dual format presentations each conveying different information) multimedia presentations. Repetit...

Memory for the emotions evoked by past events guides people’s ongoing behaviour and future plans. Evidence indicates that emotions are represented in at least two forms in memory with different properties. Explicit memories of emotion can be retrieved deliberately, in a flexible manner, across situations. Implicit memories of emotion are brought to mind automatically by cues resembling the cont...