Recall

When you put it that way, I’ll remember it! Framing effects on memory for important information

Which steak would you prefer: one that is 25% fat, or one that is 75% lean? If you’re like the participants in a classic study by Irwin Levin, you’d pick the latter. This finding represents a framing effect, where equivalent information presented in different ways influences behavior. In this example, the steak labeled with a […]

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What do TikToks, the Macarena, and memory have in common?

TikToks are short videos that typically show a set of movements. Doing the Macarena requires remembering a sequence of movements to make up the dance. Our communications are full of hand gestures and body movements. These “co-speech” hand gestures are meaningful and often relate to the content of our speech. Co-speech gestures enhance the understanding of a listener, help a […]

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Being mindful about memory: Mindfulness can boost memory performance

Have you paid any mind to the growing popularity of mindfulness? It seems everywhere I look there is a new promotion or app touting the benefits of this meditative practice. But what exactly is mindfulness and how might it benefit us? Mindfulness is a state of being that is characterized by a nonreactive awareness of […]

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Why we don’t serve “cheese and macaroni”: Investigating directionality of relationships between words

We have become experts at remembering pieces of information that share no natural relationships. For example, your friend may have just started a new job, and it is easy for you to remember where she works because the company’s logo and her favorite color are both red. When thinking about remembering two pieces of information, […]

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Context is everything—but what is context? Disentangling the “what” from the “when”

An old but common adage is that “context is everything”, and while this aphorism can be applied to many different topics, it has been especially significant in theories of memory. Even in early psychological research, theorists believed that having knowledge and memory for an item meant connecting it to the “context which the world provides”, […]

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Sherlock Holmes and Mrs. H____n: The mystery of diminishing-cues retrieval practice

The idea of enhanced or superior memory is a theme that has long fascinated cognitive researchers and society in general. It has been the theme of various novels, films, and probably an equal number of academic journal articles. The single question motivating both works of fact and fiction is, what techniques might an individual employ […]

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Chunks amidst the ruins of Giuoco Pianissimo: Superior expert memory for random domain-relevant material

In 1974, philosopher Thomas Nagel famously asked, what’s it like to be a bat? I am not sure that this question has been answered satisfactorily, so maybe we should focus on a slightly more circumscribed variant of the same question: What’s it like to be a chess grand master? Cognitive scientists have been addressing this […]

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When HOOK lets you remember the voice of BOOK: generation effects for context

Get ready to think of some antonyms. Ready? Now fill in the blanks: HOT-C____, SHORT-T_____, and LEFT-R____. Decades of memory research have converged on the strong conclusion that your memory for cold, tall, and right will be better after you generate them in response to the antonym cues than if you had merely read those […]

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When South Butt makes you think of buying North Face

Imagine standing in an isle of cereals and you want to find THE cereal that has been advertised to you as exceptionally yummy and at the same time, exceptionally healthy—and all that for a great price! What will influence your decision regarding what cereal box you’ll eventually place into your cart, and how could companies […]

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