Aysecan Boduroglu

Cultural Differences in Allocation of Attention in Visual Information Processing

Previous research has shown that when processing visual scenes, Westerners attend to salient objects and East Asians attend to the relationships between focal objects and background elements. It is possible that cross-cultural differences in attentional allocation contribute to these earlier findings. In this article, the authors investigate cultural differences in attentional allocation in two experiments, using a visual change detection paradigm. They demonstrate that East Asians are better than Americans at detecting color changes when a layout of a set of colored blocks is expanded to cover a wider region and worse when it is shrunk. East Asians are also slower than Americans are at detecting changes in the center of the screen. The data suggest that East Asians allocate their attention more broadly than Americans. The authors consider potential factors that may contribute to the development of such attention allocation differences.

Action video game players form more detailed representation of objects

Previous research has clearly demonstrated action video game improvements in visual and spatial attention. The present study investigated action video game related changes in the resolution of representations for both dynamic and stationary objects by comparing video game players (VGP) and non-video game players (NVGP). In a color wheel task (adapted from Zhang & Luck, 2008) where viewers were asked to freely recall the color of briefly presented objects, we found that VGPs were more accurate than NVGPs. Furthermore, in the Multiple Identity Tracking task (Horowitz et al., 2007), we found that VGPs were able to track not only more objects but also maintain identity of tracked objects better than NVGPs. Finally, we demonstrated that VGPs had greater attentional breadth and higher spatial representation resolution.

Effects of spatial configurations on visual change detection: An account of bias changes

In order to determine whether people encode spatial configuration information when encoding visual displays, in four experiments, we investigated whether changes in task-irrelevant spatial configuration information would influence color change detection accuracy. In a change detection task, when objects in the test display were presented in new random locations, rather than identical or different locations preserving the overall configuration, participants were more likely to report that the colors had changed. This consistent bias across four experiments suggested that people encode task-irrelevant spatial configuration along with object information. Experiment 4 also demonstrated that only a low-false-alarm group of participants effectively bound spatial configuration information to object information, suggesting that these types of binding processes are open to strategic influences.

Cross-Cultural Differences in Categorical Memory Errors

Cultural differences occur in the use of categories to aid accurate recall of information. This study investigated whether culture also contributed to false (erroneous) memories, and extended cross-cultural memory research to Turkish culture, which is shaped by Eastern and Western influences. Americans and Turks viewed word pairs, half of which were categorically related and half unrelated. Participants then attempted to recall the second word from the pair in response to the first word cue. Responses were coded as correct, as blanks, or as different types of errors. Americans committed more categorical errors than did Turks, and Turks mistakenly recalled more non-categorically related list words than did Americans. These results support the idea that Americans use categories either to organize information in memory or to support retrieval strategies to a greater extent than Turks and suggest that culture shapes not only accurate recall but also erroneous distortions of memory.

The relationship between executive functions, episodic feeling-of-knowing and confidence judgements

Metamemory processes and executive control may be related, given that both are frontally mediated. However, previous behavioural research has been limited in identifying common processes driving this somewhat weak relationship partly because they mostly relied upon global executive measures and composite scores of executive function (EF). The present study investigated the relationship between specific EFs (task shifting, interference resolution), working memory capacity and feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and confidence judgements (CONF) in an episodic memory task. We found that, of the EFs, only task-switching performance was correlated with FOK accuracy and proposed a shared mechanism that may be at play in both task-switching and FOK judgements. We also demonstrated that interference resolution and episodic memory measures were related, suggesting strategic influences on memory retrieval. Finally, we found a strong consistency in the strength and accuracy of FOK and CONF judgements, possibly due to retrieval-based mechanisms in both types of judgements.

Effects of self-referencing on feeling-of-knowing accuracy and recollective experience

The current research investigated the impact of self-referencing (SR) on feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgements to improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying these metamemory judgements and specifically test the relationship between recollective experiences and FOK accuracy within the accessibility framework FOK judgements are thought to be by-products of the retrieval process and are therefore closely related to memory performance. Because relating information to ones self is one of the factors enhancing memory performance, we investigated the effect of self-related encoding on FOK accuracy and recollective experience. We compared performance on this condition to a separate deep processing condition in which participants reported the frequency of occurrence of pairs of words. Participants encoded pairs of words incidentally, and following a delay interval, they attempted at retrieving each target prompted by its cue. Then, they were re-presented with all cues and asked to provide FOK ratings regarding their likelihood of recognising the targets amongst distractors. Finally, they were given a surprise recognition task in which following each response they identified whether the response was remembered, known or just guessed. Our results showed that only SR at encoding resulted in better memory, higher FOK accuracy and increased recollective experience.

Effects of spatial configurations on the resolution of spatial working memory

Recent research demonstrated that people represent spatial information configurally and preservation of configural cues at retrieval helps memory for spatial locations (Boduroğlu & Shah, Memory & Cognition, 37(8), 1120–1131 2009; Jiang, Olson, & Chun, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26(3), 683–702 2000). The present study investigated the effects of spatial configurations on the resolution of individual location representations. In an open-ended task, participants first studied a set of object locations (three and five locations). Then, in a test display where available configural cues were manipulated, participants were asked to determine the original location of a target object whose color was auditorially cued. The difference between the reported location and the original location was taken as a measure of spatial resolution. In three experiments, we consistently observed that the resolution of spatial representations was facilitated by the preservation of spatial configurations at retrieval. We argue that participants may be using available configural cues in conjunction with the summary representation (e.g., centroid) of the original display in the computation of target locations.

The role of context on boundary extension

ABSTRACT Boundary extension (BE) is a memory error in which observers remember more of a scene than they actually viewed. This error reflects one’s prediction that a scene naturally continues and is driven by scene schema and contextual knowledge. In two separate experiments we investigated the necessity of context and scene schema in BE. In Experiment 1, observers viewed scenes that either contained semantically consistent or inconsistent objects as well as objects on white backgrounds. In both types of scenes and in the no-background condition there was a BE effect; critically, semantic inconsistency in scenes reduced the magnitude of BE. In Experiment 2 when we used abstract shapes instead of meaningful objects, there was no BE effect. We suggest that although scene schema is necessary to elicit BE, contextual consistency is not required.

Culture impacts the magnitude of the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect

ABSTRACT The present study assessed the extent to which culture impacts the emotion-induced memory trade-off effect. This trade-off effect occurs because emotional items are better remembered than neutral ones, but this advantage comes at the expense of memory for backgrounds such that neutral backgrounds are remembered worse when they occurred with an emotional item than with a neutral one. Cultures differ in their prioritisation of focal object versus contextual background information, with Westerners focusing more on objects and Easterners focusing more on backgrounds. Americans, a Western culture, and Turks, an Eastern-influenced culture, incidentally encoded positive, negative, and neutral items placed against neutral backgrounds, and then completed a surprise memory test with the items and backgrounds tested separately. Results revealed a reduced trade-off for Turks compared to Americans. Although both groups exhibited an emotional enhancement in item memory, Turks did not show a decrement in memory for backgrounds that had been paired with emotional items. These findings complement prior ones showing reductions in trade-off effects as a result of task instructions. Here, we suggest that a contextual-focus at the level of culture can mitigate trade-off effects in emotional memory.

Impact of spatial grouping on mean size estimation

People represent summary statistics of visual scenes, but it is not fully clear whether such summary statistics are extracted automatically. To determine whether different levels of summary representation (i.e., at the perceptual-group or the entire-display level) may be formed differently, in two experiments we investigated how people extracted summary statistics for displays consisting of spatially segregated groups. Participants were asked to report the mean sizes of either entire sets or perceptual groups in precue and postcue conditions. There was no precueing advantage in the mean size estimations of entire sets. However, when these precues identified target perceptual groups, participants reported the perceptual-group means more accurately than when postcues were used. In the postcue condition, participants were biased toward the entire-set mean even when they were probed to report the perceptual-group mean. There was also greater bias toward the entire-set mean for more erroneous perceptual-group summaries. These findings suggest that ensemble representations are extracted more efficiently for the whole than for the perceptual parts and that ensemble perception is not a uniform process across perceptual groups and entire sets.