Dr. Lisa D Blalock

The present study investigated the effects of long-term knowledge on backward masking interference in visual working memory (VWM) by varying the similarity of mask stimuli along categorical dimensions. To-be-remembered items and masks were taken from categories controlled for perceptual distinctiveness and distinctiveness in kinds (e.g., there are many kinds of cars and few kinds of coffee mugs). Participants completed a change-detection task in which the memory array consisted of exemplars from either a similar or distinctive category, followed by a mask array of items from the same category (conceptually similar versus conceptually distinct categories), a different category, or no mask. The results over two experiments showed greater interference from conceptually similar masks as compared with the other conditions across stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) conditions, suggesting masking with conceptually similar categories leads to more interference even when masks are shown well after the stimulus. These results have important implications for both the nature and time course of long-term conceptual knowledge influencing VWM, particularly when using complex real-world objects.

This study examines how adding scents to a virtual reality (VR) environment impacts immersion, anxiety levels, and mood. Participants ( N = 40), aged 18–44 years with varying levels of VR technology experience, were randomly assigned to either the control (no scent), congruent (i.e., scents that match the visual scene), or incongruent scent conditions. Participants were assessed on changes to mood, anxiety levels, immersion, and performance on a memory recognition task. Results suggest that while the VR experience significantly reduced anxiety and lifted mood, scent did not significantly affect memory performance or immersion in the VR experience. Future directions for research include exploring the use of scent to engage participants more fully in exposure therapies.

Summative assessment practices reveal whether students ultimately are successful in learning what we teach. In this chapter, we explore current insights about what summative practices reveal about effective teaching and learning in psychology’s international contexts. We define summative practices and distinguish summative strategies from formative approaches, followed by discussing administrative concerns that help determine summative design choices. We offer exemplars at both the course and program levels to optimize gains from assessment for students and teachers alike. We identify the psychometric factors that influence the quality and success of summative designs. We close with an exploration of emerging contemporary issues and some “lessons learned” to optimize gains using summative assessment in psychology contexts.

Flashcards are a popular study tool, however learner decisions can lower their effectiveness. One such decision is whether or not to drop a concept from study. Using objective mastery criteria that adaptively determine when to add or drop an item from study based on performance may improve learning outcomes in flashcard-based tasks. The effectiveness of adaptive flashcard-based learning may also vary based on the cognitive ability of the learner. The current study examined the impact of adaptive mastery instructional strategies on learning butterfly species and whether or not the impact of adaptive mastery varies by cognitive ability. Three learning conditions were compared: a No Add/Drop group (all items remain in the deck throughout study), a Mastery Drop group (start with all items, then drop after an item ismastered), and a Mastery Add group (start with three items, add items once mastered). A pre-post-transfer test design was used both immediately after training and one week later. Participants also completed the symmetry span task and a change detection task to evaluate cognitive ability. Results show the worst overall immediate pre-post learning gains in the Mastery Drop condition compared to the Mastery Add and No Add/Drop conditions which showed similar learning gains. This pattern went away when looking at delayed pre-post learning gains. Cognitive ability did not have any impact on learning performance, suggesting that similar strategies work equally well across all levels of cognitive ability. These results suggest adaptively adding cards is better than dropping them, though if there are no time constraints, leaving all concepts in the deck leads to the best overall learning in the short term.

While visualization can support understanding complex phenomena, their effectiveness might vary with the recipient’s familiarity with both the phenomenon and the visualization. The current study contrasted interpretations of simulated hurricane paths using student populations from a high frequency hurricane area versus no local hurricane risk. Non-expert understanding of trajectory predictions was supported via two visualizations: common cones of uncertainty and novel dynamic ensembles. General patterns of performance were similar across the two groups. Participants from the high hurricane risk area did show narrower decision thresholds, in both common and novel visualization formats. More variability was consistently considered possible when viewing the dynamic ensemble displays. Despite greater likelihood of experiences with variability of trajectories outside of forecast paths, greater familiarity tended towards narrower interpretations of the need for evacuations within the variability possible. The results suggest an advantage of dynamic ensembles in grasping uncertainty even in populations familiar with hurricanes.

Students often use flashcards to study but they do not always use them effectively. In this experiment, we explored different methods of dropping flashcards to inform the development of an adaptive flashcard-based trainer. Forty-seven U.S. Marine Corps students were randomly assigned to one of three groups in an armored vehicle training task. In the Mastery Drop condition, cards were dropped from training based on objective criteria (i.e., accuracy and reaction time). In the Learner Drop condition, cards were dropped based on the learner’s choice. In the No Drop condition, cards were not dropped during training, which served as a control group. Using a pre-test post-test design, results showed that the Learner Drop condition had the lowest learning gains on the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test (two days after training), perhaps because participants were unsuccessful at self-regulating their learning and completed training too quickly. Although the No Drop condition had the highest learning gains on the immediate post-test, the gains significantly decreased on the delayed post-test. In contrast, the Mastery Drop condition maintained consistent learning gains from immediate to delayed post-test. Although the No Drop condition completed more training trials than the Mastery Drop condition, this additional practice did not significantly aid long-term retention. Finally, the No Drop condition had the highest immediate transfer test scores, which involved identifying images of real-world vehicles, but there were no group differences on the delayed transfer test. These results suggest that adaptive flashcard training should incorporate mastery criteria, rather than learner-driven decisions about when to drop flashcards from the deck.

In this study, we examined how spatially informative auditory and tactile cues affected participants' performance on a visual search task while they simultaneously performed a secondary auditory task. Visual search task performance was assessed via reaction time and accuracy. Tactile and auditory cues provided the approximate location of the visual target within the search display. The inclusion of tactile and auditory cues improved performance in comparison to the no-cue baseline conditions. In comparison to the no-cue conditions, both tactile and auditory cues resulted in faster response times in the visual search only (single task) and visual-auditory (dual-task) conditions. However, the effectiveness of auditory and tactile cueing for visual task accuracy was shown to be dependent on task-type condition. Crossmodal cueing remains a viable strategy for improving task performance without increasing attentional load within a singular sensory modality.
Practitioner Summary: Crossmodal cueing with dual-task performance has not been widely explored, yet has practical applications. We examined the effects of auditory and tactile crossmodal cues on visual search performance, with and without a secondary auditory task. Tactile cues aided visual search accuracy when also engaged in a secondary auditory task, whereas auditory cues did not.

Psychomotor assessment tasks have been shown to be predictive of individual performance in aviation training. Predictive relationships have also been shown between performance in training and cognitive measures such as intelligence, processing speed, and spatial reasoning. The present study seeks to better understand the relationships between basic cognitive measures and a modern psychomotor tracking task. Participants completed a matrix reasoning task, a working memory capacity (WMC) span task, two reaction time tasks and a multiphase psychomotor tracking task. Only processing speed measures were correlated with psychomotor tracking tasks. Results support using psychomotor tracking tasks as a selection tool in addition to aptitude testing.

Short-term consolidation is a process that stabilizes visual working memory (VWM) representations so that they are less susceptible to interference. The current study examined this process, specifically if training on specific shapes facilitated the consolidation of visual representations in working memory. Three experiments using two different training tasks compared performance between trained and novel stimuli using the backward masking paradigm. Experiment 1 used a four alternative forced choice task and found an overall advantage for trained shapes as well as evidence for faster consolidation for trained shapes and this cannot be explained by verbal labeling of the trained items (Experiment 3). Experiment 2 used a change-detection training task and showed no overall benefit of training but did show evidence of transfer of training to novel shapes. Taken together, these results show that long-term visual representations can facilitate VWM processing, but the type of training task used impacts the degree to which the long-term representations will affect VWM.

Undergraduate psychology majors are encouraged to engage in research to improve understanding of research methods and increase research skills. This study examines the potential of volunteering as a research participant to increase student perceptions of knowledge and interest in research. Undergraduate students completed a survey regarding the value of research participation. Results showed that across all classifications (i.e., freshmen, sophomore, junior, and senior), students reported higher levels of both understanding research and interest in research after research participation. Given these results, we suggest that including research participation as a part of the psychology undergraduate curriculum can serve as an effective hands-on experience for all undergraduate students.