In this narrative theoretical review, I take a closer look at the last 40 years of research on the cuing of attention and the often-related inhibition of return in the spatial senses of vision, audition, and touch. A distinction is made between perceptual versus response-based facilitation and inhibition in these two putatively related phenomena. Ray Klein has long been interested in the phenomenon of inhibition of return, though mostly from a unisensory visual perspective. This review highlights how examining these attentional and response-related phenomena outside of the visual modality (e.g., in audition and in touch), as well as crossmodally, and in a multisensory context, has helped to further our understanding of both empirical phenomena. The putative existence of attentional orienting and inhibition of return-like inhibitory phenomena outside of the spatial domain, as when attentional selection relates to a specific stimulus dimension (such as hue), semantic category, or even sensory modality, is also discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Although gaze information is important for human interactions, recent studies show that in natural exchanges, mutual face-to-face looks occur relatively infrequently, on less than 15% of interaction time. In the present study, we conducted two dyadic interaction experiments utilizing dual mobile eye-tracking eyeglasses to examine if the prevalence of mutual face-to-face looks may be affected by interactive context. In Experiment 1, we strengthened the interactive context by measuring looking behaviours in dyads of friends. In Experiment 2, we weakened the interactive context by measuring looking behaviours in dyads of strangers interacting under facial visual occlusion. In both experiments, we found that mutual looks continued to occur rarely, on 7% of interaction time in Experiment 1 and 4% of interaction time in Experiment 2. Thus, changes in the interactive context appear not to affect the overall low prevalence of mutual looking in natural interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

As the aging population grows, it is important to investigate factors that protect against cognitive decline. Bilingualism is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive reserve. However, the research on the influence of bilingualism and related variables (e.g., age of second language [L2] acquisition and language usage) on episodic memory remains sparse. We investigate the role of L2 age of acquisition, proficiency, and usage on verbal and nonverbal episodic memory in middle-aged and older adult bilingual speakers of English and French. Accuracy on a verbal memory task was negatively associated with L2 usage at work. People with lower L2 proficiency and usage at home performed better on a nonverbal memory task in terms of accuracy and reaction time, respectively. Earlier L2 acquisition was associated with higher accuracy on the nonverbal memory task. We hypothesize that greater L2 engagement leads to increased effort to inhibit nonrelevant stimuli, impeding episodic memory retrieval, and the effort required is lower with earlier L2 acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Prediction error minimization and embodied cognition theorists posit that abstract self-representations are predicated on models of the self as an embodied agent. While the view of continuity between conceptual and bodily self is common to several frameworks in psychology and cognitive science, empirical tests of this relationship are scant. However, a recent study by Krol et al., (see record 2020-26839-011) found that people low in self-concept clarity (SCC) were more vulnerable to the rubber-hand illusion-in particular, in the asynchronous stroking condition, where the illusion is unwarranted. This study provides preliminary evidence for an association between self-concept strength and vulnerability to illusions regarding the bodily self. Here we sought to replicate this finding in an existing study that assessed SCC and the rubber-hand illusion. Using linear mixed-effects modelling, we found that lower SCC was again associated with greater embodiment of the rubber hand in the asynchronous condition; moreover, we also observed this effect in the synchronous stroking condition, providing additional evidence for the role of SCC in vulnerability to bodily illusions. We discuss the implications of this finding for theories in social cognitive neuroscience. Finally, as the study we drew upon to test the replication effect involved the administration of intranasal oxytocin, we also took this opportunity to replicate a previously observed effect of oxytocin on embodiment of the rubber hand; this effect, however, did not replicate, although methodological difference may have played a role. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We search for objects every day using touch alone, as in reaching for keys in our pockets or reaching for pens in our desk drawers. In such contexts, we engage in a "free-range" haptic search. The objects we feel can be moved freely and our hands can move freely. Free-range haptic search has been little studied, so we developed a laboratory task to do so. We invited college student to feel for a plastic pipe of fixed length among a variable number of uniformly shorter or longer plastic pipes, giving half of our participants informative precues (pictures showing the number of distractors and size difference between the target and distractors) and the other half uninformative precues (a simple "go-ahead" message). The informative precues boosted efficiency only when the target was much larger than the distractors. The result suggests that participants could take advantage of the informative precues to opt for a quick sweep of the search area to pick out the object that would "stick out like a sore thumb." Otherwise, they would resort to that strategy with a lower probability. Because our task has high ecological validity, we can recommend that informative advance information may help haptically impaired individuals search more efficiently. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Mathematical orthography comprises knowledge of mathematical symbols and the conventions for combining those symbols. For example, in the expression x3 + 3x, the positions of the symbol "3" in each term dictate its meanings in the expression. To be successful mathematical problem solvers, people need to know these conventional orthographic patterns. In this study, mathematical orthography skills were assessed in an online format for 189 adults using a timed dichotomous symbol-decision task (e.g., are these expressions conventional? (|| or ||)). The symbol-decision task predicted unique variance in whole-number arithmetic, word problem solving, and algebra, controlling for verbal working memory. These results support the role of individual differences in mathematical orthography as a predictor of advanced mathematical skills. In contrast, a written language orthography task only predicted unique variance in word problem solving, where participants read texts. The role of mathematical orthography should be considered in models of mathematical cognition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We compared the effectiveness of encoding techniques in learning a character-based language. During an encoding phase, participants naive to Korean were shown 40 English-Korean word pairs in Experiment 1 (80 in Experiment 2) and asked to either repeat aloud (produce) the Korean pronunciation or copy the image of the Korean character. Recognition was later assessed in two ways: On an auditory test, participants selected the correct pairing from two audio clips of Korean words, and on a visual test, they selected the correct pairing from among two visually presented Korean characters. In both experiments, copying Korean characters led to higher performance overall. Notably, we also found an interaction such that memory was higher on the auditory test when encoding required production and better on the visual test when encoding required copying. Results suggest that matching the encoding and retrieval test modality maximizes performance. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "Determining the optimal environmental information for training computational models of lexical semantics and lexical organization" by Brendan T. Johns (, 2024[Sep], Vol 78[3], 163-173; see record 2025-18520-001). In the article, the bar graph for Figure 4 is not the correct graph. The correct graph is provided in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2025-18520-001.) Experiential theories of cognition propose that the external environment shapes cognitive processing, shifting emphasis from internal mechanisms to the learning of environmental structure. Computational modelling, particularly distributional models of lexical semantics (e.g., Landauer & Dumais, 1997) and models of lexical organization (e.g., Johns, 2021a), exemplifies this, highlights the influence of language experience on cognitive representations. While these models have been successful, comparatively less attention has been paid to the training materials used to train these models. Recent research has explored the role of social/communicatively oriented training materials on models of lexical semantics and organization (Johns, 2021a, 2021b, 2023, 2024), introducing discourse- and user-centred text training materials. However, determining the optimal training materials for these two model types remains an open question. This article addresses this problem by using experiential optimization (Johns, Jones, & Mewhort, 2019), which selects the materials that maximize model performance. This study will use experiential optimization to compare user-based and discourse-based corpora in optimizing models of lexical organization and semantics, offering insight into pathways towards integrating cognitive models in these areas. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Moments of inattention are commonly experienced by most people in everyday life. While some of these inattentive episodes occur inadvertently, others are the result of an individual's choices. Here we characterize the aspects of inattention over which individuals have agency, with a specific consideration of the inattentive state of mind wandering (i.e., off-task thought). Our research on this topic has revealed several general principles that underpin people's agency over their inattention to a task at hand. First, people have nuanced awareness of their inattentive episodes, reporting various degrees of both spontaneous and deliberate moments of inattention, even during tasks in which they agree to be attentive. Second, spontaneous and deliberate bouts of attentional disengagement have distinct correlates and underlying mechanisms. Third, people have considerable control over the degree of their inattention and are able to regulate it skillfully on command and strategically in response to situational demands. Fourth, people have reliable memories of prior moment-to-moment changes in their inattention. And finally, individuals are able to accurately forecast how their inattention might change in an upcoming task. These principles suggest an agentic view of inattention, according to which people are imperfect but intelligent managers of their attentional engagement and disengagement. We discuss the wide-ranging implications of this view on prior and future studies of attentional disengagement, the interpretability of performance in cognitive tasks, and strategies that can be implemented to reduce inattention. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Choosing when to start tasks can be an important aspect of task management in daily life. Do people prefer to start tasks at the beginning of the hour, that is, using clock time as a cue for their scheduling preferences? A first study showed a strong preference to start tasks on the hour, even in scenarios involving a cost to starting on the hour, in scenarios involving no other people, and across several forms of start preference measurement. A second study examined reports of real-life tasks: Participants identified next-day tasks ahead of time and then reported on these exact tasks 2 days later. Starting tasks on the hour was not linked with benefits for individual task progress, but starting a higher percentage of tasks on the hour over the day was linked with judging the day overall as having been spent more efficiently. In sum, these studies identify a preference for scheduling and starting tasks on the hour but show mixed evidence that this preference is beneficial for task achievement. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychological science is hard. This short article focuses on two issues. One has to do with the importance of understanding statistical power and how post hoc data explorations and selective reporting can lead to exaggerated estimates of the size of effects and the strength of relationships (which in turn contribute to replication failures). The other topic is tools research psychologists can use to improve the reproducibility of their procedures and analyses. The article closes with a comment on the deeper challenge of improving the usefulness and testability of theories in psychology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotional information is treated differently than any other type of information and has a powerful impact on many cognitive processes, including attention. The aim of this study was to investigate how valence and arousal impact how we process words in sentences, as well as examine two theories of emotion, categorical negativity theory and the arousal hypothesis. Categorical negativity theory suggests that the valence of a word is what truly influences how emotional information receives attention, while the arousal hypothesis posits that the arousal level of a word determines the amount of attention it receives. In the current work, we used the rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) task to investigate interactions between valence and arousal. The valence and arousal levels of positive and negative emotion words were manipulated within the context of full-sentence reading. Analyses revealed that all negative words, regardless of arousal level, produced the standard repetition blindness effect; however, positive words appeared to benefit from repetition. This interaction of valence and arousal suggests that a new theory is needed to accommodate evidence that both valence and arousal play a role in the attentional capture of emotion words. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Word problem-solving (WPS) in mathematics and reading comprehension (RC) are essential to academic literacy. Previous studies suggest that WPS and RC involve common processes related to number and word processing. However, the nature of these connections is not yet fully understood. In this study, we examined the influence of reading and calculation fluency on the development of WPS and RC by conducting two longitudinal studies (L1 and L2) with children entering first grade in 2019 and 2018, respectively. Significant associations were found between reading fluency and RC, as well as between addition and subtraction fluency and WPS. In general, those correlations were higher (L1: .60-.74; L2: .55-.82) than correlations between reading and mathematics measures (L1: .30-.57; L2: .34-.54) suggesting patterns of overlap between different underlying more specific processes. Hierarchical regressions were computed to test the unique contribution of each predictor to the variance in WPS and RC when the other predictors were controlled. Addition and subtraction fluency significantly explained 6% and 4% of the individual variability in WPS in L1. Addition fluency also explained 20% of the variance in WPS in L2, whereas subtraction fluency did not. Moreover, reading fluency did not show a unique contribution to individual variability in WPS. On the contrary, reading fluency contributed uniquely to variance in RC in L1 (16%) and L2 (17%), while addition and subtraction fluency did not. Considering these findings, the controversy over the specificity of learning disabilities in mathematics and reading is revised, and practical implications are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Conceptual understanding of arithmetic is considered a key component for success in advanced mathematics topics such as algebra, but the link between them has rarely been investigated, particularly in adults. Participants solved conducive (3 × 26 ÷ 26) and nonconducive (26 × 3 ÷ 26) inversion problems, conducive (3 × 26 ÷ 13) and nonconducive (26 × 3 ÷ 13) associativity problems, and multiplication (3 × 6 × 12 = 3 × ?) and division (36 ÷ 8 ÷ 4 = 36 ÷ ?) equivalence problems and completed an algebra task. Conceptually based shortcut use on the nonconducive inversion problems was the strongest predictor of algebra scores. Participants who used conceptually based shortcuts on more problem types had higher algebra scores than participants who had low use of conceptually based shortcuts on most problem types. The results support the relationship between algebra and conceptual understanding of arithmetic and demonstrate that even in adulthood there are pronounced individual differences in conceptual understanding of arithmetic, which may impact success in advanced mathematics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Over the past decades, numerical and mathematical cognition has transformed from a niche research area into a thriving global field, with contributions spanning diverse populations, methodologies, and theoretical approaches. The 13 articles in this special issue highlight the breadth and depth of contemporary research, addressing topics such as the development of early numeracy skills, the interplay between mathematical and reading processes, the cognitive mechanisms supporting arithmetic and algebra, and the role of visuospatial thinking in expert mathematical reasoning. The contributions exemplify methodological innovation, from longitudinal studies and psychometric evaluations to interdisciplinary theoretical models that integrate numerical and linguistic frameworks. Together, they collectively advance theoretical, applied, and interdisciplinary perspectives. This introduction synthesizes the contributions, demonstrating how they collectively inspire future directions for research on numerical and mathematical cognition. We discuss the broader implications of the work while also contextualizing its development within its historical ties to Canadian experimental psychology and the foundational work of pioneers such as the late Jamie I. D. Campbell, in memory of whom this special issue was conceived. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reading and math are related due to many codeveloping skills. Historically, theorizing in these two areas has progressed separately, despite well-documented empirical evidence for a range of shared underlying developmental processes subserving these learning domains. The purpose of this article was to describe the links between the Triple Code Model, an influential model of numerical cognition, and the Triangle Framework, a dominant model of learning to read. We describe several parallels between the theoretical models and discuss how the cognitive mechanisms posited by the Triangle Framework might be used to understand the commonalities in learning processes across these learning domains. In particular, we discuss how the cognitive mechanisms implemented in the Triangle Framework can be used to understand linguistic aspects of numerical cognition, specifically, learning the connections among numerals (e.g., 24) and spoken words (e.g., twenty-four), and linking those to semantic representations of magnitude. Following from these commonalities between the two models, we discuss several ways that interdisciplinary work integrating both models can benefit math cognition research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

While in society mathematics is often thought of as formal and rigid, mathematicians themselves frequently consider the discipline creative and visual. To challenge stereotypes, we focus on visuo-spatial thinking by research mathematicians ( = 232). Via the Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire (Blazhenkova & Kozhevnikov, 2009), together with open questions, we ask the following: (1) Are mathematicians visuo-spatial thinkers? (2) Is the degree of visual thinking correlated with mathematical subdiscipline? (3) Which role does visual thinking play in mathematical research? The Object-Spatial Imagery and Verbal Questionnaire results indicate that mathematicians are more strongly visuo-spatial thinkers than scientists, humanities researchers or visual artists. The degree of visuo-spatial thinking does not correlate to how 'visual' the mathematical subdiscipline is as measured by average figure environment per article, obtained through text mining 3,799 arXiv articles. In open questions, two thirds of respondents ( = 222) report using visual mental imagery during mathematical research. Some mathematicians mention metaphors for research that refer to spatial movement, such as rock climbing, moving through a jungle or attacking the problem like an insect. Our study contributes to the research agenda set by Alcock et al. (2016), which aims to improve our understanding of mathematical cognition for the purpose of elucidating the nature of mathematical thinking and inform policymakers to address challenges in mathematics education. We conclude that visualisation plays an important part in the practice of mathematics, contrary to common belief. As Hadamard wrote in 1945: 'deductions in the realm of numbers may be, at least in several mathematical minds, most generally accompanied by images'. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The difficulty of a word problem is influenced by both linguistic and arithmetic processes. However, whether these processes are sequential or interactive is a matter of debate. Little is known about how eye-movement behaviour changes when faced with different linguistic and arithmetic task characteristics, both in relation to the entire problem and to specific components (i.e., numerical and textual elements). To address this gap, we conducted a study monitoring the eye movements of children aged 10-13 years during word problem solving. We manipulated linguistic and arithmetic task characteristics independently, focusing on the mathematical factor operation (addition/subtraction) and the linguistic factors consistency (consistent/inconsistent) and nominalization (verbalized/nominalized). The results revealed that eye movements generally increased as linguistic difficulty (e.g., nominalization) or arithmetic difficulty (e.g., operation) increased. Thereby, specific parts of the text were differentially affected based on the task characteristics. Increasing arithmetic difficulty led to a shift in eye movements towards numerical elements, while increasing linguistic difficulty resulted in a shift towards textual elements. Interestingly, the increase in arithmetic difficulty also influenced processing in the linguistic domain. For example, textual parts of the word problem received more fixations when the arithmetic difficulty increased, but not vice versa. This suggests that text comprehension and calculation processes in word problem solving are not separate and not strictly sequential; instead, they interact and/or do partially rely on shared cognitive resources. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

We introduce the (M4S), a paper-and-pencil measure incorporating the four arithmetic operations with items of varying complexity. M4S consists of 50 addition, 50 subtraction, 50 multiplication, and 50 division problems, limited to 2 min per operation. The psychometric evaluation was conducted by combining convenience samples of young adults ( = 1,165), who were mainly university students (77.2%), from six European countries (the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Greece, and Spain). Reliability and validity were satisfactory. Construct validity was reflected in the largest associations between inverse operations (e.g., multiplication and division). Convergent and divergent validity were reflected in higher associations of the M4S with other arithmetic measures than with a spelling test. As a freely available measure, M4S will be widely accessible and will in this first step allow cross-study comparison for typical experimental samples. In the next step, we invite all researchers to contribute to further development of M4S by providing more culturally diverse, minority, or representative samples to broaden the use cases of this screening of arithmetic fluency and enable more generalizability. Interested contributors can get in contact via email (math4speed@psychologie.uni-tuebingen.de). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Several methods have been developed to assess sexual preferences in men and women. Direct instruments (e.g., plethysmography, questionnaires) are the most widely used, but they have notable shortcomings, including a lack of response specificity in certain groups and a risk of false responding. Indirect instruments (e.g., reaction time), where preferences are assessed unobtrusively, may overcome these limitations and could therefore be used to measure sexual preferences more effectively. One promising instrument, published by Jiang et al. (2006), used an ocular suppression paradigm that exposed participants to sexual images while simultaneously masking them from conscious perception. Jiang et al. (2006) found that these "invisible" images attracted visual attention when they matched the participants' sexual preferences for nude male or female images and, in the case of heterosexual men, repelled attention when they did not match the participants' preferences. Here, we attempt to replicate these findings over two studies. In the first experiment, using a stereoscopic apparatus with 22 men and 25 women and a validation test (time spent rating the same nude images), we found no attentional attraction to or repulsion of invisible images even though the rating times for the same images were related to participants' sexual orientation. In the second experiment, with 32 men, we replaced the stereoscopic apparatus with a virtual reality headset, offering better control over stimulus delivery. Again, the invisible images produced no attentional attraction or repulsion. Our results suggest that the interocular suppression paradigm is not an effective method for assessing sexual preferences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The goal of the present study was to investigate whether a relationship exists between statistical learning ability and sentence processing ability in adult readers and whether this relationship depends on the participant's exposure to print. Fifty participants read syntactically complex sentences while their eye movements were tracked and answered comprehension questions. The region of interest for the eye fixation analyses was the area where the complexity of the sentence became evident. Participants also completed a visual statistical learning (VSL) task and an author recognition test (ART). There were main effects of statistical learning ability and print exposure, as well as an interaction between the two on both first pass and total reading times. Reading times decreased with increasing VSL scores for participants with higher ART scores, whereas reading times increased with increasing VSL scores for participants with lower ART scores. In addition, participants with better statistical learning ability and greater print exposure had higher scores on the comprehension questions. These results demonstrate that efficient processing of complex syntactic structures depends on both good statistical learning skills and exposure to a large amount of print so that these skills have the opportunity to extract the relevant statistical relationships in the language. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Judgements of learning (JOLs) are metacognitive evaluations of future memory for newly learned information (Fiacconi et al., 2020; Koriat, 1997). The cue utilization view of JOLs states that individuals use a variety of cues when predicting future memory performance (Koriat, 1997). Critically, however, the majority of research aimed at understanding how different types of cues influence individuals' JOLs has focused on immediate memory assessments based on individuals' in-the-moment experiences or has utilized very brief retention intervals and relied on the representation of previously studied material (Rhodes & Tauber, 2011). Importantly, individuals' assessments of new learning may also be coloured by information learned further in the past when it is similar to the current information. Using a letter set training procedure (Fiacconi et al., 2020), we manipulated the fluency of to-be-learned material to examine whether previous learning would influence JOLs for new material over a 24-hr time period. As hypothesized, our results showed that previous learning did impact individuals' metamemory predictions, as JOLs for distinct but similar items were indeed higher than those for novel dissimilar items both immediately following training and 24 hr later. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Is learning history preserved in the mental representation of simple arithmetic facts? We compared addition and multiplication of Chinese-educated students to address this question. Chinese-educated students learn to memorize multiplication problems in the min × max order (e.g., 6 × 8, referred to as min-first). In contrast, for addition, they are taught to decompose the smaller digit to make 10 (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4). We hypothesized that these learning experiences would be reflected in the preferred order of operands, that is, min-first for multiplication and max-first for addition. Forty-three Chinese-educated participants solved single-digit multiplication and addition problems. As anticipated, participants responded faster when addition and multiplication were presented in their preferred orders. One implication of this research is that experiences during training can be designed to enhance arithmetic fluency. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In published studies using the remember/know judgement paradigm, the remember-based old/new responses (supposed to be slow and effortful) are on average faster than the know-based responses (supposed to be fast and automatic), contrary to the dual-process theories' view. One widely believed cause of this finding is that it is an experimental artefact, meaning participants are unknowingly influenced by the instruction to first consider the remember before the know alternative. In Experiment 1, we hinted to participants to first consider the know experience. This did not reverse the order of the two response times (RT). In Experiment 2, we explicitly told them to first consider the familiarity experience. Additionally, we used a decision criterion favouring making quick familiarity responses. These measures significantly lowered the RT and increased the proportion of familiarity-based responses. However, they did not change the RT of the recollection-based responses and did not reverse the relative order of the two RTs. Based on this finding and participants' inability to inhibit the retrieval of contextual details, we concluded that the paradoxical RT results are probably not an experimental artefact and that retrieval of detailed information in recollective recognition might be automatic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This work aimed to examine whether the spatial representations of actions depend on the spatial features of the body components involved in those actions. I proposed that this is possible, but only when the responses cannot be spatially coded based on the spatial features of the actions' goal. I presented participants with large and small objects and instructed them to respond with either their palm-hand or index-digit based on the colour of the objects. Palm-hand or index-digit responses represented large and small responses, respectively, considering the size of the effector part used. The collected data confirmed this hypothesis. I found a size-based Simon effect, indicating that participants code the size of their responses based on the relative size of the body part used for responding (i.e., palm-hand vs. index-digit). This finding therefore suggests that the size-based Simon effect could serve as a valuable tool for implicitly assessing the metrics of body representation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Collective memory broadly refers to the memories shared by a group of people. Interest in collective memory among cognitive psychologists has boomed in recent years, with many studies leveraging fluency tasks to probe what events and people come to mind given a prompt. As other research using fluency tasks has benefitted greatly from network analysis (e.g., semantic memory research), it seems there is an opportunity to deepen our understanding of collective cognition and changes in collective cognition by adopting a network perspective. In the current article, we ask whether collective memory investigations could be enriched by harnessing the tools of network science. We start by reviewing the relevant collective memory literature and touch on the deep semantic memory literature to the extent it provides ties to network analysis for present goals. Our novel contributions to the topic include the introduction of a large fluency data set collected over the course of a decade as part of a task embedded within several research projects. We conduct several descriptive analyses and initial, proof-of-concept network analyses examining collective memory for U.S. cities. Some cities-those that are recalled most frequently-are recalled at similar rates and in similar output positions across time and task contexts. Our network approach suggests that recall transitions (e.g., recalling and in adjacent positions) are made at similar rates as well. Together, these complementary approaches suggest a striking stability in both what people recall and their ordering, providing a window into the composition of collective memories. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Recent research on multilingualism highlights the role of language diversity in modulating the cognitive capacities of communication and suggests a gap in available measures for quantifying socially realistic language experience. One questionnaire-based measure that potentially fills this gap is Language Entropy (e.g., Gullifer & Titone, 2018, 2020), which quantifies the balance between compartmentalised and integrated language use. However, an open question is whether questionnaire-based Language Entropy is a valid reflection of socially realistic language behaviours. To address this question, we grounded questionnaire-based Language Entropy using personal social network data for a linguistically diverse sample of speakers of French and English in the city of Montréal ( = 95). Specifically, we used exploratory factor analysis to characterise the factor structures resulting from questionnaire-based and social network-based Entropy. In addition, we examined the generalisability and stability of the relationship between both entropies across three bilingual groups with different social network compositions: simultaneous, English-dominant, and French-dominant. Our findings indicated that both questionnaire-based and social network-based entropies loaded onto the same factors and that the relationship between them was not affected by group differences in social network composition or by context. This suggests that questionnaire-based Language Entropy aligns well with social network-based Entropy and that this relationship is stable across different sociolinguistic realities, validating Language Entropy as a useful tool for quantifying language diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

This introduction to the special issue entitled "Network Science in Experimental Psychology" describes how complex networks are used by experimental psychologists to examine questions from a range of topics in psychology. Complex networks use nodes to represent individual entities and connections between nodes that are related in some way. The overall weblike structure that emerges influences the processes that operate in that system. The articles summarized here illustrate the various definitions of nodes (e.g., people, words, parts of the brain) and connections between nodes (e.g., friendships, semantic similarity, coactivation of brain regions) and also illustrate a wide range of metrics that reveal information that could not be found using contemporary and conventional approaches. The guest editors and authors hope that these examples encourage other researchers to apply the computational techniques from network science to their questions of interest to make new and interesting discoveries. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Using network representations of the lexicon has expanded our understanding of vocabulary growth processes and vocabulary structure during early development. These models of vocabulary development have used multiple types of sources to create lexical representations. More recently, Weber and Colunga (2022) demonstrated that predictions of early vocabulary norms can be improved by using network representations based on a corpus incorporating language a young child might typically hear. The present work goes a step further by evaluating the accuracy of network representations for predicting individual children's word learning that are based on embeddings that are readily available or embeddings gathered from the same child language corpus. We predicted the specific words that individual children add to their vocabulary over time, using a longitudinal data set of 86 monolingual English-speaking toddler's changing vocabulary from 18 to 30 months of age. The toddler-based network predicted word learning more accurately than the off-the-shelf network. Further, there was an advantage for prediction methods that took into account the individual child's particular network structure rather than overall network connectivity. These results highlight the importance of tailoring representational and processing choices to the population of interest. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The goal of this article was to determine if second language (L2) speakers benefit from living in mixed-language environments and whether said benefit applies across proficiency levels. To this end, we reanalyzed a subset of data from Gilbert et al. (2019) considering language entropy scores as a proxy for linguistic environment predictability. The task involved producing sentences designed around oronyms in French and English. Participants produced sentences in both languages, allowing the comparison of first language and L2 productions. Their results demonstrated the production of L2-appropriate prosodic cues, albeit after having reached a high level of L2 proficiency. Adding language entropy scores to the original statistical models revealed significant interactions suggesting that participants benefited from living in a mixed-languages environment whereby even low-proficiency speakers produced L2-appropriate prosodic cues. However, low-proficiency L2 speakers living in predictable linguistic environments failed to adapt their prosodic production to their L2, as previously observed. These results suggest that, irrespective of proficiency, the language environment has a significant impact on nonnative language production. This has implications for language development and models of language acquisition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).