Psych Science - June 2018

Volume 29, Issue 6

**Iconic memories die a sudden death; Pratte, M. S.**
The researcher aimed to test two models of how information in iconic memory is transferred to working memory. In the gradual-decay model, representations of perceived items become weaker over the course of iconic memory, resulting in many items in working memory containing very little stimulus information (but all are present in WM). As information decays, behavioral accuracy in reporting the color of an item would become less precise over time. In the sudden-death model, perceived items vanish entirely from memory over the course of iconic memory, and only a few items remain in working memory (but with complete details for the remaining items). The sudden-death model predicts more frequent pure guessing behavior as more items vanish, with no loss of precision for those items still in memory. Using a color and spatial memory task, Pratte found evidence that the sudden-death model occurs in iconic memory for visual stimuli. These results suggest that whatever information makes it to working memory is all or none, challenging the conventional characterization of iconic memory as a gradually decaying trace.

**Is implicit theory of mind a real and robust phenomenon? Results from a systematic replication study; Kulke, L., von Duhn, B., Schneider, D., & Rakoczy, H.**
The researchers aimed to test the reliability of anticipatory-looking false-belief tasks with a large-scale preregistered replication study and the validity of the paradigm across tasks, specifically four different established anticipatory-looking false-belief paradigms that have been used with infants, children, and adults were compared. In these anticipatory-looking tasks participants see short videos during which a target object of some relevance to a protagonist changes location. This change of location is witnessed or unwitnessed by the protagonist. When the protagonist is about to search for the object, participants’ spontaneous belief attribution may manifest itself in anticipatory looking to the location where the protagonist believes the object to be. This study addressed the replicability of each individual paradigm and of convergent validity across them. The researchers found no evidence for any convergent validation across tasks, and only one paradigm was robustly replicated.

**The dark side of context: Context reinstatement can distort memory; Doss, M. K., Picart, J. K., & Gallow, D. A.**
The researchers investigated the impact of context reinstatement on false recognition using an object recognition task. In this task, participants encoded object pictures and on a later memory test had to discriminate between these objects and visually similar lures (e.g., two different hammers). Participants were asked to make conceptual associations between each object and its background context (e.g., a beach scene) during encoding. A key feature of this task was that targets and similar lures share the same conceptual identity, differing only in the visual features of the object pictures. There were two opposing hypotheses: context reinstatement would improve memory accuracy or context reinstatement would increase false recognition. Context reinstatement distorted memory, increasing both correct and incorrect object recognition so that overall accuracy was largely unaffected.

**An optimistic outlook creates a rosy past: The impact of episodic simulation on subsequent memory; Devitt, A. L., & Schacter, D. L.**
Across two experiments, the research tested whether the emotional valence of episodic future simulation influenced memory for emotional aspects of a corresponding subsequent event. Participants simulated positive and negative future events, then read narratives describing the hypothetical outcome of each event and describing events that had not been simulated. Each narrative was neutral overall in tone and contained positive and negative details. To explore biases in memory as a result of prior simulation, they assessed memory for true and false narrative details in a recognition test. In Experiment 1, they examined the impact of testing delay, and in Experiment 2, they explored the role of the temporal orientation of simulation (subjective ratings of the narrative’s emotional tone immediately after participants read the narratives and after the recognition test). The experiments showed that simulating a future event changes how that event is remembered once it occurs. Neutral events were remembered as more positive if they were first simulated in a positive way. In contrast, negative simulation did not impact subsequent memory.

**Does power reduce temporal discounting? Commentary on Joshi and Fast (2013); Zhang, M., & Smith, P. K.**
The researchers conducted preregistered replications of two different experiments by Joshi and Fast (2013), who claimed that power reduces temporal discounting and that connecting with the future self mediates this relationship. Study 1 manipulated real power by assigning participants low or high amounts of control over team members’ outcomes and then measuring temporal discounting with monetary outcomes. In Study 2, they manipulated power with a recall paradigm and again measured temporal discounting. A meta-analysis was also conducted of experiments examining the effect of low versus high power on temporal discounting. The results of Joshi and Fast’s were not replicated. The present study never found a significant difference in temporal discounting between low- and high-power conditions. The meta-analysis of known replication studies, including the current study, showed a nonsignificant effect of power on temporal discounting.