Three experiments examined people's ability to incorporate base rate information when judging posterior probabilities. Speci®cally, we tested the (Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (1996). Are humans good intuitive statisticians after all? Rethinking some conclusions from the literature on judgement under uncertainty. Cognition, 58, 1±73) conclusion that people's reasoning appears to follow Bayesian principles when they are presented with information in a frequency format, but not when information is presented as one case probabilities. First, we found that frequency formats were not generally associated with better performance than probability formats unless they were presented in a manner which facilitated construction of a set inclusion mental model. Second, we demonstrated that the use of frequency information may promote biases in the weighting of information. When participants are asked to express their judgements in frequency rather than probability format, they were more likely to produce the base rate as their answer, ignoring diagnostic evidence. q

Task-irrelevant speech impairs short-term serial recall appreciably. On the interference-by-process account, the processing of physical (i.e., precategorical) changes in speech yields order cues that conflict with the serial-ordering process deployed to perform the serial recall task. In this view, the postcategorical properties (e.g., phonology, meaning) of speech play no role. The present study reassessed the implications of recent demonstrations of auditory postcategorical distraction in serial recall that have been taken as support for an alternative, attentional-diversion, account of the irrelevant speech effect. Focusing on the disruptive effect of emotionally valent compared with neutral words on serial recall, we show that the distracter-valence effect is eliminated under conditions-high task-encoding load-thought to shield against attentional diversion whereas the general effect of speech (neutral words compared with quiet) remains unaffected (Experiment 1). Furthermore, the distracter-valence effect generalizes to a task that does not require the processing of serial order-the missing-item task-whereas the effect of speech per se is attenuated in this task (Experiment 2). We conclude that postcategorical auditory distraction phenomena in serial short-term memory (STM) are incidental: they are observable in such a setting but, unlike the acoustically driven irrelevant speech effect, are not integral to it. As such, the findings support a duplex-mechanism account over a unitary view of auditory distraction. (PsycINFO Database Record

Research suggests that listening to background music prior to task performance increases cognitive processes, such as attention and memory, through the mechanism of increasing arousal and positive mood. However, music preference has not been explored with regard to a more common and realistic scenario of concurrent music and cognition, namely the 'irrelevant sound effect' (ISE). To examine this, serial recall was tested under quiet, liked and disliked music sound conditions as well as steady-state (repetition of '3') and changing-state speech (random digits 1-9). Results revealed performance to be poorer for both music conditions and the changing-state speech compared to quiet and steady-state speech conditions. The lack of difference between both music conditions suggests that preference does not affect serial recall performance. These findings are discussed within the music and cognition and auditory distraction literatures.

No abstract

The extent to which familiar syntax supports short-term serial recall of visually presented six-item sequences was shown by the superior recall of lists in which item pairs appeared in the order of "adjective-noun" (items 1-2, 3-4, 5-6)--congruent with English syntax--compared to when the order of items within pairs was reversed. The findings complement other evidence suggesting that short-term memory is an assemblage of language processing and production processes more than it is a bespoke short-term memory storage system.

No abstract

Although liked music is known to improve performance through boosting one's mood and arousal, both liked music and disliked music impair serial recall performance. Given that the key acoustical feature of this impairment is the acoustical variation, it is possible that some music may contain less acoustical variation and so produce less impairment. In this situation, unliked, unfamiliar music could be better for performance than liked, familiar music. This study tested this by asking participants to serially recall eight-item lists in either quiet, liked or disliked music conditions. Results showed that performance was significantly poorer in both music conditions compared with quiet. More importantly, performance in the liked music condition was significantly poorer than in the disliked music condition. These findings provide further illustration of the irrelevant sound effect and limitations of the impact of liked music on cognition.

Subjective ratings of drunkenness by trained observers corresponded with BAC. Transition BACs denoting observable behaviour change associated with intoxication have been identified. Observations of gait, combined with assessment of slurred speech should be the basis of estimates of drunkenness.