Abstract Humans are poorer at identifying smells and communicating about them, compared to other sensory domains. They also cannot easily organize odor sensations in a general conceptual space, where geometric distance could represent how similar or different all odors are. These two generalities are more or less accepted by psychologists, and they are often seen […]

Abstract People frequently gesture when a word is on the tip of their tongue (TOT), yet research is mixed as to whether and why gesture aids lexical retrieval. We tested three accounts: the lexical retrieval hypothesis, which predicts that semantically related gestures facilitate successful lexical retrieval; the cognitive load account, which predicts that matching gestures […]

Over half a century of research focused on understanding how working memory is capacity constrained has overshadowed the fact that it is also remarkably resistant to interference. Protecting goal-relevant information from distraction is a cornerstone of cognitive function that involves a multifaceted collection of control processes and storage mechanisms. Here, we discuss recent advances in […]