Have a personal or library account? Click to login
A Distributional Response Time Analysis of the Perceptual Disfluency Effect Cover

A Distributional Response Time Analysis of the Perceptual Disfluency Effect

Open Access
|Oct 2025

References

  1. 1Allaire, J. J., Teague, C., Scheidegger, C., Xie, Y., Dervieux, C., & Woodhull, G. (2024). Quarto (Version 1.6) [Computer software]. 10.5281/zenodo.5960048
  2. 2Alter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007). Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 569576. 10.1037/0096-3445.136.4.569
  3. 3Andrews, S., & Heathcote, A. (2001). Distinguishing common and task-specific processes in word identification: A matter of some moment? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27(2), 514544. 10.1037/0278-7393.27.2.514
  4. 4Balota, D. A., & Spieler, D. H. (1999). Word frequency, repetition, and lexicality effects in word recognition tasks: Beyond measures of central tendency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128(1), 3255. 10.1037/0096-3445.128.1.32
  5. 5Balota, D. A., & Yap, M. J. (2011). Moving beyond the mean in studies of mental chronometry the power of response time distributional analyses. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(3), 160166. http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/20/3/160.short
  6. 6Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Cortese, M. J., & Watson, J. M. (2008). Beyond mean response latency: Response time distributional analyses of semantic priming. Journal of Memory and Language, 59(4), 495523. 10.1016/j.jml.2007.10.004
  7. 7Balota, D. A., Yap, M. J., Hutchison, K. A., Cortese, M. J., Kessler, B., Loftis, B., Neely, J. H., Nelson, D. L., Simpson, G. B., & Treiman, R. (2007). The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods, 39(3), 445459. 10.3758/bf03193014
  8. 8Barnhart, A. S., & Goldinger, S. D. (2010). Interpreting chicken-scratch: Lexical access for handwritten words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 36(4), 906923. 10.1037/a0019258
  9. 9Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255278. 10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001
  10. 10Barthelme, S. (2023). Imager: Image processing library based on ‘CImg’. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=imager
  11. 11Besken, M., & Mulligan, N. W. (2013). Easily perceived, easily remembered? Perceptual interference produces a double dissociation between metamemory and memory performance. Memory & Cognition, 41(6), 897903. http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-013-0307-8
  12. 12Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. A. (2011). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. In Psychology and the real world: Essays illustrating fundamental contributions to society. (pp. 5664). Worth Publishers.
  13. 13Boag, R. J., Strickland, L., Heathcote, A., Neal, A., & Loft, S. (2019). Cognitive control and capacity for prospective memory in complex dynamic environments. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(12), 21812206. 10.1037/xge0000599
  14. 14Boag, R. J., Strickland, L., Loft, S., & Heathcote, A. (2019). Strategic attention and decision control support prospective memory in a complex dual-task environment. Cognition, 191, 103974. 10.1016/j.cognition.2019.05.011
  15. 15Braver, T. S. (2012). The variable nature of cognitive control: a dual mechanisms framework. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 16(2), 106113. 10.1016/j.tics.2011.12.010
  16. 16Bürkner, P.-C. (2017). Brms: An r package for bayesian multilevel models using stan. 80. 10.18637/jss.v080.i01
  17. 17Carpenter, S. K., Pan, S. C., & Butler, A. C. (2022). The science of effective learning with spacing and retrieval practice. Nature Reviews Psychology, 1(9), 496511. 10.1038/s44159-022-00089-1
  18. 18Castel, A. D., Nazarian, M., & Blake, A. B. (2015). Attention and incidental memory in everyday settings (pp. 463483). Boston Review. 10.7551/mitpress/10033.003.0023
  19. 19Coltheart, M., Rastle, K., Perry, C., Langdon, R., & Ziegler, J. (2001). DRC: A dual route cascaded model of visual word recognition and reading aloud. Psychological Review, 108(1), 204256. 10.1037/0033-295X.108.1.204
  20. 20Cushing, C., & Bodner, G. E. (2022). Reading aloud improves proofreading (but using sans forgetica font does not). Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 11, 427436. 10.1037/mac0000011
  21. 21De Jong, R., Liang, C. C., & Lauber, E. (1994). Conditional and unconditional automaticity: a dual-process model of effects of spatial stimulus-response correspondence. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 20(4), 731750. 10.1037//0096-1523.20.4.731
  22. 22DeCarlo, L. T. (1998). Signal detection theory and generalized linear models. Psychological Methods, 3(2), 186205. 10.1037/1082-989X.3.2.186
  23. 23Diana, R. A., & Reder, L. M. (2006). The low-frequency encoding disadvantage: Word frequency affects processing demands. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32(4), 805815. 10.1037/0278-7393.32.4.805
  24. 24Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the: Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111115. 10.1016/j.cognition.2010.09.012
  25. 25Dolstra, E., & contributors, T. N. (2023). Nix (Version 2.15.3) [Computer software]. https://nixos.org/
  26. 26Earp, J. (2018, October 8). Q&a: Designing a font to help students remember key information. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/qa-designing-a-font-to-help-students-remember-key-information
  27. 27Eskenazi, M. A., & Nix, B. (2021). Individual differences in the desirable difficulty effect during lexical acquisition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(1), 4552. 10.1037/xlm0000809
  28. 28Fernández-López, M., Gómez, P., & Perea, M. (2022). Letter rotations: through the magnifying glass and What evidence found there. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 38(2), 127138. 10.1080/23273798.2022.2093390
  29. 29Fitousi, D. (2020a). Decomposing the composite face effect: Evidence for non-holistic processing based on the ex-Gaussian distribution. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(6), 819840. 10.1177/1747021820904222
  30. 30Fitousi, D. (2020b). Linking the ex-gaussian parameters to cognitive stages: Insights from the linear ballistic accumulator (LBA) model. The Quantitative Methods for Psychology, 16(2), 91106. 10.20982/tqmp.16.2.p091
  31. 31Gagl, B., Sassenhagen, J., Haan, S., Gregorova, K., Richlan, F., & Fiebach, C. J. (2020). An orthographic prediction error as the basis for efficient visual word recognition. NeuroImage, 214, 116727. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.116727
  32. 32Geller, J., Davis, S. D., & Peterson, D. J. (2020). Sans forgetica is not desirable for learning. Memory, 28(8), 957967. 10.1080/09658211.2020.1797096
  33. 33Geller, J., & Peterson, D. (2021). Is this going to be on the test? Test expectancy moderates the disfluency effect with sans forgetica. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(12), 19241938. 10.1037/xlm0001042
  34. 34Geller, J., Still, M. L., Dark, V. J., & Carpenter, S. K. (2018). Would disfluency by any other name still be disfluent? Examining the disfluency effect with cursive handwriting. Memory and Cognition, 46(7), 11091126. 10.3758/s13421-018-0824-6
  35. 35Glanzer, M., & Adams, J. K. (1985). The mirror effect in recognition memory. Memory & Cognition, 13(1), 820. 10.3758/bf03198438
  36. 36Gomez, P., & Perea, M. (2014). Decomposing encoding and decisional components in visual-word recognition: A diffusion model analysis. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 67(12), 24552466. 10.1080/17470218.2014.937447
  37. 37Gomez, P., Perea, M., & Ratcliff, R. (2013). A diffusion model account of masked versus unmasked priming: Are they qualitatively different? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 39(6), 17311740. 10.1037/a0032333
  38. 38Grant, R. L., Carpenter, B., Furr, D. C., & Gelman, A. (2017). Introducing the StataStan Interface for Fast, Complex Bayesian Modeling Using Stan. The Stata Journal: Promoting Communications on Statistics and Stata, 17(2), 330342. 10.1177/1536867x1701700205
  39. 39Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. John Wiley.
  40. 40Halamish, V. (2018). Can very small font size enhance memory? Memory & Cognition, 46(6), 979993. 10.3758/s13421-018-0816-6
  41. 41Heathcote, A., Popiel, S. J., & Mewhort, D. J. (1991). Analysis of response time distributions: An example using the Stroop task. Psychological Bulletin, 109(2), 340347. 10.1037/0033-2909.109.2.340
  42. 42Hu, X., Yang, C., & Luo, L. (2022). Retrospective confidence rating about memory performance is affected by both retrieval fluency and non-decision time. Metacognition and Learning, 17(2), 651681. 10.1007/s11409-022-09303-0
  43. 43Huff, M. J., Maxwell, N. P., & Mitchell, A. (2022). Distinctive Sans Forgetica font does not benefit memory accuracy in the DRM paradigm. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 7(1). 10.1186/s41235-022-00448-9
  44. 44James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology, vol i. Henry Holt; Co. 10.1037/10538-000
  45. 45Johnson, R. L., Staub, A., & Fleri, A. M. (2012). Distributional analysis of the transposed-letter neighborhood effect on naming latency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 38(6), 17731779. 10.1037/a0028222
  46. 46Kane, M. J., & Engle, R. W. (2003). Working-memory capacity and the control of attention: The contributions of goal neglect, response competition, and task set to Stroop interference. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132(1), 4770. 10.1037/0096-3445.132.1.47
  47. 47Kuchinke, L., Vo, M., Hofmann, M., & Jacobs, A. (2007). Pupillary responses during lexical decisions vary with word frequency but not emotional valence. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 65(2), 132140. 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2007.04.004
  48. 48Lehmann, J., Goussios, C., & Seufert, T. (2015). Working memory capacity and disfluency effect: an aptitude-treatment-interaction study. Metacognition and Learning, 11(1), 89105. 10.1007/s11409-015-9149-z
  49. 49Lenth, R. V. (2023). Emmeans: Estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans
  50. 50Makowski, D., Ben-Shachar, M. S., & Lüdecke, D. (2019). bayestestR: Describing effects and their uncertainty, existence and significance within the bayesian framework. 4, 1541. 10.21105/joss.01541
  51. 51Malmberg, K. J., & Nelson, T. O. (2003). The word frequency effect for recognition memory and the elevated-attention hypothesis. Memory & Cognition, 31(1), 3543. 10.3758/bf03196080
  52. 52Mathot, S. (2018). Pupillometry: Psychology, physiology, and function. Journal of Cognition, 1(1). 10.5334/joc.18
  53. 53Matzke, D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2009). Psychological interpretation of the ex-gaussian and shifted wald parameters: A diffusion model analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 16(5), 798817. http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/PBR.16.5.798
  54. 54McClelland, J. L., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: I. An account of basic findings. Psychological Review, 88(5), 375407. 10.1037/0033-295X.88.5.375
  55. 55McElreath, R. (2020). Statistical rethinking: A bayesian course with examples in r and stan (2nd ed.). CRC Press. 10.1201/9780429029608
  56. 56Mulligan, N. W. (1996). The effects of perceptual interference at encoding on implicit memory, explicit memory, and memory for source. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(5), 10671087. 10.1037/0278-7393.22.5.1067
  57. 57Myers, C. E., Interian, A., & Moustafa, A. A. (2022). A practical introduction to using the drift diffusion model of decision-making in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and health sciences. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1039172
  58. 58Nairne, J. S. (1988). A framework for interpreting recency effects in immediate serial recall. Memory & Cognition, 16(4), 343352. 10.3758/BF03197045
  59. 59Pazzaglia, A. M., Staub, A., & Rotello, C. M. (2014). Encoding time and the mirror effect in recognition memory: Evidence from eyetracking. Journal of Memory and Language, 75, 7792. 10.1016/j.jml.2014.05.009
  60. 60Peirce, J., Gray, J. R., Simpson, S., MacAskill, M., Höchenberger, R., Sogo, H., Kastman, E., & Lindeløv, J. K. (2019). PsychoPy2: Experiments in behavior made easy. Behavior Research Methods, 51(1), 195203. 10.3758/s13428-018-01193-y
  61. 61Perea, M., Fernández-López, M., & Marcet, A. (2018). Does CaSe-MiXinG disrupt the access to lexico-semantic information? Psychological Research, 84(4), 981989. 10.1007/s00426-018-1111-7
  62. 62Perea, M., Gil-López, C., Beléndez, V., & Carreiras, M. (2016). Do handwritten words magnify lexical effects in visual word recognition? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 69(8), 16311647. 10.1080/17470218.2015.1091016
  63. 63Perea, M., & Lupker, S. J. (2003). Transposed-letter confusability effects in masked form priming. Masked Priming: State of the Art, 97120. http://defiant.ssc.uwo.ca/faculty/lupkerpdfs/Perea%20&%20Lupker,%202003,%20chapter.pdf
  64. 64Pieger, E., Mengelkamp, C., & Bannert, M. (2016). Metacognitive judgments and disfluency does disfluency lead to more accurate judgments, better control, and better performance? Learning and Instruction, 44, 3140. 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2016.01.012
  65. 65Plourde, C. E., & Besner, D. (1997). On the locus of the word frequency effect in visual word recognition. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale, 51(3), 181194. 10.1037/1196-1961.51.3.181
  66. 66Ptok, M. J., Hannah, K. E., & Watter, S. (2020). Memory effects of conflict and cognitive control are processing stage-specific: evidence from pupillometry. Psychological Research, 85(3), 10291046. 10.1007/s00426-020-01295-3
  67. 67Ptok, M. J., Thomson, S. J., Humphreys, K. R., & Watter, S. (2019). Congruency encoding effects on recognition memory: A stage-specific account of desirable difficulty. Frontiers in Psychology, 10. 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00858
  68. 68R Core Team. (2025). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. https://www.R-project.org/
  69. 69Ratcliff, R. (1978). A theory of memory retrieval. Psychological Review, 85(2), 59108. 10.1037/0033-295X.85.2.59
  70. 70Ratcliff, R., Smith, P. L., Brown, S. D., & McKoon, G. (2016). Diffusion Decision Model: Current Issues and History. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(4), 260281. 10.1016/j.tics.2016.01.007
  71. 71Rhodes, M. G., & Castel, A. D. (2008). Memory predictions are influenced by perceptual information: Evidence for metacognitive illusions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137(4), 615625. 10.1037/a0013684
  72. 72Rhodes, M. G., & Castel, A. D. (2009). Metacognitive illusions for auditory information: Effects on monitoring and control. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 16(3), 550554. 10.3758/PBR.16.3.550
  73. 73Roberts, B. R. T., Hu, Z. S., Curtis, E., Bodner, G. E., McLean, D., & MacLeod, C. M. (2023). Reading text aloud benefits memory but not comprehension. Memory & Cognition. 10.3758/s13421-023-01442-2
  74. 74Rodrigues, B., & Baumann, P. (2025). Rix: Reproducible data science environments with ‘nix’. https://docs.ropensci.org/rix/
  75. 75Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-Enhanced Learning. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249255. 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
  76. 76Rohrer, D., & Taylor, K. (2007). The shuffling of mathematics problems improves learning. Instructional Science, 35(6), 481498. 10.1007/s11251-007-9015-8
  77. 77Rosner, T. M., Davis, H., & Milliken, B. (2015). Perceptual blurring and recognition memory: A desirable difficulty effect revealed. Acta Psychologica, 160, 1122. 10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.06.006
  78. 78Rummer, R., Schweppe, J., & Schwede, A. (2015). Fortune is fickle: Null-effects of disfluency on learning outcomes. Metacognition and Learning, 114. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11409-015-9151-5
  79. 79Slamecka, N. J., & Graf, P. (1978). The generation effect: Delineation of a phenomenon. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 4(6), 592604. 10.1037/0278-7393.4.6.592
  80. 80Staub, A. (2010). The effect of lexical predictability on distributions of eye fixation durations. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18(2), 371376. 10.3758/s13423-010-0046-9
  81. 81Sternberg, S. (1969). The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders’ method. Acta Psychologica, 30, 276315. 10.1016/0001-6918(69)90055-9
  82. 82Sungkhasettee, V. W., Friedman, M. C., & Castel, A. D. (2011). Memory and metamemory for inverted words: Illusions of competency and desirable difficulties. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 18(5), 973978. 10.3758/s13423-011-0114-9
  83. 83Taylor, A., Sanson, M., Burnell, R., Wade, K. A., & Garry, M. (2020a). Disfluent difficulties are not desirable difficulties: The (lack of) effect of sans forgetica on memory. Memory, 28(7), 850857. 10.1080/09658211.2020.1758726
  84. 84Taylor, J. E., Beith, A., & Sereno, S. C. (2020b). LexOPS: An R package and user interface for the controlled generation of word stimuli. Behavior Research Methods, 52(6), 23722382. 10.3758/s13428-020-01389-1
  85. 85van der Wel, P., & van Steenbergen, H. (2018). Pupil dilation as an index of effort in cognitive control tasks: A review. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(6), 20052015. 10.3758/s13423-018-1432-y
  86. 86Vandekerckhove, J., Tuerlinckx, F., & Lee, M. D. (2011). Hierarchical diffusion models for two-choice response times. Psychological Methods, 16(1), 4462. 10.1037/a0021765
  87. 87Vehtari, A., Gelman, A., Simpson, D., Carpenter, B., & Bürkner, P.-C. (2021). Rank-normalization, folding, and localization: An improved Rˆ for assessing convergence of MCMC (with discussion). Bayesian Analysis, 16(2), 667718. 10.1214/20-BA1221
  88. 88Vergara-Martínez, M., Gutierrez-Sigut, E., Perea, M., Gil-López, C., & Carreiras, M. (2021). The time course of processing handwritten words: An ERP investigation. Neuropsychologia, 159, 107924. 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107924
  89. 89Weissgerber, S. C., & Reinhard, M. A. (2017). Is disfluency desirable for learning? Learning and Instruction, 49, 199217. 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.02.004
  90. 90Weltman, D., & Eakin, M. (2014). Incorporating unusual fonts and planned mistakes in study materials to increase business student focus and retention. INFORMS Transactions on Education, 15(1), 156165. 10.1287/ited.2014.0130
  91. 91Wenzel, K., & Reinhard, M.-A. (2019). Relatively unintelligent individuals do not benefit from intentionally hindered learning: The role of desirable difficulties. Intelligence, 77, 101405. 10.1016/j.intell.2019.101405
  92. 92Westerman, D. L., & Greene, R. L. (1997). The effects of visual masking on recognition: Similarities to the generation effect. Journal of Memory and Language, 37(4), 584596. 10.1006/jmla.1997.2531
  93. 93Wetzler, E. L., Pyke, A. A., & Werner, A. (2021). Sans Forgetica is Not the “Font” of Knowledge: Disfluent Fonts are Not Always Desirable Difficulties. SAGE Open, 11(4), 21582440211056624. 10.1177/21582440211056624
  94. 94Wilcox, R. R. (1998). How many discoveries have been lost by ignoring modern statistical methods? American Psychologist, 53(3), 300314. 10.1037/0003-066x.53.3.300
  95. 95Wit, B. de, & Kinoshita, S. (2015). The masked semantic priming effect is task dependent: Reconsidering the automatic spreading activation process. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 41(4), 10621075. 10.1037/xlm0000074
  96. 96Yap, M. J., & Balota, D. A. (2007). Additive and interactive effects on response time distributions in visual word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 33(2), 274296. 10.1037/0278-7393.33.2.274
  97. 97Yue, C. L., Castel, A. D., & Bjork, R. A. (2013). When disfluency isand is nota desirable difficulty: The influence of typeface clarity on metacognitive judgments and memory. Memory & Cognition, 41(2), 229241. http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-012-0255-8
  98. 98Zloteanu, M., & Vuorre, M. (2024). A Tutorial for Deception Detection Analysis or: How I Learned to Stop Aggregating Veracity Judgments and Embraced Signal Detection Theory Mixed Models. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 48(1), 161185. 10.1007/s10919-024-00456-x
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.469 | Journal eISSN: 2514-4820
Language: English
Submitted on: Jun 19, 2025
Accepted on: Oct 6, 2025
Published on: Oct 16, 2025
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

© 2025 Jason Geller, Pablo Gomez, Erin Buchanan, Dominique Makowski, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.