
































Microsoft Word - [Formatted] 6 - Changing Verbal Label Assignments Selects the Memory System for Responses in an Immediate Visual Recognition Task


  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

 
 

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CHANGING VERBAL  
LABEL ASSIGNMENTS  

SELECTS THE  
MEMORY SYSTEM  

FOR RESPONSES IN  
AN IMMEDIATE VISUAL 

RECOGNITION TASK 

ALEXA BECKER, MENGXUE KANG, 
ARNOLD GLASS (FACULTY ADVISOR) 

 

 

✵ ABSTRACT 
The dual system hypothesis posits the exist-

ence of two neural systems for memory and learning 
in the mammalian brain: the habit system and the im-
provisational system. This study sought to determine 
whether both systems are involved in a visual recog-
nition task originally outlined in Sternberg (1966) 
and whether each system could be selectively en-
gaged on the basis of response assignment.[13] Sev-
enteen undergraduate students participated in an 
immediate visual recognition task where they re-
sponded whether or not a test consonant was pre-
sent in a previous study sequence of one to six con-
sonants by pressing one key for same or another key 
for different. When the different response was as-
signed to the spatially right “J” key, reaction time for 
targets and lures was a function of the study se-
quence size, indicating that the study sequence was 
serially scanned and compared with the test item by 
the habit system. However, when the same response 
was assigned to the spatially right “J” key, reaction 
time was not a function of study sequence size, indi-
cating that the test item was not compared with the 

study sequence and responses were instead deter-
mined by perceived recency/novelty of the test item 
by the improvisational system. Differences in reac-
tion time depending on response assignment sug-
gest the selection of one memory system over the 
other based on verbal labels assigned to response 
keys in different spatial locations. Verbal label refers 
to the label of same or different assigned to the re-
sponse keys in the experiment instructions. Results 
expand upon Sternberg (1966)—which used the 
same visual recognition task design as this study but 
did not account for response assignment, obscuring 
evidence of contributions from both memory sys-
tems—and provide more evidence for the dual-sys-
tem hypothesis by demonstrating the involvement 
of both memory systems in immediate visual recog-
nition.[13] 

 

1 INTRODUCTION 
Sternberg’s (1966) seminal study on 

memory scanning found that, for a study sequence 
of one to six digits presented one at a time, visual 
recognition response time (RT) for a test digit was an 
increasing function of the length of the study se-
quence for both targets (a test digit that was present 
in the study sequence) and lures (a test digit that was 
not present in the study sequence).[13] These results 
suggested the existence of a visual recognition sys-
tem that computes by (exhaustively) serially scan-
ning a representation of a study set for a match with 
a test item. Less than a decade after Sternberg’s 
study, evidence was found for the existence of an ad-
ditional visual recognition system that computes a 
test item’s perceived recency (referring to a test item 
that one recognizes as just having been seen in a 
previous study set) or novelty (referring to a new test 
item that one does not recognize as just having been 
seen in a previous study set) without scanning 
through a representation of a corresponding study 
set. Whereas Sternberg’s results suggested the se-
rial scanning of a study set in memory for a match 
with a test item, Atkinson & Juola’s (1973 & 1974) 
suggested a purely perceptual judgment of the re-
cency/novelty of a test item without comparison to a 
study set.[1,2] Sternberg and Atkinson & Juola both 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

found evidence for two different systems of visual 
recognition; however, researchers at the time had no 
explanation for why there would be more than one. 

Evidence of the contributions of two distinct 
neural systems to animal navigation provided the 
first evidence of two distinct neural systems for 
recognition. This led to the proposal of the dual-sys-
tem hypothesis, a possible resolution to the mystery 
of Sternberg and Atkinson & Juola’s findings.[9,11] The 
dual-system hypothesis posits that two integrated, 
yet distinct systems of learning and memory exist in 
the mammalian brain: the improvisational system 
and the habit system. The improvisational system in-
cludes the hippocampus and surrounding medial 
temporal regions, the inferior temporal cortex, and 
the occipital cortex. It is responsible for constructing 
visual representations of the world and making re-
sponses to novel targets. The habit system includes 
the basal ganglia, the supplementary, premotor, and 
ventrolateral areas of the frontal cortex, the parietal 
cortex, and occipital cortex. It is responsible for en-
coding and serially generating sequences of ac-
tions.[5] See FIGURE 1 for an fMRI scan depicting por-
tions of these systems. A variety of behavioral find-
ings—such as spatial navigation, habit formation, and 

goal-directed actions—have been found to have a 
clear neural basis in the context of this dual-system 
model.[15]  

The improvisational system makes recogni-
tion judgments based on a test item’s perceived re-
cency or novelty.[14] The most likely explanation for 
how the improvisational system computes re-
cency/novelty is on the basis of the neural response 
to a perceptual stimulus. A repeated visual target ac-
tivates exactly the same neurons, and the response 
of those neurons decreases as a function of the rep-
etition due to habituation. So, if a test item was just 
shown in a previous study set, the improvisational 
system will detect that habituated (hence reduced) 
neural pattern and compute recency (a match with 
one of the just-seen study items). If it does not detect 
a habituated neural pattern upon presentation of the 
test item, it will compute novelty (a new item; no 
match). Well before the establishment of the dual-
system hypothesis, Groves and Thompson (1970) 
first demonstrated that this was a plausible basis for 
the detection of recency/novelty.[6] Contrarily, the 
habit system makes recognition judgments by re-
trieving a representation of the study items from 
memory and serially scanning the set of study items  

FIGURE 1: Clusters in the left/right hippocampus (A) and left/right anterior parahippocampal gyrus (B), which are part of the 
improvisational system. (C) shows clusters in the left/right caudate, which is part of the habit system. A better illustration of the 
habit and improvisational systems does not yet exist unfortunately, but these scans from Sinha and Glass (2017) show the cru-
cial parts of each system. 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

for a match with a test item.[3]  
Sinha & Glass (2017) found evidence for the 

involvement of both of these memory systems in a 
same/different matching task where participants 
judged whether two four-consonant strings were the 
same or different (e.g., study string “BDCF” vs. test 
string “BCFD”).[12] Participants were presented with a 
study string followed by a test string to which they 
had to respond with either same or different. RT for 
different responses was an increasing function of the 
left-to-right location of the first difference between 
study and test strings, indicating that the habit sys-
tem made different responses by serially comparing 
the consonants in the study and test strings from left 
to right. It follows from this line of reasoning that 
same responses ought to be the slowest since the 
participant presumably must compare all four test 
string items to all four study string items to deter-
mine that they are the same. However, RT for same 
responses was faster than different responses, indi-
cating that the improvisational system was making 
same responses based on the perceived recency of 
the test string as a whole chunk without serially com-
paring each item in the study and test strings. fMRI 
results corroborated this interpretation and showed 
that different responses were associated with activity 
in both the caudate and hippocampus while same 
responses were associated with just hippocampal 
activity. 

Based on a connectivity analysis of this brain 
activity, Sinha & Glass (2017) posited that when the 
test string is presented, the improvisational system 
begins a holistic perceptual comparison between 
the study and test strings while the habit system sim-
ultaneously initiates a serial left-to-right comparison 
of the individual study and test string consonants.[12] 
During this holistic comparison, mental maps of the 
test and study strings are compared; if the strings 
match across all four positions, a strong match signal 
is produced by the hippocampus and a same re-
sponse is made. When the study and test strings are 
identical, the match signal produced by the hippo-
campus is powerful enough to inhibit the serial com-
parison process initiated by the caudate and pro-
duce a same response. When the study and test 
strings differ, the match signal is not strong enough 

to inhibit the serial comparison process, so the habit 
system takes over and the serial comparison contin-
ues until a mismatch is found and a different re-
sponse is then made. 

The functional roles of the improvisational 
and habit systems in a visual recognition task where 
the study and test items were both four-consonant 
strings were evident from the results of Sinha & Glass 
(2017).[12] The two systems appear to work in parallel 
and one of them responds depending on whether 
the test string is the same as or different from the 
study string. However, there was still the question of 
how the systems would function when the test item 
was a single consonant. Kang, Norman, Zhou, 
Becker, & Glass (2021) replicated the same experi-
mental design as Sinha & Glass (2017) with a four-
consonant study string, except the test item was a 
single consonant that either was (eliciting a same re-
sponse) or was not (eliciting a different response) 
present in the study string. They found that when the 
different response was assigned to the spatially right 
response key and the same response was assigned 
to the spatially left response key, RT for same re-
sponses to targets was an increasing function of the 
test consonant’s position in the study string, indicat-
ing that the habit system made responses by serially 
scanning the study string until a match (if there was 
one) with the test consonant was found. However, 
when the response assignment was switched—the 
different response was assigned to the spatially left 
response key and the same response was assigned 
to the spatially right response key—RT for same re-
sponses was not significantly different among the 
four possible positions in the study string. This indi-
cated that the improvisational system made re-
sponses based on the perceived recency/novelty of 
the test consonant without scanning the study string 
for a match.[7] Kang et al. (2021) also conducted an 
iteration of this experiment where participants used 
two fingers on the same hand to make responses 
with keys in different spatial locations. They found 
the same result, confirming that the assignment of a 
verbal label to a key in a relative right or left spatial 
position determines which memory system is se-
lected for the task. This refutes an alternative expla-
nation that the assignment of verbal label same or 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

 

 

[a] The participants in this experiment were students from two different Rutgers courses. “Course A” completed the experiment first, running 
144 regular trials per session. After observing significant results from “course A”, the researchers increased the regular trials for “course B” to 
360 per session to see if the effect observed in the results of “course A” remained. Of the sample of 17, 10 participants were in “course A” 
and 7 participants were in “course B”. Groups 1 and 2 mentioned above—which are the groups the researchers are comparing—are each 
composed of students from both of these courses. The final results detailed later are a combination of the results of both courses, but these 
combined results do not significantly differ from the initial results of just “course A” (data not shown). 

 

different to a specific hand causes the hemisphere 
associated with that hand to control which memory 
system is selected for the task.[7] Therefore, when the 
study item is a four-consonant string and the test 
item is a single consonant, one system is selected to 
make responses in the task over the other based on 
the assignment of verbal labels to response keys in 
different spatial locations. 

Sternberg (1966) did not take into account 
the effect of response assignment on RT; since it is 
not mentioned anywhere in his paper, he either only 
tested one response assignment or varied the re-
sponse assignment but did not discriminate be-
tween RTs from trials of different response assign-
ments in his analyses. The purpose of this experi-
ment was to investigate the effect of response as-
signment on RT by designating it as a separate inde-
pendent variable in a replication of Sternberg 
(1966). The researchers aim to determine whether 
response assignment influences the control of the 
improvisational versus habit system in Sternberg’s 
immediate visual recognition task. Based on the re-
sults of Kang et al. (2021) where both memory sys-
tems were differentially involved in the task depend-
ing on the response assignment, the researchers hy-
pothesize that the finding of contributions from both 
memory systems in Sternberg (1966) may have been 
obscured originally by his disregard for response as-
signment’s effect on RT. Thus, it could be the case 
that both memory systems are indeed involved in 
this task and that one system is selected to make re-
sponses over the other based on response assign-
ment. 
 

2 METHODOLOGY  

 Participants were seventeen students dis-
tributed across two psychology courses at Rutgers 
University-New Brunswick in New Jersey. At the time 
that this study was run, the researchers did not have 
access to a larger online subject pool; however, one 
researcher had remote access to a pool of students 

enrolled in his psychology courses and the study 
here was relevant to their course material, so they 
were used as subjects. Participants consented to tak-
ing part in experiments as a feature of the course 
they were enrolled in and received course credit for 
their participation. Eleven were female and six were 
male, aged 18-23. Sixteen were right-handed and 
one was left-handed based on self-reports of hand-
edness. 
 Stimuli were capitalized consonants ran-
domly selected from a pool of all consonants (ex-
cluding Y). In a previous replication of Sternberg 
(1966), Glass (1993) used three different kinds of 
stimuli in Sternberg’s original design: digits, conso-
nants from the first half of the alphabet, and conso-
nants from the second half of the alphabet.[4] There 
was no difference in results based on the stimuli. 
Study sequences were one to six consonants in 
length. Each consonant was presented one at a time 
for 1.2 seconds each with no inter-stimulus intervals, 
consistent with the design and timing in Sternberg 
(1966). In the “Right Key = Different” response as-
signment condition, participants responded by 
pressing the spatially left “F” key if the test consonant 
was present in the study sequence (a same re-
sponse) and the spatially right “J” key if it was not (a 
different response). In the “Right Key = Same” condi-
tion, participants had the opposite response assign-
ment. Each participant completed one session with 
the “Right Key = Different” response assignment and 
one session with the “Right Key = Same” response 
assignment. Participants were randomly assigned to 
one of two groups: group one (N = 9) completed the 
“Right Key = Different” session first and the “Right 
Key = Same” session second. Group two (N = 8) 
completed the sessions in the opposite order.[a]  
 All participants completed twenty practice 
trials at the beginning of each session to understand 
how the trials would run. RTs from practice trials were 
not included in the larger analysis. There were an 
equal number of regular trials for each possible 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

study sequence size (one to six). Within the group of 
trials for a particular study sequence size, half of the 
subsequent test consonants were targets (test items 
presented in the study sequence) and half were lures 
(test items not presented in the study sequence). Of 
the trials where the test consonant was a target, 
there were an equal number of trials for each possi-
ble position of the test consonant in the study se-
quence. The experiment was administered re-
motely; participants were given Python code files 
containing the experiment code and instructions on 
how to run it through PsychoPy on their personal 
computers.[10] 

Before the trials began, instructions were 
presented (see FIGURES 2A & 2B). Though there were no 
explicit instructions regarding which hands or fin-
gers to use to respond, the researchers assume par-
ticipants used their left hand to press the “F” key and 
their right hand to press the “J” key as that is the nor-
mal typing position. However, the researchers are 
more concerned with the spatial location of the re-
sponse keys rather than which hands the participants 
used to respond; as explained earlier, it is the assign-
ment of verbal labels to response keys in different 
spatial locations that determines the memory system 
(and thus visual recognition method) used to re-
spond, not the assignment of verbal labels to differ-
ent hands.[7] 

For each trial, a study sequence of one to six 
capitalized consonants was shown—one consonant 
at a time in the center of the screen—and then a fixa-
tion asterisk was presented followed by a test conso-
nant. The purpose of the fixation asterisk was to fo-
cus the participant’s gaze to a particular point (the 
center of the screen) where the test consonant was 
about to be displayed so that RT did not include the 
time it takes for a participant to direct their gaze to-
wards the test consonant, only the time it took for 
them to respond. The fixation asterisk was black for 
two seconds and then red for one second to indicate 
that the test consonant was about to appear. Partici-
pants responded as fast as possible whether the test 
consonant had been present in the previous se-
quence. The test consonant disappeared immedi-
ately after a response was made and feedback on ac-
curacy was presented, as was done in Sternberg 

(1966).[13] Feedback was one of four possible sen-
tences (depending on the response) displayed for 
three seconds that said “Correct, the test letter 
was/was not in the sequence” or “Incorrect, the test 
letter was/was not in the sequence”. Fixation aster-
isks appeared in between successive trials as well. 
 

3 RESULTS 
A within-subjects ANOVA was selected to 

assess the effect of response assignment condition 
(“Right Key = Different” or “Right Key = Same”), judg-
ment (same response or different response), and 
study sequence size (1-6 consonants) on RT. The re-
searchers selected a within-subjects ANOVA be-
cause each subject completed one session for each 
response assignment, and they wanted to measure 
the difference in RT for those conditions for each 
subject. All variables were within-subjects variables. 

FIGURE 2A: First instructions screen displayed upon opening 
the experiment. 

FIGURE 2B: Second instructions screen. 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

 

The degrees of freedom, F-statistic, p-value, and ef-
fect size for all variables and interactions are con-
tained in TABLE 1. 

The effects of response assignment and 
judgment were not significant. The effect of study se-
quence size was significant, 𝑝 = 0.002. The interac-
tion of response assignment and judgment was sig-
nificant, 𝑝 = 0.034. The interaction of response as-
signment and study sequence size was significant,  
𝑝 = 0.013. There was an effect of study sequence 

size on RT in the “Right Key = Different” condition for 
targets (𝑝 < 0.001) and lures (𝑝 < 0.001), but there 
was no effect of study sequence size on RT in the 
“Right Key = Same” conditions for targets or lures. 
This result is shown in FIGURE 3, which includes the av-
erage RT for each condition/study sequence size 
across all subjects. None of the other interactions—
between judgment and study sequence size and be-
tween condition, judgment, and study sequence 
size—were significant. 

 

VARIABLE/INTERACTION 
DEGREES OF  

FREEDOM 
F-STATISTIC P-VALUE 

EFFECT SIZE  
(OBSERVED POWER) 

RESPONSE ASSIGNMENT (RA) 1 0.647 0.433 0.118 

JUDGMENT 1 2.605 0.126 0.329 

STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE 5 4.285 0.002** 0.952 

RA X JUDGMENT 1 5.353 0.034* 0.585 

RA X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE 5 3.086 0.013* 0.850 

RA X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE  
(RIGHT KEY = DIFFERENT – TARGETS) 

5 7.383 < 0.001** 0.999 

RA X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE  
(RIGHT KEY = DIFFERENT – LURES) 

5 14.189 < 0.001** 1.000 

RA X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE  
(RIGHT KEY = SAME – TARGETS) 

5 0.419 0.834 0.154 

RA X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE  
(RIGHT KEY = SAME – LURES) 

5 0.962 0.446 0.327 

JUDGMENT X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE 5 0.852 0.536 0.281 

RA X JUDGMENT X STUDY SEQUENCE SIZE 5 0.402 0.846 0.150 

TABLE 1: ∗ indicates 𝑝 < 0.05. ∗∗ indicates 𝑝 < 0.01. 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

 

FIGURE 2: RT is only a function of study sequence size in the "Right Key = Different" condition, statistically verified by the within-
subjects ANOVA. RTs (y-axis) are averages for the entire set of participants. Error bars represent the standard error of the sam-
pling distribution of each condition/study set size, specified in the table below (TABLE 2). 

TABLE 2: Values for the standard error bars in FIGURE 3. 



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

 

4 DISCUSSION 
The purpose of this experiment was to inves-

tigate the effect of response assignment on RT in a 
replica of Sternberg (1966). The researchers hypoth-
esized that Sternberg’s disregard for response as-
signment’s effect on RT may have obscured evi-
dence for contributions from two memory systems—
hence two methods of visual recognition—in his task. 
The finding of significant differences in RT between 
the “Right Key = Different” and “Right Key = Same” 
conditions suggested that serial scanning of the 
study sequence by the habit system only occurred in 
the “Right Key = Different” condition. It was only in 
this condition that RT was a function of study se-
quence size, indicating serial comparison of the test 
item to each item in the study sequence; longer 
study sequences require more time to serially scan, 
and thus result in longer RTs. The fact that RT was not 
a function of study sequence size in the “Right Key = 
Same” condition suggests that the improvisational 
system made judgments of the perceived re-
cency/novelty of the test consonant (based on de-
tection of a habituated/non-habituated neural pat-
tern, respectively) without comparing it to the study 
sequence. This expands upon Sternberg’s original 
findings and provides more evidence for the dual-
system hypothesis. Our results suggest that both the 
habit system and the improvisational system are in-
deed involved in this task, and an experimenter can 
control the memory system selected to make re-
sponses in the task by assigning different verbal la-
bels to response keys in different spatial locations (in 
this case, different keys on a keyboard). 

The researchers do not have a definite an-
swer as to why the habit system is selected for the 
task when the different verbal label is assigned to the 
spatially right response key and the same verbal la-
bel is assigned to the spatially left response key 
(Right Key = Different condition) while the improvi-
sational system is selected for the task when the re-
sponse assignment is the opposite (Right Key = 
Same condition). Even though Kang et al. (2021) 
confirmed that the assignment of verbal labels to re-
sponse keys in different spatial locations determines 
which memory system gets selected for the task—not 
the assignment of verbal labels to different hands—

there is still no clear answer as to why the two re-
sponse assignment conditions result in the selection 
of different memory systems. For the same task, why 
should merely switching the verbal labels assigned 
to the response keys cause the participant to use a 
different memory system? The researchers suggest 
that the verbal label assigned to the spatially right 
key could be the deciding factor. Language is local-
ized in the left hemisphere, which processes infor-
mation from the right side of space. Therefore—since 
the verbal label assigned to the spatially right re-
sponse key is initially processed by the language-
dominant left hemisphere while the verbal label as-
signed to the spatially left response key is initially 
processed by the non-language-dominant right 
hemisphere—the language-dominant left hemi-
sphere may interpret the task and select the appro-
priate memory system depending on verbal label as-
signed to the spatially right response key. Perhaps 
when the label of different is assigned to the spatially 
right response key (Right Key = Different condition), 
the experiment is interpreted as a difference-detec-
tion task that implies serial comparison, and so the 
habit system is selected to make responses. Con-
versely, when the label of same is assigned to the 
spatially right response key (Right Key = Same con-
dition), the experiment is interpreted as a re-
cency/novelty detection task that implies a purely 
perceptual judgement, and so the improvisational 
system is selected to make responses. However, this 
is merely a suggestion; the verbal label assigned to 
the spatially left key could instead be the determin-
ing factor, or it could be the spatial position of both 
keys. 

To determine if it is indeed the verbal label 
processed by the language-dominant hemisphere 
that controls which system is selected for the task, fu-
ture studies ought to measure participant language 
dominance directly by using brain imaging tech-
niques to see if the location of one’s language center 
has any effect on their responses. If individuals with 
atypical right hemisphere language localization use 
the opposite neural system as their typical counter-
parts to respond when the response assignment is 
the same, this would provide evidence for the notion 
that it is the verbal label processed by the language-



  ARESTY  RUTGERS UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH JOURNAL, VOLUME I, ISSUE III 
 
 
 

dominant hemisphere that controls the memory sys-
tem selected for the task. There is an increased inci-
dence of atypical right hemisphere language locali-
zation in strongly left-handed individuals.[8] How-
ever, it only occurs in about 25% of those individuals, 
and there was no evidence that the one left-handed 
participant in this study was using the opposite neu-
ral system as the other participants to respond when 
the response assignment was the same. They were 
also not an outlier regarding RT. 

A limitation of our experiment is that due to 
the move to remote instruction as a consequence of 
the COVID-19 pandemic, participants completed 
this experiment in their own homes at their leisure, 
so environmental confounds could not be controlled 
as they normally would be in a laboratory setting. 
However, this experiment could still better control 
for those confounds while remaining remote, per-
haps by running the sessions over video call to mon-
itor participants. The sample size was also small, and 
the sizes of each group were slightly uneven (group 
1, N = 9; group 2, N = 8). Participant fatigue could 
have also been a confounding factor as breaks did 
not appear during any of the sessions. Further repli-
cations of this experiment that include fMRI record-
ings ought to be done to see if activation in the cau-
date/hippocampus like that observed in Sinha & 
Glass (2017) and Kang et al. (2021) is found during 
this task∎  

 
 

5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 
This research was conducted under Dr. Ar-

nold Glass in his lab. Data analyses referenced in the 
results section were facilitated by our lab’s graduate 
student, Mengxue Kang. 

 

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My name is Alexa Becker. I am a rising senior majoring in Psychology and Cognitive Science at Rutgers-New 
Brunswick. My hobbies include playing the bass, reading, and powerlifting. My research interests include visual 
recognition and, more broadly, the neural systems involved in memory and learning as well as aging and 
memory. I have been working in Dr. Arnold Glass’ research lab for two years. Dr. Glass has been a professor of 
psychology at Rutgers for 46 years. 
The experiment outlined in this paper was done virtually (as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic). I composed 
the write-up, designed this experiment, provided participants with materials needed to complete the experi-
ment remotely, and collected results data. Our lab’s former graduate student, Mengxue Kang, assisted with 
designing the experiment and facilitated the statistical analyses. She has since successfully defended her dis-
sertation and now works as a data scientist for CVS. 


