False memories are well-established long-term memory (LTM) phenomena. Recent reports of false recognition at short term suggest that working memory (WM) could also give rise to false memories, supporting the unitary view of memory. Alternatively, we hypothesized that the emergence of false memories at short term results from the impairment of WM maintenance, memory performance relying then on LTM. More specifically, we assumed that false memories rely on the retrieval of gist traces of the memory items while their verbatim traces that could block false memories are no longer accessible. To test this proposal, we reported a series of 4 experiments in which the availability of 2 WM maintenance mechanisms, articulatory rehearsal and attentional refreshing, was manipulated, and the reliance of recognition performance on gist and verbatim traces was also assessed. In line with our hypothesis, the occurrence of false memories in immediate recognition test was accompanied by the reduction of verbatim memory retrieval resulting from the impairment of rehearsal. By contrast, false memories in the delayed test depended on gist memory, which was strengthened by the use of refreshing. These findings support an integrated account of false memories at short and long term, shed light on the nature of mental representations generated by WM maintenance mechanisms and on the relationships between WM and LTM.

The unconscious-thought effect (UTE) occurs when people are better able to make complex decisions after a period of distraction rather than immediately or after a period of conscious deliberation. This finding has often been interpreted as evidence of unconscious thinking. In two experiments, we provided the first evidence that the UTE is accompanied by enhanced memory for the gist of decision-relevant attributes and demonstrated that the cognitive demands of a distraction task moderate its effect on decision making and gist memory. It was only following a low-demand distraction task that participants chose the best alternative more often and displayed enhanced gist memory for decision-relevant attributes. These findings suggest that the UTE occurs only if cognitive resources are available and that it is accompanied by enhanced organization of information in memory, as shown by the increase in gist memory.

Successful statistical reasoning emerges from a dynamic system including: a cognitive agent, material artefacts with their actions possibilities, and the thoughts and actions that are realized while reasoning takes place. Five experiments provide evidence that enabling the physical manipulation of the problem information (through the use of playing cards) substantially improves statistical reasoning, without training or instruction, not only with natural frequency statements (Experiment 1) but also with single-event probability statements (Experiment 2). Improved statistical reasoning was not simply a matter of making all sets and subsets explicit in the pack of cards (Experiment 3), it was not merely due to the discrete and countable layout resulting from the cards manipulation, and it was not mediated by participants' level of engagement with the task (Experiment 5). The positive effect of an increased manipulability of the problem information on participants' reasoning performance was generalizable both over problems whose numeric properties did not map perfectly onto the cards and over different types of cards (Experiment 4). A systematic analysis of participants' behaviors revealed that manipulating cards improved performance when reasoners spent more time actively changing the presentation layout "in the world" as opposed to when they spent more time passively pointing at cards, seemingly attempting to solve the problem "in their head". Although they often go unnoticed, the action possibilities of the material artefacts available and the actions that are realized on those artefacts are constitutive of successful statistical reasoning, even in adults who have ostensibly reached cognitive maturity.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) refers to a change in liking of a conditioned stimulus (CS) subsequent to its repeated pairing with a valent stimulus (US). Two studies that bring new light on the highly debated question of the role of awareness in EC were conducted. We developed an innovative method motivated by higher order and integration theories of consciousness to distinguish between the role of conscious and unconscious knowledge about the pairings. On each trial of the awareness test, participants had to indicate the valence of the US associated with a given CS and to make a 'structural knowledge attribution' by reporting the basis of their response. Valence identification accuracy was used to evaluate knowledge while the knowledge attribution was used to measure the conscious status of knowledge. Memory attribution indicated conscious knowledge about the pairings while feeling-based and random attributions indicated unconscious knowledge. A meta-analysis of the two studies revealed that valence identification accuracy was above chance level for memory and feelingbased attributions but not for the random attribution. EC was found in the three attributions. While EC effect size was medium for the memory attribution it was small for feeling-based and random attributions. Moreover, Experiment 2 included a delayed test. EC was still present 24 hours after the conditioning took place. The results obtained for memory and feeling-based attributions suggest that both conscious and unconscious knowledge may underlie EC. The results obtained for random attribution suggest that EC may also occur without any knowledge of US valence.