PhD award: Caro Hautekiet

Paper: Hautekiet, C., Langerock, N., & Vergauwe, E. (in press). Accessibility of Information in the Focus of Attention: Heightened or Reduced? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition .

Hautekiet et al. (in press) is a very substantial, 4-experiments paper on the accessibility of items under the focus of attention. It takes some inconsistent evidence on the topic as a starting point, and carefully builds on it with a very clear and compelling rationale. It thus provides a solid and large basis of data to clarify that, indeed, items in the focus of attention are more accessible overall — which is certainly a broad conclusion that is relevant for a large audience. We also appreciated very much that the experiment script, the raw data and the analysis codes were made available to the community, and that the experiments were pre-registered.

Post doc award: Ven Popov

paper: Popov, V., & Dames, H. (2022). Intent matters: Resolving the intentional versus incidental learning paradox in episodic long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 10.1037/xge0001272. Advance Online Publication .

ESCOP is delighted to recognize Ven Popov for his outstanding work that is truly transformational for the field of human learning and memory. In a series of 11 meticulous experiments, Popov and Dames (2022) have shaken up old assumptions, showing that intent to learn is crucial for long-term memory, especially for forming item-context associations. Besides this impressive contribution to the literature, Popov's work represents a source of inspiration for researchers across the discipline for exceptional, accessible writing and strong open science practices.