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This paper deals with the question, whether reading could be forgotten by skilled readers deprived from reading during a long period. Forty questionnaires and interviews of Israeli Holocaust survivors - who actually were cut off from all reading activities during their imprison - were analyzed and summarized. A number of interesting facts came up: There was hardly any desire or possibility to read in KZ-Camps, nevertheless a strong strive for a high cultural level was felt in order to keep the minds sane, such as 'reading as if' in many variations: Reading by heart, citing poems, discussing philosophic questions, imagining recipes, etc. were reported as a means to conserve the taste of reading. But, reading Camp-orders or an occasional piece of paper was not considered reading (only books or newspapers), while writing even a tiny single note was considered writing. The first reading-experience after liberation was "strange," but only in a few cases was real difficulty encountered in going back to reading, in no case was reading forgotten. General sadness was expressed about the lost years of reading. After release: free newspaper reading was not only expressed as "back to literature," but served as a means to the acquisition of the new language (Hebrew). Only very few cases indicated reading encouragement or ambitious book-education of the second generation.

A growing body of evidence indicates that subjective confidence plays an important role in guiding behaviour. Past studies have demonstrated a fixed relationship between confidence and behaviour, so that low confidence leads to one course of action, and high confidence to another. Here, we tested whether people display flexibility in their use of confidence, so that the mapping between confidence and behaviour is not necessarily fixed, but can instead vary depending on the specific context. This proposal was studied in three experiments, testing the hypothesis that the seemingly natural relationship between low confidence and advice requests varies according to whether people know, or do not know, the quality of the advice. Participants made an initial perceptual judgement, and then had to choose between re-sampling evidence or receiving advice from a virtual advisor, before making a final decision. The results from these experiments showed that, when no objective information about advisor reliability was available, people selected advice more often when their confidence was high rather than low, reflecting the use of confidence as a feedback proxy to learn about advisor quality. Importantly, participants were able to learn about the value of advice even in the absence of feedback and subsequently selected more advice from better advisors, indicating the value of using confidence in this way. In contrast, when participants had prior knowledge about the reliability of advisors, they requested advice more often when confidence was low, reflecting the use of confidence as a self-monitoring tool signalling that help should be solicited. These findings indicate that people use confidence in a way that is context-dependent and directed towards achieving their current goals.