Emotional factors in the forgetting of word associations.

Systematic explorations of the hypothesis that emotional factors influence memory has eventuated in both acceptance and rejection of the premise. The present study is patterned after the experimental model used by Rapaport et al. The modification introduced concerns the nature of the stimulus words; herein the "neutral" and "emotional" words are equated with regard to frequency of usage. The dependent variable included an evaluation of the emotionality of each word by Es, by Ss, and S's GRS. Factor analysis of the data revealed 2 factors affecting recall: emotionality and "response variability" (between Ss and between testing sessions) suggesting that "the forgetting of word associations is a function of both emotional and non-emotional determinants." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:3CL99L. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in working memory: Introduction to the special section.

This special section includes a set of 5 articles that examine the nature of inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory, using working memory span tasks as the main research tools. These span tasks are different from traditional short-term memory spans (e.g., digit or word span) in that they require participants to maintain some target memory items (e.g., words) while simultaneously performing some other tasks (e.g., reading sentences). In this introduction, a brief discussion of these working memory span tasks and their characteristics is provided first. This is followed by an overview of 2 major theoretic issues that are addressed by the subsequent articles—(a) the factors influencing the inter- and intraindividual differences in working memory performance and (b) the domain generality versus domain specificity of working memory—and also of some important issues that must be kept in mind when readers try to evaluate the claims regarding these 2 theoretical issues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memories seconds later: The rapid and compelling onset of illusory recognition.

Distortions of long-term memory (LTM) in the converging associates task are thought to arise from semantic associative processes and monitoring failures due to degraded verbatim and/or contextual memory. Sensory-based coding is traditionally considered more prevalent than meaning-based coding in short-term memory (STM), whereas the converse is true of LTM, leading to the expectation that false memory phenomena should be less robust in a canonical STM task. These expectations were violated in 2 experiments in which participants were shown lists of 4 semantically related words and were probed immediately following a filled 3- to 4-s retention interval or approximately 20 min later in a surprise recognition test. Corrected false recognition rates, confidence ratings, and Remember/Know judgments reveal similar false memory effects across STM and LTM conditions. These results indicate that compelling false memory illusions can be rapidly instantiated and that, consistent with unitary models of memory, they originate from processes that are not specific to LTM tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The persistence of structural priming: Transient activation or implicit learning?

Structural priming in language production is a tendency to recreate a recently uttered syntactic structure in different words. This tendency can be seen independent of specific lexical items, thematic roles, or word sequences. Two alternative proposals about the mechanism behind structural priming include (a) short-term activation from a memory representation of a priming structure and (b) longer term adaptation within the cognitive mechanisms for creating sentences, as a form of procedural learning. Two experiments evaluated these hypotheses, focusing on the persistence of structural priming. Both experiments yielded priming that endured beyond adjacent sentences, persisting over 2 intervening sentences in Experiment 1 and over 10 in Experiment 2. Although memory may have short-term consequences for some components of this kind of priming, the persisting effects are more compatible with a learning account than a transient memory account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

False memory in aging: Effects of emotional valence on word recognition accuracy.

Memory is susceptible to distortions. Valence and increasing age are variables known to affect memory accuracy and may increase false alarm production. Interaction between these variables and their impact on false memory was investigated in 36 young (18-28 years) and 36 older (61-83 years) healthy adults. At study, participants viewed lists of neutral words orthographically related to negative, neutral, or positive critical lures (not presented). Memory for these words was subsequently tested with a remember-know procedure. At test, items included the words seen at study and their associated critical lures, as well as sets of orthographically related neutral words not seen at study and their associated unstudied lures. Positive valence was shown to have two opposite effects on older adults' discrimination of the lures: It improved correct rejection of unstudied lures but increased false memory for critical lures (i.e., lures associated with words studied previously). Thus, increased salience triggered by positive valence may disrupt memory accuracy in older adults when discriminating among similar events. These findings likely reflect a source memory deficit due to decreased efficiency in cognitive control processes with aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term outcomes of memory retrieval under stress.

Previous studies have found impairing effects of stress hormones on memory retrieval. So far, it is unknown whether these impairments are temporary, persistent throughout time, or whether the strength of the memory trace changes after retrieval because of the effects of stress hormones on memory processes during retrieval. In the present study, delayed cued recall (6 months after initial learning) was compared between male participants who had retrieved previously learned word pairs during stress or a control condition. Retrieval (with or without stress) had taken place either 1 day or 5 weeks after initial encoding. The group that had retrieved words under stress 5 weeks after encoding performed worse on long-term recall than the comparable control group. However, when words were retrieved under stress 1 day after encoding, no long-term effect was found, although performance at 6 months in relation to performance under stress was slightly increased compared to the control group. These results support previous findings in animals that stress may affect memory during reactivation. It further suggests that time intervals between encoding and reactivation may play an important role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Similarities and differences between working memory and long-term memory: Evidence from the levels-of-processing span task.

Two experiments compared the effects of depth of processing on working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM) using a levels-of-processing (LOP) span task, a newly developed WM span procedure that involves processing to-be-remembered words based on their visual, phonological, or semantic characteristics. Depth of processing had minimal effect on WM tests, yet subsequent memory for the same items on delayed tests showed the typical benefits of semantic processing. Although the difference in LOP effects demonstrates a dissociation between WM and LTM, we also found that the retrieval practice provided by recalling words on the WM task benefited long-term retention, especially for words initially recalled from supraspan lists. The latter result is consistent with the hypothesis that WM span tasks involve retrieval from secondary memory, but the LOP dissociation suggests the processes engaged by WM and LTM tests may differ. Therefore, similarities and differences between WM and LTM depend on the extent to which retrieval from secondary memory is involved and whether there is a match (or mismatch) between initial processing and subsequent retrieval, consistent with transfer-appropriate-processing theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental reversals in false memory: Now you see them, now you don't!

A developmental reversal in false memory is the counterintuitive phenomenon of higher levels of false memory in older children, adolescents, and adults than in younger children. The ability of verbatim memory to suppress this age trend in false memory was evaluated using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm. Seven and 11-year-old children studied DRM lists either in a standard condition (whole words) that normally produces high levels of false memory or in an alternative condition that should enhance verbatim memory (word fragments). Half the children took 1 recognition test, and the other half took 3 recognition tests. In the single-test condition, the typical age difference in false memory was found for the word condition (higher false memory for 11-year-olds than for 7-year-olds), but in the word fragment condition false memory was lower in the older children. In the word condition, false memory increased over successive recognition tests. Our findings are consistent with 2 principles of fuzzy-trace theory's explanation of false memories: (a) reliance on verbatim rather than gist memory causes such errors to decline with age, and (b) repeated testing increases reliance on gist memory in older children and adults who spontaneously connect meaning across events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence comprehension in Alzheimer's disease: Effects of grammatical complexity, speech rate, and repetition.

Caregivers of patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) are often advised to modify their speech to facilitate the patients' sentence comprehension. Three common recommendations are to (a) speak in simple sentences, (b) speak slowly, and (c) repeat one's utterance, using the same words. These three speech modifications were experimentally manipulated in order to investigate their individual and combined effects on sentence comprehension in AD. Fifteen patients with mild to moderate AD and 20 healthy older persons were tested on a sentence comprehension task with sentences varying in terms of (a) degree of grammatical complexity, (b) rate of presentation (normal vs. slow), and (c) form of repetition (verbatim vs. paraphrase). The results indicated a significant decline in sentence comprehension for the AD group. Sentence comprehension improved, however, after the sentence was repeated in either verbatim or paraphrased form. However, the patients' comprehension did not improve for sentences presented at the slow speech rate. This pattern of results is explained vis-à-vis the patients' working memory loss. The findings challenge the appropriateness of several clinical recommendations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

This cat has nine lives? Children's memory for genericity in language.

Generic noun phrases ("Birds lay eggs") are important for expressing knowledge about abstract kinds. The authors hypothesized that genericity would be part of gist memory, such that young children would appropriately recall whether sentences were presented as generic or specific. In 4 experiments, preschoolers and college students (N = 280) heard a series of sentences in either generic form (e.g., "Bears climb trees") or specific form (e.g., "This bear climbs trees") and were asked to recall the sentences following a 4-min distractor task. Participants in all age groups correctly distinguished between generic and specific noun phrases (NPs) in their recall, even when forgetting the details of the NP form. Memory for predicate content (e.g., "climb trees") was largely unaffected by genericity, although memory for category labels (e.g., "bear") was at times better for those who heard sentences with generic wording. Overall, these results suggest that generic form is maintained in long-term memory even for young children and thus may serve as the foundation for constructing knowledge about kinds. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interidentity memory transfer in dissociative identity disorder.

Controversy surrounding dissociative identity disorder (DID) has focused on conflicting findings regarding the validity and nature of interidentity amnesia, illustrating the need for objective methods of examining amnesia that can discriminate between explicit and implicit memory transfer. In the present study, the authors used a cross-modal manipulation designed to mitigate implicit memory effects. Explicit memory transfer between identities was examined in 7 DID participants and 34 matched control participants. After words were presented to one identity auditorily, the authors tested another identity for memory of those words in the visual modality using an exclusion paradigm. Despite self-reported interidentity amnesia, memory for experimental stimuli transferred between identities. DID patients showed no superior ability to compartmentalize information, as would be expected with interidentity amnesia. The cross-modal nature of the test makes it unlikely that memory transfer was implicit. These findings demonstrate that subjective reports of interidentity amnesia are not necessarily corroborated by objective tests of explicit memory transfer. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The mnemonic value of orthography for vocabulary learning.

In 2 experiments, the authors examined whether spellings improve students' memory for pronunciations and meanings of new vocabulary words. Lower socioeconomic status minority 2nd graders (M = 7 years 7 months; n = 20) and 5th graders (M = 10 years 11 months; n = 32) were taught 2 sets of unfamiliar nouns and their meanings over several learning trials. The words were defined, depicted, and embedded in sentences. During study periods, students were shown written forms of 1 set but not the other set. Spellings were not present during word recall. Results of analyses of variance showed that spellings enhanced memory for pronunciations and meanings compared to no spellings (ps     

Synesthesia and memory: Color congruency, von Restorff, and false memory effects.

In the current study, we explored the influence of synesthesia on memory for word lists. We tested 10 grapheme-color synesthetes who reported an experience of color when reading letters or words. We replicated a previous finding that memory is compromised when synesthetic color is incongruent with perceptual color. Beyond this, we found that, although their memory for word lists was superior overall, synesthetes did not exhibit typical color- or semantic-defined von Restorff isolation effects (von Restorff, 1933) compared with control participants. Moreover, our synesthetes exhibited a reduced Deese–Roediger–McDermott false memory effect (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995). Taken as a whole, these findings are consistent with the idea that color-grapheme synesthesia can lead people to place a greater emphasis on item-specific processing and surface form characteristics of words in a list (e.g., the letters that make them up) relative to relational processing and more meaning-based processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired priming of new associations in amnesia.

We assessed priming of new associations in amnesic patients and healthy control subjects in a paradigm developed by P. Graf and D. L. Schacter (see record 1986-12203-001). Subjects were presented unrelated word pairs embedded in sentences (e.g., A BELL was hanging over the baby's CRADLE) and were asked to rate how well the sentences related the two words. Subjects were then given a word completion test. They were shown three-letter word stems and were asked to complete the stem with the first word that came to mind. In the same context condition, each word stem was presented together with the word that had appeared in the same sentence during study (e.g., BELL-CRA ). In the different context condition, each stem was presented together with a new word that had never been presented (e.g., APPLE-CRA ). Control subjects completed more words in the same context condition than in the different context condition. In contrast, amnesic patients did not complete any more words in the same context condition than in the different context condition. Indeed, across two experiments none of the amnesic patients exhibited consistent priming of new associations. Thus, although amnesic patients do exhibit entirely normal priming of preexisting memory representations, they do not appear to exhibit priming of new associations in this paradigm. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval monitoring and anosognosia in Alzheimer's disease.

This study explored the relationship between episodic memory and anosognosia (a lack of deficit awareness) among patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). Participants studied words and pictures for subsequent memory tests. Healthy older adults made fewer false recognition errors when trying to remember pictures compared with words, suggesting that the perceptual distinctiveness of picture memories enhanced retrieval monitoring (the distinctiveness heuristic). In contrast, although participants with AD could discriminate between studied and nonstudied items, they had difficulty recollecting the specific presentation formats (words or pictures), and they had limited use of the distinctiveness heuristic. Critically, the demands of the memory test modulated the relationship between memory accuracy and anosognosia. Greater anosognosia was associated with impaired memory accuracy when participants with AD tried to remember words but not when they tried to remember pictures. These data further delineate the retrieval monitoring difficulties among individuals with AD and suggest that anosognosia measures are most likely to correlate with memory tests that require the effortful retrieval of nondistinctive information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working Memory and Perseveration in Verbal Fluency.

Letter and semantic fluency tasks are often used in neuropsychological assessment and are sensitive to many conditions. Performance is assessed by correct responses and errors, including perseverations. Healthy young adults performed letter and semantic fluency tasks. One group performed these tasks in the conventional manner; 2 other groups performed them while maintaining memory loads. The memory loads consisted either of words from the same category as the fluency task or of words from a different category. The results showed little effect of memory loads on correct responses but significant effects of memory load on perseveration rates: Same-category loads resulted in higher rates, especially in letter fluency. The results are discussed in terms of frontal lobe function in verbal fluency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remembering source evidence from associatively related items: Explanations from a global matching model.

The authors tested source memory across three conditions, one in which 3 strongly associated primes of a target word were presented in the same source as the target, one in which primes were presented in a different source than the target, and one in which no associates of targets were encoded. In the first 2 experiments, target source memory increased in the same-prime condition and decreased in the different-prime condition relative to the no-prime condition. In Experiment 3, the different-prime condition created the illusion that target words had been presented in both sources at encoding. The MINERVA 2 model (D. L. Hintzman, 1988) was able to predict these effects by basing source decisions on the global match of source-specific retrieval probes to all of the items in the memory set. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Implicit false memory in the DRM paradigm: Effects of amnesia, encoding instructions, and encoding duration.

Recent studies with the Deese/Roediger–McDermott (Deese 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995) paradigm have revealed that amnesic patients do not only show impaired veridical memory, but also diminished false memory for semantically related lure words. Due to the typically used explicit retrieval instructions, however, this finding may reflect problems at encoding, at recollection, or both. Therefore, the present experiments examined implicit as well as explicit false memory in patients suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome and controls. In Experiment 1, encoding instructions either focused on remembering individual list words, or on discovering semantic relationships among the words. In Experiment 2, different presentation durations were used. Results emphasize the distinction between automatic and intentional retrieval: Korsakoff patients’ veridical and false memory scores were diminished when explicit recollection was required, but not when memory was tested implicitly. Encoding manipulations only significantly affected veridical memory: Priming was reduced with thematic encoding, and explicit retrieval was facilitated when given more study time. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-lasting effects of briefly flashed words and pseudowords in ultrarapid serial visual presentation.

Our ability to identify even complex scenes in rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is astounding, but memory for such items seems lacking. Rather than pictures, we used streams of more than 200 verbal stimuli, rushing by on the screen at a rate of more than 12 items per second while participants had to detect infrequent names (Experiments 1 and 2) or words written in capitals (Experiment 3). By direct and indirect tests, we investigated what is remembered of these masses of task-irrelevant distractor words and pseudowords embedded in an RSVP stream. Lexical decision, the indirect test applied either immediately after each stimulus train or with a delay, revealed strong long-term priming effects. Relative to stimuli not shown before, lexical decisions were faster and more accurate to words but slower to pseudowords. The size of these effects mirrored how often words and pseudowords had occurred in a stream, suggesting that memory traces are strengthened with successive presentations and survive for several minutes at least. Moreover, in a direct test (old–new categorization), words as well as pseudowords benefited from prior occurrence in an RSVP stream if they had occurred more than once. These findings parallel recent physiological and behavioral evidence for memory consolidation of distractor pictures in RSVP and highlight that, despite huge numbers of interfering stimuli, distractor words and pseudowords exhibit long-lasting memory effects. Consolidation seems to progress at higher cognitive levels at the same time that subsequent stimuli are perceptually processed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Building up linguistic context in schizophrenia: Evidence from self-paced reading.

An impairment in the build-up and use of context has been proposed as a core feature of schizophrenia. The current study tested the hypothesis that schizophrenia patients show impairments in building up context within sentences because of abnormalities in combining semantic with syntactic information. Schizophrenia patients and healthy controls read and made acceptability judgments about sentences containing verbs that were semantically associated with individual preceding words but that violated either the meaning (animacy/semantic constraints) or the syntactic structure (morphosyntactic constraints) of their preceding contexts. To override these semantic associations and determine that such sentences are unacceptable, participants must integrate semantic with syntactic information. These sentences were compared with congruous and pragmatically/semantically violated sentences that imposed fewer semantic-syntactic integration demands. At sentence-final words and decisions, patients showed smaller reaction time differences than controls to animacy/semantically violated or morphosyntactically violated sentences relative to pragmatically/semantically violated or nonviolated sentences. The relative insensitivity to these violations in patients with schizophrenia may arise from impairments in combining semantic and syntactic information to build up sentence context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)