Retroactive Effects of Irrelevant Speech on Serial Recall From Short-Term Memory.

The authors report 5 serial-recall experiments. In 4 of the 5 experiments, they show that irrelevant sound (IS) has a retroactive effect on material already in memory. In Experiment 1, IS presented during a filled retention interval had a reliable effect on list recall. Four further experiments, 3 of which used retroactive IS, showed that IS continued to-have an effect on recall following a long, filled retention interval. Articulatory suppression during visual input was found to abolish the long-lasting, retroactive effect of IS, supporting the idea that IS affects the phonological-loop component of short-term memory. IS also, therefore, seems to affect a longer term memory system with which the loop interacts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in retention as a function of learning.

The hypothesis that observed age-related decrements in recall scores derive primarily from degree of acquisition rather than from retention deficits per se was investigated. 40 elderly and 30 young Ss learned 9 paired associates under equal learning opportunity, learning to criterion or overlearning conditions. Retention was measured at 20 min. and 1 wk. Elderly Ss learned less on equal exposure and required more trials to criterion, but once having learned the material retained it as well as young Ss. Trials beyond criterion did not enhance the retention scores of elderly Ss and may have introduced negative motivational factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Object Retrieval in the 1st Year of Life: Learning Effects of Task Exposure and Box Transparency.

Before 12 months of age, infants have difficulties coordinating and sequencing their movements to retrieve an object concealed in a box. This study examined (a) whether young infants can discover effective retrieval solutions and consolidate movement coordination earlier if exposed regularly to such a task and (b) whether different environments, indexed by box transparency, would impact the rate of learning and time of discovery of these solutions. Infants (N=12) were presented with an object retrieval task every week from 6 1/2 months of age until they were able to retrieve the toy from the box using coordinated two-handed patterns for 3 weeks. To reach that criterion, infants tested with an opaque box took 2 1/2 months and infants tested with a semitransparent box took 1 1/2 months. Both groups outperformed age-matched controls who received a one-time exposure to the task. Repeated exposure to the task and vision of the toy significantly enhanced this process of solution discovery. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A short intertrial interval facilitates acquisition of context-conditioned fear and a short retention interval facilitates its expression.

Rats were shocked in a context on two occasions and then tested for fear reactions as indexed by freezing. Rats spent the interval between conditioning trials and between conditioning and test in their home cages. A short interval between context-conditioning trials or between trials involving a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS) produced better learning than longer intervals. A short retention interval between conditioning and test produced better performance than longer intervals. The effects of the intertrial interval on learning are the opposite of those reported previously and are opposite to those predicted by contemporary learning theories. The effects of the training to test interval on performance are predicted by Wagner's sometimes opponent process (SOP) theory (Wagner, 1981). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Following the Wrong Footsteps: Fixation Effects of Pictorial Examples in a Design Problem-Solving Task.

Two experiments examined possible negative transfer in nonexperts from the use of pictorial examples in a laboratory design problem-solving situation. In Experiment 1, 89 participants were instructed to "think aloud" and were assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) control (standard instructions), (b) fixation (inclusion of a problematic example, describing its problematic elements), or (c) defixation (inclusion of a problematic example, with instructions to avoid using problematic elements). Negative transfer due to examples was measured both quantitatively and qualitatively through verbal protocols. Verbal protocols (N = 176) were analyzed for participants' reasons for reference to the examples. In Experiment 2, fixation to examples was evaluated in nonverbalizing participants (N = 60). Results of both experiments suggest that (a) although participants consulted the problem instructions, they tended to follow the examples even when they included inappropriate elements and (b) the fixation effects can be diminished with the use of defixating instructions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of Model-Based and Memory-Based Processing on Speed and Accuracy of Grammar String Generation.

Learners are able to use 2 different types of knowledge to perform a skill. One type is a conscious mental model, and the other is based on memories of instances. The authors conducted 3 experiments that manipulated training conditions designed to affect the availability of 1 or both types of knowledge about an artificial grammar. Participants were tested for both speed and accuracy of their ability to generate letter sequences. Results indicate that model-based training leads to slow accurate responding. Memory-based training leads to fast, less accurate responding and highest achievement when perfect accuracy was not required. Evidence supports participants' preference for using the memory-based mode when exposed to both types of training. Finally, the accuracy contributed by model-based training declined over a retention interval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of stimulus emotionality and sentence generation on memory for words in adults with unilateral brain damage.

Does sentence generation and/or stimulus emotionality enhance verbal memory in patients with neurological impairment? This question was addressed by testing 40 patients with unilateral stroke (20 with left-brain and 20 with right-brain damage) and 20 healthy control participants for recall and recognition of 48 target words. During encoding, emotional and nonemotional words were either presented in sentences (read condition) or used to form sentences (generate condition). Both word emotionality and generative processing improved memory performance in all groups. The authors suggest that a similar influence (i.e., cognitive activation) underlies both of these memory-enhancing effects, although the putative origins of the 2 effects are quite different. Neuropsychological underpinnings and clinical implications of these phenomena are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comprehension as a basis for metacognitive judgments: Effects of effort after meaning on recall and metacognition.

We examined free recall and metacognitive judgments of ambiguous sentences studied with and without clues to facilitate their comprehension. Sentences were either studied without clues, with clues meaningfully embedded, or with clues following a 10-s interval delay. After presentation, subjects made judgments of comprehension (JCOMPs) or judgments of learning (JOLs). Puzzling over the meaning of sentences for several seconds prior to receiving the clue enhanced recall compared with studying sentences without clues or with embedded clues. This benefit of effort after meaning was not reflected in JCOMPs or JOLs. Rather, sentences considered relatively easy to understand received higher JOLs regardless of experimental condition. Although effort after meaning enhanced recall, subjects displayed no awareness of this benefit in their judgments. Our study adds to a growing literature showing students’ ignorance of factors affecting their own learning, which have important implications for education. Making learning conditions more difficult, thus requiring students to engage more cognitive effort, often leads to enhanced retention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stimulus context effects, associative strength, and word frequency as determiners of free recall in paired-associate learning.

Two levels of response word frequency and three levels of associative strength of paired-associates were used to form six lists. One level of low associative strength between pairs to be learned was created by re-pairing stimuli and responses from high associative strength lists. Both the high associative strength condition and the re-paired condition produced superior recall of response items. Results suggested that the development of response availability in paired-associate learning depends in part not only upon the strength of the initial relationship between each stimulus and response pair to be learned, but also upon the context provided by other stimuli in the list. The meaning of "present at input" in studies evaluating the principle of encoding specificity (Tulving & Thompson, 1973) was questioned. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Word Frequency Effects in Immediate Serial Recall of Pure and Mixed Lists: Tests of the Associative Link Hypothesis.

In immediate serial recall, high-frequency words are better recalled than low-frequency words. Recently, it has been suggested that high-frequency words are better recalled because of their better long-term associative links, and not because of the intrinsic properties of their longterm representations. In the experiment reported here, recall performance was compared for pure lists of high- and low-frequency words, and for mixed lists composed of either one low- and five high-frequency words or the reverse. The usual advantage of high-frequency words was found with pure lists and this advantage was reduced, but still significant with mixed lists composed of five low-frequency words. However, the low-frequency word included in a high-frequency list was recalled just as well as high-frequency words. Results are challenging for the associative link hypothesis and are best interpreted within an item-based reconstruction hypothesis, along with a distinctiveness account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Blockade of Central Cholinergic Receptors Impairs New Learning and Increases Proactive Interference in a Word Paired-Associate Memory Task.

Experimental data and computational models suggest that blockade of muscarinic cholinergic receptors impairs paired-associate learning and increases proactive interference (E. DeRosa & M. E. Hasselmo, 2000; M. E. Hasselmo & J. M. Bower, 1993). The results presented here provide evidence in humans supporting these hypotheses. Young healthy subjects first learned baseline word pairs (A-B) and, after a delay, learned additional overlapping (A-C) and nonoverlapping (D-E) word pairs. As predicted, when compared with subjects who received the active placebo glycopyrrolate (4 μg/kg) and subjects who were not injected, those who received scopolamine (8 μg/kg) showed (a) overall impairment in new word paired-associate learning, but no impairment in cued recall of previously learned associates; and (b) greater impairment in learning overlapping (A-C) compared with nonoverlapping (D-E) paired associates. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Serial Position Effects and the Picture-Superiority Effect in the Group Recall of Unshared Information.

This research examined how serial position effects (i.e., primacy and recency effects) and the picture-superiority effect (i.e., the tendency to recall pictures better than words) can impact the recall of unshared information (i.e., information known by only 1 group member). In 2 experiments, participants studied a stimulus list of pictures and words and completed a group recall task. In both experiments, the authors found that the primacy effect and the picture-superiority effect influenced how much unshared information was recalled and when it was recalled. However, there was little impact of the recency effect on either how much unshared information was recalled or when it was recalled. The implications of these findings for future theoretical research and applications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive Operations in the Generation Effect on a Recall Test: Role of Aging and Divided Attention.

Generation effect (generated words are better memorized than read words) of anagrams, rhymes, and associates of target words was examined in young, elderly, and very old subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that only young subjects benefit from the generation effect in a free-recall test when the rule is of a phonological nature. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 showed that the generation effect of rhymes was due to a resources-dependent self-initiated process. Experiments 4 and 5 showed that in a divided-attention situation, generation effect of rhymes is not significant in young subjects, but that the generation effect of semantic associates remains significant for both groups (Experiment 5). The results are discussed within the environmental support framework and the transfer-appropriate processing framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence of a Time-Dependent Long-Term Stage of Memory for a Spatial Learning Task in the Chick (Callus gallus).

The generalizability of temporal parameters of memory formation previously observed for a passive avoidance task was investigated in a spatial task with day-old chicks (Callus gallus). The percentage improvement in completion time over 2 separate trials was measured, and chicks were found to complete the second trial faster at all times tested up to 2 hr, except at 55 min posttraining. In addition, retention at 120 min, but not at 30 min, posttraining was found to be impaired by protein synthesis inhibition. These findings are consistent with the timing of a long-term stage of memory formation following passive avoidance training, implying that there may be some hardwiring to the temporal characteristics of memory formation in this species. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploration of cerebellar-dependent associative learning in schizophrenia: Effects of varying and shifting interstimulus interval on eyeblink conditioning.

Eyeblink conditioning abnormalities have been reported in schizophrenia, but the extent to which these anomalies are evident across a range of delay intervals (i.e., interstimulus intervals; ISIs) is unknown. In addition, the effects of ISI shifts on learning are unknown, though such manipulations can be informative about the plasticity of cerebellar timing functions. Therefore, the primary purpose of the present study was to investigate the interactions between ISI manipulations and learning in schizophrenia. A standard delay eyeblink conditioning procedure with four different interstimulus intervals (ISIs; 250, 350, 550, 850 ms) was employed. Each eyeblink conditioning experiment was immediately followed by another with a different ISI, thus permitting the characterization of conditioned response (CR) learning at one ISI and the extent to which CRs could be generated at a different latency following an ISI shift. Collapsing across all conditions, the schizophrenia group (n = 55) had significantly fewer conditioned responses and longer onset latencies than age-matched controls (n = 55). Surprisingly, shifting to a new ISI had negligible effects on conditioned response rates in both groups. These findings contribute to evidence of robust eyeblink conditioning abnormalities in schizophrenia and suggest impaired cerebellar function, but underscore the need for more research to clarify the source of these abnormalities and their relationship to clinical manifestations of schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exemplar effects in the context of a categorization rule: Featural and holistic influences.

Brooks and colleagues (S. W. Allen & L. R. Brooks, 1991; G. Regehr & L. R. Brooks, 1993) have shown that the classification of transfer stimuli is influenced by their similarity to training stimuli, even when a perfect classification rule is available. It is argued that the original effect obtained by Brooks and colleagues might have resulted from two potential confounding variables. Once these confounds were controlled, the current authors did not replicate Brooks and colleagues' results in Experiment 1. Exemplar effects appeared in Experiment 2 when transfer stimuli were perceptually more similar to training stimuli than in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, the authors obtained exemplar effects with separated stimuli, a finding that was not predicted by Brooks and colleagues' model. The authors suggest that a close perceptual match between training and transfer stimuli is necessary for the effect to occur, for both integrated and separated stimuli. The nature of this perceptual match, holistic or featural, is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Trace Eyeblink Conditioning in Abstinent Alcoholic Individuals: Effects of Complex Task Demands and Prior Conditioning.

Chronic misuse of alcohol affects an integrated neural circuit supporting the formation of associative memories acquired during eyeblink classical conditioning (R. McGlinchey-Berroth et al., 1995). The authors of this study investigated single-cue trace conditioning in amnesic and nonamnesic abstinent alcoholic individuals who either were or were not trained in a single-cue delay conditioning task. Overall, untrained alcoholic participants were severely impaired in acquisition, and alcoholic participants previously trained in single-cue delay conditioning performed similarly to untrained control participants. Individual performance in acquisition varied significantly within task but was relatively stable between the trace and delay tasks; there were nonamnesic and amnesic alcoholic participants who acquired responses at a normal rate in both delay and trace conditioning. The similarity of performances in delay and trace conditioning suggests a common source of impairment across both tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Timing in pigeons: Effects of the similarity between intertrial interval and gap in a timing signal.

Previous research suggests that when a fixed interval is interrupted (known as the gap procedure), pigeons tend to reset memory and start timing from 0 after the gap. However, because the ambient conditions of the gap typically have been the same as during the intertrial interval (ITI), ambiguity may have resulted. In the present experiment, the authors found that when ambient conditions during the gap were similar to the ITI, pigeons tended to reset memory, but when ambient conditions during the gap were different from the ITL pigeons tended to stop timing, retain the duration of the stimulus in memory, and add to that time when the stimulus reappeared. Thus, when the gap was unambiguous, pigeons timed accurately. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Immediate and delayed effects of using a classroom case exemplar in teacher education: The role of presentation format.

Students learned teaching principles either with or without (control group) the presentation of a classroom exemplar in video or text format. Across 2 experiments, the video group produced higher transfer scores and affective ratings than the other groups. Four weeks later, the video group recalled more information about the exemplar than the text group, but no treatment effects were found on transfer. Qualitative analyses (Experiment 2) showed that the video group produced a significantly larger number of modeled behaviors in the transfer test than the text (immediate) and control (immediate and delayed) groups. Results encourage using classroom video exemplars to promote students' affect and retention, but suggest that additional pedagogies are needed to promote longer term transfer of theory into practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age appropriateness and motivation, engagement, and performance in high school: Effects of age within cohort, grade retention, and delayed school entry.

The present study examined the relative salience of age within cohort, grade retention, and delayed school entry (3 dimensions of age appropriateness) in 3,684 high school students' academic motivation, engagement, and performance. Structural equation modeling revealed that after the effects of demographic characteristics and grade retention were taken into account, little significant variance was explained by the linear effects of age within cohort. However, subsequent modeling incorporating nonlinear effects showed that the markedly older-for-cohort students (i.e., over the "standard" 12-month age range for a given cohort) and delayed-entry students (i.e., academic "red shirts") experienced some academic disadvantage in motivation, engagement, and performance while the age-appropriate students (particularly the younger ones) fared best. Over and above demographic and age-within-cohort effects, the effects of grade retention were consistently negative. Taken together, data suggest that there appear to be little or no motivation, engagement, or performance advantages to being markedly older-for-cohort, having delayed-entry status, or being retained in a grade. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)