Multiple memory systems are unnecessary to account for infant memory development: An ecological model.

How the memory of adults evolves from the memory abilities of infants is a central problem in cognitive development. The popular solution holds that the multiple memory systems of adults mature at different rates during infancy. The early-maturing system (implicit or nondeclarative memory) functions automatically from birth, whereas the late-maturing system (explicit or declarative memory) functions intentionally, with awareness, from late in the first year. Data are presented from research on deferred imitation, sensory preconditioning, potentiation, and context for which this solution cannot account and present an alternative model that eschews the need for multiple memory systems. The ecological model of infant memory development (N. E. Spear, 1984) holds that members of all species are perfectly adapted to their niche at each point in ontogeny and exhibit effective, evolutionarily selected solutions to whatever challenges each new niche poses. Because adults and infants occupy different niches, what they perceive, learn, and remember about the same event differs, but their raw capacity to learn and remember does not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The testing effect in recognition memory: A dual process account.

The testing effect, or the finding that taking an initial test improves subsequent memory performance, is a robust and reliable phenomenon--as long as the final test involves recall. Few studies have examined the effects of taking an initial recall test on final recognition performance, and results from these studies are equivocal. In 3 experiments, we attempt to demonstrate that initial testing can change the ways in which later recognition decisions are executed even when no difference can be detected in the recognition hit rates. Specifically, initial testing was shown to enhance later recollection but leave familiarity unchanged. This conclusion emerged from three dependent measures: source memory, exclusion performance, and remember/know judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory span development: A time-based resource-sharing model account.

The time-based resource-sharing model (P. Barrouillet, S. Bernardin, & V. Camos, 2004) assumes that during complex working memory span tasks, attention is frequently and surreptitiously switched from processing to reactivate decaying memory traces before their complete loss. Three experiments involving children from 5 to 14 years of age investigated the role of this reactivation process in developmental differences in working memory spans. Though preschoolers seem to adopt a serial control without any attempt to refresh stored items when engaged in processing, the reactivation process is efficient from age 7 onward and increases in efficiency until late adolescence, underpinning a sizable part of developmental differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of interruption duration and demand on resuming suspended goals.

The time to resume task goals after an interruption varied depending on the duration and cognitive demand of interruptions, as predicted by the memory for goals model (Altmann & Trafton, 2002). Three experiments using an interleaved tasks interruption paradigm showed that longer and more demanding interruptions led to longer resumption times in a hierarchical, interactive task. The resumption time profile for durations up to 1 min supported the role of decay in defining resumption costs, and the interaction between duration and demand supported the importance of goal rehearsal in mitigating decay. These findings supported the memory for goals model, and had practical implications for context where tasks are frequently interleaved such as office settings, driving, emergency rooms, and aircraft cockpits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning correct responses and errors in the Hebb repetition effect: Two faces of the same coin.

In a serial recall task, the Hebb repetition effect occurs when recall performance improves for a sequence repeated throughout the experimental session. This phenomenon has been replicated many times. Nevertheless, such cumulative learning seldom leads to perfect recall of the whole sequence, and errors persist. Here the authors report evidence that there is another side to the Hebb repetition effect that involves learning errors produced in a repeated sequence. A learning measure based on past recalls (correct or incorrect) shows that the probability of a given response increases with the number of prior occurrences of that response. The pattern of results reveals another manifestation of the Hebb repetition effect and speaks to the nature of implicit learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging, metamemory, and high-confidence errors: A misrecollection account.

Two experiments showed that older adults were worse than younger adults at judging the accuracy of their responses on source identification (i.e., who said what) and cued-recall tests. It is important to note that this age-related metamonitoring impairment occurred even after older and younger adults were matched on overall source accuracy and cued-recall accuracy. By contrast, older and younger adults showed comparable metamonitoring capacities when assessing the likely accuracy of old-new recognition judgments and responses to questions about general knowledge. These experiments are consistent with the misrecollection account of cognitive aging, which suggests that age-related memory impairments are due to older adults' vulnerability to making high-confidence errors when answering questions that require memory for specific details about recently learned events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory.

According to some theories of recognition memory (e.g., S. Dennis & M. S. Humphreys, 2001), the number of different contexts in which words appear determines how memorable individual occurrences of words will be: A word that occurs in a small number of different contexts should be better recognized than a word that appears in a larger number of different contexts. To empirically test this prediction, a normative measure is developed, referred to here as context variability, that estimates the number of different contexts in which words appear in everyday life. These findings confirm the prediction that words low in context variability are better recognized (on average) than words that are high in context variability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of the ecological and error models of overconfidence using a multiple-trace memory model.

A memory processes account of the calibration of probability judgments was examined. A multiple-trace memory model, Minerva-Decision Making (MDM; M. R. P. Dougherty, C. F. Gettys, & E. E. Ogden, 1999), used to integrate the ecological (Brunswikian) and the error (Thurstonian) models of overconfidence, is described. The model predicts that overconfidence should decrease both as a function of experience and as a function of encoding quality. Both increased experience and improved encoding quality result in lower variance in the output of the model, which in turn leads to improved calibration. Three experiments confirmed these predictions. Implications of MDM's account of overconfidence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theoretical and computational analysis of skill learning, repetition priming, and procedural memory.

This article analyzes the relationship between skill learning and repetition priming, 2 implicit memory phenomena. A number of reports have suggested that skill learning and repetition priming can be dissociated from each other and are therefore based on different mechanisms. The authors present a theoretical analysis showing that previous results cannot be regarded as evidence of a processing dissociation between skill learning and repetition priming. The authors also present a single-mechanism computational model that simulates a specific experimental task and exhibits both skill learning and repetition priming, as well as a number of apparent dissociations between these measures. These theoretical and computational analyses provide complementary evidence that skill learning and repetition priming are aspects of a single underlying mechanism that has the characteristics of procedural memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Category-based errors and the accessibility of unbiased spatial memories: A retrieval model.

Studies have consistently shown a spatial memory bias such that a target location is remembered toward the prototypical location of the region to which the target belongs, indicating a blending between the target’s specific information and the generic information of its region. The authors investigated whether people retain a veridical representation of a target location after a delay by determining the locus of the blending (during encoding, delay, or retrieval). To examine accessibility to the original target location, they used a recognition task, which is less demanding than the traditional reproduction procedure. The results showed that participants were able to recognize the original position of a target over their own biased recalled position after both a short (1,500 ms) and a longer (5,000 ms) delay. These findings reveal that spatial memories can be undistorted despite distorted recall responses. Results are discussed in terms of J. Huttenlocher, L. V. Hedges, and S. Duncan’s (1991) category adjustment model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The contributions of primary and secondary memory to working memory capacity: An individual differences analysis of immediate free recall.

The present study tested the dual-component model of working memory capacity (WMC) by examining estimates of primary memory and secondary memory from an immediate free recall task. Participants completed multiple measures of WMC and general intellectual ability as well as multiple trials of an immediate free recall task. It was demonstrated that there are 2 sources of variance (primary memory and secondary memory) in immediate free recall and that, further, these 2 sources of variance accounted for independent variation in WMC. Together, these results are consistent with a dual-component model of WMC reflecting individual differences in maintenance in primary memory and in retrieval from secondary memory. Theoretical implications for working memory and dual-component models of free recall are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The components of working memory updating: An experimental decomposition and individual differences.

Working memory updating (WMU) has been identified as a cognitive function of prime importance for everyday tasks and has also been found to be a significant predictor of higher mental abilities. Yet, little is known about the constituent processes of WMU. We suggest that operations required in a typical WMU task can be decomposed into 3 major component processes: retrieval, transformation, and substitution. We report a large-scale experiment that instantiated all possible combinations of those 3 component processes. Results show that the 3 components make independent contributions to updating performance. We additionally present structural equation models that link WMU task performance and working memory capacity (WMC) measures. These feature the methodological advancement of estimating interindividual covariation and experimental effects on mean updating measures simultaneously. The modeling results imply that WMC is a strong predictor of WMU skills in general, although some component processes—in particular, substitution skills—were independent of WMC. Hence, the reported predictive power of WMU measures may rely largely on common WM functions also measured in typical WMC tasks, although substitution skills may make an independent contribution to predicting higher mental abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Improving memory after interruption: Exploiting soft constraints and manipulating information access cost.

Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access cost (IAC: the time, and physical and mental effort involved in accessing information) encourages a more memory-intensive strategy. Like interruptions, access costs are also intrinsic to most work environments, such as when opening documents and e-mails. Three experiments investigated whether increasing IAC during a simple copying task can be an effective method for reducing forgetting following interruption. IAC was designated Low (all information permanently visible), Medium (a mouse movement to uncover target information), or High (an additional few seconds to uncover such information). Experiment 1 found that recall improved across all three levels of IAC. Subsequent experiments found that High IAC facilitated resumption after interruption, particularly when interruption occurred on half of all trials (Experiment 2), and improved prospective memory following two different interrupting tasks, even when one involved the disruptive effect of using the same type of resource as the primary task (Experiment 3). The improvement of memory after interruption with increased IAC supports the prediction of the soft constraints hypothesis. The main disadvantage of a high access cost was a reduction in speed of task completion. The practicality of manipulating IAC as a design method for inducing a memory-intensive strategy to protect against forgetting is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dose-dependent effects of hydrocortisone infusion on autobiographical memory recall.

The glucocorticoid hormone cortisol has been shown to impair episodic memory performance. The present study examined the effect of two doses of hydrocortisone (synthetic cortisol) administration on autobiographical memory retrieval. Healthy volunteers (n = 66) were studied on two separate visits, during which they received placebo and either moderate-dose (0.15 mg/kg IV; n = 33) or high-dose (0.45 mg/kg IV; n = 33) hydrocortisone infusion. From 75 to 150 min post-infusion subjects performed an Autobiographical Memory Test and the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT). The high-dose hydrocortisone administration reduced the percent of specific memories recalled (p = .04), increased the percent of categorical (nonspecific) memories recalled (p     

Misattribution errors in Alzheimer's disease: The illusory truth effect.

Patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD) and age-matched controls were compared on a series of tasks designed to measure errors of misattribution, the act of attributing a memory or idea to an incorrect source. Misattribution was indexed through the illusory truth effect, the tendency for participants to judge previously encountered information to be true. Cognitive theories have suggested that the illusory truth effect reflects the misattribution of experimentally produced familiarity (a nonspecific sense that an item has been previously encountered) to the veracity of previously encountered information. Consistent with earlier suggestions that AD impairs both familiarity and recollection (specific memory for contextual details of the study episode), AD patients demonstrated significantly fewer misattribution errors under conditions in which the illusory truth effect is thought to rely on relative familiarity (uncued condition), but more misattribution errors under conditions thought to rely on relative amounts of contextual recollection (cued condition). These results help further specify the precise nature of memory impairments in AD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A demonstration and comparison of two types of inference-based memory errors.

Participants viewed slides depicting ordinary routines (e.g., going grocery shopping) and later received a recognition test. In Experiment 1, there was higher recognition confidence to high-schema-relevant than to low-schema-relevant items. In Experiment 2, participants viewed slide sequences that sometimes contained a cause (e.g., woman taking orange from bottom of pile) but not an effect scene (oranges on floor), or an effect but not a cause scene. Participants mistook new cause scenes as old when they viewed the effect; false alarms to cause scenes and high-schema-relevant items increased with retention interval. Experiment 3 showed that the backward inference effect was accompanied by false explicit recollection, whereas false alarms to schema-high foils were based on familiarity. This suggests that the 2 types of inferential errors are produced by different underlying mechanisms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The production effect in memory: Evidence that distinctiveness underlies the benefit.

The production effect is the substantial benefit to memory of having studied information aloud as opposed to silently. MacLeod, Gopie, Hourihan, Neary, and Ozubko (2010) have explained this enhancement by suggesting that a word studied aloud acquires a distinctive encoding record and that recollecting this record supports identifying a word studied aloud as “old.” This account was tested using a list discrimination paradigm, where the task is to identify in which of 2 studied lists a target word was presented. The critical list was a mixed list containing words studied aloud and words studied silently. Under the distinctiveness explanation, studying an additional list all aloud should disrupt the production effect in the critical list because remembering having said a word aloud in the critical list will no longer be diagnostic of list status. In contrast, studying an additional list all silently should leave the production effect in the critical list intact. These predictions were confirmed in 2 experiments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The relationships of working memory, secondary memory, and general fluid intelligence: Working memory is special.

Recent efforts have been made to elucidate the commonly observed link between working memory and reasoning ability. The results have been inconsistent, with some work suggesting that the emphasis placed on retrieval from secondary memory by working memory tests is the driving force behind this association (Mogle, Lovett, Stawski, & Sliwinski, 2008), whereas other research suggests retrieval from secondary memory is only partly responsible for the observed link between working memory and reasoning (Unsworth & Engle, 2006, 2007). In the present study, we investigated the relationship between processing speed, working memory, secondary memory, primary memory, and fluid intelligence. Although our findings show that all constructs are significantly correlated with fluid intelligence, working memory—but not secondary memory—accounts for significant unique variance in fluid intelligence. Our data support predictions made by Unsworth and Engle (2006, 2007) and suggest that the combined need for maintenance and retrieval processes present in working memory tests makes them special in their prediction of higher order cognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Everyday memory compensation: The impact of cognitive reserve, subjective memory, and stress.

To determine the potential importance of several unexplored covariates of everyday memory compensation, the authors examined relations between responses on the Memory Compensation Questionnaire (a self-report measure of everyday memory compensation) and cognitive reserve (education and verbal IQ), subjective memory, and life stress in 66 older adults (mean age = 70.55 years). Key results indicated that compensation occurred in people (a) whose IQ level was greater than their education level (representing cognitive reserve “discordance”) but not in people whose IQ was commensurate with their education (representing cognitive reserve “concordance”); (b) who had greater perceived memory errors; and (c) who experienced heightened stress. Further, high-stress older adults compensated whether perceived memory errors were low or high, but low-stress older adults compensated only if they perceived high memory errors. Bootstrapped confidence intervals around model betas provided further support for estimate reliability. These results suggest boundary conditions for the concept of cognitive reserve, and highlight the importance of subjective memory and life stress for defining contexts in which compensation may occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory in schizophrenia: An examination of the distribution of memories.

Patients with schizophrenia display numerous memory impairments. Examination of autobiographical memory distribution across the life span can constrain theories of how schizophrenia affects memory. Previously, schizophrenic patients were shown to produce fewer memories from early adulthood than from childhood or the recent past (A. Feinstein, T. E. Goldberg, B. Nowlin, & D. R. Weinberger, 1998), this temporal paucity corresponding with illness onset. The current study examined this issue further using a different (noncued) method. Age-matched schizophrenic patients (n = 21) and controls (n = 21) were to freely generate 50 episodes, after which they dated these memories. Patients generated fewer memories than did controls, especially from the recent decade. When the overall lower production of memories was controlled for, the groups displayed equivalent recency effects. It was concluded that patients' paucity of memories generated from the recent decade reflects encoding or acquisition problems, which may be associated with the illness period. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)