Toward a theory of consciousness.

Posits that an adequate explanation of psychological phenomena that have a conscious aspect implies a theory of awareness that is now lacking. On psychological, physical, and philosophical grounds, a preliminary model is presented, postulating awareness as a field effect with 2 primary modes: detector and effector. Any adequate field theory of awareness seems to entail a set of field equations; an outline of preconditions for their eventual derivation is presented, partially based on C. T. Tart's (1975) paradigm for the experimental investigation of consciousness. It is argued that the field paradigm of physics provides a fruitful precedent for dealing with an unobservable event having observable consequences. (French abstract) (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory, autonoetic consciousness, and self-perspective in aging.

In this study, the authors examined the effects of aging on autobiographical memory in 180 participants by means of a new method designed to assess across 5 lifetime periods the nature of memories-that is, specificity and spontaneity--and the phenomenal experience of remembering--that is, self-perspective and autonoetic consciousness--via the field/observer and remember/know paradigms respectively. Age-related differences were found for the specificity and spontaneity of memories and the phenomenal experience of remembering. There was an increase in observer and know responses with age, but a decrease in field and remember responses and in the ability to justify them by recalling sensory-perceptive, affective, or spatiotemporal specific details. This pattern confirms the existence of a semantic-episodic dissociation in autobiographical memory in aging. Moreover, the data support the view that older participants can subjectively "travel back in time" to relive personal events in the most distant past better than those in the recent past. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The functional neuroanatomy of episodic memory: the role of the frontal lobes, the hippocampal formation, and other areas

Because it allows direct mapping of synaptic activity during behavior in the normal subject, functional neuroimaging with the activation paradigm, especially positron emission tomography, has recently provided insight into our understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of episodic memory over and above established knowledge from lesional neuropsychology. The most striking application relates to the ability to distinguish the structures implicated in the encoding and the retrieval of episodic information, as these processes are extremely difficult to differentiate with behavioral tasks, either in healthy subjects or in brain-damaged patients. Regarding encoding and retrieval, the results from most studies converge on the involvement of the prefrontal cortex in these processes, with a hemispheric encoding/retrieval asymmetry (HERA) such that the left side is preferentially involved in encoding, and the right in retrieval. However, there are still some questions, for instance, about bilateral activation during retrieval and a possible specialization within the prefrontal cortex. More expected from human and monkey lesional data, the hippocampal formation appears to play a role in both the encoding and the retrieval of episodic information, but the exact conditions which determine hippocampal activation and its fine-grained functional neuroanatomy have yet to be fully elucidated. Other structures are activated during episodic memory tasks, with asymmetric activation that fits the HERA model, such as preferentially left-sided activation of the association temporal and posterior cingulate areas in encoding tasks and preferentially right-sided activation of the association parietal cortex, cerebellum, and posterior cingulate in retrieval tasks. However, this hemispheric asymmetry appears to depend to some extent on the material used. These new data enhance our capacity to comprehend episodic memory deficits in neuropsychology, as well as the neural mechanisms underlying the age-related changes in episodic memory performances.     

Aging, episodic memory feeling-of-knowing, and frontal functioning.

Groups of normal old and young adults made episodic memory feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments and took 2 types of episodic memory tests (cued recall and recognition). Neuropsychological tests of executive and memory functions thought to respectively involve the frontal and medial temporal structures were also administered. Age differences were observed on the episodic memory measures and on all neuropsychological tests. Compared with young adults, older adults performed at chance level on FOK accuracy judgments. Partial correlations indicated that a composite measure of frontal functioning and FOK accuracy were closely related. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the composite frontal functioning score accounted for a large proportion of the age-related variance in FOK accuracy. This finding supports the idea that the age-related decline in episodic memory FOK accuracy is mainly the result of executive or frontal limitations associated with aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging effects on memory encoding in the frontal lobes.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare frontal-lobe activation in younger and older adults during encoding of words into memory. Participants made semantic or nonsemantic judgements about words. Younger adults exhibited greater activation for semantic relative to nonsemantic judgements in several regions, with the largest activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Older adults exhibited greater activation for semantic judgments in the same regions, but the extent of activation was reduced in left prefrontal regions. In older adults, there was a significant association between behavioral tests of declarative and working memory and extent of frontal activation. These results suggest that age-associated decreases in memory ability may be due to decreased frontal-lobe contributions to the initial encoding of experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neuropsychological studies of the frontal lobes.

Summarizes the current state of knowledge of prefrontal lobe functions as derived from studies and observations of adult humans following frontal lobe damage. Following an overview of the neuroanatomy and neuropathology, frontal lobe activities are presented under the following headings: motor functions; sensory, perception, and construction functions; attention; abnormal awareness; flexibility–perseveration; language; memory; cognition; personality; localization; and hemispheric activity. Six specific prefrontal functions are suggested as the principal disorders underlying many if not all of the described manifestations. Thus, prefrontal damage can (1) separate action from knowledge, (2) impair the ability to handle sequential behaviors, (3) impair the ability to establish or change a set, (4) impair the ability to maintain a set, (5) impair the ability to monitor personal behavior, and (6) produce attitudes of apathy. (5? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rated associability and episodic memory.

There is some conflict in the literature over the question of whether paired-associate episodic memory improves systematically with the "associability" of the word pairs in question. In the present 3 studies with summer school students, associability was measured by ratings. Results show that under certain circumstances, episodic memory performance was affected by ceiling effects such that a simple relationship between episodic memory for paired associates and the rated associability of the pairs was difficult to demonstrate. However, when ceiling effects were avoided, either by having Ss study a great many pairs at once or by using unusually long lists, episodic memory was monotonically related to rated associability. It is suggested that word frequency should also be considered along with rated associability in this context. (French abstract) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Different ways to cue a coherent memory system: A theory for episodic, semantic, and procedural tasks.

An associative theory of human memory is proposed, which serves as a counterexample to claims that disassociations between episodic, semantic, and procedural memory tasks necessitate separate memory systems. The theory is based on task analyses of matching (recognition and familiarity judgments), retrieval (cued recall with list associates, extralist associates, and part-word cues), and production (producing the first word that comes to mind). These analyses are then embedded in a distributed storage model, and it is shown how proactive interference from old memories can be largely eliminated by combining cue strengths interactively at study and test. A distinction between modality-specific and more central, modality independent, memory codes is also introduced. The model is extended to the performance of amnesic patients, and the general approach to human memory is then evaluated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a theory of followership.

Unlike most of the leadership literature, which focuses on the leaders themselves, the point of departure in this paper is that the psychology of the followers is the key to understanding the leaders' influence. Followers' attraction to leaders is analyzed from three theoretical perspectives: (a) psychodynamic, according to which the leader represents a protective parental figure; (b) psycho-cognitive, in which the leader serves as a convenient explanation for a complex reality; and (c) social-psychological, in which the leader becomes a kind of narrative that grants meaning and strengthens social identity. The article illustrates how these perspectives can help in the choice of concepts and models of leadership and in examining their validity in predicting and explaining leaders' influence in various contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

The real unconscious: psychoanalysis as a theory of consciousness

Inquiries into hallucinatory wish fulfillment and the unconscious converge and, by distinguishing the concept of the unconscious in psychoanalysis from that of cognitive psychology, serve to bring out what is most essential to the psychoanalytic conception. Freud's topographical model is used to stress that the psychoanalytic unconscious can be understood only in relation to theories of consciousness and wishing. Moreover, in contrast to the cognitive conception, psychoanalysis holds that the processing of thought in the human mind is inseparable from the activity of desire. This leads to further psychoanalytic reflections on the interrelation of conscious and unconscious, wishing and thinking, and, in consequence, on transference and the mechanism of unconscious fantasy.     

The sensory nature of episodic memory: Sensory priming effects due to memory trace activation.

The aim of this study was to provide evidence that memory and perceptual processing are underpinned by the same mechanisms. Specifically, the authors conducted 3 experiments that emphasized the sensory aspect of memory traces. They examined their predictions with a short-term priming paradigm based on 2 distinct phases: a learning phase consisting of the association between a geometrical shape and a white noise and a priming phase examining the priming effect of the geometrical shape, seen in the learning phase, on the processing of target tones. In the 3 experiments, the authors found that only the prime associated with the sound in the learning phase had an effect on the target processing. The perceptual nature of the auditory component reactivated by the prime was shown in Experiments 1 and 2 via manipulation of the white noise duration in the learning phase and the stimulus onset asynchrony in the priming phase. Moreover, Experiment 3 highlighted the importance of the simultaneous association of sensory components in the learning phase, which makes it possible to integrate these components in a memory trace. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motor imagery theory of a contralateral handedness effect in recognition memory: Toward a chiral psychology of cognition.

The assumption that cognitive processes are independent of handedness was questioned. Five experiments with left-handed and right-handed participants centered on investigating recognition memory for the orientation of heads. Their results provided consistent evidence of a general contralateral handedness effect: Left-facing heads are more likely to be remembered correctly by right-handed participants, whereas right-facing heads are more likely to be remembered correctly by left-handed participants. Motor imagery and hemispheric differences explanations were compared. The results supported the hypothesis that the effect is a consequence of differences between handedness groups in terms of specific patterns of underlying motor activation rather than in terms of more general differences in function between cerebral hemispheres. The possibility of a chiral psychology of cognition that takes note of a person's handedness is considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The influence of apoe status on episodic and semantic memory: Data from a population-based study.

In a prospective cohort study, the authors demonstrated a more pronounced ε4-related deficit for participants 70 years of age and older in tasks assessing episodic recall. Apolipoprotein E (APOE) and age interacted for episodic memory tasks, whereas the interaction for semantic memory tasks was between APOE and test wave. Heterozygotes of ε4 between middle-age and young-old participants performed at a higher level than noncarriers of this allele in recall tasks. A dose effect was found such that carriers of 2 ε4 alleles failed more profoundly in acquiring and recollecting episodic information than carriers of 1 ε4 allele, who in turn failed more than carriers of non-ε4 alleles. The pattern of findings observed for older ε4 carriers suggests that these individuals have particular difficulty when the executive task demands are high. Several factors (e.g., smaller hippocampal volumes, less effective neural repair mechanisms) may account for these findings. On the basis of the data obtained, the authors argue that analyses of the effect of specific genes in cognition should be accompanied by assessment of performance at a specific level, with due attention to the individual's age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sex differences in episodic memory: The impact of verbal and visuospatial ability.

The impact of verbal and visuospatial ability on sex differences in episodic memory was investigated. One hundred men and 100 women, 20–40 years old, participated in a series of verbal and visuospatial tasks. Episodic memory was assessed in tasks that, to a greater or lesser extent, were verbal or visuospatial in nature. Results showed that women excelled in verbal production tasks and that men performed at a superior level on a mental rotation task. In addition, women tended to perform at a higher level than men on most episodic memory tasks. Taken together, the results demonstrated that (a) women perform at a higher level than men on most verbal episodic memory tasks and on some episodic memory tasks with a visuospatial component, and (b) women's higher performance on episodic memory tasks cannot fully be explained by their superior performance on verbal production tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic activation and episodic memory: Age similarities and differences.

In 2 experiments, 48 19–35 yr olds and 48 59–75 yr olds were engaged in semantic and nonsemantic orienting tasks and were subsequently given incidental or expected recall and recognition tasks. Reaction time (RT) patterns from the orienting tasks suggested that all Ss experienced similar semantic activation during encoding. Under incidental conditions, age differences in memory performance were minimal. When memory tests were expected, younger Ss recalled and recognized more items than did older Ss, suggesting that younger Ss were more effective in their deployment of mnemonic strategies. The age difference was particularly pronounced for unattended items, which suggests an age difference in the capacity to encode all of the episodic information. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Retrieval blocks in episodic and semantic memory.

A retrieval block (RB) refers to impaired accessibility in retrieving target information when semantically related information is presented or retrieved prior to target retrieval. A research review reveals that RBs occur in a variety of situations, including both episodic and semantic memory tasks. RBs have been most thoroughly studied in the part-list cuing paradigm in episodic recall, but similar principles seem to operate in other situations, including the A–B, A–D interference paradigm, episodic recognition, and the tip-of-the-tongue situation. Evidence for such RBs is problematic for theories postulating automatic spreading activation among associated nodes in memory. Difficulties with theories that account for such RBs are discussed. Further research on RBs may help illuminate similar phenomena, such as the effects of Einstellung in thinking and problem solving. (French abstract) (76 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The episodic–semantic memory distinction and paired associate learning.

39 senile dementia patients (mean age 69.1 yrs) completed the Associate Learning subtest of the Wechsler Memory Scale, and orthogonal measures of episodic and semantic memory were developed through factor analysis. As predicted, scores on the semantic factor were related only to learning high-associate word pairs; scores on the episodic factor were related to both high- and low-associate learning. Findings provide an interpretive framework for the Associate Learning subtest and support E. Tulving's (1972) 2-store model of long-term memory. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prior knowledge and memory: The episodic encoding of implicitly activated associates and rhymes.

Explored the effects of study-trial orientation and test delay on the encoding of both rhyme- and meaning-related concepts in 4 experiments involving 184 Ss. Exps I and II showed that meaning-related concepts were encoded and interfered with memory for the presented target regardless of study-trial orientation. Interference was obtained even when the study-trial context emphasized phonemic information and Ss were oriented to rating rhyme properties. This interference effect disappeared when the test trial was delayed. Results from all 4 experiments indicate that rhyme-related concepts were encoded and interfered with memory for the presented target only when Ss attended to the rhyme dimension. This interference effect was found after a long delay. Findings suggest that the encoding of meaning-related concepts results from relatively automatic processes and the encoding of rhyme-related concepts requires Ss to attend to rhyme. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a cognitive theory of catharsis.

Reviews 4 counseling analog studies which conclude that (1) expression of anger, either verbally or physically, does not automatically reduce anger, and (2) a cognitive process needs to accompany emotional expression. Results contradict the "hydraulic model" (J. Breuer and S. Freud, 1937) of emotions. An alternate model is proposed suggesting that anger expression will lead to anger reduction if it leads to coping with the anger-instigating event. Coping is achieved through dealing with the environment or through changing one's self-perceptions and attitudes. The model is extended to the emotion of sadness, and it is suggested that the experience and expression of emotions in general are therapeutic only if they facilitate a cognitive assimilation or working through process. (43 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Toward a theory of dream recall.

Examines evidence for 3 hypotheses of dream recall in studies of variables characteristic of presleep, sleep, and postsleep periods. Neither correlational nor experimental data show consistent support for the hypothesis that repression affects dream recall. Salience and interference concepts are strongly supported and if taken together with cognitive and motivational variables, suggest a promising model for dream recall based on interactions among situational, organismic, and individual difference factors. (117 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)