Symbolic control of visual attention: The role of working memory and attentional control settings.

This study examined how 1 symbol is selected to control the allocation of attention when several symbols appear in the visual field. In Experiments 1-3, the critical target feature was color, and it was found that uninformative central arrows that matched the color of the target were selected and produced unintentional shifts of attention (i.e., involuntary, initiated slowly, producing long-lasting facilitatory effects). Experiment 4 tested whether such selection is the result of an attentional filter or of a competition bias due to a match of incoming information against integrated object representations stored in working memory. Here, the critical feature was shape and color was irrelevant, but matching color arrows were still selected. Thus, features of objects in working memory will bias the selection of symbols in the visual field, and such selected symbols are capable of producing unintentional shifts of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal working memory and language production: Common approaches to the serial ordering of verbal information.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 136(3) of Psychological Bulletin (see record 2010-07936-010). In the article “Verbal Working Memory and Language Production: Common Approaches to the Serial Ordering of Verbal Information” by Daniel J. Acheson and Maryellen C. MacDonald (Psychological Bulletin, 2009, Vol. 135, No. 1, pp. 50–68), the initial sentence of the text of the article (p. 50) contains an error. The first name of the researcher Andrew W. Ellis was listed incorrectly. The sentence should read as follows: Nearly 30 years ago, Andrew W. Ellis (1980) observed that errors on tests of verbal working memory (WM) paralleled those that occur naturally in speech production.] Verbal working memory (WM) tasks typically involve the language production architecture for recall; however, language production processes have had a minimal role in theorizing about WM. A framework for understanding verbal WM results is presented here. In this framework, domain-specific mechanisms for serial ordering in verbal WM are provided by the language production architecture, in which positional, lexical, and phonological similarity constraints are highly similar to those identified in the WM literature. These behavioral similarities are paralleled in computational modeling of serial ordering in both fields. The role of long-term learning in serial ordering performance is emphasized, in contrast to some models of verbal WM. Classic WM findings are discussed in terms of the language production architecture. The integration of principles from both fields illuminates the maintenance and ordering mechanisms for verbal information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Taking a computational approach to aging: The SPAN theory of working memory.

The decline of working memory capacity associated with normal adult aging is well-known. What is less well established is the cause of this decline. One prominent proposal is that working memory decline is caused by a reduction in basic information-processing speed, but this account has lacked a demonstration that general slowing is computationally sufficient to produce a decrease in working memory capacity. This article presents a production system theory of working memory (SPAN) based on established mechanisms: slowing, decay, and displacement. Models of 2 tasks—digit symbol and computation span—which have been prominent in research on slowing, are presented in detail. These models demonstrate that slowing is sufficient to produce differences in these tasks, and they provide a quantitative match to observed young-old differences as well. This advance for slowing theory also demonstrates the viability of computational tools in aging research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lorazepam and scopolamine: A single-dose comparison of effects on human memory and attentional processes.

This placebo-controlled, double-blind, double-dummy, independent groups study directly compared effects of the benzodiazepine, lorazepam (2.0 mg/70 kg orally administered), and the anticholinergic scopolamine (0.6 mg/70 kg subcutaneously administered) on memory and attentional measures hypothesized to differentiate the drugs. At the studied doses, lorazepam and scopolamine produced similar decrements in psychomotor performance, free recall, and overall sensitivity in distinguishing between studied and nonstudied items on a recognition memory test. However, the drugs differed with respect to effects on working memory, response bias, metacognition, subjective awareness, and selective attention. In addition to providing information about the cognitive psychopharmacological profiles of drugs with distinct neurochemical and pharmacological mechanisms of action, this study also informs the understanding of memory and attentional processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of working memory in syntactic ambiguity resolution: A psychometric approach.

In 2 studies, the authors used a combination of psychometric and experimental techniques to investigate the effects of domain-general and domain-specific working memory factors on offline decisions concerning attachment of an ambiguous relative clause. Both studies used English and Dutch stimuli presented to English- and Dutch-speaking participants, respectively. In Study 1, readers with low working memory spans were less likely to use recency strategies for disambiguation than were readers with high spans. This finding is inconsistent with predictions of locality- and resource-based accounts of attachment. Psychometric analyses showed that both domain-specific (verbal) and domain-general working memory accounted for the effect. Study 2 found support for the hypothesis that segmentation strategies imposed during silent reading can account for the counterintuitive relationship. Results suggest that readers with low spans have a greater tendency to break up large segments of text because of their limited working memory, leading to high attachment of the ambiguous relative clause. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depressed mood in multiple sclerosis: Relationship to capacity-demanding memory and attentional functioning.

Because it is theorized that depression results in reduced available attentional capacity that, in turn, can explain the impaired performance on capacity-demanding tasks in depressed individuals, the authors predicted that multiple sclerosis (MS) patients with depressed mood would have difficulty with these types of tasks. Twenty depressed mood MS participants were compared with 41 nondepressed mood MS participants and 8 nondepressed mood controls on 5 attentional capacity-demanding clinical memory and attentional tasks and 3 tasks with minimal capacity demands. Depressed mood MS patients performed significantly worse than both nondepressed mood groups on the 3 speeded capacity-demanding attentional measures but not on any of the tasks requiring few capacity demands, supporting the authors' predictions. The possibility that the impaired performance of depressed mood MS patients on speeded attentional tasks was mediated by reduced verbal working memory capacity, impaired deployment of executive strategies that access working memory capacity, or psychomotor slowing is explored. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Manipulation of working memory information is impaired in Parkinson's disease and related to working memory capacity.

It has been suggested that in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), difficulties in the manipulation of information, which result in problems in executive tasks, are related to a reduction of working memory capacity (J. D. E. Gabrieli, J. Singh, G. T. Stebbins, & C. G. Goetz, 1996). The present study selectively varied the manipulation demand irrespective of the maintenance requirement. In a group of 14 PD patients, performance declined overproportionally with the increasing task demand and was significantly correlated with a measure of working memory capacity. These results suggest that the complexity of working memory processing may decisively contribute to the exhaustion of resources in PD patients. Increasing complexity may either affect their manipulation ability directly or impede the management of inhibitory control requirements inherent to the task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Counting on working memory when learning to count and to add: A preschool study.

In this study, the author aimed at measuring how much limited working memory capacity constrains early numerical development before any formal mathematics instruction. To that end, 4- and 5-year-old children were tested for their memory skills in the phonological loop (PL), visuo-spatial sketchpad (VSSP), and central executive (CE); they also completed a series of tasks tapping their addition and counting skills. A general vocabulary test was given to examine the difference between the children’s numerical and general vocabulary. The results indicated that measures of the PL and the CE, but not those of the VSSP, were correlated with children’s performance in counting, addition and general vocabulary. However, the predictive power of the CE capacity was significantly stronger than that of the PL capacity. Poor CE capacity should thus be taken into consideration when identifying children at risk of experiencing learning disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Access to information in working memory: Exploring the focus of attention.

Participants memorized briefly presented sets of digits, a subset of which had to be accessed as input for arithmetic tasks (the active set), whereas another subset had to be remembered independently of the concurrent task (the passive set). Latencies for arithmetic operations were a function of the setsize of active but not passive sets. Object-switch costs were observed when successive operations were applied to different digits within an active set. Participants took 2 s to encode a passive set so that it did not affect processing latencies (Experiment 2). The results support a model distinguishing 3 states of representations in working memory: the activated part of long-term memory, a capacity limited region of direct access, and a focus of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic and controlled processing in Stroop negative priming: The role of attentional set.

The distinction between automatic and controlled attentional influences on priming effects was examined in a series of Stroop color-naming experiments. As expected, priming effects depended on the proportion of repeated trials-those in which a color word prime matched a following ink-color probe. However, responses were slower for repeated trials than for unrepeated trials when the proportion of repeated trials was no greater than chance (.25 with 4 colors). This effect was shown not to depend on slow-to-develop expectancies but did depend on the selective-attention requirements of the probe task. This dependence on probe task selection parallels an often reported result in the negative-priming literature (e.g., D. G. Lowe, 1979; S. P. Tipper & M. Cranston, 1985). Implications of these results for the distractor inhibition and episodic retrieval accounts of negative priming are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reduced working memory span in Parkinson's disease: Evidence for the role of frontostriatal system in working and strategic memory.

Working and strategic memory were examined in unmedicated patients with Parkinson's disease who had neither depression nor dementia. The patients, relative to control participants, had reduced working memory spans for verbal and arithmetic materials. They also had impairment on strategic memory tests of fee recall, temporal ordering, and self-ordered pointing, but no impairment on tests of recognition memory and semantic memory. Impairments in working memory capacity correlated with impairments in strategic memory and with a measure of perceptual-motor speed, but not with motor speed. It is hypothesized that a frontostriatal memory system, in which dopamine plays a critical role, mediates perceptual-motor processing speed that contributes to working memory capacity, which in turn, contributes to strategic memory performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Task perceptions and behavioural expectations: A process-oriented approach to subject behaviour in experiments.

Because of its emphasis on the documentation of artifact, previous research on the social psychology of the psychological experiment has not appreciably advanced understanding of S behavior. Prior research has tried to classify Ss' behavior as representing 1 of 4 preconceived roles that presumably bias data. The present study, in contrast, used an approach that regarded Ss' behavior as an integral part of the process of experimentation and attempted to explore Ss' perceptions of the dimensions relevant to experimental behavior. Specifically, this approach conceived of a single, multidimensional S role and viewed Ss' reactions as natural and legitimate within the experimental situation as it was experienced. Data from 858 college students are presented that identify some dimensions of Ss' perceptions of experimental tasks and their expected behaviors. The interrelationship of the behavioral expectations and task perceptions suggests that this process-oriented approach may provide a more constructive alternative to prevailing theory and research on the social psychology of the experiment. (French abstract) (18 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The separability of working memory resources for spatial thinking and language processing: An individual differences approach.

The current study demonstrates the separability of spatial and verbal working memory resources among college students, In Experiment 1, we developed a spatial span task that taxes both the processing and storage components of spatial working memory. This measure correlated with spatial ability (spatial visualization) measures, but not with verbal ability measures. In contrast, the reading span test, a common test of verbal working memory, correlates with verbal ability measures, but not with spatial ability measures. Experiment 2, which uses an interference paradigm to cross the processing and storage demands of span tasks, replicates this dissociation and further demonstrates that both the processing and storage components of working memory tasks are important for predicting performance on spatial thinking and language processing tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Combat and human existence: Toward an intersubjective approach to combat-related PTSD.

The author proposes a short-term, intersubjective model for treating combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Psychodynamic approaches to adult-onset PTSD lack the evidence and popularity of other approaches because adult-onset traumas are fundamentally distinct from the developmental, or childhood-based, traumas that psychoanalysis evolved to treat. An approach based in intersubjective systems theory can address this problem. The writings of Robert Stolorow (2007) in Trauma and Human Existence, which the author first read while deployed to Iraq as a psychiatrist, fundamentally changed his understanding of trauma and its treatment. The author gives an overview of Stolorow's ideas about trauma, and then describes his six-phase short-term intersubjective treatment approach. Extensive case material from a treatment that occurred in Iraq illustrates each of these phases. The author then compares his and Stolorow's views to those of other contemporary relational psychoanalytic writers. Future directions include the manualization and empirical testing of this approach in order to determine its replicability, its utility for therapists who lack extensive psychoanalytic training, and its generalizability to populations with adult-onset trauma outside the military. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commentary: Progress and problems in the cognitive approach to clinical child psychology.

Comments on articles included in the special section "Meta-analysis and Psychotherapy" in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Problems related to preventive programs are discussed in light of the finding that early development in childhood tends to be fluid in many instances rather than fixed. Difficulties in accounting for psychopathology in terms of cognitive variables and developmental delay are presented. Advantages and disadvantages of having diverse approaches to cognition are noted. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Verbal and spatial working memory in school-age children: Developmental differences in susceptibility to interference.

The development of verbal and spatial working memory was investigated with an interference paradigm. Memory spans were obtained from 3 groups (8-, 10-, and 19-yr olds) under 6 different conditions: Two primary memory tasks (1 verbal, 1 spatial) were administered in isolation and in conjunction with 2 versions of a secondary task. The primary tasks required recalling a series of visually presented digits and recalling the locations of Xs in a series of visually presented grids. The secondary tasks required reporting the color of the stimuli as they were presented using either a verbal or a spatial response. Analyses revealed that all age groups showed domain-specific interference (i.e., interference by a secondary task from the same domain as the primary task), but only the 8-yr-olds also showed nonspecific interference (i.e., interference by a secondary task from a domain different than the primary memory task), suggesting that at least some executive functions do not reach adult levels of efficiency until approximately age 10. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Critics and their texts: An approach to Jung's theory of cognition and personality.

A cluster analysis of critics' writings about children's literature led to the conceptualization of 4 discursive styles, parallel to Jung's 4 functions. The styles generally characterize different types of mentality engaged in literary studies. Characteristics of the work and careers of leading representatives from the "Age of Criticism" are used to illustrate the applicability of type theory. The nature of literary controversies, relationships between protagonists, and aspects of the development of thought among various critics of this period may be interpreted in terms of Jung's psychology of knowledge. Further study of types through analysis of discourse and its social and biographical context is recommended. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)