Spatial attention and cuing to global and local levels of hierarchical structure.

Five experiments investigated the role of attention in identifying global and local targets in hierarchically structured patterns. Hierarchical patterns were presented at a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) either after a cue (4 arrows or shaded boxes) or after no cue. Targets occurred at the cued level 80% of the time and at the uncued level 20%. On uncued trials, target level probability was .5. Global cues produced benefits for both global and local targets over SOA on cued trials. Local cues produced benefits only for local targets. For uncued trials, responses favored local targets overall when interspersed with locally cued trials but favored global targets when interspersed with globally cued trials. The role of an attentional window and discrete distribution of attention over global and local levels of hierarchical patterns are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time to detect targets at inhibited and noninhibited locations: Preliminary evidence for attentional momentum.

Inhibition of return refers to the finding that response latencies are longer for targets appearing at previously attended (cued) locations than at novel (uncued) locations. The present research was designed to examine the pattern of detection latencies that occurred for targets appearing at various uncued locations. The first 2 experiments showed that responses were fastest when the target occurred at a location directly opposite the cue. Experiment 3 showed that latencies were related to the angle between the target and the direction in which attention was being oriented. Experiments 4 and 5 showed that manipulating the direction of attentional orientation affected inhibition of return. Overall, the results suggest that inhibition of return may be due to the difference between orienting attention to locations along the path of attention versus orienting attention to those off the path of attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selective attention and performance with a multidimensional visual display.

Studied selective attention, using data from 63 adult Ss collected in 4 experiments in which stimuli varied in both spatial location and visual form. In Exp I, the likely location and likely form of targets were both precued. An advantage was found for cued over uncued forms at both cued and uncued locations. In Exps II, III, and IV, different forms tended to occur at different locations. Regardless of whether a location was cued or uncued, form selective effects were found in accordance with form probability for that location. It was not the case that selective attention simply favored certain locations or certain stimulus forms in preference to others. Rather, selective attention was sensitive to precise combinations of form and location. It is concluded that these results can not be reconciled with mental spotlight notions of spatial selectivity. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transformations in the recognition of visual forms.

Conducted 3 experiments in which Ss were required to learn to recognize 4 flexible plastic shapes photographed on different backgrounds from different angles. Slides were designated as either prototypes (photographed from overhead on a black background), cued (photographed from many angles on a definite background, e.g., a chair), or uncued (the cued photographs placed on a black background). Ss were 80 undergraduates in Exp I, 80 16-24 yr olds in Exp II, and 43 undergraduates in Exp III. Variables investigated were (a) order, amount, and type of training (prototype, cued, or uncued); (b) type of training instructions (Ss were told either that there were 4 classes of objects or 4 objects viewed from various backgrounds); and (c) presence or absence of context in training or testing (background which gave cues to transformation). Results indicate that (a) type of training had a significant effect on performance; (b) the presentation of uncued test slides before cued ones decreased performance on the cued slides, while cued slides presented first facilitated performance on the uncued slides; and (c) the presence of context in training significantly increased rates of pattern learning and success in recognizing new material. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Part-Set Cuing Effects in Younger and Older Adults.

In 3 experiments, the authors examined part-set cuing effects in younger and older adults. Participants heard lists of category exemplars and later recalled them. Recall was uncued or cued with a subset of studied items. In Experiment 1, participants were cued with some of the category names, and they remembered fewer never-cued categories than a free-recall condition. In Experiment 2, a similar effect was observed for category exemplar cues. There was also an age difference: By some measures, a small number of cues impaired older adults more than younger. Experiment 3 replicated this result and found that older adults were disproportionately slow in the presence of cues. Across experiments, older adults showed robust part-set cuing effects, and sometimes, they were disproportionately impaired by cues. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of locus of control, cueing, and relevance on memory for passages.

24 internal and 24 external (Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale) undergraduates read 6 passages representing 3 operationally-defined levels of relevance under either a cued (informed of memory test) or uncued (not informed of memory test) condition. On a retention test 24 hrs later, internals scored consistently higher than externals. Ss performed best on material of high relevance, with their scores declining systematically on material of medium and low relevance. Results do not support the contention derived from social learning theory that internals would only be superior to externals on relevant material under uncued instruction. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The spatial relationship between cues and targets mediates inhibition of return.

Although inhibition of return (IOR) has been examined in a number of experimental circumstances, it is not known whether the number of potential target locations affects the magnitude of the inhibition at a cued location. To investigate this issue, 20 undergraduates were randomly presented with displays of 2, 4, or 6 potential target locations in a typical IOR detection task. The findings indicate that number of target locations did not affect IOR and that RTs at uncued locations varied systematically as a function of the spatial relationship between the cued and uncued location. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Shifting visual attention between objects and locations: Evidence from normal and parietal lesion subjects.

Space- and object-based attention components were examined in neurologically normal and parietal-lesion Ss, who detected a luminance change at 1 of 4 ends of 2 outline rectangles. One rectangle end was precued (75% valid); on invalid-cue trials, the target appeared at the other end of the cued rectangle or at 1 end of the uncued rectangle. For normals, the cost for invalid cues was greater for targets in the uncued rectangle, indicating an object-based component. Both right- and left-hemisphere patients showed costs that were greater for contralesional targets. For right-hemisphere patients, the object cost was equivalent for contralesional and ipsilesional targets, indicating a spatial deficit, whereas the object cost for left-hemisphere patients was larger for contralesional targets, indicating an object deficit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of predictive information on responses of tonically active neurons in the monkey striatum

Influence of predictive information on responses of tonically active neurons in the monkey striatum. J. Neurophysiol. 80: 3341-3344, 1998. We investigated how the expectation of a signal of behavioral significance influences the activity of tonically active neurons in the striatum of two monkeys performing a simple reaction time task under two conditions, an uncued condition in which the trigger stimulus occurred randomly in time and a cued condition in which the same trigger was preceded by an instruction stimulus serving as a predictive signal for the forthcoming signal eliciting an immediate behavioral reaction. Both monkeys benefited from the presence of the instruction stimulus to reduce their reaction time, suggesting an increased ability to predict the trigger onset during cued trials compared with uncued trials. A majority of neurons (199/272, 73%) showed a phasic reduction in activity after the onset of the trigger stimulus in the uncued condition, whereas only 38% responded to the same stimulus when it was preceded by the instruction. Furthermore, magnitudes of trigger responses in the uncued condition were significantly higher than in the cued condition. Fifty-seven percent of the neurons responded to the instruction stimulus, and one-half of the neurons losing their response to the trigger in the cued condition responded to the instruction stimulus. These findings suggest that responses of tonic striatal neurons to a trigger stimulus for movement were influenced by predictive information.     

Spatially diffuse inhibition affects multiple locations: A reply to Tipper, Weaver, and Watson (1996).

S. Tipper, B. Weaver, and F. Watson (see record 84-02784) suggest that J. Pratt and R. A. Abrams's (see record 1996-16290-001) failure to find inhibition of return for more than the most recently cued location was because their 2-target display did not adequately capture some of the complexity of real-world visual environments. However, Tipper et al. tested a special case because they always cued 3 out of 4 potential targets (allowing cued and uncued locations to be segregated into 2 spatial regions). The authors show that only the 1 most recently cued location will be inhibited when 2 nonadjacent targets out of 4 possible targets are cued, but both cued locations will be inhibited when they are adjacent. Also, only the 1 most recently cued location was inhibited when 3 nonadjacent targets out of 6 potential target locations were cued. Thus, in a complex environment in which several cued locations are interspersed among noncued locations, inhibition of return will occur for only the 1 most recently attended location, consistent with conclusions of Pratt and Abrams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the status of unconscious memory: Merikle and Reingold (1991) revisited.

Four experiments are reported that reevaluate P. M. Merikle and E. M. Reingold's (1991) demonstration of unconscious memory: the greater sensitivity to familiarity (repetition) of an indirect (implicit) memory task than of a comparable direct (explicit) task. At study, participants named the cued member of a pair of visually presented words. At test, new and uncued study words were presented against a background mask. Participants judged whether each word was old or new (direct task) or whether the contrast between the word and the background was high or low (indirect task). Contrary to the original findings, the sensitivity of the indirect task to familiarity never exceeded that of the direct task. These findings pose a challenge to a key pillar of evidence for unconscious influences of memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Investigating dissociations among memory measures: Support for a transfer-appropriate processing framework.

In three experiments subjects performed one of five tasks after an initial study phase. Results showed that performance on conceptually driven retention tasks (those requiring the processing of meaning) was consistently dissociated from that on data-driven tasks (those relying more on analysis of physical features). Performance on conceptually driven tasks of free recall, semantic cued recall, and a task of answering general knowledge questions was enhanced most when target items had been generated rather than read at study (Experiment 1) and when subjects formed mental images of item referents at study (Experiment 3). Conversely, the data driven tasks of word fragment completion and recall using graphemic cues were performed best when subjects read rather than generated items at input (Experiment 1) and when the physical features of study and test items matched in terms of modality (Experiment 2) and typography (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that dissociations among memory tasks are better explained in terms of the degree of overlap between mental operations at study and test than in terms of various memory systems underlying different tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The generation effect: A test between single- and multifactor theories.

Single- and multifactor accounts of the generation effect (better memory for internally generated items than for externally presented items) were tested. Single-factor theories suggest that generation induces either stimulus–response relational processing or response-oriented processing. Multifactor theories suggest that generation induces both types of processing. In the first 3 experiments Ss either read or generated responses, and the degree of categorical structure within the list was manipulated. When categorical structure was minimal, large generation effects were observed for free recall and recognition, but not for cued recall. When categorical structure was high, however, a generation effect was observed for cued recall but not for recognition or free recall. A 4th experiment was performed to eliminate an uninteresting interpretation of the results. It is argued that a multifactor account is needed to explain these findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Structural analysis of memory traces in children from 4 to 10 years of age.

In 2 experiments, items from 4 (or 8) semantic categories were presented in 4 (or 8) colors located at 4 (or 8) spatial positions. In a recall task, a total of 48 4-, 7-, and 10-yr-olds were given semantic, color, and locational cues. The probability of successful cued recall to each type of cue and cue combination was used to estimate the proportion of memory traces that contained the various types of information. Although recall increased with age, the relative effectiveness of the 3 types of cues did not, and the estimated proportion of memory traces for the set of items that contained semantic information was higher than the estimated proportion having color and locational information. Retention of one type of cue information was not independent of retention of other types of cue information; Ss of all ages tended to retain either none or more than 1 of the 3 kinds of information. (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

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)     

The role of retrieval in schizophrenic memory deficit.

To distinguish between information that is unavailable or inaccessible in the schizophrenic's memory store, 48 schizophrenics and 48 normals learned 3 lists of categorized words. The lists were either cued or not cued at recall. Demographic and pretest measures validated the diagnosis of schizophrenia and indicated no significant differences between the experimental groups on age, education, intelligence, or categorizing ability. Results indicate that under conditions where the input did not exceed the limits of immediate memory span, schizophrenic memory deficit could be explained in terms of an "inaccessibility" of items due to a retrieval dysfunction. Under conditions where input exceeded these limits, the recall analysis was suggestive of an "unavailability" of items in the memory store. It is concluded that schizophrenics suffer deficits throughout the information processing system rather than at any specific stage. The locus of breakdown was dependent on the task demands of the experimental situation. (French summary) (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cued recall from image and sentence memory: A shift from episodic to identical elements representation.

The applicability of the identical elements (IE) model of arithmetic fact retrieval (T. C. Rickard, A. F. Healy, & L. E. Bourne, 1994) to cued recall from episodic (image and sentence) memory was explored in 3 transfer experiments. In agreement with results from arithmetic, speedup following even minimal practice recalling a missing word from an episodically bound word triplet did not transfer positively to other cued recall items involving the same triplet. The shape of the learning curve further supported a shift from episode-based to IE-based recall, extending some models of skill learning to cued recall practice. In contrast with previous findings, these results indicate that a form of representation that is independent of the original episodic memory underlies cued-recall performance following minimal practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Extending the irrelevant speech effect beyond serial recall.

The irrelevant speech effect is the impairment of immediate memory by the presentation of to-be-ignored speech stimuli. The irrelevant speech effect has been limited to serial recall, but this series of 8 experiments demonstrates that it is considerably more general. Exps 1–3 show that (1) irrelevant speech inhibits free recall more than does white noise, (2) irrelevant speech impairs free recall even when the speech occurs after the to-be-recalled items, and (3) free recall is inhibited even when the speech is meaningless. Exp 4 failed to find an effect in free recall with 16-item lists. Exps 5A–5C extend the effect to recognition of 8-, 12-, and 16-item lists, with both phonologically related and phonologically unrelated lure items. Exp 6 extends the effect to a cued recall task that discourages the use of serial rehearsal of the to-be-remembered items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Semantic fluency in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease: Dissociation of storage and retrieval failures.

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), Huntington's disease (HD), and Parkinson's disease (PD), and normal controls were compared on 2 versions of a semantic fluency task: a standard, uncued version and a version in which Ss were cued with subordinate categories. All patients were impaired relative to controls on the standard version. On the cued version, PD and HD patients improved significantly, but AD patients did not. AD patients' fluency, but not PD or HD patients', correlated significantly with confrontation naming ability. Impairment exhibited by PD and HD patients on standard semantic fluency tasks may be due to a retrieval deficit, whereas that of AD patients may be due to degradation of semantic memory stores. In addition, the pattern of performance exhibited by a nonaphasic patient with bilateral frontal lobe lesions suggests that the retrieval functions involved may depend on integrity of the prefrontal cortex. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Learning by the keyword mnemonic: Looking for long-term benefits.

Although using the keyword mnemonic to learn new vocabulary items enhances performance on the tests of immediate cued recall when compared with control strategies, the reverse is true after a delay. The authors examined long-term retention of second language vocabulary with 2 variants of the keyword method: self-generated keywords (Experiment 1) and mnemonic pictures (Experiment 2). Results showed that keyword generation did not attenuate forgetting, but provision of pictures of the keyword and translation referent during study improved long-term retention. Pictures may increase the visual detail of interactive images and hence the stability of the memory trace (Experiment 3). However, designers of instructional modules should be aware that immediate gains evidenced by learners who use the standard keyword technique may dissipate rapidly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)