Everyday life memory deficits in pregnant women.

Converging evidence indicates that pregnant women report experiencing problems with memory, but the results of studies using objective measures are ambiguous. The present study investigated potential reason(s) for the discrepancy between findings of subjective and objective memory deficits, as well as potential source(s) of pregnant women's problems with memory. Sixty-one pregnant and 24 nonpregnant women completed a series of memory tests which included field and laboratory measures of prospective memory. Three standardized questionnaires were used to assess subjective aspects of memory. The influence of cortisol, depressed mood, anxiety, physical symptoms, sleep/fatigue, and busyness on pregnancy-related deficits was also examined. The findings revealed objective pregnancy-related deficits on two of the field measures of prospective memory. Pregnancy-related subjective deficits were also detected on all of the questionnaires. In contrast, no objective pregnancy-related deficits were found on the laboratory measures of memory. Increased physical symptoms accounted for one of the objective deficits in memory, while depressed mood and physical symptoms accounted for two of the subjective memory deficits. Collectively, these findings suggest that pregnant women experience everyday life problems with memory that are not readily detected in the laboratory environment. The predominant use of laboratory tests may explain the myriad of previous failures to detect objective deficits in pregnant women's memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory performance predicts subjective cognitive complaints in HIV infection.

The authors examined the contribution of working memory performance to subjective cognitive complaints in HIV infection beyond the influence of depressive symptoms. Thirty-six adults with HIV infection were administered neuropsychological (NP) tests of working memory, complex psychomotor efficiency, verbal learning, delayed recall, and questionnaires measuring depressive symptoms and cognitive complaints. Working memory performance, depression scores, and complex psychomotor efficiency were most strongly associated with self-reported cognitive complaints, whereas verbal learning scores and simple psychomotor efficiency showed more modest associations. Regression analyses revealed working memory performance to be the strongest NP predictor of self-reported cognitive complaints, comparable with depression scores in the amount of variance explained. These results suggest that working memory performance may be well suited to reflect how patients function in their everyday environment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perception of alcohol intoxication shows acute tolerance while executive functions remain impaired.

Several psychological constructs (e.g., subjective perception of intoxication, visuomotor speed) display acute tolerance to alcohol, that is, show improvement at declining blood alcohol concentrations (BACs) relative to equivalent rising BACs. However, methodological challenges emerge when attempting to make such comparisons across limbs of the BAC curve, which have proven a barrier to advancing research on acute tolerance. To date, no studies have made multiple comparisons across the entire BAC trajectory. This study employs experimental procedures that overcome some of these difficulties, offering a clearer picture of recovery of impairment for subjective perception of intoxication and cognitive performance and the relationship between them. Twenty participants were assessed at multiple time points over 2 days. Continuous subjective perception of intoxication ratings and cognitive data derived from a computerized measure were paired with a novel analytic paradigm, which allowed comparisons at identified BACs. Results showed acute tolerance for individuals' subjective perception of intoxication and for performance on cognitive tasks measuring visuomotor speed and learning efficiency (recovery from impairment). In contrast, performance on measures of executive function and short-term memory showed no significant difference between limbs at exact concentrations (no recovery from impairment). Therefore, despite participants feeling less intoxicated over time, many cognitive functions remained impaired. The implication for these findings in terms of drunken driving behavior are substantial, suggesting that people may be likely to drive once they subjectively perceive that they have recovered from the acute intoxicating effects of alcohol, despite the persistence of “higher order” cognitive impairments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of memory training on the subjective memory functioning and mental health of older adults: A meta-analysis.

The effectiveness of memory training on the subjective memory functioning and mental health of older adults was examined in a meta-analysis. Effect sizes indicated that memory training led to improved subjective memory functioning (d++?=?.19), but the magnitude of the improvement was less than that obtained on objective memory measures (d++?=?.66) in the meta-analysis of P. Verhaeghen, A. Marcoen, and L. Goossens (1992). However, no differences in effectiveness were found among mnemonic training, expectancy modification, or placebo procedures such as unstructured practice. Improvement of subjective memory functioning was enhanced by including pretraining in skills such as the use of imagery and by including interventions to improve participants' attitudes toward the effects of aging on memory functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress-related cognitive interference predicts cognitive function in old age.

Both subjective distress and cognitive interference have been proposed as mechanisms underlying the negative effects of stress on cognition. Studies of aging have shown that distress is associated with lower cognitive performance, but none have examined the effects of cognitive interference. One hundred eleven older adults (Mage=80) completed measures of working memory, processing speed, and episodic memory as well as self-report measures of subjective distress and cognitive interference. Cognitive interference was strongly associated with poorer performance on all 3 cognitive constructs, whereas distress was only modestly associated with lower working memory. The results suggest that cognitive process related to stress is an important predictor of cognitive function in advanced age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What do cancer patients mean when they complain of concentration and memory problems?

Cognitive function items are increasingly included in quality of life measures, and complaints of concentration and memory difficulties are often reported by cancer patients. The aim of this study was to examine the factors influencing patients' level of complaint by comparing subjective reports with objective test performance of a sample of adult lymphoma patients, disease-free and > or = 6 months after treatment. There was no significant difference between complainers and non-complainers in sociodemographic or clinical characteristics or in their performance on standard neuropsychometric tests of concentration and memory. Those reporting concentration and memory difficulties had significantly higher scores on measures of anxiety, depression and fatigue. This calls into question the validity of including cognitive function items in self-report quality of life measures. Patients who report concentration and memory difficulties should be screened for clinically significant and potentially remediable mood disorder. Objective testing remains the method of choice for assessing higher mental function.     

Impact of working memory training on memory performance in old-old adults.

Memory impairments constitute an increasing objective and subjective problem with advancing age. The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of working memory training on memory performance. The authors trained a sample of 80-year-old adults twice weekly over a time period of 3 months. Participants were tested on 4 different memory measures before, immediately after, and 1 year after training completion. The authors found overall increased memory performance in the experimental group compared to an active control group immediately after training completion. This increase was especially pronounced in visual working memory performance and, to a smaller degree, also in visual episodic memory. No group differences were found 1 year after training completion. The results indicate that even in old?old adults, brain plasticity is strong enough to result in transfer effects, that is, performance increases in tasks that were not trained during the intervention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Concurrent validation of a dual-task selection test.

Examined individual differences in dual-task decrement within the framework of a concurrent validation paradigm. The performance of 49 males employed as detection and communication equipment operators aboard military antisubmarine aircraft was measured in a dual-task situation, which combined a visual decision task and an auditory short-term memory task. Criterion scores from a standardized exercise in a radar training simulator were not significantly related to dual-task measures. Peer ratings, supervisor rank orderings based on flight performance, radar training grades, and indexes combining subjective and objective criteria were significantly related to dual-task measures. The dual-task measures, when combined with predictive measures available from aircrew selection tests, enhanced the potential predictive effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective memory evaluations in patients with focal frontal, diencephalic, and temporal lobe lesion

This paper examines subjective memory evaluations and their correlates in patients with focal frontal, diencephalic, or temporal lobe lesions. Although all patient groups showed significantly lower subjective memory evaluations than healthy subjects, the temporal lobe group rated themselves significantly lower than the frontal lobe or diencephalic groups despite comparable severity of amnesia, implying more severely impaired 'insight' in the latter two groups. There was a 'temporal gradient' such that patients rated their memory for 'old' (premorbid) items better than their memory for 'new' (recent) or prospective items. As in previous studies, subjective memory evaluations were not correlated with measures of 'objective' anterograde memory performance, but the present study suggests that subjective evaluations are not randomly determined. It seemed to be the site of lesion (frontal and/or diencephalic), rather than underlying aetiology, which produced a particularly severe loss of 'insight'. Whether the earliest remote or autobiographical memories were preserved or not appeared to be an important correlate of current subjective memory evaluations, and patients who had been memory-disordered for longer were more likely to evaluate their memory as poor than those with a more recent onset.     

Effects of sleep inertia after daytime naps vary with executive load and time of day.

The effects of executive load on working memory performance during sleep inertia after morning or afternoon naps were assessed using a mixed design with nap/wake as a between-subjects factor and morning/afternoon condition as a within-subject factor. Thirty-two healthy adults (mean 22.5 ± 3.0 years) attended two laboratory sessions after a night of restricted sleep (6 hrs), and at first visit, were randomly assigned to the Nap or Wake group. Working memory (n-back) and subjective workload were assessed approximately 5 and 25 minutes after 90-minute morning and afternoon nap opportunities and at the corresponding times in the Wake condition. Actigraphically assessed nocturnal sleep duration, subjective sleepiness, and psychomotor vigilance performance before daytime assessments did not vary across conditions. Afternoon naps showed shorter EEG assessed sleep latencies, longer sleep duration, and more Slow Wave Sleep than morning naps. Working memory performance deteriorated, and subjective mental workload increased at higher executive loadings. After afternoon naps, participants performed less well on more executive-function intensive working memory tasks (i.e., 3-back), but waking and napping participants performed equally well on simpler tasks. After some 30 minutes of cognitive activity, there were no longer performance differences between the waking and napping groups. Subjective Task Difficulty and Mental Effort requirements were less affected by sleep inertia and dissociated from objective measures when participants had napped in the afternoon. We conclude that executive functions take longer to return to asymptotic performance after sleep than does performance of simpler tasks which are less reliant on executive functions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Observers and participants in an intergroup setting.

High- and low-self-esteem participant and observer (control) Ss received feedback about the performance of in-groups and out-groups. Self-evaluations and evaluations of the groups were assessed. Results suggest that participant group members (vs observers) enhance evaluations of both groups under conditions of failure feedback. Intergroup bias was obtained over and above these effects for participant high-self-esteem Ss. However, participant low-self-esteem Ss favored failing out-groups. Results suggest that individuals with different levels of self-esteem may differ in terms of their inferred status within groups. Intragroup comparisons may then influence one's choice of group for social identification. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Further studies of hippocampal representation during odor discrimination learning.

The contribution of hippocampal and nonhippocampal memory processing to simultaneous-cue odor discrimination learning was assessed. In this task rats with hippocampal system damage consequent to fornix lesions (fornix rats) were severely and persistently impaired in discrimination learning, acquisition of learning set, and concurrent discrimination, although they occasionally solved some problems at a normal rate. By using those problems on which fornix rats succeeded, to permit comparisons of performance strategies with normal rats, differences between groups were shown on response latency measures and on probe trials involving the novel pairing of familiar odors. Normal rats had a bimodal distribution of response latencies, and their latency depended on where the S+ was presented. Fornix rats had short response latencies and responded equally quickly wherever the S+ was presented. Furthermore, when the representation of familiar S+ and S– odor pairs was challenged in probe trials, normal rats responded appropriately to the correct stimulus, whereas fornix rats behaved as if presented with a new odor pair. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An individual differences analysis of ability and strategy influences: Age-related differences in associative learning.

The relationships among abilities, strategies, and performance on an associative learning task were investigated for young (aged 17 to 34) and older adults (aged 60 to 82). Participants received extensive practice on a noun-pair task in which they could use a visual-scanning strategy or a memory-retrieval strategy. Older adults were more likely to use the scanning strategy. Age differences were reduced when comparisons were made only for participants using a retrieval strategy. Associative memory was predictive of learning on the task, and semantic memory access speed was predictive of practiced performance. Practiced performance on a memory-search task that also required associative learning was predictive of practiced noun-pair performance. Models of ability-performance relationships for skill acquisition are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social comparison processes and academic achievement: The dependence of the development of self-evaluations on friends' performance.

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of social comparison processes in children's self-evaluations. Children's aptitudes to gauge their self-evaluations of their abilities in school activities (i.e., perceived academic competence) on the basis of their actual performance depended on how well their reciprocated friends performed academically. Self-evaluations of performance were not affected when the comparison was based on levels of nonreciprocated friends' achievement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive functioning of older people in relation to social and personality variables.

Examined age differences in performance on memory measures and in subjective ratings of memory adequacy in the context of 12 social, personality, adjustment, and lifestyle measures. Ss were 285 men and women (aged 65–93 yrs) of middle- and working-class backgrounds. Cognitive measures included digit span, word recall, and memory and elaborative processing of a prose passage. Multivariate and univariate analyses revealed that a large proportion of the age differences and virtually all of the social-class differences on memory measures could be accounted for by contextual variables. Education; Intellectual activity; and Extroversion, Neuroticism, and Lie scores on the Eysenck Personality Inventory all accounted for more of the variance in memory performance than did age. Self-rated memory adequacy was not correlated with performance, and although the expected finding of lower ratings by older Ss was obtained with the working-class group, the opposite was true for the middle-class group. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in spatial memory and striatal ChAT activity among young and aged rats

Individual differences in spatial memory among young and aged rats were assessed using memory tasks related to integrity of the hippocampus and the neostriatum. Relationships were then examined between measures of spatial memory and regional choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) activity, a marker for cholinergic integrity. Twenty-four-month-old Long-Evans rats were impaired in comparisons with 6-month-old rats on measures of place learning, working memory, reference memory, and perseveration in water-maze tasks. Aged rats that were impaired on one measure of memory, however, were not necessarily impaired on other measures. ChAT activity in the ventromedial and dorsolateral neostriatum of aged rats was significantly reduced in comparisons with young rats whereas no difference was found in the hippocampus. Aged rats with the most ChAT activity in the anterior ventromedial neostriatum performed best on the place-learning and reference memory tasks but also made the most perseverative errors on the working memory task. In addition, young and aged rats with the most ChAT activity in the anterior dorsolateral neostriatum were those with the least accurate working memory. No relationships were found between ChAT activity in the hippocampus and spatial memory. Thus age-related memory impairment has components that can be segregated by measuring relationships between cholinergic integrity in subregions of the anterior neostriatum and memory tasks with different strategic requirements.     

Cognitive and subjective acute dose effects of intramuscular ketamine in healthy adults.

Ketamine is a noncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) antagonist. Given the purported role of the NMDA receptor in long-term potentiation, the primary purpose of the present study was to further understand the dose-related effects of ketamine on memory. The study was also designed to provide information about the relative effects of ketamine on memory versus nonmemory effects and to more fully characterize ketamine's overall pattern and time course of effects. Single intramuscular injections of ketamine (0.2 mg/kg, 0.4 mg/kg) were administered to 18 healthy adult volunteers using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover design. Word lists were used to evaluate episodic memory (free recall, recognition memory, source memory) and metamemory. Working memory, time estimation, psychomotor performance, and subjective effects were assessed repeatedly for 5 hours after drug administration. Ketamine selectively impaired encoding (as measured by free recall) while sparing retrieval, working memory while sparing attention, and digit symbol substitution task speed while sparing accuracy. Ketamine did not significantly impair recognition or source memory, metamemory, or time estimation. There were no hallucinations or increases in mystical experiences with ketamine. Memory measures were less sensitive to ketamine effects than subjective or psychomotor measures. Subjective effects lasted longer than memory and most psychomotor impairments. Ketamine produces selective, transient, dose- and time-related effects. In conjunction with previous studies of drugs with different mechanisms of actions, the observed selectivity of effects enhances the understanding of the pharmacological mechanisms underlying memory, attention, psychomotor performance, and subjective experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognition and depression in a cohort of aging men: Results from the Western Collaborative Group Study.

Relationships between cognitive performance and self-ratings of depression on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CES-D; L.S. Radloff, 1977) were examined for 1,217 older men. After controlling for demographic variables and both objective and subjective measures of health, significant associations were observed between several CES-D variables and measures of cognitive mental status, memory, and psychomotor speed. The Well-Being factor of the CES-D was the most robust predictor of cognitive scores. Therefore, for older adults with generally favorable health and socioeconomic resources, there may be a link between positive affect and maintenance of cognitive effectiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive complaints, depression, medical symptoms, and their association with neuropsychological functioning in HIV infection: A structural equation model analysis.

The main objective of this study was to use structural equation modeling (SEM) to clarify the relationship between subjective cognitive complaints and neuropsychological functioning in 160 adults with HIV infection. Participants completed questionnaires assessing cognitive complaints, symptoms of depression, and HIV-related medical symptoms. Neuropsychological tests included measures of attention, verbal fluency, psychomotor skills, learning, memory, and executive skills. SEM was used to test models of the relationships among cognitive complaints, mood, and medical symptoms with neuropsychological functioning. The model indicated that although depressed mood (β = 0.32, p     

Memory and reality.

Although it may be disconcerting to contemplate, true and false memories arise in the same way. Memories are attributions that we make about our mental experiences based on their subjective qualities, our prior knowledge and beliefs, our motives and goals, and the social context. This article describes an approach to studying the nature of these mental experiences and the constructive encoding, revival, and evaluative processes involved (the source monitoring framework). Cognitive behavioral studies using both objective (e.g., recognition, source memory) and subjective (e.g., ratings of memory characteristics) measures and neuroimaging findings are helping to clarify the complex relation between memory and reality. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)