Attention and retrieval from long-term memory.

Conducted 9 experiments with 152 female volunteers (mean age 44.4 yrs) to investigate the disrupting effect of a secondary task on retrieval from long-term memory. Exps I–V studied the influence of concurrent card sorting or digit span on free recall or paired-associate learning of word lists. Exp VI explored recall probability using a recognition paradigm in which accuracy and latency could be measured simultaneously. Exp VII explored the latency effect with a semantic memory paradigm, and Exp VIII required Ss to make semantic category judgments while retaining sequences of 6 digits. Exp IX examined the effect of concurrent digital load on the rate of generating items from semantic categories. Overall findings reveal that a demanding concurrent task did not reduce the probability of retrieving an item from semantic or episodic memory. However, concurrent load during learning substantially effected recall performance. A concurrent task during retrieval did not have a clear effect on latency. The contrast between the pattern shown by errors and by that shown by latencies suggests that attempts to estimate the attentional demands of any task should be interpreted with considerable caution when based on a single measure, such as performance errors, performance latency, or a response to a probe RT signal. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The retrieval of attention-dependent long-term memory traces

Phenomenon of memory dissociation is proposed as a paradigm for studying the retrieval processes of the long-term memory. The memory-dissociated states of brain are produced by external influence and result in selective reversible disturbances of the retrieval processes without substantial changes in perception and storage of new information. Analysis of dissociated states induced by pharmacological influences has led us to the following conclusions: 1) the reversible failures of the retrieval processes are usual for the attention-dependent form of long-term memory, 2) hippocampus is the key structure in brain mechanisms that realize the engram selection during memory retrieval, 3) the central cholinergic and GABAergic systems regulate the retrieval of information, 4) steady disturbances of retrieval of the long-term attention-dependent memory are accompanied by strongly pronounced changes in hippocampal cells including those at the membrane and genomic levels.     

Task-set switching and long-term memory retrieval.

The authors tested the hypothesis of a close relationship between the intentional component of task-set switching ("advance reconfiguration;" R. D. Rogers & S. Monsell, 1995) and long-term memory (LTM) retrieval. Consistent with this hypothesis, switch costs are reported to be larger when the switched-to task involves high retrieval demands (i.e., retrieval of episodic information) than when it involves low retrieval demands (i.e., retrieval of semantic information). In contrast, switch costs were not affected by a primary-task difficulty manipulation unrelated to intentional retrieval demands (Experiment 2). Also, the retrieval-demand effect on switch costs was eliminated when time for advanced preparation or task cues explicitly specifying the task rules were provided (Experiment 3). Overall, results were consistent with the hypothesis that the intentional switch-cost component reflects the time demands of retrieving appropriate task rules from LTM. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of alcohol intoxication on metamemory and on retrieval from long-term memory.

In a balanced-placebo design, 160 male moderate to heavy drinkers (aged 21–35 yrs) expected either an alcohol drink or placebo drink and consumed either alcohol (1 ml/kg) or placebo. Shortly thereafter, each S attempted to recall the answers to general-information questions (e.g., "What is the capital of Chile?"), made confidence judgments about the accuracy of recall, made feeling-of-knowing judgments on all nonrecalled items, and received a recognition test. Unanticipated outcomes included the following: (a) Alcohol intoxication significantly hindered recall from long-term memory, contrary to previous conclusions that alcohol does not affect retrieval; (b) Ss' expectancy of alcohol had no significant effect on memory or metamemory performance, contrary to its established effects on other kinds of performance; (c) Alcohol intoxication produced no significant overconfidence in judgments about recall or in feeling-of-knowing judgments, contrary to the overconfidence produced in other kinds of judgments such as an intoxicated person's assessment of his/her driving ability. This last outcome implies that alcohol intoxication does not produce a general lowering of the threshold for confidence but rather has effects that are situation specific. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context retrieval and context change in free recall: Recalling from long-term memory drives list isolation.

Three experiments used the "list-before-the-last" free recall paradigm (Shiffrin, 1970) to investigate retrieval for context and the manner in which context changes. This paradigm manipulates target and intervening list lengths to measure the interference from each list, providing a measure of list isolation. Correct target list recall was only affected by the target list length when participants engaged in recall between the lists, whereas there were effects of both list lengths with other activities. This suggests that the act of recalling drives context change, thus isolating the target list from interference. Correspondingly, incorrect recall of intervening list items was affected only by the length of the intervening list when recall occurred between the lists, but was otherwise affected by both list lengths. Concurrent with these changes in context similarity, there were apparent changes in context retrieval, as indicated by the overall levels of target retrieval versus intervening recall. A multinomial model of sampling and recovery was implemented to assess the adequacy of this account and to quantify context similarity and context retrieval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Novelty versus retrieval cue value in the study of long-term memory in pigeons.

Investigated, in 6 experiments, whether a training context distinguished by an ambient odor (isoamyl acetate or eucalyptus oil) might serve as a retrieval cue for pigeons by virtue of its mere presence during reinforced learning. The rate of key pecking in the presence of 1 of 2 odors that had accompanied reinforced responding, relative to the rate in the alternative (novel) odor (Exps 2 and 4), was compared with the relative response rate in the presence of an odor that was familiar but had not accompanied reinforced responding (Exps 1 and 3). A comparable preference for the familiar odor was found in all 4 experiments. Similarly, in Exp 5, Ss exposed to both odors, but reinforced in only 1 of them, showed no preference for the reinforced odor (i.e., no cue effect). Exp 6 showed that the odors could function as explicit conditional cues when a key color discrimination and its reversal were associated with different odors. The retrieval function commonly claimed for context may not result from mere presence during reinforced learning but may require a training procedure that calls attention to the context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integrated retrieval cues as a mechanism for priming in retrieval from memory.

Spreading-activation theories are contrasted with composite retrieval-cue theories in priming of associative judgments. Under spreading activation, priming causes a change of memory state from quiet to active before the appearance of a test item. Under retrieval-cue theories, the prime is combined with the test item during retrieval. Spreading-activation models must predict that a relation between the prime and one element of a mispaired test will damage rejection—the partial-overlap prediction. Some retrieval-cue theories avoid this prediction with composite representations. We present one speed-accuracy trade-off and two reaction time experiments that demonstrate substantial discriminative priming (increasing hits more than false alarms) without consistent partial-overlap effects. Results suggest a combined retrieval-cue account of priming and independent storage of composites and parts (e.g., B. B. Murdock; see record 1983-04936-001). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety, diazepam and retrieval from semantic memory

Diazepam, an anxiolytic, was administered to 16 undergraduate volunteers in a double-blind design. Eight subjects were selected to be high in State and Trait anxiety and were slow in recall on a semantic memory task compared to non-anxious subjects. Instead of alleviating this detrimental effect of anxiety on memory, diazepam slowed recall in both the anxious and non-anxious.     

Event-related potentials during mental imagery

Event-related potentials(ERPs) were measured while subjects were constructing mental images of a letter of the alphabet. Following presentation of an uppercase letter, subjects were asked to form a mental image of the same letter in lower case, and determine whether or not it had an ascending or descending stroke (ascender or descender). ERPs were measured in a passive condition and then compared with the ERPs recorded while the subjects performed the discrimination task. During the discrimination task, negative potentials were observed in left frontal, central and parietal areas around 220 ms after the stimulus onset. These early negative potentials were dominant in the left hemisphere and are probably related to working memory processes in mental image formation.     

A diffusion model analysis of adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory retrieval.

Two experiments investigated adult age differences in episodic and semantic long-term memory tasks, as a test of the hypothesis of specific age-related decline in context memory. Older adults were slower and exhibited lower episodic accuracy than younger adults. Fits of the diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978) revealed age-related increases in nondecisional reaction time for both episodic and semantic retrieval. In Experiment 2, an age difference in boundary separation also indicated an age-related increase in conservative criterion setting. For episodic old-new recognition (Experiment 1) and source memory (Experiment 2), there was an age-related decrease in the quality of decision-driving information (drift rate). As predicted by the context-memory deficit hypothesis, there was no corresponding age-related decline in semantic drift rate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attentional limits in memory retrieval.

The hypothesis that episodic memory retrieval can occur in parallel with other cognitive processes was tested in 2 experiments. Participants memorized words and then performed speeded cued recall (Experiment 1) or speeded yes-no recognition (Experiment 2) in a dual-task situation. The psychological refractory period design was used: The participant was presented with a single test item at various stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs; 50-1,000 ms) after a tone was presented in an auditory-manual 2-alternative choice reaction task. Reducing the SOA increased the memory task reaction times. This slowing was additive with the effect of variables slowing retrieval in the memory task. The results indicate that memory retrieval is delayed by central processes in the choice task, arguing that the central bottleneck responsible for dual-task interference encompasses memory retrieval as well as response selection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impaired retrieval from remote memory in patients with frontal lobe damage.

Patients with unilateral dorsolateral frontal lobe lesions and matched controls were given 2 tests of remote memory for public information, the Public Events Test and the Famous Faces Test. On both tests, the patients with frontal lobe lesions exhibited impaired recall for remote information. Recognition memory was relatively preserved. Provision of semantic and phonemic cues in the Famous Faces Test did not completely compensate for their recall deficit. These findings suggest that the remote memory impairment exhibited by frontal patients may be related to deficits in strategic search of memory. These deficits in retrieval from remote memory extend the array of memory deficits associated with damage to the frontal lobes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autobiographical memory: Reports in adolescence.

A prompt word technique was used to investigate the processes of autobiographical memory in 40 adolescents (aged 12–15 yrs) and 40 undergraduates. Three types of prompts were used: object, action, and affect. Prompt type was found to interact with age for both response time and the reported event age of the memories. Results indicate that affect prompts were responded to differentially by college students but not by adolescents. Affective terms were responded to more slowly and with more recent memories by college students. Changes in the nature of conceptual systems, e.g., levels of abstraction, are suggested as a possible explanation for changes in episodic memory performance. (French abstract) (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short- and long-term memory retrieval: A comparison of the effects of information load and relatedness.

The separate applications of the Sternberg and fact-retrieval paradigms promote a view that short- and long-term memory are functionally distinct. However, effects of information load and relatedness, observed in both paradigms, support a more unified approach to memory retrieval. The two experiments of this article allow for direct comparison of these effects as observed in a fact-retrieval task, a Sternberg task, and a hybrid precuing task. These experiments are motivated by an associative approach in which performance in all tasks is seen to depend upon a parallel search driven by spreading activation. Decision-time data are explained in an indirect-pathway model with two important features: (a) Pretrial activation levels of areas in memory can vary to reflect differences between short-term and long-term retrieval; and (b) for related material, decisions can be based upon indirect pathways that connect the elements of a test probe through preexperimental associations in memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working-memory capacity, proactive interference, and divided attention: Limits on long-term memory retrieval.

Two experiments examined how individual differences in working-memory capacity (WM) relate to proactive interference (PI) susceptibility. We tested high and low WM-span participants in a PI-buildup task under single-task or dual-task ("load") conditions. In Experiment 1, a finger-tapping task was imposed during encoding and retrieval of each list; in Experiment 2, tapping was required during encoding or retrieval. In both experiments, low spans showed greater PI than did high spans under no load, but groups showed equivalent PI under divided attention. Load increased PI only for high spans, suggesting they use attention at encoding and retrieval to combat PI. In Experiment 2, only low spans showed a dual-task cost on List 1 memory, before PI built up. Results indicate a role for attentional processing, perhaps inhibitory in nature, at encoding and retrieval, and are discussed with respect to theories of WM and prefrontal cortex function. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Theories relating mental imagery to perception.

Reviews contemporary theories of relations between mental imagery and perception in terms of structural, functional, and interactive theories. Structural theories propose that mental images exhibit the same spatial and pictorial properties as real physical objects. Functional theories propose that the formation and transformation of mental images contribute to object recognition and comparison. Interactive theories propose that imagery contributes directly to ongoing perceptual processes. The evidence for each type of theory is critically evaluated in view of the following alternative accounts: task-induced demand characteristics, experimenter bias, tacit knowledge, and eye movements. Efforts to rule out these alternatives have had varying degrees of success, with the consequence that the 3 types of imagery theories differ in the extent to which they have been confirmed (i.e., none of the 3 types of imagery theories is universally free from challenges from at least some of the alternative accounts). (4 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differentiating visual and kinesthetic imagery in mental practice.

Through two experiments, the study sought to emphasize the usefulness of the visual and kinesthetic imagery in mental practice. In Experiment 1, it was hypothesized that when the task to be learned through mental practice necessitates the reproduction of a form by drawing, the visual image, which provides a wide span of apprehension, is more suitable than the kinesthetic image. On the other hand, the kinesthetic image that supplies inputs from the muscles' positions and movements should be more appropriate for the acquisition of the duration of the drawing. In Experiment 2, it was hypothesized that the task, transformed into a motor task necessitating minute coordination of the two hands, would benefit more from kinesthetic imagery. To have optimal control over what was actually experienced during mental practice, the participants' imagery skills were measured. The participants also benefited from prior imagery training. The results demonstrate that when using mental practice to initially acquire a task, visual imagery is better for tasks that emphasize form while kinesthetic imagery is better for those tasks that emphasize timing or minute coordination of the two hands. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and autobiographical memory: Dissociating episodic from semantic retrieval.

Cognitive aging research documents reduced access to contextually specific episodic details in older adults, whereas access to semantic or other nonepisodic information is preserved or facilitated. The present study extended this finding to autobiographical memory by using a new measure: the Autobiographical Interview. Younger and older adults recalled events from 5 life periods. Protocols were scored according to a reliable system for categorizing episodic and nonepisodic information. Whereas younger adults were biased toward episodic details reflecting happenings, locations, perceptions, and thoughts, older adults favored semantic details not connected to a particular time and place. This pattern persisted after additional structured probing for contextual details. The Autobiographical Interview is a useful instrument for quantifying episodic and semantic contributions to personal remote memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory and the vividness of imagery.

The working memory framework was used to investigate the factors determining the phenomenological vividness of images. Participants rated the vividness of visual or auditory images under control conditions or while performing tasks that differentially disrupted the visuospatial sketchpad and phonological loop subsystems of working memory. In Experiments 1, 2, and 6, participants imaged recently presented novel visual patterns and sequences of tones; ratings of vividness showed the predicted interaction between stimulus modality and concurrent task. The images in experiments 3, 4, 5, and 6 were based on long-term memory (LTM). They also showed an image modality by task interaction, with a clear effect of LTM variables (meaningfulness, activity, bizarreness, and stimulus familiarity), implicating both working memory and LTM in the experience of vividness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)