Directed forgetting meets the production effect: Distinctive processing is resistant to intentional forgetting.

The production effect refers to the fact that, relative to reading a word silently, reading a word aloud during study improves explicit memory. The authors tested the distinctiveness account of this effect using the item method directed forgetting procedure. If saying words aloud makes them more distinctive, then they should be more difficult to forget on cue than should words read silently. Participants studied a list of words by reading half aloud and half silently; half of the words in each of these subsets were followed by a Remember instruction and half were followed by a Forget instruction. There was a robust production effect for both Remember and Forget words on an explicit recognition test. Critically, however, a directed forgetting effect was observed only for words read silently; words read aloud at study were unaffected by memory instruction. An implicit speeded reading test showed equal priming for all studied items. This pattern supports a distinctiveness account of the production effect: Words processed distinctively during production are not influenced by subsequent rehearsal differences. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting of trauma cues in adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse with and without posttraumatic stress disorder

The authors used a directed-forgetting task to investigate whether psychiatrically impaired adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse exhibit an avoidant encoding style and impaired memory for trauma cues. The authors tested women with abuse histories, either with or without posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and women with neither abuse histories nor PTSD. The women saw intermixed trauma words (e.g., molested), positive words (e.g., confident), and categorized neutral words (e.g., mailbox) on a computer screen and were instructed either to remember or to forget each word. Relative to the other groups, the PTSD group did not exhibit recall deficits for trauma-related to-be-remembered words, nor did they recall fewer trauma-related to-be-forgotten words than other words. Instead, they exhibited recall deficits for positive and neutral words they were supposed to remember. These data are inconsistent with the hypothesis that impaired survivors exhibit avoidant encoding and impaired memory for traumatic information.     

Manipulation of attention at study affects an explicit but not an implicit test of memory

We investigated the impact of attention during encoding on later retrieval. During study, participants read some words aloud (ignoring the print color) and named the print color of other words aloud (ignoring the word). Then one of two memory tests was administered. The explicit test--recognition--required conscious recollection of whether a word was studied. Previously read words were recognized more accurately than were previously color named words. This contrasted sharply with performance on the implicit test--repetition priming in lexical decision. Here, words that were color named during study showed priming equivalent to words that were read during study; both were responded to faster than unstudied words. Thus, an attentional manipulation during study had a strong effect on an explicit test of memory, but almost no effect on an implicit test. Focal attention during study is crucial for remembering consciously but not necessarily for remembering without awareness.     

Effects of stimulus emotionality and sentence generation on memory for words in adults with unilateral brain damage.

Does sentence generation and/or stimulus emotionality enhance verbal memory in patients with neurological impairment? This question was addressed by testing 40 patients with unilateral stroke (20 with left-brain and 20 with right-brain damage) and 20 healthy control participants for recall and recognition of 48 target words. During encoding, emotional and nonemotional words were either presented in sentences (read condition) or used to form sentences (generate condition). Both word emotionality and generative processing improved memory performance in all groups. The authors suggest that a similar influence (i.e., cognitive activation) underlies both of these memory-enhancing effects, although the putative origins of the 2 effects are quite different. Neuropsychological underpinnings and clinical implications of these phenomena are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advance organizers: Encoding manipulations.

Investigated whether varying students' methods of encoding advance organizers would influence the memorability of the organizers and subsequent reading materials in 2 experiments involving a total of 121 undergraduates. In Exp I, 3 encoding procedures were contrasted in the reading of a 1,300-word essay: (a) a nonorganizer, read only control, (b) a condition that required Ss to deal with the semantic base of organizers, and (c) a condition that required Ss merely to read the organizer and list key words it contained. In addition, both true organizers and control organizers were used to allow a contrast of advance organizers with other, nonorganizer prefatory materials. The results indicate that when Ss dealt with the semantic base of organizers, memory for the organizers and the subsequent essay content was significantly greater than in other conditions. However, Ss who dealt with the semantic base of organizers required significantly more study time than other Ss. Exp II replicated Exp I but entailed only 3 conditions: (a) control, (b) read organizer and chapter only, and (c) paraphrase organizer and read chapter. In addition, the reading material used in this experiment was a 5,000-word essay. The results confirm those of Exp I, but in this instance no significant differences in study time were observed. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stuttering as a function of the information value and sentence position of words.

24 stutterers read aloud a 95-word passage of banal prose, and the incidence of stuttering was determined for each word. The information value of each word was estimated by studying the extent to which each word could be predicted from knowledge of the preceeding words by 46 normal speakers. Results indicated that both position in the sentence and information value of words are significantly correlated with stuttering incidence. It is concluded that the positional phenomenon cannot be explained as a redundancy effect. Its nature is discussed briefly from the approach-avoidance conflict and operant viewpoints of stuttering. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory for context and its use in item memory: Comparisons of younger and older persons.

This study compared memory for words and the font in which they appeared (or the voice speaking them) in young and old participants, to explore whether age-related differences in episodic word memory are due to age-related differences in memory for perceptual–contextual information. In each of 3 experiments, young and older participants were presented with words to learn. The words were presented in either 1 of 2 font types, or in 1 of 2 male voices, and participants paid attention either to the fonts or voices or to the meaning of the words. Participants were then tested on both word and font or voice memory. Results showed that younger participants had better explicit memory for font and voice memory and for the words themselves but that older participants benefited at least as much as younger people when perceptual characteristics of the words were reinstated. There was no evidence of an age-related impairment in the encoding of perceptual–contextual information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supporting visual and verbal learning preferences in a second-language multimedia learning environment.

English-speaking college students who were enrolled in a German course read a 762-word German language story presented by a computer program. For key words in the story, students could choose to see a translation on the screen in English (i.e., verbal annotation) or view a picture or video clip representing the word (i.e., visual annotation), or both. Students remembered word translations better when they had selected both visual and verbal annotations during learning than only 1 or no annotation; students comprehended the story better when they had the opportunity to receive their preferred mode of annotation. Results are consistent with a generative theory of multimedia learning that assumes that learners actively select relevant verbal and visual information, organize the information into coherent mental representations, and integrate these newly constructed visual and verbal representations with one another. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conjunction error rates on a continuous recognition memory test: Little evidence for recollection.

Two experiments examined conjunction memory errors on a continuous recognition task where the lag between parent words (e.g., blackmail, jailbird) and later conjunction lures (blackbird) was manipulated. In Experiment 1, contrary to expectations, the conjunction error rate was highest at the shortest lag (1 word) and decreased as the lag increased. In Experiment 2 the conjunction error rate increased significantly from a 0- to a 1-word lag, then decreased slightly from a 1- to a 5-word lag. The results provide mixed support for simple familiarity and dual-process accounts of recognition. Paradoxically, searching for an item in memory does not appear to be a good encoding task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Directed forgetting of trauma cues in adults reporting repressed or recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse.

An item-cuing directed forgetting task was used to investigate whether women reporting repressed (n?=?13) or recovered (n?=?13) memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) exhibit an avoidant encoding style (and resultant impaired memory) for trauma cues relative to women reporting no CSA experience (n?=?15). All participants viewed intermixed trauma (e.g., molested), positive (e.g., confident), and categorized neutral (e.g., mailbox) words on a computer screen and were instructed either to remember or to forget each word. The results provided no support for the hypothesis that people reporting either repressed or recovered memories of CSA are especially adept at forgetting words related to trauma. These groups recalled words they were instructed to remember more often than words they were instructed to forget regardless of whether they were trauma related. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for distributivity effects in comprehension.

In the current article, we introduce a new methodology for detecting whether a word in a sentence is conceptually represented as plural and use it to shed light on a debate about whether comprehenders interpret singular indefinite noun phrases within a distributed predicate as plural during online reading. Experiment 1 extended a methodology previously used by Berent, Pinker, Tzelgov, Bibi, and Goldfarb (2005) to test individual words or word pairs by having readers judge, at a critical word, whether 1 or 2 words appeared on a computer screen while performing self-paced reading on a sentence presented in 1- and 2-word chunks. In line with Berent et al., Experiment 1 indicated that participants were slower to judge that 1 word was on the screen when the word was plural (e.g., cats) than when it was singular (e.g., cat). Experiment 2 used this paradigm to show that readers build different conceptual representations for distributed versus collective predicates and interpret a singular indefinite noun phrase within a distributed predicate as plural (e.g., Kaup, Kelter, & Habel, 2002; but cf. Filik, Paterson, & Liversedge, 2004; Paterson, Filik, & Liversedge, 2008). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Allocentric Versus Egocentric Spatial Memory After Unilateral Temporal Lobectomy in Humans.

Thirty patients who had undergone either a right or left unilateral temporal lobectomy (14 RTL; 16 LTL) and 16 control participants were tested on a computerized human analogue of the Morris Water Maze. The procedure was designed to compare allocentric and egocentric spatial memory. In the allocentric condition, participants searched for a target location on the screen, guided by object cues. Between trials, participants had to walk around the screen, which disrupted egocentric memory representation. In the egocentric condition, participants remained in the same position, but the object cues were shifted between searches to prevent them from using allocentric memory. Only the RTL group was impaired on the allocentric condition, and neither the LTL nor RTL group was impaired on additional tests of spatial working memory or spatial manipulation. The results support the notion that the right anterior temporal lobe stores long-term allocentric spatial memories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positional effects in the stuttering of contextually organized verbal material.

23 stutterers read aloud 72 7-word sequences, defined and constructed according to 3 levels of contextual constraint, or order of approximation to the statistical structure of English. Measures of frequency of stuttering were taken on critical words in each of 3 positions (initial, medial, and terminal) within the experimentally constructed sequences. It was concluded that the relation between the 2 variables under investigation was an additive one, and that both word position and contextual organization are relevant factors affecting the frequency of stuttering in an oral reading situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The generation effect and the modeling of associations in memory

The search of associative memory (SAM) model of Gillund and Shiffrin (1984) was applied to data of two experiments that examined the generation effect (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). Subjects studied a list of related word pairs, in which they either read both words in the pair or generated the right- hand response term using the left-hand stimulus term plus the response word fragment as generation cues. Experiment 1 manipulated encoding condition within subjects and used an incidental learning procedure. Experiment 2 manipulated encoding condition between subjects and used an intentional learning procedure. Memory was tested with recognition, cued recall, and free recall. A higher order association model gave a better and more parsimonious fit to the results than did an item-level association model. The relationship between various versions of SAM and current accounts of the generation effect are discussed, particulary the two-factor theory of Hirshman and Bjork (1988).     

Contributions of surface and conceptual information to recognition memory

The present experiments were designed to determine whether memory for the voice in which a word is spoken is retained in a memory system that is separate from episodic memory or, instead, whether episodic memory represents both word and voice information. These two positions were evaluated by assessing the effects of study-to-test changes in voice on recognition memory after a variety of encoding tasks that varied in processing requirements. In three experiments, the subjects studied a list of words produced by six voices. The voice in which the word was spoken during a subsequent explicit recognition test was either the same as or different from the voice used in the study phase. The results showed that word recognition was affected by changes in voice after each encoding condition and that the magnitude of the voice effect was unaffected by the type of encoding task. The results suggest that spoken words are represented in long-term memory as episodic traces that contain talker-specific perceptual information.     

Attention and perceptual priming in the perceptual identification task.

Prior research indicates that manipulations of attention during encoding sometimes affect perceptual implicit memory. Two hypotheses were investigated. One proposes that manipulations of attention affect perceptual priming only to the extent that they disrupt stimulus identification. The other attributes reduced priming to the disruptive effects of distractor selection. The role of attention was investigated with a variant of the Stroop task in which participants either read words, identified their color, or did both. Identifying the color reduced priming even when the word was also overtly identified. This result held regardless of whether color and word were presented as a single object (Experiments 1 and 2) or as separate objects (Experiment 4). When participants read and identified a color, the overt order of the responses did not matter; both conditions reduced priming relative to reading alone (Experiment 3). The results provide evidence against the stimulus-identification account but are consistent with the distractor-selection hypothesis. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of imagery on explicit and implicit tests of memory in young and old people: A double dissociation.

Examined the effect of imagery on implicit and explicit tests of memory in young and old adults. 48 undergraduates (mean age 21 yrs) and 64 adults (mean age 72.48 yrs) in Canada were presented with 2 separate word lists in a random order and were assigned to imagery or no-imagery instruction conditions. Ss in the imagery instruction condition read the words to themselves, formed a mental image of it, and rated their ability to do so. Ss in the no-imagery instruction condition simply read the words. All Ss were tested on explicit or implicit memory tests and asked to describe the mnemonic strategies used. Results show that imaging the referent of a visually-presented word improved the performance of the young Ss on the explicit memory test, but reduced their performance on the implicit test. Results of the elderly Ss showed a similar trend but did not reach the level of significance observed for young adults. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in predicting memory performance: The effects of normative information and task experience.

Two experiments addressed the effects of task information and experience on younger and older adults' ability to predict their memory for words. The 1st study, which involved 36 women (aged 20–30 yrs) and 36 women (aged 65–75 yrs), examined the effects of normative task information on Ss' predictions for 30-word lists across 3 trials. The 2nd study, which involved 2 groups of men and women (128 Ss total; aged 19–30 yrs and 54–77 yrs), examined the effects of making predictions and recalling either an easy or a difficult word list prior to making predictions and recalling a moderately difficult word list. Results from both studies showed that task information and experience affected Ss' predictions and that elderly adults predicted their performance more accurately than did younger adults. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term outcomes of memory retrieval under stress.

Previous studies have found impairing effects of stress hormones on memory retrieval. So far, it is unknown whether these impairments are temporary, persistent throughout time, or whether the strength of the memory trace changes after retrieval because of the effects of stress hormones on memory processes during retrieval. In the present study, delayed cued recall (6 months after initial learning) was compared between male participants who had retrieved previously learned word pairs during stress or a control condition. Retrieval (with or without stress) had taken place either 1 day or 5 weeks after initial encoding. The group that had retrieved words under stress 5 weeks after encoding performed worse on long-term recall than the comparable control group. However, when words were retrieved under stress 1 day after encoding, no long-term effect was found, although performance at 6 months in relation to performance under stress was slightly increased compared to the control group. These results support previous findings in animals that stress may affect memory during reactivation. It further suggests that time intervals between encoding and reactivation may play an important role. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive Visual and Postvisual Processes and Their Roles in Form-Specific Memory.

Effects of depth of encoding on form-specific memory were examined. After viewing words (e.g., "bear") presented centrally during initial encoding, participants completed word stems (e.g., "BEA") presented laterally and pattern masked during subsequent test. When the encoding task was perceptual, letter-case specific memory was not observed, unlike in previous experiments without pattern masking. However, when the encoding task required both perceptual and conceptual processing, letter-case specific memory was observed in direct right-hemisphere, but not in direct left-hemisphere, test presentations, like in previous studies without pattern masking. Results were not influenced by whether stems were completed to form the first words that came to mind or words explicitly retrieved from encoding. Depth of encoding may influence form-specific memory through interactive processing of visual and postvisual information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)