Use of semantic context by patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Used semantic-priming procedures to examine limitations in the use of semantic context by 18 patients (mean age 68.9 yrs) with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to determine whether any such contextual effects were mediated solely through automatic processes or whether attentional processes were also involved. Three tasks were applied to examine the effect of semantic context on the performance of 18 normal elderly Ss (mean age 67.2 yrs), 18 normal young Ss (mean age 24.1 yrs), and the AD Ss. When normal and AD Ss were asked to decide whether a given item was a member of a certain category, their response times were equally affected by the item's dominance in the category. The time that AD Ss took to recognize a word was actually affected more by the semantic context provided by a priming sentence than was that of normal Ss. When asked to generate the final word of an incomplete sentence, AD Ss performed very poorly unless potential responses were highly constrained by sentence context. (31 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Functional mapping of human memory using PET: Comparisons of conceptual and perceptual tasks.

Tested whether different neurological regions subserved the conceptual and perceptual memory components by using positron emission tomography (PET). Regional cerebral blood flow (RCBF) of 14 Ss (mean age 25 yrs) during 2 conceptual tasks of semantic cued recall and semantic association was compared to a control condition in which Ss made semantic associations to nonstudied words. RCBF during 2 perceptual tasks of word fragment cued recall and word fragment completion was also compared to a word fragment nonstudied control condition. There were clear dissociations in RCBF that reflected differences in brain regions subserving the 2 types of memory processes. Conceptual processing produced more activation in the left frontal and temporal cortex and the lateral aspect of the bilateral inferior parietal lobule. Perceptual memory processing activated the right frontal and temporal cortex and the bilateral posterior areas. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in incidental learning.

Examined the effects of age and of incidental-learning tasks on recall of a categorized word list. Ss were 50 18-30 yr old college students and 50 55-65 yr old teachers. The control groups were instructed to remember the words; incidental-learning groups performed orienting tasks, but were not informed that they would have to recall the words. 2 orienting tasks required that Ss process the meaning of the words; the other 2 orienting tasks did not involve semantic processing. Analysis of the free-recall data indicates that the semantic processing tasks led to much greater recall and organization of recall than the nonsemantic orienting tasks. In recall, there was a significant interaction between age and orienting task, with old Ss only manifesting incidental learning that was inferior to young Ss, whose orienting task involved semantic processing. The findings indicate that the presence or absence of an age-related decrement in incidental learning is predictable from the depth of processing of the incidentally acquired material. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transfert d'une stratégie de mémorisation chez des enfants de 10 ans: étude des différences individuelles.

Studied spontaneous or induced use of an organization strategy on free recall tasks by children differing with regard to perceptual field dependence–field independence (i.e., global vs analytic perceptual style). Human Ss: 72 normal male and female school-age children (mean age 10 yrs). In a 2 by 2 by 2 experimental design, Ss were divided into 8 groups according to gender, perceptual style (global vs analytic), and treatment (control vs experimental). The groups received a brief illustration of a semantic organization strategy designed to promote memorization of verbal material. Ss performed 3 successive and identical recall tasks followed by 2 different tasks requiring either a transfer of maintenance or a transfer of generalization. Intergroup differences in memorization strategies and recall performances were analyzed. Tests used: The Group Embedded Figures Test. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive processes in normal and hyperactive children and their response to amphetamine treatment.

14 normal (mean age 10.1 yrs) and 15 hyperactive (mean age 9.4 yrs) children were compared on cognitive tasks following placebo or amphetamine administration (.5 mg/kg) in a double-blind crossover study. A no-treatment control group of normal children who were matched with the hyperactive Ss on age, IQ, and socioeconomic status were also tested on the cognitive measures. In the undrugged state, normals remembered more information under free-recall retrieval conditions than did hyperactives; cued recall did not differentiate between the 2 groups. Both normals and hyperactives demonstrated similar, amphetamine-related increases in the recall of semantically and acoustically processed words. This enhancement of cognition occurred along with improvements in attention but was independent of such attentional changes. The pattern of amphetamine-induced changes in cognition is generally similar in normal and hyperactive children. Differences in response to amphetamine that do appear involve components of cognition that distinguish these children in the undrugged state (e.g., semantic processing, organization in recall, and free retrieval of information). (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Episodic memory functioning in a community-based sample of old adults with major depression: Utilization of cognitive support.

Community-based samples of old adults with current major depression (n?=?17; mean age 83.29 yrs) and healthy old adults (n?=?51; mean age 83.29 yrs) were examined on a variety of episodic recall and recognition tasks. Results indicate depression-related deficits in recall that were reduced but not eliminated, in recognition. Control Ss were able to utilize cognitive support in the form of more study time and item organizability in free recall, whereas depressed Ss were not. However, both groups showed equal gains from the provision of category cues and beneficial effects of prior knowledge and more study time in recognition. Results suggest that depression results in deficits in effortful, elaborate processes at encoding and retrieval and that old age depression is associated with a reduced ability to utilize cognitive support to improve episodic memory. Depressed older adults appear to require cognitive support at both encoding and retrieval to demonstrate memory facilitation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sentence perception and distractibility in schizophrenic, manic, and depressed patients.

Previous research with schizophrenics suggested that distraction may have its primary effect on controlled information processing. To explore this hypothesis, 8 schizophrenics, 8 manics, 8 depressives, and 8 normal Ss (all Ss were aged 18–45 yrs) were asked to shadow short stories in both the presence and absence of a competing message and to answer questions afterward about the content of the shadowed message. The shadowing performance of all 3 patient groups was equivalent to that of normal Ss and was not affected by distraction. Shadowing errors of commission indicated that schizophrenics did use semantic and syntactic information to anticipate words in the relevant message, but the schizophrenics also inserted more semantically irrelevant words than any of the other 3 groups. Distraction did interfere with the schizophrenics' ability to recall the content of relevant passages, but not with the performance of the other 3 groups. Data indicate that distraction may have a specific rather than general influence on controlled information processing or that distraction may reduce schizophrenics' overall capacity to handle information in short-term memory. The analysis of shadowing errors suggested that performance on such laboratory tasks may be closely related to the verbal communication problems encountered by many schizophrenic patients, but also that these symptoms may not be a simple function of selective attention difficulties. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in cued recall.

Examined the relative effectiveness of semantic and structural retrieval cues in 72 male college graduates of 3 age groups: Group 1 (aged 20–39 yrs), Group 2 (aged 40–59 yrs), and Group 3 (aged 60–80 yrs). The Ss had been administered 2 subtests of the WAIS to insure the compatibility of the Ss. Results of the recall tests show that there was significantly poorer recall by the older Ss in the noncued conditions (free recall) and in the cued condition when structural cues were used. When category labels were used as semantic cues, however, the age deficit in recall was eliminated. Results are discussed in terms of both a retrieval hypothesis and a processing-deficit hypothesis. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Differential memory changes with age: Exact retrieval versus plausible inference.

Conducted 2 experiments on the use of direct retrieval and plausibility memory strategies in elderly and college-age adults. In Exp I, which used an episodic memory task, data were obtained from 49 65–80 yr old college alumni and from 58 college students who had served in a previous study by the 1st author (see record 1983-02731-001). Findings indicate that older Ss effectively used the plausibility strategy but performed more poorly than younger Ss when the direct retrieval strategy was required. Results of Exp II, using 18 college alumni (8 Ss aged 20–31 yrs, 10 Ss aged 64–75 yrs) with a semantic memory task, show that older Ss' accuracy was essentially undistinguishable from that of younger Ss as long as a plausibility judgment process produced the correct response. It is argued that careful inspection is a much more costly process for older adults than it is for young adults but that plausibility judgments and feature overlap processes are equally easy for both age groups. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment of semantic processing in patients with Alzheimer's type dementia: The release-of-proactive-inhibition paradigm.

Investigated memory functioning in 10 patients with dementia of Alzheimer's type (DAT [aged 54–87 yrs]) and 20 age-matched normal controls (CTLs) by using the release-from-proactive-interference paradigm. DAT Ss exhibited lower correct recall and higher intrusion rates than did CTLs. DAT Ss did not show the expected build-up and release from proactive interference when correct recall was considered but showed the expected pattern when intrusion rate was considered. CTLs showed evidence of semantic processing on both measures. Results are discussed in relation to the defects in semantic memory hypothesized in Alzheimer's disease. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linear and nonlinear effects of aging on categorizing and naming faces.

Ss aged 54–84 yrs performed 5 separate tasks involving various aspects of face processing: (1) structural decisions, (2) familiarity decisions, (3) semantic decisions, (4) 1st-name decisions, and (5) name retrieval. For the categorization tasks (1–4), the mean reaction times (RTs) for the older Ss (over 65) were plotted against the corresponding means for the younger Ss (under 65). This produced a linear function (slope >1, intercept     

A comparison of category and letter fluency in Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease.

44 patients with dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT), 44 elderly normal control (ENC) Ss demographically matched to the DAT group, 42 patients with Huntington's disease (HD), and 42 middle-aged normal control (MNC) Ss demographically matched to the HD group were administered letter and category fluency tasks. DAT patients showed an overproportional impairment on category than on letter fluency tasks, whereas HD patients were equally impaired. Analyses based on receiver operating characteristic curves revealed that category fluency correctly classified significantly more DAT and ENC Ss than did letter fluency, whereas the 2 fluency tasks did not differ in this respect for HD and MNC Ss. Results suggest that HD patients' failures on fluency tasks are caused by impaired initiation/retrieval capacities. In contrast, DAT patients' greater category than letter fluency deficits are primarily due to a breakdown in the structure of semantic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Short-term memory processes in children with reading and arithmetic learning disabilities.

Examined the role of phonemic coding in short-term memory in 45 children with a reading disability, 38 children with a specific arithmetic disability, and 89 normal children, as measured by the Wide Range Achievement Test. Ss, aged 7–13 yrs, were administered a series of tasks that involved the visual or auditory presentation of rhyming and nonrhyming letters and either an oral or a written response. Younger Ss (7–8 yrs) with a reading disability did not show any difference between the recall of nonrhyming and rhyming letters, whereas normal Ss of the same age did. Older reading-disabled Ss (aged 9–23 yrs), like their normal counterparts, had significantly poorer recall of rhyming as opposed to nonrhyming letters. However, their overall levels of performance were significantly lower than normals. The same pattern was found with Ss with arithmetic disabilities for the visual presentation of stimuli. For the auditory presentation of stimuli, the performance of Ss with arithmetic disabilities resembled that of normals, except at the youngest ages. Whereas a deficiency in phonological coding may characterize younger children with learning disabilities, older children with learning disabilities appear to use a phonemic code but have a more general deficit in short-term memory. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Bender Gestalt: Use of clinical judgment versus recall scores in prediction of Huntington's disease.

Used Bender-Gestalt recall scores and clinical evaluation of Bender protocols to predict organicity in 2 comparisons in a total of 89 Ss: normals vs premorbids for Huntington's disease and normals vs Ss already affected with Huntington's disease (mean ages, 31 yrs for normals and premorbids and 38 yrs for Huntington's Ss). Mean Bender recall scores significantly discriminated between normals and premorbids. Chi-squares reflecting predictive accuracy were significant for both comparisons using the Bender recall score but were nonsignificant for the predictions by clinical evaluations. Hit rates for the recall score prediction, however, were not much better than those for the clinical evaluation method and were too low for diagnostic evaluation of individual cases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A developmental study of recall from natural categories.

27 6th graders, 25 college students, and 26 older adults (aged 57–77 yrs) were asked to list exemplars from the semantic domains of animals and occupations for 6 min each. Cumulative recall curves were found to fit a hyperbolic model of recall and to be stable over age in the animal domain; in the occupation domain, 6th graders reached asymptote earlier. A slope-difference algorithm was used to identify clusters within recall. It was found that the size of clusters was stable over time. Older adults tended to find new clusters at a faster rate in the later stages of recall, and the youngest and oldest Ss reported items within clusters at a slower rate. Results demonstrate the stability of some basic functions in semantic memory and support a production deficiency view of reported deficits in episodic memory tasks. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing relational and item-specific information: Effects of aging and division of attention.

64 young adults (aged 18–21 yrs) and 32 older Ss (aged 65–83 yrs) encoded items from categorizable lists under incidental learning conditions. Two orienting tasks were used: a category sorting task and a pleasantness rating task. The number of items/category was varied (between 2 and 14) within each list. In addition, 24 young adults performed the orienting tasks while simultaneously engaged in an attention-demanding secondary task (divided-attention condition). Recall declined with both age and division of attention, while recall clustering was greatest for the older Ss and least for the young divided-attention Ss. The effects of category size and orienting task on recall did not vary across groups. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical memory in poor and normal readers: Developmental differences in the use of category cues.

Examined whether differences between poor and normal reading children on lexical memory tasks may be attributed to semantic development, using 80 2nd and 6th graders. Ss were presented with 4 lists of taxonomic categories and were asked to recall items under (a) noncued and random conditions, with Ss instructed to recall as many items as possible and (b) cued and blocked conditions, with Ss told to recall items in a category. All Ss performed better with category cues. Group differences on category recall were more reliable at Grade 6, suggesting that facility in accessing taxonomic categories may differentiate poor and normal readers more reliably at older age levels. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A word-frequency cohort effect in young versus elderly adults' memory for words.

72 undergraduates and 72 elderly Ss (mean age 73.6 yrs) were tested for recall of 4 types of word lists that varied in terms of word frequency and datedness. "Popular" words had high frequency in both E. L. Thorndike's (1921) and H. Kucera and N. W. Francis's (1967) norms; "dated" words had high frequency in 1921 but low present-day frequency; "contemporary" words had low frequency in 1921 but high present-day frequency; "rare" words had low frequency in both norms. In both the sorting-recall and the standard multitrial free-recall tasks, the older Ss' pattern of list recall differed from that of the younger Ss. For older Ss, the feature of early high frequency promoted better recall (in the popular and dated lists) than did present-day high frequency (i.e., the contemporary list was recalled as poorly as the rare list). Results suggest a word-frequency cohort effect and indicate that high-frequency words from one's youth are particularly memorable, especially for elderly individuals. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Remote memory: Recalling autobiographical and public events from across the lifespan.

Examined the recall of autobiographical (ATB) and public events across the lifespan among 24 middle-aged (40–55 yrs old) and 24 older (aged 65–75 yrs) individuals. Ss were asked to recall events from specific time periods across their lifespan. The 4 tasks differed in their nature of the episodes requested (ATB or public) and whether recall was word-cued or nonword-cued. Verification of public events was assessed archivally, while ATB events were verified by relatives of a subgroup of the Ss and reported events. Memory for public events decreased with increased age of Ss, but this effect generally did not occur for the recall of ATB events. Older Ss recalled an equal number of ATB episodes from all life segments, whereas recall of news events tended to decrease with remoteness of the episode. Findings suggest that generalizations regarding age or time-related deficiencies are unwarranted. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Les représentations de catégories sémantiques dans le vieillissement.

Examined to what extent young and elderly populations agreed in their representation of semantic categories. 90 elderly (77 women, 13 men, mean age 71.8 yrs) and 90 young (74 women, 16 men, mean age 27.3 yrs) Ss wrote down the first 4 associations evoked by each of 30 semantic categories. Chi-square tests of association revealed that elderly and young Ss differed in their representation of most of the categories. As such, the norms generated by the data may be useful in future research in cognitive growth and regression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)