Deficits of Organizational Strategy and Visual Memory in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

This study was conducted to investigate the deficits of organizational strategy and visual memory in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Thirty OCD patients and 30 healthy controls aged 20-35 years participated. The Maudsley Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, and Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) test were administered to participants. The authors scored ROCF performances using the Boston Qualitative Scoring System. The OCD patients showed poorer planning ability and higher fragmentation than did healthy controls when copying the ROCF, and they showed even poorer performances in the immediate and delayed recall conditions. The authors found that the Organization score in the copy condition mediated the difference between the OCD group and the healthy group in immediate recall. The direct effect of diagnosis (OCD or healthy) on the immediate recall condition of the ROCF was also significant. This study indicates that people with OCD have poor memory function and organizational deficits. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Prose recall in dementia. A comparison of delay intervals

OBJECTIVE: To explore one methodological variation, delay length, that may contribute to contradictory findings in the literature regarding the use of delayed recall in the detection of early-stage dementia of the Alzheimer type. DESIGN: Comparison of participants with dementia and without dementia on a prose recall task at both 10- and 30-minute delay intervals. SETTING: Washington University Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, St Louis, Mo. PARTICIPANTS: Participants with very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type (n = 136) and uncompromised elderly individuals (n = 197). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Results of the Logical Memory subtest from the Wechsler Memory Scale with immediate recall and 10- and 30-minute delayed recall. RESULTS: Participants with dementia recalled significantly less material than elderly controls at both immediate and delayed recall (P < .001). Multiple regression analyses revealed that dementia classification failed to account for additional variance in the 30-minute delayed score beyond that which could be accounted for by the immediate score. A small but significant proportion of variance was accounted for in the 10-minute delayed score beyond that which could be accounted for by the immediate recall score. CONCLUSION: Delayed recall of a prose passage does not appear to enhance the differentiation of very mild dementia of the Alzheimer type from normal aging in a meaningful way, whether the recall delay is 10 or 30 minutes.     

Visuoconstructional problems in dementia: Contribution of executive systems functions.

Visuoconstructional ability was assessed by asking patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD), ischaemic vascular dementia (IVD), and Parkinson's disease (PD) and a normal control group (NC) to copy a modification of the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure (M–ROCF). The drawings of the NC group were superior to all dementia participants. AD patients generally outperformed LVD and PD patients; however, there were few differences between LVD and PD groups. Nonetheless, the drawings of LVD and PD patients were very fragmented and contained numerous perseverations and omissions. Despite these errors, patients with LVD and PD obtained higher delayed recognition memory scores than AD patients. Correlational analyses among dementia patients between neuropsychological tests and the copy of the M–ROCF found that accurate figure copy was most consistently correlated with tests of working memory, that is, tests requiring patients to monitor their behavior and sustain a complex mental set while performing mental manipulations. By contrast, no relationship between executive function tests related to measures of response selection/inhibition or other domains of neuropsychological functioning was found. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and memory for action events: The role of familiarity.

Two experiments with young and elderly adults explored age-related memory differences for performed action events varying in familiarity. Memory for similar items encoded verbally was also assessed. The findings demonstrated that type of encoding and item-familiarity influenced immediate as well as delayed free recall in both age groups. Highest recall performances were found for familiar performed items. Both factors affected memory performance separately and did not compensate for each other, either in immediate or in delayed free recall. These findings held true regardless of age. Performed actions were especially resistant against forgetting, indicating that, besides the amount of items encoded, performing while encoding especially enhances the retention of knowledge. Recognition memory also varied with type of encoding. Age-related memory differences were found in all free recall tests irrespective of item familiarity and type of encoding, favoring young adults. No age-related memory differences were found in the recognition test. Because of possible ceiling effects, this finding must be treated with care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advance organizers: Retrieval context hypotheses.

In six experiments we examined issues related to the retrieval context set by rereading advance organizers before recall tests. In Experiments 1 and 2, rereading advance organizers before immediate testing had no effect on recall. We hypothesized that the results of Experiments 1 and 2 were due to testing recall too soon to allow for a "loss" of the initial encoding context. Consequently, in Experiments 3–5 we varied delays between encoding and retrieval from 24 hr to 2 weeks. The results of all three experiments indicated that rereading advance organizers before delayed recall greatly facilitated memory performance. In Experiment 6 we contrasted rereading an advance organizer before delayed testing with rereading a false organizer and rereading the first paragraph of the essay. The results revealed that only rereading the advance organizer had a significant effect on recall. The results are discussed in terms of advance organizer theory and a general perspective on encoding and retrieval contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Story and list recall tests as measures of verbal memory in a head-injured sample.

Memory components of story and list recall were derived for 48 head-injured patients (mean age 33.5 yrs) using regression techniques. Ss completed such measures as the Wechsler Memory Scale. General and verbal memory components, respectively, contributed the most variance to both story and list recall under both immediate and delayed conditions. Although they share substantial variance, list and story recall were not identical. Willingness to repeat oneself contributed to all types of recall, except delayed story recall. It was hypothesized that long-term storage contributed to immediate list recall ability, active semantic organization contributed to delayed list recall ability, and attentional fluctuations contributed to delayed story recall ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Delaying students' metacognitive monitoring improves their accuracy in predicting their recognition performance.

The accuracy of students' judgments of learning (JOLs) in predicting recognition vs recall was investigated in 4 experiments. Students studied paired associates and made JOLs, which occurred either immediately after an item had been studied or shortly after an item had been studied. Students then received tests of associative recognition or paired-associate recall. JOL accuracy was greater for delayed JOLs than immediate JOLs, and the accuracy of JOLs was lower in predicting recognition than recall. The latter finding occurred (1) regardless of whether students had anticipated a recall test or a recognition test when making JOLs and (2) regardless of whether JOLs had been cued by only the stimulus of an item or by the entire stimulus-response pair. Correct guessing was shown to contribute to the lower accuracy of students' predictions of recognition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissociations in Hippocampal and Frontal Contributions to Episodic Memory Performance.

The hippocampus and frontal lobes both contribute to episodic memory performance. In the present study, the authors evaluated the relative contributions of hippocampus, frontal lobes, anterior temporal cortex, and posterior cortex to memory performance in neurodegenerative patients and normal older controls. Subjects (n = 42) were studied with structural MRI and a memory paradigm that measured delayed recall, semantic clustering during recall, recognition discriminability, and recognition response bias. Data were analyzed with multiple regression. Consistent with the authors' hypotheses, hippocampal volumes were the best predictor of delayed recall and recognition discriminability, whereas frontal volumes were the best predictor of semantic clustering and response bias. Smaller frontal volumes were associated with less semantic clustering during recall and a more liberal response bias. Results indicate that hippocampal and frontal contributions to episodic memory can be dissociated, with the hippocampus more important for memory accuracy, and frontal structures more important for strategic processing and decision making. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interaction of position and conceptual level of adjunct questions on immediate and delayed retention of text.

75 college students read an 800-word passage that had conceptual or verbatim questions placed either before or after the associated text segments. A control group received inserted questions drawn from commmon knowledge. In general, conceptual prequestions produced higher recall than conceptual postquestions, and verbatim prequestions yielded less recall than verbatim postquestions. While verbatim postquestions and conceptual prequestions were superior to control questions on the immediate recall test, only conceptual prequestions exceeded the control questions on delayed recall. Correlational and clustering analyses support the view that conceptual prequestions produce more highly structured and organized memories than verbatim postquestions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative recency and levels of processing in free recall.

Compared initial and final free recall of 5-item lists for 4 different "processing activities"; during list presentation 32 undergraduates either silently rehearsed, overtly rehearsed, generated rhymes, or generated verbal associates. Whereas the 2 rehearsal conditions showed a marked superiority in immediate free recall, their final (delayed) recall was inferior to that of lists for which associates were generated. It appears that the negative recency effect commonly obtained in delayed recall is a consequence of processing strategies which maximize the recency effect in immediate recall. (French summary) (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorial and strategic determinants of tactile recency.

Across 4 experiments, recency arising from the presentation of 5-item tactile lists was assessed with immediate and delayed recall with or without a same-modality suffix. The lists were presented with or without concurrent verbalization and at rates varying from 0.5 s to 2 s per item. Delaying recall or the addition of a suffix impaired recency both in the absence of concurrent verbalization during list presentation and at the 1-s presentation rate. In contrast, both concurrent verbalization during list presentation and a 0.5-s presentation rate restored recency for both the delayed recall and suffix conditions. This pattern of data is problematic for sensory memory and for trace discriminability accounts of modality and suffix effects. It is suggested that a sensory memory account together with an attention-biasing strategy by which limited encoding resources are diverted toward the terminal list item can better accommodate the data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contextual variability and serial position effects in free recall.

In immediate free recall, words recalled successively tend to come from nearby serial positions. M. J. Kahana (see record 1996-93836-009) documented this effect and showed that this tendency, which the authors refer to as the lag recency effect, is well described by a variant of the search of associative memory (SAM) model (J. G. W. Raaijmakers & R. M. Shiffrin, 1980, 1981). In 2 experiments, participants performed immediate, delayed, and continuous distractor free recall under conditions designed to minimize rehearsal. The lag recency effect, previously observed in immediate free recall, was also observed in delayed and continuous distractor free recall. Although two-store memory models, such as SAM, readily account for the end-of-list recency effect in immediate free recall, and its attenuation in delayed free recall, these models fail to account for the long-term recency effect. By means of analytic simulations, the authors show that both the end of list recency effect and the lag recency effect, across all distractor conditions, can be explained by a single-store model in which context, retrieved with each recalled item, serves as a cue for subsequent recalls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Revised Methodology for Research on Metamemory: Pre-judgment Recall And Monitoring (PRAM).

A revised methodology is described for research on metacognitive monitoring, especially judgments of learning (JOLs), to investigate psychological processing that previously has been only hypothetical and unobservable. During data collection a new stage of recall occurs just prior to the JOL, so that during data analysis the items can be partitioned into subcategories to measure the degree of JOL accuracy in ways that are more analytic than was previously possible. A weighted-average combinatorial rule allows the component measures of JOL accuracy to be combined into the usual overall measure of metacognitive accuracy. An example using the revised methodology offers a new explanation for the delayed-JOL effect, in which delayed JOLs are more accurate than immediate JOLs for predicting recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

One thing follows another: Effects of temporal structure on 1- to 2-year-olds' recall of events.

Investigated whether recall of events by children under 2 years of age is similar to that of older preschoolers and adults. Experiment 1 used elicited-imitation to test 16- and 20-month-olds' immediate and delayed recall (2-week delay) of familiar and novel events. Ordered recall at immediate and delayed test was superior for familiar events and for novel events with causal relations among the elements; ordered recall of novel events lacking causal relations was significantly lower. Experiment 2 tested children's sensitivity to differences in underlying structure of novel events. Nineteen-, 25-, and 31-month-olds organized recall around causal relations, in spite of experimental manipulations that interrupted causally connected pairs of elements. The experiments provide clear evidence that, like preschoolers and adults, children as young as 16 months include temporal order information in their representations of both familiar novel events and that the causal structure of novel events influences their recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory organization of action events and its relationship to memory performance.

Previous research yielded inconsistent results regarding the memory organization of self-performed actions. The authors propose that task performance changes the very basis of memory organization. Enactment during study and test (Experiment 1) yielded stronger enactive clustering (based on motor-movement similarities), whereas verbal encoding yielded stronger conceptual clustering (based on semantic-episodic similarities). Enactment enhanced memory quantity and memory accuracy. Both measures increased with enactive clustering under self-performance instructions but with conceptual clustering under verbal instructions. Enactment only during study (Experiment 2) or only during testing (Experiment 3) also enhanced enactive clustering. It is proposed that different conditions affect the relative salience of different types of memory organization and their relative contribution to recall. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test performance in acute, chronic, and remitted schizophrenia patients

To assess visual memory disturbance in different forms of schizophrenia, we compared Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test (RCF) performance in acutely psychotic, chronically psychotic, and outpatient schizophrenia patients and in a control group of acutely psychotic patients with disorders other than schizophrenia. There were no group differences on the copy condition of the RCF. The chronic schizophrenia group utilized more abnormal copying strategies, however, than the outpatient or nonschizophrenia groups. Moreover, the chronic schizophrenia group demonstrated significantly poorer recall than the outpatient or nonschizophrenia groups, and a trend toward poorer performance than the acute schizophrenia group. Both groups of inpatient schizophrenia patients were characterized by a lack of relationship between copying strategies and recall accuracy. These data suggest that (a) chronic schizophrenia patients are characterized by more severe memory impairment than are nonchronic schizophrenia patients, and (b) visual memory disturbance in chronic schizophrenia is not solely a function of encoding difficulties.     

Revision of the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test: Studies of normal performance, reliability, and validity.

There is an increasing demand for alternate-form neuropsychological tests that can be used in clinical trials with little risk of direct practice effect. Although the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test ( BVMT ) includes six equivalent alternate forms, its administration is limited to an immediate and 25-min delayed free-recall trial. We now present a revised version of the BVMT called the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test—Revised (BVMT-R) that includes three learning trials, a 25-min delayed recall trial, and a delayed yes/ no recognition task. A new scoring system, which accounts for the location of test stimuli as well as the accuracy of recall, is also introduced. Using these new administration and scoring procedures, we administered the BVMT-R to 261 neuropsychiatric patients and 456 normal healthy adults. The results indicated that the test has excellent interform reliability, and the construct and criterion-related validity of the test were supported in studies using clinical samples. Although the BVMT-R is not without its limitations, the test's brevity and alternate-form capacity make it a valuable instrument for serial neuropsychological assessments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of perceptual interference at encoding on organization and order: Investigating the roles of item-specific and relational information.

Interfering with the perceptual processing of a stimulus can improve memory. The perceptual-interference effect was investigated from the perspective of the item-specific/relational encoding distinction. This perspective suggests that perceptual interference enhances item-specific encoding but disrupts the encoding of relational and order information. The results of 6 experiments were largely consistent with this view. In Experiments 1 and 2, perceptual interference (a hypothesized item-specific manipulation) and list organization (a relational manipulation) both enhanced free recall but had opposite effects on a measure of relational processing (category clustering). Increasing list organization increased clustering, whereas perceptual interference decreased clustering. In addition, perceptual interference typically decreased memory for order. Finally, when order information was an important determinant of free recall, the perceptual-interference effect was eliminated or reversed. When reliance on order information was lessened, the perceptual-interference effect reemerged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory abilities during normal aging

One hundred and five normal subjects from 20 to 89 years old, and with a minimum of six years of formal education were selected. Subjects were divided into seven age ranges, with 15 subjects in each group. The following tests were individually administered: (1) Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) (Wechsler, 1945); (2) Serial Verbal Learning (Ardila, Rosselli & Puente, 1994; Ardila & Ostrosky, 1991); (3) The Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure (ROCF) (Osterrieth, 1944) (copy, immediate, and delayed reproduction); (4) Corsi's blocks (Milner, 1971) (forwards and backwards); and (5) Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (Wilson, Cockburn, & Baddeley, 1985). This last test may be considered as a functional or ecological memory test. All test scores declined across ages between 4.1% and 76.6%. In all the tests, excepting Digits, standard deviations increased with age. It was observed that the youngest subjects could retain about three-fourths of the information presented, whereas the oldest retained around one-third of this information. About half of the test significantly correlated with the Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test. A factor analysis revealed four different factors accounting for 63.3% of the variance. A single nonverbal memory factor accounted for over 40% of the variance.     

On the nature of echoic persistence: Experiments with running memory.

Modality effects in running memory were explored in a series of 5 experiments. The precategorical acoustic storage (PAS) model of Crowder and Morton (1969) predicts an auditory advantage over the last item or 2 if recall is delayed by a rehearsal-preventing task, but the prediction for immediate recall in running memory is less clear. Exp 1 demonstrated superior recall for vocalized presentation further back into the memory sequence than predicted for both immediate and delayed recall. Exps 2–5 investigated the effects of delaying a distractor task by an unfilled interval of 10.8 s. When the distractors were vocalized a decrement was observed across all positions, independent of the modality of presentation. Silent copying of the distractors caused no significant interference with recall at all. I argue that these results create difficulties for the current conceptualization of PAS and they conflict with some previous evidence of modality-specific interference from delayed distraction on which theories of direct utilization have been based. Difficulties raised by these results can be more satisfactorily handled by a process view, emphasizing the principle of distinctiveness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)