Biomedical subjects

Laura E Schulz

Publications and source records attributed to Laura E Schulz.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2004

Age related changes in emotional memory.

Studies have found that emotionally evocative stimuli are better remembered than neutral stimuli, an effect called "emotional enhancement". Researchers have also found that the elderly experience an overall decline in memory relative to the young. We hypothesized that the elderly may experience diminished emotional enhancement, and that this may be one factor contributing to overall memory decline in the elderly. We tested elderly and young subjects on tasks of emotional memory for words and faces. In both the elderly and young, a shift in memory favoring positive stimuli (as opposed to negative and neutral stimuli) was evident, this effect being slightly more marked in the elderly. We suggest that the effects seen in both groups may be due to a shift from the amygdala-hippocampal system to the prefrontal cortex over time. We suggest that the more marked response in the elderly may be due to age-related changes in these brain systems, causing a further shift towards memory for positive material.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Causal learning across domains.

Five studies investigated (a) children's ability to use the dependent and independent probabilities of events to make causal inferences and (b) the interaction between such inferences and domain-specific knowledge. In Experiment 1, preschoolers used patterns of dependence and independence to make accurate causal inferences in the domains of biology and psychology. Experiment 2 replicated the results in the domain of biology with a more complex pattern of conditional dependencies. In Experiment 3, children used evidence about patterns of dependence and independence to craft novel interventions across domains. In Experiments 4 and 5, children's sensitivity to patterns of dependence was pitted against their domain-specific knowledge. Children used conditional probabilities to make accurate causal inferences even when asked to violate domain boundaries.

Association Learning↗

PubMed2004

A theory of causal learning in children: causal maps and Bayes nets.

The authors outline a cognitive and computational account of causal learning in children. They propose that children use specialized cognitive systems that allow them to recover an accurate "causal map" of the world: an abstract, coherent, learned representation of the causal relations among events. This kind of knowledge can be perspicuously understood in terms of the formalism of directed graphical causal models, or Bayes nets. Children's causal learning and inference may involve computations similar to those for learning causal Bayes nets and for predicting with them. Experimental results suggest that 2- to 4-year-old children construct new causal maps and that their learning is consistent with the Bayes net formalism.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

God does not play dice: causal determinism and preschoolers' causal inferences.

Three studies investigated children's belief in causal determinism. If children are determinists, they should infer unobserved causes whenever observed causes appear to act stochastically. In Experiment 1, 4-year-olds saw a stochastic generative cause and inferred the existence of an unobserved inhibitory cause. Children traded off inferences about the presence of unobserved inhibitory causes and the absence of unobserved generative causes. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds used the pattern of indeterminacy to decide whether unobserved variables were generative or inhibitory. Experiment 3 suggested that children (4 years old) resist believing that direct causes can act stochastically, although they accept that events can be stochastically associated. Children's deterministic assumptions seem to support inferences not obtainable from other cues.

Biological Evolution↗