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Short-term memory for the temporal order of events in monkeys.

Two monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) demonstrated short-term memory for the recency of unpredictable visual events in a probe recognition task. On each trial, from two to five 3-dimensional objects were randomly selected from a pool of 200 and presented sequentially. In the test probe that followed, the subjects saw two objects from the preceding list and chose the one that had appeared earlier. Overall accuracy was 73% correct. Like human judgments of recency, accuracy varied inversely with the lag and directly with the temporal separation of the objects in the probe. The data suggest that monkeys encode information about object order as well as object identity, their mnemonic representation of the ordered list contains information about all of its constituent elements, and recency judgments are made at the time the probe is presented and not before. Monkey processing of temporal order information is in these respects similar to human order memory.

Animals↗

Random number generation by normal, alcoholic and schizophrenic subjects.

Controls (N = 45), schizophrenics (N = 20) and alcoholics (N = 23) were asked to choose at random a number between 1 and 10, 100 times. The correlation matrices of five different randomization indices were used to study within group variation; these matrices were similar for the normal and alcoholic groups, but very different for the schizophrenic group. The differences between the three groups were studied by canonical analysis and, in terms of the canonical variables, the mean performance of the normal group is clearly discriminated from that of the alcoholic and schizophrenic subjects.

Adult↗

Implicit learning of new verbal associations.

Implicit learning of a series of new verbal associations was studied in four experiments. The first two experiments demonstrated that learning of a repeating sequence of verbal stimuli may occur without awareness, but only when the stimulus-response mapping requires an attention-demanding activity: Subjects who were unaware of the sequence learned when instructed to categorize the stimuli, but not when instructed simply to read them. However, in both situations, unaware subjects performed no better than untrained control subjects in expressing their knowledge of the sequence explicitly. In Experiments 3 and 4, subjects showed implicit learning when the task involved either motor responses to verbal stimuli or verbal responses to spatially arranged stimuli. These findings are discussed in terms of the conditions under which implicit learning can be obtained. First, they demonstrate implicit learning of a set of new associations in the verbal domain. Second, the data suggest that attention is important in implicit learning. Finally, the degree of interitem organization that is familiar preexperimentally seems to partially determine the amount of implicit learning.

Adult↗

Declarative memory following anterior temporal lobectomy in humans.

This study hypothesized that verbal memory decline following anterior temporal lobectomy (ATL) is associated with a lack of significant neuropathology in resected left, but not right, hippocampus and is limited to measures of episodic memory only. Tests of immediate (digit span), semantic (visual naming), and episodic memory as measured by the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) were administered before and 6 months after resection of the anterior left (n = 36) or right (n = 26) temporal lobe. There were no effects of hippocampal pathology on measures of immediate or semantic memory for either ATL group or for episodic memory for the right ATL group. Left ATL patients who demonstrated no/mild hippocampal sclerosis exhibited significantly greater postoperative decline in episodic memory compared with those with moderate/marked hippocampal sclerosis on multiple CVLT indices (recall measures, learning characteristics, and contrast measures).

Adult↗

The associative-memory basis of cognitive skill learning: adult age differences.

It has been established that memorizing common problems and their solutions underlies cognitive skill development, and that there are substantial age deficits in the rate of this learning. In a between-groups design, the authors compared learning rates for the same set of problems in skill (SK) training and paired-associate (PA) training. The authors found main effects due to condition (PA problems were acquired earlier) and to age (older adults' learning was delayed), but no condition-by-age interaction. The authors concluded that the age deficit in SK can be accounted for by the age deficit in associative memory; no further explanation is needed. The authors also analyzed fast and slow retrieves in SK and PA, and found that the frequency of fast retrieves did not differ in the two conditions. The overall advantage of PA was due to the occurrence of slow retrieves, which were absent in SK presumably because the skill algorithm displaces slow, explicit memory search in SK, but not fast, familiarity-based retrieval.

Adolescent↗

Working memory capacity and the construction of spatial mental models in comprehension and deductive reasoning.

We asked 149 high-school students who were pretested for their working memory capacity (WMC) to read spatial descriptions relating to five objects and to evaluate conclusions asserting an unmentioned relationship between two of the objects. Unambiguous descriptions were compatible with a single spatial arrangement, whereas ambiguous descriptions permitted two arrangements; a subset of the ambiguous descriptions still determined the relation asserted in the conclusion, whereas another subset did not. Two groups of participants received different instructions: The deduction group should accept conclusions only if they followed with logical necessity from the description, whereas the comprehension group should accept a conclusion if it agreed with their representation of the arrangement. Self-paced reading times increased on sentences that introduced an ambiguity, replicating previous findings in deductive reasoning experiments. This effect was also found in the comprehension group, casting doubt on the interpretation that people consider multiple possible arrangements online. Responses to conclusions could be modelled by a multinomial processing model with four parameters: the probability of constructing a correct mental model, the probability of detecting an ambiguity, and two guessing parameters. Participants with high and with low WMC differed mainly in the probability of successfully constructing a mental model.

Adolescent↗

Chronic administration of the L-type calcium channel blocker nimodipine can facilitate the acquisition of sequence learning in a radial-arm maze.

Nimodipine, a dihydropyridine L-type voltage-gated calcium-channel blocker, was examined for its potential effect on the acquisition of a complex-arm sequence task in an automated radial maze. Young (60-day-old) male Wistar rats were injected with saline or nimodipine (5 mg/kg) 15 min prior to radial maze training, or immediately following the radial maze testing. The results of the learning task (over 7 days of testing) showed that rats injected with nimodipine each training session acquired the task more quickly and more efficiently compared to saline-treated animals. There were no significant differences for rats that were pre-/post-treated with nimodipine during the maze-learning task. The number of incorrect arm entries and number of additional lever presses in the same arm were found to be significantly lower in rats treated with nimodipine compared to saline-injected controls. The beneficial effect of nimodipine treatment occurred only in rats that were acquiring the task, and not in rats that had already learned the arm sequence paradigm. There were no potential non-specific influences on locomotor activity or appetite caused by chronic nimodipine treatments. These results strongly suggest that nimodipine can facilitate the acquisition of a complex learning task.

Animals↗

Pigeons flexibly time or count on cue.

In Experiment 1, pigeons were presented with a sequence of light flashes and cued to peck a key for reward either after a fixed time or after a fixed number of flashes. Curves that showed the rate of key pecking over time within trials indicated that peak rates of response were reached near the fixed time on timing-cued trials and near the fixed number of flashes on counting-cued trials. In Experiment 2, the key cue was shifted from timing to counting or from counting to timing midway through a trial. The peak times reached after the cue change indicated that pigeons kept track of time while cued to count but did not count while cued to time. These findings suggest a basic asymmetry in the dual-mode model of timing and counting.

Animals↗

Phonological coding in dyslexic readers.

A study was made of the ability of 9-, 12-, and 14-year-old dyslexics to recall auditorily presented rhyming and non-rhyming letter strings. These children showed a normal phonemic confusability effect, although overall their recall was much poorer than that of their chronological age controls; their recall levels were in fact very similar to those of their reading age controls. It was concluded that although previous studies have argued that poor readers show a weak phonemic confusability effect, this finding does not appear to be generalizable to older poor readers.

Adolescent↗

Involuntary awareness and implicit priming: role of retrieval context.

This study examined the role of retrieval context in implicit priming by manipulating percentage of word-stem index as shallow and deep processing while performing a word-stem completion task. 80 subjects were randomly divided into four groups each of 20 subjects: shallow processing or deep processing with few retrieval indices, and shallow processing or deep processing with many retrieval indices. Analysis indicated that proportion of word-stem completion was significantly higher for studied words than for nonstudied words in all four groups and that the subjects in the groups with many retrieval indices had a significantly increased proportion of word-stem completion between studied and nonstudied words than those in the groups with few retrieval indices. Postquestionnaire analysis indicated that more previously studied items were retrieved if many studied items were available during implicit word-stem completion and that only a small proportion of word-stem completion was finished with studied words by the subjects who were aware of the prior studied and test word relations in all four groups. It was concluded that having more studied words retrievable contributed to more being retrieved and that involuntary awareness had very limited influence on the priming in the implicit word-stem completion.

Adolescent↗

The effects of associations and aging on illusory recollection.

Younger and older adults (mean years = 20.5 and 75) studied lists of associated words for a final recognition test. The length (5, 10, or 15 associates) and modality (auditory or visual) of study lists were manipulated within subjects. For both groups, increasing the number of associates increased illusory recollections of a related lure's presentation (measured by source judgments and the Memory Characteristics Questionnaire). This pattern suggests that associative activation of the lure influenced illusory recollection, and aging spared this process. In contrast, age impaired the recollection of source for studied words (auditory or visual) and had identical effects on source attributions for related lures. This pattern suggests that the true recollection of source influenced illusory recollection of source, and age impaired this process. To account for these and other results, we propose that associative activation drives an attribution process that binds subjectively detailed features to a false memory.

Adolescent↗

Basic processes in reading: a critical review of pseudohomophone effects in reading aloud and a new computational account.

There are pervasive lexical influences on the time that it takes to read aloud novel letter strings that sound like real words (e.g., brane from brain). However, the literature presents a complicated picture, given that the time taken to read aloud such items is sometimes shorter and sometimes longer than a control string (e.g.,frane) and that the time to read aloud is sometimes affected by the frequency of the base word and other times is not. In the present review, we first organize these data to show that there is considerably more consistency than has previously been acknowledged. We then consider six different accounts that have been proposed to explain various aspects of these data. Four of them immediately fail in one way or another. The remaining two accounts may be able to explain these findings, but they either make counterintuitive assumptions or invoke a novel mechanism solely to explain these findings. A new account is advanced that is able to explain all of the effects reviewed here and has none of the problems associated with the other accounts. According to this account, different types of lexical knowledge are used when pseudohomophones and nonword controls are read aloud in mixed and pure lists. This account is then implemented in Coltheart, Rastle, Perry, Langdon, and Ziegler's (2001) dual route cascaded model in order to provide an existence proof that it accommodates all of the effects, while retaining the ability to simulate three standard effects seen in nonword reading aloud.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗

Temporal memory over the adult lifespan.

Performances of noncollege student young adults, middle-aged adults, and elderly adults were contrasted on word temporal memory and paired-associate learning tasks. A comparison group of college-student subjects was also evaluated on each task. Significant effects for age variation were found for each task. The age sensitivity for temporal memory conflicts with one of the criteria commonly established for determining the automaticity of a memory task. In addition, moderately high positive correlations were found for each age group between word temporal memory scores and paired-associate learning scores, implying the involvement of effortful processes over the adult lifespan in word temporal memory.

Adult↗

The impact of response mode on implicit and explicit sequence learning.

Evidence regarding the influence of response mode on sequence learning in serial reaction time (SRT) tasks has been mixed so far. In the present study, sequence learning was investigated under two different response conditions: manual (button presses) versus verbal (pronunciation of digits). Additionally, participants were divided post hoc into subgroups differing in their degree of explicit knowledge about the sequence. Results showed an interaction between response mode and type of learning (implicit vs. explicit), with explicit learning functioning more effectively under verbal than under manual conditions, whereas implicit learning was unaffected by the variation of the response mode. Implications concerning different underlying learning mechanisms (R-R learning vs. R-S learning) are discussed. Specifically, we suggest that the high response-effect distinctiveness of the verbal responses facilitated R-R learning.

Adult↗