The effect of divided attention on memory for items and their context.

Examined differences between item and context memory using divided attention at encoding and retrieval. Ss, in 3 experiments, were presented with word lists and were instructed to learn the items (i.e., words), the intrinsic context (i.e., the color of the cards on which each word was presented), and the extrinsic context (i.e., the temporal order of the words). In Exp 1 24 undergraduates (aged 20–32 yrs) participated in a digit-monitoring and memory tasks. In Exp 2 the authors examined the effect of divided attention at retrieval using 24 undergraduates (aged 18–29 yrs). In Exp 3 the authors examined memory performance when divided attention was employed at encoding on all lists, and attentional load was manipulated at retrieval using 24 undergraduates (aged 19–32 yrs). Among young adults, in comparison to conditions of full attention, divided attention applied at encoding only or retrieval only resulted in equally lower performance on all memory tasks; in contrast, divided attention applied at both encoding and retrieval resulted in lower performance only on memory for temporal order. The findings support the idea that memory for temporal order requires greater attentional resources and strategic processing than memory for items. (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)     

Discrimination learning requiring different memory components in rats: Age and neurochemical comparisons.

Three experiments compared the performances of 19 young (8–9 mo old) and 23 aged (22–24 mo old) male ACI rats in a T-maze involving a spatial discrimination in the stem of the T-maze that required long-term reference memory, and discrete-trial, alternation discrimination in the arms of the T-maze that required working memory. Following acquisition training in 1 maze, Ss were trained in a 2nd maze in which the correct response in stem was opposite to that in the 1st maze. In Exps I and II, aged Ss made more errors in all phases of maze training than did young Ss, suggesting that all components of memory processing were affected equivalently. In Exp III, aged Ss were unimpaired in the ability to perform in a T-maze task involving a brightness discrimination with intramaze cues. This result suggests that the age-related impairment in the 2-component T-maze task was restricted to the cognitive demands of the task. Neurochemical analyses revealed a slight (8%) but significant age-related decline in the activity of glutamic acid decarboxylase but not of choline acetyltransferase. Although the correlation between maze performance and regional enzyme activities generally supported previous observations, the only significant correlation to emerge was between working memory performance and glutamic acid decarboxylase activity in the cingulate cortex. (45 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of contextual organization on spatial memory of middle-aged and older women.

Examined the memory performance of 20 women aged 31–59 yrs and 20 aged 65–85. Ss reconstructed spatial arrays, replacing miniature objects in either a contextually organized panorama or a noncontextually organized bank of cubicles. Performance of the middle-aged Ss did not differ between the 2 tasks. Older Ss performed as well as middle-aged Ss in the panorama task, but in the cubicles task their scores were lower than in the panorama task and lower than those of the younger Ss in the cubicles task. Results support the conclusion that in a task that allows the use of existing contextual organization as a memory aid, age differences in memory performance disappear. Age differences may be limited to tasks that remove previously learned relationships between items (as in recall of lists of unrelated words), requiring Ss to invent an organizational structure to facilitate recall. Though such tasks predominate in research, they probably do not represent the memory problems met in everyday life, especially by older adults. (30 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing macrostructure for expository text.

In Exp I, 108 (36 Ss at each level) 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders and 36 graduate students read short expository paragraphs and performed tasks that required the generation of macrostructure. Ss chose the best title, wrote a summary sentence, or wrote 1 additional sentence for each paragraph. Some paragraphs were not well structured; others contained an anomalous sentence. Results show that performance improved with age. The title task was easier than the summary task, which in turn was easier than the next-sentence task. Only adult Ss reflected the presence of anomalous information, and the effects were different on each of the 3 tasks. In Exp II, the title task with 4 response options was administered to 24 undergraduates. Results show that Ss broadened their representations to encompass the deviant sentence in both related and unrelated paragraphs. In the summary-sentence task, proficient adults—who monitored their own comprehension—responded like children. It is suggested that children need instruction variations in both task and in text, introduced gradually and systematically, in order to deal with potential sources of difficulty. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental changes in recognition memory for pictures of objects and scenes.

Investigated recognition memory for pictures, using photographs that showed either single objects or multi-object scenes and distractors that differed from targets in that an element had been added, an original element moved, or the vantage point changed. In Exp I, Ss included 24 6-yr-olds, 24 9-yr-olds, and 24 adults from the US; in Exp II Ss included the same age groups but from an Indian village in Guatemala. Results indicate that addition transformations were easier to recognize than rearrangements at all ages in the US but not in Guatemala. Objects were easier to recognize than scenes in both cultures. Contrary to recent claims, the present results show that recognition memory improved with age for both cultures. (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adult age differences in recognition memory and frequency judgments for planned versus performed activities.

24 young (18.25–27.92 yrs old) and 24 elderly (62.75–80.42 yrs old) adults received a series of tasks (e.g., card sorting, arithmetic) that were planned for performance and subsequently performed with varying frequencies under intentional- and incidental-memory conditions to investigate age differences in active memory. Following the series of tasks, Ss estimated the frequencies with which task activities had been both performed and planned. Recognition-memory scores derived from performance-judgment scores revealed a significant age deficit in Ss' identification of those activities that had been performed earlier. However, memory was unaffected by intentionality at each age level. Results imply a modest age deficit for encoding rehearsal-independent, episodic events, but no age differences were found for reality monitoring: Elderly Ss were as proficient as young Ss in discriminating between planning and performance of an activity in terms of absolute frequency-judgment scores. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Long-term effects of neonatal damage to the hippocampal formation and amygdaloid complex on object discrimination and object recognition in rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta).

Rhesus monkeys with neonatal aspiration lesions of the hippocampal formation or the amygdaloid complex were tested on concurrent discrimination learning (24-hr intertrial interval [ITI]) at 3 months, on object recognition memory (delayed nonmatching-to-sample [DNMS]) at 10 months, and retested on both tasks at 6–7 years of age. Neonatal amygdaloid damage mildly impaired acquisition at the 24-hr ITI and the performance test of DNMS at both ages. In contrast, early hippocampal lesions impaired performance only on the longest lists of 10 items in DNMS in adult monkeys. Thus, early amygdala lesions appeared to have resulted in a greater object memory loss than early hippocampal lesions. However, in light of recent findings from lesion studies in adult monkeys, the object memory impairment after early amygdaloid lesions is better accounted for by damage to the entorhinal and perirhinal cortex than by damage to the amygdaloid nuclei. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Discrimination and memory for symmetry in young children.

Conducted 3 experiments to assess the development of symmetry perception in children between the ages of 4 and 6 yrs. Exp I employed a learning task in which 72 Ss were asked at different times to discriminate vertically symmetrical, obliquely symmetrical, and horizontally symmetrical holistic patterns from asymmetrical ones. Results reveal a developmental progression: 4-yr-olds discriminated only vertical; 5-yr-olds, vertical and horizontal; and 6-yr-olds, vertical, horizontal, and oblique. Exp II retested the 18 6-yr-olds with fragmented patterns of the different symmetries; these Ss regressed to the performance level of 4-yr-olds and only discriminated vertical. Exp III, conducted with 18 Ss, used a memory-production task with new vertical, oblique, horizontal, and asymmetrical patterns constructed to 4, 5, or 6 elements. Measures of the goodness and accuracy of Ss' reproductions were consistent with data from the discrimination-learning experiments in terms of age, stimulus orientation, and stimulus complexity. These studies support the view that vertical symmetry is special perceptually and developmentally and that, after vertical, horizontal predominates, followed by oblique. The role of symmetry in early perceptual development and the value of child–adult perceptual comparisons are discussed. (55 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)     

Eliciting cryptomnesia: Unconscious plagiarism in a puzzle task.

Investigated cryptomnesia (unconscious plagiarism) and source memory using a word-search puzzle task in 3 experiments. Ss first alternated with a "computer partner" in locating words from 4 puzzles. They then attempted to recall their previously generated items as well as to locate additional new words. Substantially more plagiarism was committed in these tasks than was observed in a study by A. S. Brown and D. R. Murphy (1989), in which Ss generated category exemplars. Manipulations of retention interval (Exp 1) and degree of encoding (Exps 2a and 2b) reliably influenced plagiarism rates. Source confusions from a modified recognition memory task (Exp 3) were used as the basis for a unitary relative strength model to explain both source and occurrence (item) forgetting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age-related disruption of trace but not delay classical conditioning of the rabbit's nictitating membrane response.

16 6-mo-old and 15 36–60 mo old New Zealand albino rabbits underwent classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response in either a delay conditioning (Exp I) or a trace conditioning (Exp II) paradigm. There was no difference between old and young Ss in the acquisition of the CR in the delay paradigm, nor were there any age-related differences in generalization to the tone CS or in sensitivity to the tone CS or eyeshock UCS. However, in the trace conditioning paradigm, old Ss acquired the CR significantly more slowly than young Ss. Because the same stimulus parameters and the same response were used in both experiments, it is unlikely that age-related differences in trace conditioning were due to stimulus sensitivity, motivation, or fatigue. Results are discussed in terms of how brain changes that accompany aging could differentially affect these 2 types of classical conditioning. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition impaired and association intact in the memory of monkeys after transection of the fornix.

Three rhesus monkeys with transection of the fornix were compared with 3 operated control monkeys in 4 memory tasks. They were tested repeatedly at each task until a stable level of performance was achieved. Ss with transection of the fornix were severely impaired in the 3 tasks that tested recognition memory and unimpaired in a test of pure associative memory which was very similar in all but the essential respects to one of the recognition tasks. It is suggested that damage to the hippocampal system in monkeys causes an anterograde amnesia comparable to that observed in human patients with similar lesions and consisting in a specific deficit of recognition memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Je parle donc j'attends?": Langage et autocontr?le ches le jeune enfant.

Specified the association between self-control and language skills in early childhood and examined the issue of gender variations with respect to self-control. Ss were 67 Francophone infants, including 32 18-mo-old (18 male and 14 female) and 35 24-mo old (18 male and 22 female) children. During an interview in the family home, 3 reward expectation tasks were administered to assess the child's self-control. The Hearing and Speech Subquotient of the Griffiths Mental Development Scales (GMDS) was used to assess the child's language development. Self-control varied depending on age and sex: the 24-mo-old children expected more than the 18-mo-old children, and girls exhibited more expectations than did boys. The relationship between expectation and GMDS was significant for Ss aged 24 mo. The relationship between speech and expectation evidenced at 2 yrs of age supports the socio-historical perspective for the development of self-regulation, and the results concerning the superiority of girls revive the questions of gender-specificity in the area of self-control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cross-modal transfer in 6-month-old infants.

Investigated in 4 studies with 101 infants 25.5–32 wks of age the ability of Ss to transfer information about shape across modalities. Ss were familiarized either orally or tactually and then tested for visual recognition memory. In Exp I, Ss failed to show evidence of cross-modal transfer on any of the tasks (1 oral–visual, 2 tactual–visual). When familiarization times were increased from 30 to 60 sec in Exp II, Ss showed evidence of transfer on both tactual–visual tasks. Exp III eliminated the 5–7 sec delay that generally intervenes between the familiarization and test phase. Ss were permitted to retain the stimulus in their hand (or mouth) during the test phase while simultaneously viewing a novel stimulus and a duplicate of the familiar stimulus. This modification resulted in successful transfer on 1 of the 2 tactual–visual tasks. Ss did not show evidence of transfer on the oral–visual problem in any of these studies, despite evidence from Exp IV that they could visually discriminate the paired stimuli used in these tasks and that they showed recognition memory when familiarization and testing were both visual. Results suggest that, although cross-modal transfer of information about shape is present among 6-mo-olds, it is a less robust phenomenon than that seen in older infants. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and forgetfulness: Perceivers' impressions of targets' capability.

In a person perception paradigm, 72 young and 72 old adult Ss listened to tape recordings of a nonforgetful, moderately forgetful, or highly forgetful female target person being interviewed for a volunteer job. Ss then rated their opinion of the target's memory and how likely they would be to assign the target to easy and difficult tasks. Overall, Ss gave higher memory opinion ratings to old than to young targets. As expected, they were more likely to assign tasks to nonforgetful than to forgetful targets. However, they were more egalitarian than was hypothesized in their task assignment ratings for forgetful young vs forgetful old targets. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of neonatal dopamine depletion on spatial ability during ontogeny.

Investigated the effects of neonatal dopamine (DA) depletion on spatial discrimination tasks. Ss were lesioned at 3 and 6 days of age with intraventricular 6-hydroxydopamine preceded by Desipramine. In Exp 1, Ss were tested before weaning for the ability to spontaneously alternate in a T maze both in the presence of their home cage shavings and with a screen covering the shavings. Lesioned Ss were significantly impaired in their ability to spontaneously alternate. Control and lesioned Ss both showed a decrease in performance when the screen prevented full access to the shavings and the magnitude of the impairment was significantly greater for the lesioned animals. In Exp 2, Ss were tested after weaning in an appetitively motivated task in T maze. The task required both a functional working and reference memory. Lesioned Ss were impaired on both the working and the reference components of the task; however, the magnitude of the impairment was greater in the working memory task. Results suggest that early lesions of general DA systems produce deficits in tasks requiring spatial alternation behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Object recognition versus object discrimination: Comparison between human infants and infant monkeys.

Human infants (aged 12–32 mo old) and adults learned a delayed nonmatching-to-sample (DNMS) task and single- and multiple-pair discrimination tasks using nonverbal procedures previously used with monkeys. Infants learned discriminations rapidly and at a young age (12 mo), but they required prolonged training and maturation before learning the DNMS task. Adults learned all tasks rapidly. After learning the DNMS task to criterion, memory performance declined systematically in an inverse relation to age. The dissociation in ability of infants on the DNMS vs discrimination tasks closely resembles the dissociation previously reported with infant monkeys (J. Bachevalier & M. Mishkin, 1984). Results from both infant humans and monkeys support a neurocognitive maturational model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)