Memory & Cognition最新文献

Research is lacking regarding adults' ability to determine whether children's drawings are based on an experience or not. Drawings are useful in professional settings to alleviate linguistic demands, facilitate memory, and have been used as evidence. Determining the accuracy of veracity assessments of children's drawings would inform professionals regarding their use as evidence of experiences. Twenty-eight children (14 younger, M_age = 7.53 years, SD_age = 1.19; 14 older, M_age = 11.67 years, SD = 1.27) produced drawings of two events: one staged experienced, and one narrative-based not experienced event. Fifty (Study 1, M_age = 23.72 years, SD_age = 9.70) and 63 (Study 2, M_age = 25.92, SD_age = 12.79) adults indicated whether each drawing was based on experience and their confidence in each assessment. In Study 2, additional drawing quality assessments were collected. Results indicated that adults were more accurate at distinguishing experienced than not experienced drawings for older artists. An inverse relationship was observed between confidence and accuracy-participants were more confident when they were inaccurate, especially for younger artists. Drawing quality improved with age and for drawings of experienced events. Adults tended to rate drawings of higher quality as resulting from experience leading to the highest accuracy for drawings from older artists that were based on experience. Overall, results suggest that there may be some features of drawings that allow for above chance levels of accuracy (up to 75%). However, rates are not high enough across assessments (M = 53.93%, range: 39%-75%) to reliably use them as indicators of experience.

Episodic memory comprises memory for individual information units (item memory) and for the connections among them (associative memory). In two experiments using an object pair learning task, we examined the effect of visual stimulus complexity on memory encoding and retrieval mechanisms and on item and associative memory performance. Subjects encoded pairs of black monochrome object images (low complexity, LC condition) or color photographs of objects (high complexity, HC condition) via interactive imagery, and subsequently item and associative recognition were tested. In Experiment 1, event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed an enhanced frontal N2 during encoding and an enhanced late posterior negativity (LPN) during item recognition in the HC condition, suggesting that memory traces containing visually more complex objects elicited a stronger effort in reconstructing the past episode. Item memory was consistently superior in the HC compared to the LC condition. Associative memory was either statistically unaffected by complexity (Experiment 1) or improved (Experiment 2) in the HC condition, speaking against a tradeoff between resources allocated to item versus associative memory, and hence contradicting results of some prior studies. In Experiment 2, in both young and older adults, both item and associative memory benefitted from stimulus complexity, such that the magnitude of the age-related associative deficit was not influenced by stimulus complexity. Together, these results suggest that if familiar objects are presented in a form that exhibits a higher visual complexity, which may support semantic processing, complexity can benefit both item and associative memory. Stimulus properties that enhance item memory can scaffold associative memory in this situation.

Initial performance is frequently equated in studies that compare forgetting rates across groups. However, since the encoding capacity of different groups can be different, some procedures to match initial degree of learning need to be implemented, adding confounding variables such as longer exposures to the material, which would create memories of a different age. Slamecka and McElree Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 9, 384-397, (1983) and our previous work found that the rate of forgetting was independent from initial degree of learning using verbal material. The present study seeks to determine whether this pattern holds true when undertaken with nonverbal material. In two experiments, we manipulate initial degree of learning by varying the number of presentations of the material and studying the effect on the forgetting rates. A set of 30 tonal sequences were presented to young, healthy participants either once or three times. Forgetting was evaluated in a yes/no recognition paradigm immediately and 1 hour or 24 hours after the study phase. A different subset of 10 sequences was tested along with 10 nontargets at each retention interval. The results of these experiments showed that initial acquisition was modulated by the number of repetitions. However, the forgetting rates were independent of initial degree of learning. These results are in keeping with the pattern found by Slamecka and McElree, and in our own previous studies. They suggest that the pattern of parallel forgetting after different levels of initial learning is not limited to verbal material.

Temporal landmarks are salient events that structure the way humans think about time. They may be personal events, such as one's birthday, or shared cultural events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to societal habits, the cyclical weekly structure - for example, working on weekdays, resting on the weekends - helps individuals orient themselves in time. In the "day-of-the-week effect," individuals are faster at reporting which day of the week it is on weekends than they are on weekdays. Herein, we hypothesized that the disruption of social habits during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns may have weakened this effect, thereby accounting for the "Blursday" phenomenon. In the current study, speeded responses to the question "What day of the week is it?" were collected online from 1,742 French participants, during and after the lockdown periods. We found that reaction times for days of the weekends remained faster than for weekdays during the lockdown, although the overall reaction times were significantly slower during lockdown. We also found that responses were slower as governmental stringency rules and restrictions in mobility increased. Our results suggest that the weekend landmark remains a stable temporal anchor in French culture despite the experienced temporal distortions induced by the disruption of social habits during the pandemic. We conclude that cultural temporal landmarks shape socially shared temporal cognitive maps.

Laboratory studies using a reception paradigm have found that memory items sharing similar entities and relations with a working memory cue (surface matches) are easier to retrieve than items sharing only a system of abstract relations (structural matches). However, the naturalistic approach has contended that the observed supremacy of superficial similarity could have originated in a shallow processing of somewhat inconsequential stories, as well as in the inadvertent inclusion of structural similarity during the construction of surface matches. We addressed the question of which kind of similarity dominates retrieval through a hybrid paradigm that combines the ecological validity of the naturalistic production paradigm with the experimental control of the reception paradigm. In Experiment 1 we presented participants with a target story that maintained either superficial or structural similarities with two popular movies that had received a careful processing prior to the experimental session. Experiment 2 replicated the same procedure with highly viralized public events. In line with traditional laboratory results, surface matches were significantly better retrieved than structural matches, confirming the supremacy of superficial similarities during retrieval.

Many theories assume that actively maintaining information in working memory (WM) predicts its retention in episodic long-term memory (LTM), as revealed by the beneficial effects of more WM time. In four experiments, we examined whether affording more time for intentional WM maintenance does indeed drive LTM. Sequences of four words were presented during trials of simple span (short time), slow span (long time), and complex span (long time with distraction; Experiments 1-2). Long time intervals entailed a pause of equivalent duration between the words that presented a blank screen (slow span) or an arithmetic problem to read aloud and solve (complex span). In Experiments 1-3, participants either serially recalled the words (intentional encoding) or completed a no-recall task (incidental encoding). In Experiment 4, all participants were instructed to intentionally encode the words, with the trials randomly ending in the serial-recall or no-recall task. To ensure similar processing of the words between encoding groups, participants silently decided whether each word was a living or nonliving thing via key press (i.e., an animacy judgment; Experiments 1 and 3-4) or read the words aloud and then pressed the space bar (Experiment 2). A surprise delayed memory test at the end of the experiment assessed LTM. Applying Bayesian cognitive models to disambiguate binding and item memory revealed consistent benefits of free time to binding memory that were specific to intentional encoding in WM. This suggests that time spent intentionally keeping information in WM is special for LTM because WM is a system that maintains bindings.

The levels-of-processing (LOP) framework, proposing that deep processing yields superior retention, has provided an important paradigm for memory research and a practical means of improving learning. However, the available levels-of-processing literature focuses on immediate memory performance. It is assumed within the LOP framework that deep processing will lead to slower forgetting than will shallow processing. However, it is unclear whether, or how, the initial level of processing affects the forgetting slopes over longer retention intervals. The present three experiments were designed to explore whether items encoded at qualitatively different LOP are forgotten at different rates. In the first two experiments, depth of processing was manipulated within-participants at encoding under deep and shallow conditions (semantic vs. rhyme judgement in Experiment 1; semantic vs. consonant-vowel pattern decision in Experiment 2). Recognition accuracy (d prime) was measured between-participants immediately after learning and at 30-min, 2-h, and 24-h delays. The third experiment employed a between-participants design, contrasting the rates of forgetting following semantic and phonological (rhyme) processing at immediate, 30-min, 2-h, and 6-h delays. Results from the three experiments consistently demonstrated a large effect size of levels of processing on immediate performance and a medium-to-large level effect size on delayed recognition, but crucially no LOP × delay group interaction. Analysis of the retention curves revealed no significant differences between the slopes of forgetting for deep and shallow processing. These results suggest that the rates of forgetting are independent of the qualitatively distinct encoding operations manipulated by levels of processing.

Although access to the seemingly infinite capacity of our visual long-term memory (VLTM) can be restricted by visual working memory (VWM) capacity at encoding and retrieval, access can be improved with repeated encoding. This leads to the multiple encoding benefit (MEB), the finding that VLTM performance improves as the number of opportunities to encode the same information increases over time. However, as the number of encoding opportunities increases, so do other factors such as the number of identical encoded VWM representations and chances to engage in successful retrieval during each opportunity. Thus, across two experiments, we disentangled the contributions of each of these factors to the MEB by having participants encode a varying number of identical objects across multiple encoding opportunities. Along with behavioural data, we also examined two established EEG correlates that track the number of maintained VWM representations, namely the posterior alpha suppression and the negative slow wave. Here, we identified that the primary mechanism behind the MEB was the number of encoding opportunities. That is, recognition memory performance was higher following an increase in the number of encoding opportunities, and this could not be attributed solely to an increase in the number of encoded VWM representations or successful retrieval. Our results thus contribute to the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms behind the influence of VWM on VLTM encoding.

The current study assesses whether varying the encoding context of a repeated event is a potential strategy to improve recognition memory across retrieval contexts. Context variability, also known as encoding variability, has historically been investigated primarily using recall and cued recall tasks, with the consensus being that encoding variability is not necessarily beneficial for episodic retrieval. However, recent studies (see text) suggest that test type may determine the strategy's effectiveness. Aligned with these recent findings, we found consistent benefits to simple item recognition when a word was studied in more variable contexts compared to less variable contexts across four experiments. This main effect of context variability occurred when crossed with a manipulation of repetition spacing and when crossed with a manipulation of encoding-retrieval context match. Variation in encoding contexts beyond the future retrieval context led to better item recognition than repeated study exposures within the future retrieval context. We argue that the current study and other recent findings indicate a need to re-evaluate the historical consensus on encoding variability as a beneficial strategy for learning.

Dyslexia, a specific difficulty in acquiring proficient reading, is also characterized by reduced short-term memory (STM) capacity. Extensive research indicates that individuals with developmental dyslexia (IDDs) benefit less from exposure, and this hampers their long-term knowledge accumulation. It is well established that long-term knowledge has a great effect on performance in STM tasks, and thus IDDs' reduced benefit of exposure could potentially reduce their relative performance in such tasks, especially when frequent items, such as digit-words, are used. In this study we used a standard, widely used, STM assessment: the Digit Span subtest from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. The task was conducted twice: in native language and in second language. As exposure to native language is greater than exposure to second language, we predicted that IDDs' performance in the task administered in native language will reveal a larger group difference as compared to second language, due to IDDs' reduced benefit of item frequency. The prediction was confirmed, in line with the hypothesis that reduced STM in dyslexia to a large extent reflects reduced benefits from long-term item frequency and not a reduced STM per se.