Cross‐sectional study on the relationship between music training and working memory in adults

Learning to play musical instruments has been shown to enhance a wide variety of cognitive domains. The present study investigated the specific aspects of working memory (WM) that differed between adult musicians and non‐musicians. Twenty‐four musicians and 30 non‐musicians matched for age, gender, years of formal education, and verbal intelligence performed several WM tasks. A multivariate analysis of covariance, wherein family income was controlled, revealed that musicians outperformed non‐musicians in tasks related to visual–motor coordination, visual scanning ability, visual processing speed, and spatial memory. However, no significant differences were found in phonological and visual memory capacity. This study supports the view that music training is associated to specific (and not general) WM skills.     

知觉加工中存在颜色类别知觉效应的证据

对于颜色的辨别具有类别知觉效应：类间两种颜色的辨别能力比同等颜色空间距离的类内两种颜色的辨别能力更高。对于类别知觉效应的产生机制存在两种观点：知觉特性假设、语言标签假设。以往的研究范式由于实验任务涉及到工作记忆成分,被试在完成任务时会自动地对颜色命名以利于记忆,因此所得证据大多支持语言标签假设,而对知觉特性假设的支持证据则很少。本文利用目标觉察范式最大限度去掉了工作记忆成分,通过测量被试辨别两种颜色的反应时,得到了类别知觉效应。并通过语言干扰任务进一步证实在该实验范式下类别知觉效应与语言的无关性。从而,为知觉特性假设提供了证据     

The effects of anxious mood induction on suggestibility to misleading post‐event information

Little research has been carried out into the effects of anxious mood at the time of either the encoding of misleading post‐event information or the time of its possible retrieval, on subsequent suggestibility. Participants comprised 160 first‐year undergraduates. Using a standard suggestibility paradigm, half of all participants were exposed to misleading information while half were non‐misinformed controls. In addition there were four state anxiety conditions, dependent on the timing of the anxious mood induction: at the time of encoding misleading information; at retrieval only; at both encoding and retrieval; or at neither encoding nor retrieval (controls). Results showed memory accuracy for non‐suggestible items was unaffected by the anxious mood induction. With respect to suggestibility, there was a strong effect of misleading information. In addition, within the misinformed group, all three groups who experienced the anxious mood induction were significantly less suggestible than controls. These findings are discussed both in terms of theories of anxiety and cognition and the applied implications for the increasing use by the police of video‐recorded witness interviews. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Interference in immediate spatial memory

It has been suggested that maintenance in visuospatial immediate memory involves implicit motor processes that are analogous to the articulatory loop in verbal memory. An alternative account, which is explored here, is that maintenance is based on shifts of spatial attention. In four experiments, subjects recalled spatial memory span items after an interval, and in a fifth experiment, digit span was recalled after an interval. The tasks carried out during the interval included touching visual targets, repeating heard words, listening to tones from spatially sepa-rated locations, pointing to these tones, pointing to visual targets, and categorizing spatial tar-gets as being from the left or right. Spatial span recall was impaired if subjects saw visual tar-gets or heard tones, and this impairment was increased if either a motor response or a categorical response was made. Repeating words heard in different spatial locations did not impair recall, but reading visually presented words did interfere. For digit span only, the tasks involving a verbal response impaired recall. The results are interpreted within a framework in which active spatial attention is involved in maintaining spatial items in order in memory, and is interfered with by any task (visual, auditory, perceptual, motor) that also makes demands on spatial attention.     

From A to Z? Retrieval-induced forgetting of non-verbal information indicates how writing systems can shape memory organisation

We investigated retrieval-induced forgetting of motor sequences in samples of Chinese participants. Retrieval-induced forgetting occurs when selective retrieval of a subset of information stored in memory causes forgetting for the non-retrieved rest. This phenomenon critically depends on the organised storage of separate categories of memory representations. In studies with participants from a Western culture (Germany), a categorization in left- and right-hand movements previously had been supported by letter stimuli based on a spatial mental representation of the Roman alphabet. The same assignment of letters from the beginning or end of the alphabet to motor sequences performed either with the left- or the right-hand did not entail retrieval-induced forgetting in the present study, however (Experiment 1). In Experiment 2, visual features of displaying to-be-learned sequences additionally supported a distinction into left and right. In Experiment 3, learning trials provided verbal category labels. The occurrence of retrieval-induced forgetting in the latter two experiments suggests language-dependent organisation of non-verbal items in memory.     

Individual differences in spatial relation processing: effects of strategy, ability, and gender

Numerous studies have focused on the distinction between categorical and coordinate spatial relations. Categorical relations are propositional and abstract, and often related to a left hemisphere advantage. Coordinate relations specify the metric information of the relative locations of objects, and can be linked to right hemisphere processing. Yet, not all studies have reported such a clear double dissociation; in particular the categorical left hemisphere advantage is not always reported. In the current study we investigated whether verbal and spatial strategies, verbal and spatial cognitive abilities, and gender could account for the discrepancies observed in hemispheric lateralization of spatial relations. Seventy-five participants performed two visual half field, match-to-sample tasks (Van der Ham, van Wezel, Oleksiak, & Postma, 2007; Van der Ham, Raemaekers, van Wezel, Oleksiak, and Postma, 2009) to study the lateralization of categorical and coordinate relation processing. For each participant we determined the strategy they used in each of the two tasks. Consistent with previous findings, we found an overall categorical left hemisphere advantage and coordinate right hemisphere advantage. The lateralization pattern was affected selectively by the degree to which participants used a spatial strategy and by none of the other variables (i.e., verbal strategy, cognitive abilities, and gender). Critically, the categorical left hemisphere advantage was observed only for participants that relied strongly on a spatial strategy. This result is another piece of evidence that categorical spatial relation processing relies on spatial and not verbal processes.     

Dissociating cognitive and motor interference effects on kinesthetic short-term memory

In two experiments, we investigated how short-term memory of kinesthetically defined spatial locations suffers from either motor or cognitive distraction. In Exp. 1, 22 blindfolded participants moved a handle with their right hand towards a mechanical stop and back to the start and then reproduced the encoded stop position by a second movement. The retention interval was adjusted to approximately 0 and 8 s. In half of the trials participants had to provide a verbal judgment of the target distance after encoding (cognitive distractor). Analyses of constant and variable errors indicated that the verbal judgments interfered with the motor reproduction only, when the retention interval was long. In Exp. 2, 22 other participants performed the same task but instead of providing verbal distance estimations they performed an additional movement either with their right or left hand during the retention interval. Constant error was affected by the side of the interpolated movement (right vs. left hand) and by the delay interval. The results show that reproduction of kinesthetically encoded spatial locations is affected differently in long- and short-retention intervals by cognitive and motor interference. This suggests that reproduction behavior is based on distinct codes during immediate vs. delayed recall.     

Duration and numerical estimation in right brain‐damaged patients with and without neglect: Lack of support for a mental time line

Previous studies have shown that left neglect patients are impaired when they have to orient their attention leftward relative to a standard in numerical comparison tasks. This finding has been accounted for by the idea that numerical magnitudes are represented along a spatial continuum oriented from left to right with small magnitudes on the left and large magnitudes on the right. Similarly, it has been proposed that duration could be represented along a mental time line that shares the properties of the number continuum. By comparing directly duration and numerosity processing, this study investigates whether or not the performance of neglect patients supports the hypothesis of a mental time line. Twenty‐two right brain‐damaged patients (11 with and 11 without left neglect), as well as 11 age‐matched healthy controls, had to judge whether a single dot presented visually lasted shorter or longer than 500 ms and whether a sequence of flashed dots was smaller or larger than 5. Digit spans were also assessed to measure verbal working memory capacities. In duration comparison, no spatial‐duration bias was found in neglect patients. Moreover, a significant correlation between verbal working memory and duration performance was observed in right brain‐damaged patients, irrespective of the presence or absence of neglect. In numerical comparison, only neglect patients showed an enhanced distance effect for numerical magnitude smaller than the standard. These results do not support the hypothesis of the existence of a mental continuum oriented from left to right for duration. We discuss an alternative account to explain the duration impairment observed in right brain‐damaged patients.     

Verbal working memory and planning: learning to compare movement durations of objects

Relations between duration judgments and verbal or visual working memory, between duration judgments and effect of learning to plan the processing of information about such judgments were investigated. A computer monitor was used to present images of two cars traveling in the same direction for various durations and distances. Participants (N=30) were asked to identify the car that had traveled for the longer duration. Then, participants learned how to solve Piagetian tasks logically. After the learning, they tried to solve the duration judgments task again. Finally, their verbal and visual working memory capacities were assessed. Results indicated the following: (a) numbers of correct answers on the Piagetian tasks were correlated with verbal and visual working memory capacity; (b) the correlations did not significantly decrease after the participants learned how to solve the Piagetian tasks.     

Effects of concurrent spatial and verbal memory loads on serial position functions of laterally presented letter strings

In this study the influence of visuospatial and verbal memory loads on the identification of laterally presented letter strings was investigated. In the asymmetry task without concurrent loads, a clear right visual field advantage for letter identification was obtained. Hemisphere-specific effects due to concurrent loads were particularly observed when the difficulty of the load tasks was increased. The effects of visuospatial loads were found to be sex related, suggesting that under heavy load conditions mental rotation selectively overloads the processing capacity of the right hemisphere in males, while in females capacity limitations were observed in both hemispheres. Concurrent visuospatial loads produced more facilitation (or less interference) for letters in the outermost positions of each visual field than for letters in the innermost positions of each visual field. The results of the verbal memory load tasks revealed that an easy verbal load task facilitated performance which was particularly manifest for the right-most letter of both the left visual field and the right visual field. A difficult verbal memory load task interfered with recognition accuracy of letters which was most marked for the center letter in the right visual field. Letter position effects obtained in this study were interpreted in terms of various processing mechanisms influencing the serial position curves.     

Visuospatial over verbal demands in predicting Tower of London planning tasks

The role of verbal and visuospatial information processing in Tower of London (TOL) tasks was investigated. The first part of the investigation examined the verbal and visuospatial abilities and preferred cognitive style (visualizer vs. verbalizer) of 79 participants, in an inter-individual differences approach. Visuospatial abilities significantly predicted TOL performance, but the impact of cognitive style was negligible. The second part applied a dual-task manipulation of concurrent interference of TOL planning tasks on verbal and visuospatial memory, using the same participants. Concurrent processing of the TOL tasks diminished visuospatial memory performance considerably but had no effect on verbal memory, and there was no interaction between cognitive style and memory. These findings clearly underscore the role of visuospatial information processing in TOL tasks and indicate little bearing of verbal or visual cognitive style on TOL problem solving. These results have important implications for TOL and cognitive style in clinical application and cognitive neuroimaging research.     

“This doesn’t look too hard”: A mixed methods exploration of self‐efficacy and sources of self‐efficacy information in a novel puzzle task

Studies have found self‐efficacy to be a key predictor of performance across domains (e.g., Feltz & Magyar, 2006; Judge & Bono, 2001). However, few studies have examined how self‐efficacy and the sources of self‐efficacy information change over time, and most of these studies utilized tasks participants were familiar or experienced with. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine how participants weighed and interpreted the sources of self‐efficacy information during initial learning of a novel puzzle task. A secondary aim was to explore differences between student‐athletes and non‐athletes in the sources of self‐efficacy information. Sixty‐three college students completed measures of self‐efficacy, sources of self‐efficacy information, and performed trials of the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle, a wooden puzzle solving test requiring participants to move wooden pieces from one point to another in a specific order. Quantitative results revealed hierarchical performance self‐efficacy for the number of moves required and time required to solve the puzzle significantly changed across the four trials. Qualitative results indicated verbal and imaginal experiences were the two most prominent sources of participants’ self‐efficacy information on trial 1, but by trial 4 mastery experiences and verbal information were the most prominent sources, also suggesting that that the influence of self‐efficacy sources may change over time. Implications for practitioners to assist individuals with novel cognitive tasks are discussed.     

Intermanual differences on neuropsychological motor tasks in a Japanese university student sample

We explored the intermanual difference scores of 128 Japanese university students for five typical neuropsychological motor tasks (grip strength, finger tapping, two versions of the grooved pegboard, and the dot‐filling test) and examined the relation between hand preference and intermanual difference in motor proficiency. Using the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory, 18 and 110 participants were identified as left‐ and right‐handed, respectively. Although the right hand performed better than the left for right‐handed participants, and vice versa, in all five tasks, the degree of intermanual difference varied between tasks. A discriminant function analysis using the laterality quotients of the five motor tasks as independent variables indicated that hand preference was predictable from the task performances with an accuracy of 90% or more. The dot‐filling test and finger tapping had stronger canonical loadings than the other tasks.     

Developmental differences in memory for cross‐modal associations

Associative learning is critical to normal cognitive development in children. However, young adults typically outperform children on paired‐associate tasks involving visual, verbal and spatial location stimuli. The present experiment investigated cross‐modal odour–place associative memory in children (7–10 years) and young adults (18–24 years). During the study phase, six odours were individually presented and paired with one of 12 spatial locations on a board. During the test phase, participants were presented with the six stimuli individually and were asked to place each stimulus on the correct spatial location. Children committed significantly more errors on the odour–place task than did young adults. However, item recognition memory for the odours or spatial locations involved in the odour–place associative memory task was similar between children and young adults. Therefore, poor odour–place associative memory in children did not result from impaired memory for the individual odours or spatial locations involved in the associations. The results suggest that cross‐modal associative memory is not fully developed in children.     

ASYMMETRY IN MOUTH OPENING DURING DIFFERENT SPEECH TASKS

When a normal subject is speaking, the right side of the mouth typically opens more widely or moves over a greater total distance. This asymmetry is most consistent during purely verbal word list generation and verbal recall tasks, less consistent when emotional expression and/or visual imagery is involved, and reversed during smiling. Aphasic patients also show the right bias during word lists, repetition, and conversation, but not during serial speech, singing and smiling. Since observable mouth asymmetry is presumed to result from hemispheric asymmetry in motor control, these observations confirm the major role of a left hemisphere control system for pure verbal expression and provide evidence for involvement of the right hemisphere in mouth motor control during emotional and prosodic expression or visual imagery. Therapeutic possibilities are also suggested.     

Co‐Witness Confidence,Conformity, and Eyewitness Memory: An Examination of Normative and Informational Social Influences

We explored conformity and co‐witness confidence in eyewitness memory. Confederates provided misleading information and confidence ratings during a cued recall test, and participants publicly provided answers to this test in turn. Participants performed memory tests with a confederate, then completed individual memory tests. Results indicated that confederates who answered questions prior to participants impacted their public and private memory reports for accurate information but only impacted public reports for misleading information. Participants' confidence in their performance in the presence of a confederate mirrored the confederate's confidence levels, suggesting a confidence conformity effect. Results are explained in terms of differential effects of informational and normative influence for accuracy and confidence in co‐witness memory reports. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cognitive Control of Attentional Guidance by Visual and Verbal Working Memory Representations

Both visual and verbal information in working memory guide visual attention toward a memory‐matching object. We tested whether: (a) visual and verbal representations have different effects on the deployment of attention; and (b) both types of representations can be used equally in a top‐down manner. We asked participants to maintain a visual cue or a verbal cue at the beginning of each trial, and ended with a memory task to ensure that each cue was represented actively in working memory. Before the memory task, a visual search task appeared where validity was manipulated as valid, neutral, or invalid. We also manipulated the probability of valid trials (20%, 50%, and 80%), which had been told to the participants prior to the task. Consistent with earlier findings, attentional guidance by visual representations was modulated by the probability. We also found that this was true for verbal representations, and that these effects did not differ between representation types. These results suggest that both visual and verbal representations in working memory can be used strategically to control attentional guidance.     

Mental reinstatement of the misinformation context and the misinformation effect in children and adults

The present study investigated the effects of mental reinstatement of the context in which misleading information about an event was presented on later recognition memory for the event. Five‐year‐olds, 7‐year‐olds and adults were shown a short video depicting a children's adventure and were asked a set of misleading questions to introduce misinformation one week later. Before the recognition memory test was administered another week later, half of the participants were given instructions to mentally reinstate the context of the misleading interview. Memory was assessed with a set of forced‐choice recognition questions once in the misleading interview context and for the children a second time at home one week later. When participants were instructed to mentally reinstate the context of the misleading interview prior to the recognition test, false memory reports occurred more often for adults than for children and had a stronger impact on peripheral information than on central information for both 7‐year‐olds and adults. When 5‐ and 7‐year‐olds were tested at home, false memory reports decreased. Thus, reinstating the context of an interview introducing misinformation can reduce the accuracy of memory reports; the context dependence of both accurate and inaccurate memory reports in children and adults is discussed. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

言语记忆对视觉选择的影响:基于维度的自动注意引导

两个实验分别考察外显和内隐言语记忆中的特征维度信息对基于维度的视觉选择性注意的自动引导作用。实验一要求被试在言语工作记忆(外显言语记忆)保持阶段完成一个视觉注意任务,结果发现了显著的一致性效应,即记忆任务相关维度和注意任务相关维度不一致条件下的注意任务反应时要显著慢于两者一致条件下的反应时;实验二采用go/no-go任务以考察内隐言语记忆对视觉选择的影响,结果也发现了类似的一致性效应。这些结果表明外显和内隐言语记忆中的抽象维度信息自动引导注意选择视场中与之匹配的视觉维度,而不管该维度是否为当前注意任务的相关维度。