The long-term effects of mild head injury on short-term memory for visual form, spatial location, and their conjunction in well-functioning university students

Research has suggested the presence of subtle long-term cognitive changes in otherwise well-functioning individuals who have previously sustained a mild head injury (MHI). This paper investigated the long-term effects of MHI on visual, spatial, and visual-spatial short-term memory in well-functioning university students. Sixteen students who reported having sustained a MHI were compared to 16 controls on tests of short-term memory (STM) for abstract polygons in haphazardly arranged locations. The three tests differed only in the requirements for recall (shapes for the visual task, locations for the spatial task, and the shapes in their respective locations for the visual-spatial task). MHI participants were selectively impaired on spatial memory, suggesting that tasks of spatial STM may be more sensitive, compared to tasks of visual STM, to the subtle long-term cognitive changes that may be present after a MHI.     

Attentional responses on an auditory oddball predict false memory susceptibility

Attention and memory are highly integrated processes. Building on prior behavioral investigations, this study assesses the link between individual differences in low-level neural attentional responding and false memory susceptibility on the misinformation effect, a paradigm in which false event memories are induced via misleading post-event information. Twenty-four subjects completed the misinformation effect paradigm after which high-density (256-channel) EEG data was collected as they engaged in an auditory oddball task. Temporal-spatial decomposition was used to extract two attention-related components from the oddball data, the P3b and Classic Slow Wave. The P3b was utilized as an index of individual differences in salient target attentional responding while the slow wave was adopted as an index of variability in task-level sustained attention. Analyses of these components show a significant negative relationship between slow-wave responses to oddball non-targets and perceptual false memory endorsements, suggestive of a link between individual differences in levels of sustained attention and false memory susceptibility. These findings provide the first demonstrated link between individual differences in basic attentional responses and false memory. These results support prior behavioral work linking attention and false memory and highlight the integration between attentional processes and real-world episodic memory.     

The cognitive consequences of envy: attention, memory, and self-regulatory depletion

In a series of 4 experiments, we provide evidence that--in addition to having an affective component--envy may also have important consequences for cognitive processing. Our first experiment (N = 69) demonstrated that individuals primed with envy better attended to and more accurately recalled information about fictitious peers than did a control group. Studies 2 (N = 187) and 3 (N = 65) conceptually replicated these results, demonstrating that envy elicited by targets predicts attention and later memory for information about them. We demonstrate that these effects cannot be accounted for by admiration or changes in negative affect or arousal elicited by the targets. Study 4 (N = 152) provides evidence that greater memory for envied--but not neutral--targets leads to diminished perseverance on a difficult anagram task. Findings demonstrate that envy may play an important role in attention and memory systems and deplete limited self-regulatory resources available for acts of volition.     

Relationships between working memory and intelligence from a developmental perspective: Convergent evidence from a neo-Piagetian and a psychometric approach

The objective of this paper, in line with the other papers of this special issue, is to show the potentialities of combining intelligence research and cognitive psychology. The development of intelligence is here addressed from two usually separate perspectives, a psychometric one, and a neo-Piagetian one. Two studies are presented. In Experiment 1, children aged 6, 7, 9, and 11 years (N = 100) were administered two working memory tasks and three Piagetian tasks. In Experiment 2, children aged 8–12 years (N = 207), young adults aged 20–35 (N = 160), and older adults aged 60–88 years (N = 135) were administered working memory and processing speed tasks, as well as the Raven Standard Matrices task. Regression and commonality analyses were run to analyse the age-related variance in the Piagetian tasks (Study 1), and in the Raven task (Study 2). In both experiments, working memory accounted for a large part of the age differences observed, but more so in Study 1 (Piagetian tasks) than in Study 2 (Raven task). It is concluded that working memory mediates the effect of age on fluid intelligence during childhood and during adulthood.     

Glucose regulation and face recognition deficits in older adults: the role of attention

The present study investigated the perceptual, attentional, and memory processes underlying face recognition deficits observed in older adults with impaired glucoregulation. Participants were categorized as good glucoregulators or poor glucoregulators on the basis of an oral glucose tolerance test. Using event-related potential (ERP) methodology, 23 participants (62–88 years) performed a 2-stimulus oddball task. Participants were asked to rate and memorize 10 “target” faces, which were then presented amongst 120 unfamiliar foils. Behavioral results indicated that good glucoregulators were significantly more accurate at recognizing target faces. ERP markers of early visual perception (P1 and N170 components) and memory formation (P3 component) were unaffected by glucoregulatory efficiency. The P2 component, an index of attentional processing, was larger and delayed in the poor glucoregulators. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to suggest that face recognition deficits in poor glucoregulators may be due to impairments in attentional processing.     

Intact visual perceptual discrimination in humans in the absence of perirhinal cortex

While the role of the perirhinal cortex in declarative memory has been well established, it has been unclear whether the perirhinal cortex might serve an additional nonmnemonic role in visual perception. Evidence that the perirhinal cortex might be important for visual perception comes from a recent report that monkeys with perirhinal cortical lesions are impaired on difficult (but not on simple) visual discrimination tasks. We administered these same tasks to nine amnesic patients, including three severely impaired patients with complete damage to perirhinal cortex bilaterally (E.P., G.P., and G.T.). The patients performed all tasks as well as controls. We suggest that the function of perirhinal cortex as well as antero-lateral temporal cortex may differ between humans and monkeys.     

Effects of self-evaluation on the P300 event-related potential

The effects of self evaluation on the P300 event-related potential (ERP) were explored with 56 participants (16 men, 40 women; M age = 23.4 yr., SD = 1.2) across three conditions. The conditions included (1) a standard ERP auditory oddball discrimination between a random target (15% occurrence) and standard stimuli (85% occurrence), (2) the oddball task followed by the additional cognitive task of maintaining a mental count of the target tones, and (3) the oddball task followed by the additional cognitive task of self-evaluating whether they felt surprised by the current occurrence of the target tone. The added cognitive requirements for Conditions 2 and 3 required the subjects to maintain a cognitive readiness for the secondary stimulus-related task during their sensory discrimination response for the standard oddball task. During the self-evaluation condition, the P300 amplitude was significantly larger across all recording locations than the regular oddball condition and the cognitive count condition.     

The whole is more than the sum of its parts – Audiovisual processing of phonemes investigated with ERPs

In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and deviant. A smaller distance required more attention, which was reflected in a larger amplitude. An analysis of audiovisual material, after correction for visual activity, showed that McGurk type stimuli evoked brain responses that differed from both the standard and the congruent deviants. Finally, we found that congruent audiovisual stimuli elicited an N2 with a shorter latency and a P3 with a smaller amplitude than auditory stimuli. The current ERP study, thus, shows that for audiovisual processing the whole is more than the sum of its parts.     

Adaptive psychophysical methods for nonmonotonic psychometric functions

Many psychophysical tasks in current use render nonmonotonic psychometric functions; these include the oddball task, the temporal generalization task, the binary synchrony judgment task, and other forms of the same–different task. Other tasks allow for ternary responses and render three psychometric functions, one of which is also nonmonotonic, like the ternary synchrony judgment task or the unforced choice task. In all of these cases, data are usually collected with the inefficient method of constant stimuli (MOCS), because extant adaptive methods are only applicable when the psychometric function is monotonic. This article develops stimulus placement criteria for adaptive methods designed for use with nonmonotonic psychometric functions or with ternary tasks. The methods are transformations of conventional up–down rules. Simulations under three alternative psychophysical tasks prove the validity of these methods, their superiority to MOCS, and the accuracy with which they recover direct estimates of the parameters determining the psychometric functions, as well as estimates of derived quantities such as the point of subjective equality or the difference limen. Practical recommendations and worked-out examples are provided to illustrate how to use these adaptive methods in empirical research.     

事件提示和时间提示对新异干扰的影响—— 来自听视跨通道和听通道的证据

采用Oddball范式考察听视跨感觉通道和听感觉通道中“无关刺激”或“无关属性”的信号提示对新异干扰的影响。实验1和实验2分别比较了听视跨通道和听通道中时间事件提示、时间提示和事件提示三种条件。结果表明：(1)时间提示条件下新异干扰效应消失, 而事件提示条件下新异干扰效应仍存在。无关刺激意外变化引起的靶任务行为受损, 不仅与偏差刺激的小概率和新颖性有关, 而且与干扰刺激与靶子间提示信号关联有关, 这种提示关联中事件发生的提示功能比时间间隔的提示功能更为重要。(2)听通道下新异干扰与视听跨通道结果一致, 无关属性也会起到提示信号作用, 同样事件提示功能比时间提示功能更重要。     

Music training enhances the rapid plasticity of P3a/P3b event-related brain potentials for unattended and attended target sounds

Neurocognitive studies have shown that extensive musical training enhances P3a and P3b event-related potentials for infrequent target sounds, which reflects stronger attention switching and stimulus evaluation in musicians than in nonmusicians. However, it is unknown whether the short-term plasticity of P3a and P3b responses is also enhanced in musicians. We compared the short-term plasticity of P3a and P3b responses to infrequent target sounds in musicians and nonmusicians during auditory perceptual learning tasks. Target sounds, deviating in location, pitch, and duration with three difficulty levels, were interspersed among frequently presented standard sounds in an oddball paradigm. We found that during passive exposure to sounds, musicians had habituation of the P3a, while nonmusicians showed enhancement of the P3a between blocks. Between active tasks, P3b amplitudes for duration deviants were reduced (habituated) in musicians only, and showed a more posterior scalp topography for habituation when compared to P3bs of nonmusicians. In both groups, the P3a and P3b latencies were shortened for deviating sounds. Also, musicians were better than nonmusicians at discriminating target deviants. Regardless of musical training, better discrimination was associated with higher working memory capacity. We concluded that music training enhances short-term P3a/P3b plasticity, indicating training-induced changes in attentional skills.     

Assessing the age-related effects of proactive interference on working memory tasks using the Rasch model

Inhibition-reduction theory (L. Hasher & R. Zacks, 1988) hypothesizes that the age-related decline in working memory (WM) span is a result of a decrease in the ability to inhibit irrelevant information in WM. Using the Rasch psychometric model, this study found that later trials on 2 WM span tasks were more difficult for older adults than for younger adults, consistent with inhibition-reduction theory's hypothesis that older adults are more susceptible to the effects of proactive interference (PI). Furthermore, after accounting for differential susceptibility to the effects of PI, age-related variance in WM span was reduced by about half. These results suggest that differential susceptibility to PI may account for a substantial portion, although not all, of the age-related decline in WM span.     

Measuring cancer patients' psychological distress and well-being: a factor analytic assessment of the Mental Health Inventory

This study examined the psychometric structure of the Mental Health Inventory (MHI) in 433 cancer patients. Using structural equation modeling, confirmatory factor analyses (CFAs) were conducted. Next, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to explore an alternative MHI factor structure with a randomly chosen subsample. Finally, CFAs were conducted on 6 MHI models with the second subsample. Convergent validity was examined by administering the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS). The CFAs with the original MHI factor structure indicated inadequate fit, supporting the need to conduct an EFA. Results of the EFA indicated support for a 5-factor solution but numerous differences in item factor loadings. The CFA indicated that the 5-factor correlated model was the best fitting model. Correlations between the PANAS and the DAS with the MHI provided preliminary support for the convergent validity of the MHI. Together, these results indicate that the original MHI factor structure may require modification for use in patients with cancer.     

The episodic nature of episodic-like memories

Studying episodic memory in nonhuman animals has proved difficult because definitions in humans require conscious recollection. Here, we assessed humans' experience of episodic-like recognition memory tasks that have been used with animals. It was found that tasks using contextual information to discriminate events could only be accurately performed using recollection, not familiarity. However, tasks using temporal information to discriminate events could be accurately performed using either recollection or familiarity. The results strengthen the position that some episodic-like recognition memory tasks are a valid model of episodic memory. However, tasks that rely on temporal information may be susceptible to nonepisodic strategies.     

Convergence between attention variables and factors of psychometric intelligence in older adults

The purpose of the present study was to examine the hypothesis that individual differences on measures of attention would converge with select factors of psychometric intelligence, especially fluid intelligence and short-term acquisition and retrieval. A sample of 83 elderly adults $\text{(}\text{X}\text{= 71}\text{years}\text{)}$ was administered a battery of 17 psychometric ability tests. Tests were selected to mark four psychometric ability factors (Cattell and Horn's dimensions of fluid and crystallized intelligence, short-term acquisition and retrieval, and perceptual speed). Also, seven tasks representing four aspects of attention—decoding processes, selective attention, attention switching, and concentration—were administered. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to examine the relationships among the four psychometric ability factors and 11 variables obtained from the attention tasks. Results were only partially consistent with the hypothesized pattern of convergence. Two attention measures had significant loadings on a fluid-type intelligence factor, and one had a marginally significant loading on a short-term memory factor. In general, the greatest convergence occured between attention variables and the ability factor of Perceptual Speed. Results were discussed with respect to previous research on psychometric abilities and cognitive processes, the theory of fluid-crystallized intelligence, and their implications for understanding intellectual aging.     

The involuntary capture of attention by novel feature pairings: A study of voice—location integration in auditory sensory memory

Past researchers of the integration of information in memory have typically required participants to attend to and/or commit to memory the stimuli conveying distinct features, rendering difficult the examination of whether the maintenance of the feature pairings can occur involuntarily. To address this issue, the integration of voice and location information in auditory sensory memory was measured using a cross-modal oddball task, in which task-irrelevant auditory deviants are known to capture attention in an involuntary fashion. Participants categorized visual digits presented shortly after to-be-ignored sounds. These sounds consisted in the same phoneme played simultaneously in both ears but in different voices (female in one ear, male in the other). On most trials, the pairing of voice to location was constant (standard sound). On rare and unpredictable trials, the voices swapped locations (deviant sound). In line with past work on attention capture by auditory novelty, the participants were significantly slower to judge the visual digits following the deviant sound, indicating the involuntary encoding of the links between voice and location in auditory memory. These results suggest that voices and locations are integrated in memory and that this binding occurs in conditions in which participants do not intend to commit any information to memory.     

Selective attention in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Recent information-processing studies have suggested that a selective attention deficit may be involved in the symptomatology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In this study, individuals diagnosed with OCD were distinguished from those with panic disorder and from control participants by their relatively poorer performance on a series of psychometric tasks of selective attention. These results are interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of a diminished ability of people with OCD to selectively ignore competing external (sensory) and internal (cognitive) stimuli, especially intrusive thoughts.     

The effects of music exposure and own genre preference on conscious and unconscious cognitive processes: a pilot ERP study

Did Beethoven and Mozart have more in common with each other than Clapton and Hendrix? The current research demonstrated the widely reported Mozart Effect as only partly significant. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 16 professional classical and rock musicians during a standard 2 stimulus visual oddball task, while listening to classical and rock music. During the oddball task participants were required to discriminate between an infrequent target stimulus randomly embedded in a train of repetitive background or standard stimuli. Consistent with previous research, the P3 and N2 ERPs were elicited in response to the infrequent target stimuli. Own genre preference resulted in a reduction in amplitude of the P3 for classical musicians exposed to classical music and rock musicians exposed to rock music. Notably, at the pre-attentive stage of processing (N2) beneficial effects of exposure to classical music were observed for both groups of musicians. These data are discussed in terms of short and long-term music benefits on both conscious and unconscious cognitive processes.     

Speed of lower-level auditory and visual processing as a basic factor in dyslexia: electrophysiological evidence

This study investigated speed of processing (SOP) among college-level adult dyslexic and normal readers in nonlinguistic and sublexical linguistic auditory and visual oddball tasks, and a nonlinguistic cross-modal choice reaction task. Behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures were obtained. The results revealed that between both groups, reaction times (RT) were longer and the latencies of P2 and P3 components occurred later in the visual as compared to auditory oddball tasks. RT and ERP latencies were longest in the cross-modal task. RT and ERP latencies were delayed among dyslexic as compared to normal readers across tasks. On the oddball tasks, group differences in brain activity were observed only when responding to low-probability targets. These differences were largest for the P3 component, and most pronounced in the case of phonemes. The gap between ERP latencies in the visual versus the auditory modalities for each component was larger among dyslexic as compared to normal readers, and was particularly evident at the linguistic level. A hypothesis is proposed that suggests an amodal, basic SOP deficit among dyslexic readers. The slower cross-modal SOP is attributed to slower information processing in general and to disproportionate "asynchrony" between SOP in the visual versus the auditory system. It is suggested that excessive asynchrony in the SOP of the two systems may be one of the underlying causes of dyslexics' impaired reading skills.     

If dancers ate their shoes: Inductive reasoning with factual and counterfactual premises

This experiment addressed the effect of precue information, which may be either familiar or novel, and either relevant or irrelevant, on the solution of inductive reasoning problems. Sixty undergraduate students each completed 216 verbal inductive reasoning problems and five psychometric ability tests. The reasoning problems were equally divided among analogies, classifications, and series completions, with half of each kind of item presented in a standard, uncued format, and half presented with a precue. With respect to internal validation, it was found that for analogies and classifications, subjects take longer to process irrelevant than relevant information if the precue is familiar, but they take longer to process relevant than irrelevant information if the precue is novel. For series completions, this relation does not hold; rather, both novelty and irrelevance add time to the processing of information, with the time for irrelevance greater than that for novelty. The utility of precues for different tasks was explored, and it was found that familiar relevant precues facilitated solution of the more difficult kinds of items (classifications and series completions), but hampered solution of the easier, more automatically solved items (analogies). With respect to external validation, it was found that the nonentrenched induction tasks overlapped with psychometric tests in terms of abilities measured, that the abilities measured were fluid rather than crystallized, and that the precued (more nonentrenched) items were better measures of fluid abilities than were the uncued items.