Individual Differences in Working Memory Abilities in Healthy Adults

The goal of this study was to understand the role of individual characteristics such as age, gender and education of healthy adults on working memory abilities, as conceptualized in the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad. The sample comprised 302 adults aged from 18 to 65 with different educational backgrounds. Participants were submitted to a protocol of established neuropsychological tests that were selected to assess the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad. The results revealed that these factors influenced working memory abilities differentially. Education level influenced all the three components in the same direction. Individuals with higher academic qualifications have better performance in tests assessing the central executive, phonological loop, and visuospatial sketchpad, whereas age affected performance in the task evaluating the central executive. Age and gender also influenced the performance in tasks related to visuospatial sketchpad in the sense that younger individuals or men reveal better visual and spatial abilities as conceptualized in the visuospatial sketchpad.     

Individual Differences in Arousal and Accessibility to Information in Memory

The authors conducted 9 experiments to test the hypothesis (S. Schwartz, 1975) that arousal influences the accessibility of information stored in memory. They investigated the relationship between arousal levels (as indexed by personality types) and the type of stimuli or cues presented during study or test. They predicted that low-arousal individuals (stable extroverted individuals in Experiments 1-3 and 5-9 and high-impulsive individuals in Experiment 4) would be influenced by semantic stimuli, whereas high-arousal individuals (neurotic introverted individuals in Experiments 1-3 and 5-9 and low-impulsive individuals in Experiment 4) would be influenced by physical (i.e., graphic, phonetic, or both) stimuli. They tested the arousal-accessibility hypothesis by using a variety of tasks including verbal discrimination, false recognition, cued recall, and paired associates. With the exception of the finding that stable extroverted participants performed better than neurotic introverted participants on an incidental associative-matching task (Experiment 3), the results from the verbal discrimination studies (1-5) did not support the hypothesis. In Experiment 6, the authors tested the hypothesis by using a false-recognition task. False alarms varied as a function of phonetic and semantic stimuli, but personality types were not differentially sensitive to the manipulation. The same was true for the cued-recall studies (Experiments 7 and 8); personality types were not differentially sensitive to the semantic and phonetic stimuli. Experiment 9 (paired-associate learning) was a replication of Schwartz's study. The authors found some support for the Schwartz hypothesis: Extraverted participants were adversely affected by semantic similarity. Overall, the findings did not provide much support for the arousal-accessability hypothesis.     

Hale-Bopp and Handedness: Individual Differences in Memory for Orientation

The accuracy with which a person recalls the orientation of a human figure or head has been shown to depend systematically on the person's handedness. This study investigated whether memory for the orientation of an inanimate object displays a similar effect. In contrast to previous work investigating memory for depictions encountered over many years, the present work focused on memory for a unique event that engaged considerable attention over a relatively brief period—Comet Hale-Bopp. The results showed that although right-handed and left-handed individuals did not differ in their memory for semantic information concerning the comet, they did differ in their memory for its orientation. Right-handed people were significantly more likely than left-handed people both to recall and to recognize the comet as facing to the left. The results suggest that memory performance may be influenced by patterns of underlying cerebral motor activation.     

Habitual Susceptibility to Misinformation and Individual Differences in Eyewitness Memory

A novel multiple-event, multiple-item procedure was employed to identify individuals who were habitually susceptible to accepting post-event misinformation. Using this procedure, it was found that many people succumbed at least once to the effects of misinformation, given enough opportunities. Moreover, some individuals could be identified who showed a pattern of repeated susceptibility, accepting some misinformation for each of three separate events. Several individual difference measures discriminated between individuals who were habitually susceptible to false post-event information and those who were not; these include empathy, self-reported vividness of visual imagery and a memory accuracy measure. © by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Autobiographical Memory in Patients with Tinnitus

Studies on psychiatric patients have found that their memories of the past are often unspecific and overgeneral, but the extent to which this is the case for patients with somatic problems has so far only been examined in patients with chronic pain and in patients with diabetes. The present study investigated autobiographical memories in 19 tinnitus patients and 19 controls without tinnitus. Participants were administered the autobiographical memory test (AMT), the Controlled word association test, and self-report measures of depression, anxiety, and tinnitus distress. Compared to control participants, tinnitus patients had difficulty retrieving specific memories and showed longer retrieval latencies. Additionally, tinnitus patients had fewer specific memories to positive cue words. While AMT responses were associated with depression scores, the difference between controls and patients remained significant for positive cue words after controlling for depression scores. Results suggest that cognitive components should be an integral element of the psychological management of tinnitus. The use in future studies of experimental methods such as AMT in health psychology is encouraged.     

A Study of Gender Differences in Autobiographical Memory: Broken Down by Age and Sex

Data from 40 older adults who produced autobiographical memories to word cues and to the request to list five important memories, and data from 60 older adults who answered factual multiple-choice questions for events spread across their lives, were analyzed for gender differences. In spite of considerable statistical power, there were no gender differences in the distribution of autobiographical memories over the lifespan, in the distribution of important memories, in various ratings provided to these memories, or in the distribution of knowledge for events. The only gender difference found was that men performed better on factual questions about current events and baseball. Thus, counter to what might be expected from Darwinian theory and some behavioral data, gender differences were minimal.     

Autobiographical Memory Disturbances in Childhood Abuse Survivors

Summary

Clinicians have noted that childhood abuse survivors frequently report that they have forgotten large parts of their childhood. While memory for abusive experiences has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers, other types of memory disturbances may also accompany a history of childhood trauma. Many clinicians report that certain types of sexual abuse, and abuse at certain developmental stages, is more likely to result in reports of gaps in memory for the abuse. However, because information has been mainly collected in clinical populations, the possibility of confounding between abusive experiences and psychological disturbances cannot be ruled out. This article reports on data gathered from a large, epidemiologic study conducted within a health maintenance organization. A history of childhood physical or sexual abuse doubled the prevalence of general autobiographical memory loss for women, while for men, the rate increased 1.5 times over those with no abuse history. Higher rates of autobiographical memory loss were noted where both types of abuse were reported. Further, multiple incidents of sexual abuse, sexual abuse by a relative, and more severe sexual abuse increased reports of autobiographical memory loss. Theoretical perspectives on changes in the memory system that may affect trauma survivors are discussed.     

Autobiographical Memory and Suicide Attempts in Schizophrenia

According to the cry of pain model of suicidal behavior, an over‐general autobiographical memory function is often found in suicide attempters. The model has received empirical support in several studies, mainly of depressed patients. The present study investigated whether deficits in autobiographical memory may be associated with an increased frequency of suicide attempts in patients with schizophrenia. We found support for our hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia and previous suicide attempts have an over‐generalized autobiographical memory compared to patients with schizophrenia without previous suicide attempts. Adjustment for sociodemographic and clinical variables did not change the results.     

Studying Individual Differences in Predictability With Gamma Regression and Nonlinear Multilevel Models

Statistical prediction remains an important tool for decisions in a variety of disciplines. An equally important issue is identifying factors that contribute to more or less accurate predictions. The time series literature includes well developed methods for studying predictability and volatility over time. This article develops distribution-appropriate methods for studying individual differences in predictability for settings in psychological research. Specifically, 3 different approaches are discussed for modeling predictability. The 1st is a bivariate measure of predictability discussed previously in the psychology literature, the squared or absolute valued difference between criterion and predictor, which is shown to follow the gamma distribution. The 2nd method extended limitations of previous research and involved understanding predictability in regression models. The 3rd method used nonlinear multilevel models to study predictability in settings where participants are nested within clusters. An application was presented using SAS NLMIXED to understand the predictability of college grade point average by student demographic characteristics. The findings from the application suggest that the 1st-year college performance of English as a second language students were, on average, less predictable whereas females and Whites tended to demonstrate more predictable academic performance than their male or racial/ethnic minority counterparts.     

Disruptive Individual Experiences Create Lifetime Periods: a Study of Autobiographical Memory in Persons with Spinal Cord Injury

Previous research showed that transitional events causing catastrophic and long‐lasting changes in group of people's lives (e.g., wars) create autobiographical periods. We investigated whether spinal cord injury (SCI), an involuntary and externally driven disruptive event at the individual level, would also act as a temporal landmark and spawn personal periods and whether these periods have comparable functions and temporal characteristics as those generated at the group level. Thirteen volunteers with SCI recalled a cue‐related autobiographical event for each of 22 cue words. Later, participants thought aloud when dating each event. We used the prevalence of injury‐related references as an index of the degree to which spinal cord injury affects people's lives. We found frequent references to injury for the period neighboring injury event. Unexpectedly, we also found that SCI resulted in post‐injury decrease in event memory. Results imply that SCI provides a temporal landmark and creates an autobiographical period.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

自传记忆的加工机制研究进展

自传记忆是关于个人生活经验的记忆,它有悖于Ehbinghaus的记忆研究传统。在国外．90年代以来自传记忆研究已成为继内隐记忆研究后．记忆领域的又一研究热点。自传记忆加工机制的研究是认知心理学对自传记忆研究的核心领域。本文主要评析了自传记忆的知识表征．自传记忆提取机制的研究进展。目前已有的研究结论是：（1）自传记忆是以个人生活片段知识、一般事件知识和具体事件知识三种方式表征的;（2）自传记忆的提取方式主要通过生成提取和直接提取方式来实现。     

自传记忆事件聚集现象中的组织和提取特点

事件聚集是在事件水平上组织自传记忆的结构,是一种反映自传记忆组织的提取现象.在利用矫正后的事件追随任务对62名成人进行测试后发现:①事件之间各种组织信息并不是分离的,而是以整合的方式来组织事件聚集结构,这些信息不仅包含客体的信息,更包含主观的感受.②自我在自传记忆组织中的作用是强化事件聚集本身所具有的联系.③自传记忆的提取中首先要满足当前自我的要求;进行直接提取失败后,被试根据自传记忆的层级关系进行生成搜索;生成提取策略也失败后,个体则会根据事件线索中任何可以利用的细节来完成回忆任务.     

The Unnoticed Absence of Emotion in Autobiographical Memory

Memory for one's own life experiences, or autobiographical memory, is impressive in its accuracy and flexibility. A memory is constructed anew at each recollection through a process of finding and temporarily joining together specific details about location, sensory experiences, and other details. Curiously missing, however, are emotional details. Although emotional experiences are well remembered, the emotional aspect of an experience is neither retained in its full intensity nor reexperienced during recollection. The adaptive benefits of omitting emotion from autobiographical memory include uninterrupted goal pursuit and emotional stability. But most people make metacognitive errors that convince them that autobiographical memories generally do contain emotion. Possible causes of these errors include naïve theories, motivation to believe that one is healthy, filling in current emotion for remembered emotion, and biased sampling of memories.     

Overgeneral Autobiographical Memories: Gender Differences in Depression

Considering the higher prevalence of depression in women than in men, the study of the variables that underlie this gender difference becomes important for both the prevention and the treatment of depression. This study explores gender differences in the relationship between depressive symptoms, rumination, repressive coping, and overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM) in a nonclinical population. There are 141 men and 148 women who completed the measures of depression, rumination, and repression, and the Autobiographical Memory Test to assess OGM. Women remembered a higher number of specific memories than men. Most importantly, results showed a different pattern of association between rumination, repression, depression, and OGM by gender. Depressive symptoms were associated with repressive coping and OGM in women. However, depressive symptomatology was related to repressive coping but not to OGM in men. These results suggest that the role of OGM in depression may be less important in men than in women. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Personal Landmark Events Improves Judgments about Time,but not Contents,in Autobiographical Memory

Landmark events are strong memories that function as reference points for other memories. We examined whether people's accuracy in recalling when an earlier target event occurred was related to whether they spontaneously used personal landmark events or not. Participants completed two questionnaires separated by 2‐31 days. In the first, they described a personal event including what happened, who was there, where it was, and when it occurred. In the second questionnaire, they recalled the personal event and specific details. They also described whether they had used landmark events to assist their recall. Overall, participants' memories for temporal and content information faded over time. Spontaneous use of landmark events was associated with an increase in participants’ recall of temporal information but not content information. Analysis of the landmark events revealed that almost two‐thirds were significant events, such as birthdays, parties, and travel‐related events. Applications of the findings are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

自我、文化与记忆：自传体记忆的跨文化研究

自传体记忆不仅是对过去自我经验的加工和提取,还反映了特定的社会和文化背景。近年来,自传体记忆跨文化研究表明,东西方被试在最早记忆年龄、记忆容量和具体性、内部语言的使用、记忆取向等方面存在差异。文章从自我概念、亲子回忆和叙事方式、社会变迁和文化多元化等角度,探讨了文化自我观对于自传体记忆的核心意义。Nelson和Fivush的社会文化发展观则从发展的角度动态考察了内外因素对自传体记忆产生文化和个体差异的机制。文章还回顾了自传体记忆跨文化研究的主要方法。最后,文章探讨了自传体记忆跨文化及相关领域的研究前景和存在的问题