Grammatical structure and recall: A function of the space in immediate memory or of recall delay?

Savin and Perchonock suggest that when a sentence and additional unrelated words are presented for immediate recall, the number of words recalled in addition to that sentence represents the space left over in a limited memory store after the sentence and its transformational tag have been stored. They report error data and word-recall data in support of a transformational model of sentence processing. In two replications of that study, error data failed to support the transformational model. Furthermore, the word-recall data could be attributed to differential word-recall delays-the more complex the sentence, the longer the delay between word presentation and word recall. These findings, as well as others in the literature. fail to support a transformational interpretation of sentence processing.     

Delay of auditory input in “simultaneous” auditory and visual short-term memory

In an attempt to facilitate visual recall when material is presented under bisensory simultaneous conditions (i.e., visual and auditory stimuli are presented together), auditory material was delayed up to 1/4 sec relative to the onset of the visual material. Visual recall, however, remained stable across the auditory delays, suggesting a limitation in the visual system beyond that associated with the simultaneous occurrence of auditory material.     

Does spatial information impact immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions?

The present study addresses the issue of whether spatial information impacts immediate verbatim recall of verbal navigation instructions. Subjects heard messages instructing them to move within a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional space consisting of four stacked grids displayed on a computer screen. They repeated the instructions orally and then followed them manually by clicking with a mouse on the grids. Two groups with identical instructions were compared; they differed only in whether the starting position was indicated before or after the instructions were given and repeated, with no differences in the manual movements to be made. Accuracy on both the oral repetition and manual movement responses was significantly higher when the starting position was indicated before the instructions. The results are consistent with the proposal that there is only a single amodal mental representation, rather than distinct verbal and nonverbal representations, of navigation instructions. The advantage for the before condition was found even for the oral repetition responses, implying that the creation of the amodal representation occurred immediately, while the instructions were being held in working memory. In practical terms, the findings imply that being able to form a mental representation of the movement path while being given verbal navigation instructions should substantially facilitate memory for the instructions and execution of them.     

Individual differences in immediate serial recall: A matter of mnemonics?

Normal adults differ in a fairly general immediate serial recall ability which is commonly assessed on individual IQ tests. Two experiments tested the role of rehearsal, grouping, and chunking strategies in producing such individual differences. The general approach was to limit interindividual variation in the application of these mnemonics and observe the effects on individual differences in recall. This was accomplished by (1) presenting items too fast to allow variation in rehearsal strategy and (2) requiring all subjects to group and chunk items in the same way. Both manipulations affected average recall, but neither one affected the size or order of individual differences. It was concluded that immediate serial recall differences between normal adults are largely a consequence of something other than differences in rehearsal, grouping, or chunking strategies.     

Are Asians forgetful? Perception, retention, and recall in episodic remembering

Cross-cultural studies have shown that Asians exhibit less accessibility to episodic memories than Euro-Americans. This difference is often attributed to differential cognitive and social influences on memory retention, although there have been no empirical data concerning the underlying mechanism. Three studies were conducted to examine encoding and retention processes that may underlie the cultural difference in episodic recall. While Asians recalled fewer personal event episodes than Euro-Americans across different retention intervals, the two groups showed similar forgetting functions over time (Study 1). Asians also recalled fewer episodes of fictional events than Euro-Americans when the retention interval was kept to a minimum (Study 2). Finally, Asians perceived fewer discrete episodes than Euro-Americans when reading events in a narrative text (Study 3). Collectively, these findings suggest that the cultural difference in episodic recall may not be a mere consequence of memory retention but culture-specific perceptual processing and encoding. They have great theoretical, developmental, and clinical relevance.     

Children's judgment and recall of causal connectives: A developmental study of “because,” “so,” and “and”

The present study examined the acceptability judgments and recall performance of children aged 6,9, and 11 years with sentences expressing psychological cause-effect relations. Thirty-two sentences containing because medially, because initially, so, and and were generated from four clause pairs. Both probable and improbable event orders were used. The results indicated that children preferred because to so or and for statements of psychological causality. However, on both tasks, first and third graders frequently failed to attend to the temporal ordering specified by each sentence construction. The younger children also tended to judge all sentences acceptable, suggesting that they were concerned only with the probable association of event pairs, and not with the usual order of the events. Order of mention strategies did not occur in any group, suggesting that they arise only when children cannot make interpretations based on probable order of events. The data also indicated that the recall task is an unreliable index of rules for comprehension and production.This article is based on research conducted by the first author as partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. requirements for the Department of Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin.     

The Orthogenetic Principle in the Perception of “Forests” and “Trees”?

This study explores possible links between ontogenetic and microgenetic change (Werner, 1948, 1957) in the perception of stimuli with multiple levels of structure. Visual search for targets defined by local versus global structure was examined in observers aged 6, 8, 10, and 22 years. Perceptual access to each level of structure was varied by using pattern elements of same (easy) or opposite contrast polarity (hard); attentional processes were isolated from sensory processes by varying the number of display items. The results showed large improvements with age in search rates for global targets, with search rates for local targets being more constant over age. This pattern held regardless of whether perceptual access to a target was easy or hard. These results support the view that the perception of local and global structure involves different underlying processes.     

Comprehension of “before” and “after” by normal and educable mentally retarded children

This study reports findings on appreciation of the “before” and “after” event sequence with normal and educable mentally retarded (EMR) children matched on verbal mental ability (MA). Before and after constructions were associated with three variables at a time: semantics (logical vs. arbitrary event sequence), syntax (complex when conjunction preposed vs. simple when conjunction embedded), and an order of mention strategy (coinciding with the event occurence or reversing the event occurence). The data show that normal children perform significantly better than EMR children and suggest that the linguistic performance of EMR children cannot be best predicted on the basis of MA. Before is better understood than after, in general, by both groups, but a number of interactions between syntax, semantics, and an order of mention strategy suggests that differences in performances between normal and EMR children are of a quantitative rather than a qualitative nature. Linguistic (PPVT IQ) and cognitive (WISC-Picture Arrangement) factors are, as MA, poor predictors of before and after comprehension by normal and EMR children.     

What can we learn about immediate memory from the development of children's free recall?

We ask the question: Which aspects of immediate memory performance improve with age? In two studies, we reexamine the widely held view that primary memory capacity estimates derived from children's immediate free recall are age invariant. This was done by assessing children's immediate free-recall accuracy while also measuring the order in which they elected to recall items (Experiment 1) and by encouraging children to begin free recall with items from towards the end of the presented list (Experiment 2). Across samples aged between 5 and 8 years we replicated the previously reported age-related changes in free-recall serial position functions when aggregated across all trials of the standard task, including an absence of age differences in the recency portion of this curve. However, we also show that this does not reflect the fact that primary memory capacity is constant across age. Instead, when we incorporate order of report information, clear age differences are evident in the recall of list-final items that are output at the start of a participant's response. In addition, the total amount that individuals recalled varied little across different types of free-recall tasks. These findings have clear implications for the use of immediate free recall as a means of providing potential indices of primary memory capacity and in the study of the development of immediate memory.     

Free recall measures of short-term store: Are rehearsal and order of recall data necessary?

Several investigators have claimed that immediate free recall is a composite of output from two different storage systems—a short-term store (STS) and a long-term store (LTS). Free recall data and measures of STS were evaluated by having subjects report their rehearsals while lists of words were presented at a rate of one word every 1.25, 2.50, or 5.00 sec. The results support the conclusions that (a) arranging recall as a function of where an item was presented, rather than where it was rehearsed, is inappropriate to discussions of STS and LTS, and (b) computing measures of STS without both rehearsal and order of recall data yields a biased estimate of STS.

     

Are forward and backward recall the same? A dual-task study of digit recall

There is some debate surrounding the cognitive resources underlying backward digit recall. Some researchers consider it to differ from forward digit recall due to the involvement of executive control, while others suggest that backward recall involves visuospatial resources. Five experiments therefore investigated the role of executive-attentional and visuospatial resources in both forward and backward digit recall. In the first, participants completed visuospatial 0-back and 2-back tasks during the encoding of information to be remembered. The concurrent tasks did not differentially disrupt performance on backward digit recall, relative to forward digit recall. Experiment 2 shifted concurrent load to the recall phase instead and, in this case, revealed a larger effect of both tasks on backward recall, relative to forwards recall, suggesting that backward recall may draw on additional resources during the recall phase and that these resources are visuospatial in nature. Experiments 3 and 4 then further investigated the role of visual processes in forward and backward recall using dynamic visual noise (DVN). In Experiment 3, DVN was presented during encoding of information to be remembered and had no effect upon performance. However, in Experiment 4, it was presented during the recall phase, and the results provided evidence of a role for visual imagery in backward digit recall. These results were replicated in Experiment 5, in which the same list length was used for forward and backward recall tasks. The findings are discussed in terms of both theoretical and practical implications.     

A negative order-repetition priming effect: inhibition of order in unattended auditory sequences?

A novel negative priming (NP) effect is reported in which serial recall for a sequence of visually presented digits was poorer if the same sequence was presented as an irrelevant auditory sequence on the previous trial (Experiments 1 and 2). The effect was enhanced when attention was divided between the to-be-repeated auditory sequence and the concurrent to-be-remembered (TBR) sequence (Experiment 3). When the TBR sequences were also presented auditorily, NP arose only when the repeated TBR sequence was in the same voice as the previous irrelevant sequence; a voice mismatch produced positive priming (Experiment 4). The results suggest that the order of auditory events is registered preattentively and that inhibition may be applied to the acoustic transitions between irrelevant events.     

Are written and spoken recall of text equivalent?

Writing is less practiced than speaking, graphemic codes are activated only in writing, and the retrieved representations of the text must be maintained in working memory longer because handwritten output is slower than speech. These extra demands on working memory could result in less effort being given to retrieval during written compared with spoken text recall. To test this hypothesis, college students read or heard Bartlett's "War of the Ghosts" and then recalled the text in writing or speech. Spoken recall produced more accurately recalled propositions and more major distortions (e.g., inferences) than written recall. The results suggest that writing reduces the retrieval effort given to reconstructing the propositions of a text.     

Stability and consistency of children’s event recall

The purpose of the study was to investigate consistency of recall across different tasks of event recall (similar to eyewitness tasks) and stability of performance across two different events. Additionally, developmental differences in consistency and stability were explored. 6-, 8-, and 10-year-old children were subsequently shown two different events (videos) and were questioned about each event in two separate interviews. For both videos, performance levels in free recall, unbiased cued recall, and suggestibility were at similar levels, with older children generally outperforming younger children. As to intertask consistency of recall, there were significant correlations between correct free recall and correct unbiased cued recall but not between correct free recall and yielding to suggestive questions. All three measures of eyewitness performance showed significant group stability (test-retest correlations) across the two interviews, regardless of age. However, individual stability (lability) was lower, which points to moderate individual differences in stability across the two interviews. The findings are discussed in terms of underlying cognitive skills and the problem of predicting a single child’s memory performance in real cases of eyewitness testimony.     

The effects of punishment of repetitions and the acquisition of “stutter-like” behaviors in normal speakers

The purpose of this study was to determine if a punishing stimulus, presented contingent upon repetitions, would cause normal speakers to develop behaviors that are “stutter-like,” resembling the secondary reactions often observed in stutterers. Ten normal-speaking adult males spoke spontaneously during a 15 minute A-B-A (base rate-punishment-withdrawl) single subject experiment. Repetitions decreased when the stimulus “you repeated” was made contingent upon their occurrence, but several other behaviors, “stutter-like” in nature, surfaced. As a less spontaneous speaking style was adopted, speech rate decreased significantly. Within a few minutes, the subjects developed some avoidant behaviors that may be characteristic of stuttering. The results were interpreted as having at least one therapeutic implication that could be particularly troublesome. The data seem to indicate that when clinicians focus solely on the reduction of repetitions in stuttering therapy, they may be generating avoidance behaviors that facilitate the development of stuttering.     

Nursing Home Residents' Perception of the “Good Death”

ABSTRACT

Little is known about the concept of the “good death” and its relationship to formal Christian religious belief. In this research, 15 nursing home residents participated in a semi-structured open-ended interview in which they were asked to describe their beliefs about the good death experience. This paper summarizes the most distinctive themes of one study of the impact, of formal religious belief on attitudes regarding the good death. The majority of interviewees defined a good death in terms of freedom from pain and suffering, and indicated that religious faith and prayer were important to them in coping with death and dying.