Individual differences in forced-choice recognition memory: Partitioning contributions of recollection and familiarity

In forced-choice recognition memory, two different testing formats are possible under conditions of high target–foil similarity: Each target can be presented alongside foils similar to itself (forced-choice corresponding; FCC), or alongside foils similar to other targets (forced-choice noncorresponding; FCNC). Recent behavioural and neuropsychological studies suggest that FCC performance can be supported by familiarity whereas FCNC performance is supported primarily by recollection. In this paper, we corroborate this finding from an individual differences perspective. A group of older adults were given a test of FCC and FCNC recognition for object pictures, as well as standardized tests of recall, recognition, and IQ. Recall measures were found to predict FCNC, but not FCC performance, consistent with a critical role for recollection in FCNC only. After the common influence of recall was removed, standardized tests of recognition predicted FCC, but not FCNC performance. This is consistent with a contribution of only familiarity in FCC. Simulations show that a two-process model, where familiarity and recollection make separate contributions to recognition, is 10 times more likely to give these results than a single-process model. This evidence highlights the importance of recognition memory test design when examining the involvement of recollection and familiarity.     

Young children’s acquisition of knowledge about the Earth: A longitudinal study

This longitudinal study examined the acquisition of early knowledge of astronomy to determine whether children’s knowledge at any point in time is consistent with a naive “mental model.” Children were first assessed by means of open questions and drawing tasks at 2 and 3 years of age (N = 143). The knowledge was reassessed over the course of the following 3 years. The results showed that although a few indications of naive mental models were found, in most cases young children’s knowledge was fragmented and accurate knowledge was often expressed alongside inaccurate/synthetic ideas. Furthermore, it was shown that children need to know scientific facts before they start taking the global perspective when describing the world and, when faced with ambiguous open questions, children often experience difficulties that can induce them to change the types of answers they provide.     

The effect of encoding time on retention by infants and young children

Using a Visual Recognition Memory (VRM) procedure, we examined the effect of encoding time on retention by 1- and 4-year olds. Irrespective of age, shorter familiarization time reduced retention, and longer familiarization time prolonged retention. The amount of familiarization that yielded retention after a given delay decreased as a function of age.     

Going beyond the specifics: Generalization of single actions, but not temporal order, at 9 months

We examined generalization in 9-month-old infants after a 24-h delay using deferred imitation. Infants flexibly applied their knowledge of sequence actions across changes in props even though they had no opportunity for immediate imitation.     

Dissociations between implicit and explicit memory in children: the role of strategic processing and the knowledge base

A review of the literature shows that explicit memory develops substantially from three years of age to adulthood, while implicit memory remains stable across this age range. Previously, this developmental dissociation has been attributed to different memory systems, or to confounds with perceptual vs. conceptual processing. Prompted by an alternative developmental framework, the experiments reported here provide evidence against both interpretations. Instead, it will be argued that (a) the implicit-explicit developmental dissociation reflects differences in strategic processing (strategy use and metamemory) across childhood and (b) that implicit memory can show development if a child's knowledge base in the tested domain is developing with age.     

Recognition memory: a review of the critical findings and an integrated theory for relating them

The development of formal models has aided theoretical progress in recognition memory research. Here, I review the findings that are critical for testing them, including behavioral and brain imaging results of single-item recognition, plurality discrimination, and associative recognition experiments under a variety of testing conditions. I also review the major approaches to measurement and process modeling of recognition. The review indicates that several extant dual-process measures of recollection are unreliable, and thus they are unsuitable as a basis for forming strong conclusions. At the process level, however, the retrieval dynamics of recognition memory and the effect of strengthening operations suggest that a recall-to-reject process plays an important role in plurality discrimination and associative recognition, but not necessarily in single-item recognition. A new theoretical framework proposes that the contribution of recollection to recognition depends on whether the retrieval of episodic details improves accuracy, and it organizes the models around the construct of efficiency. Accordingly, subjects adopt strategies that they believe will produce a desired level of accuracy in the shortest amount of time. Several models derived from this framework are shown to account the accuracy, latency, and confidence with which the various recognition tasks are performed.     

Judgments of remembering: the revelation effect in children and adults

When items on a recognition test are presented as a series of increasingly complete fragments rather than being presented initially in their fully intact form, adults' judgments of recognition exhibit an increased tendency to judge items as "old," an illusion of recognition referred to as the revelation effect. The present study used pictorial stimuli to test for a revelation effect with 4-year-olds, 8-year-olds, and adults (N = 76). A reliable revelation effect was found at all ages tested, indicating that the complex fluency-of-processing discrepancy detection and attribution mechanisms thought to be responsible for the effect function similarly across an age range from 4-years-of-age through adulthood. It was also found that the recognition decisions of the 8-year-olds and the adults were affected by how quickly they were able to identify a picture during the revelation phase of the recognition test. This effect was not found with the 4-year-olds, suggesting an age difference in the awareness and strategic use of an implicit memory effect when making explicit judgments of recognition.     

Knowing in advance: the impact of prior event information on memory and event knowledge

We examined the influence of newly acquired information on children's memory and general representation of a personally experienced event. Thirty-five children between the ages of 5 and 7 years participated in the novel event (Visiting the Pirate). The day before participating, children were: (1) provided with new information specific to the up-coming event; (2) engaged in a discussion generally related to the event topic based on existing knowledge; or (3) discussed an unrelated topic. Advance information specific to the event led to better recall and, in particular, to better integration of the experience into a general event representation both soon after the event and at a follow-up interview 4 months later, whereas general discussion of the topic without the event specific information neither enhanced memory reports nor facilitated the integration of event information. Providing information in advance can have significant effects on memory and knowledge acquisition although many variables, including those relating to the specific content of the information, will affect this relation.     

When knowledge is not enough: the phenomenon of goal neglect in preschool children

We argue that the concept of goal neglect can be fruitfully applied to understand children's potential problems in experimental tasks and real-world settings. We describe an assessment of goal neglect developed for administration to preschool children and report data on two measures derived from this task alongside the Dimensional Change Card Sort (DCCS) and an opposite color response inhibition task. The propensity to neglect initial task cues was uniquely linked to response inhibition, whereas neglect of a later cue was uniquely linked to the DCCS. Additional evidence suggests that recovery from neglect can occur and shows that goal neglect varies with the cognitive transparency of the signifying cue. Data demonstrate the importance of, and place constraints on, current theories of information regulation and foreground the notion of graded representations in working memory and executive functioning.     

Going beyond the Human: Christians and Other Transhumanists

Abstract

Today's transhumanists ask good questions about the human future. What about their answers? Is their version of transhumanism useful or acceptable to Christian theology today? No, at least not in its usual form. Transhumanism and Christianity divide on how we think about the cause of the changes that lie ahead for humanity. For transhumanists, the cause or the agent of human transcendence is technology. For Christians, it is grace, the underserved goodness of God who gives life and wholeness to the creation. Our core question is whether it is proper for Christian theology to see technology as contributing in any way to the future that a gracious God has in store for the creation. Does God work through technology? Yes. We may contribute through technology to what God is doing; but it is always God's doing.     

Going beyond the Human: Christians and Other Transhumanists

Transhumanism is a Christian concept. Although today's transhumanism has secularized the original Christian promise for divinization or theosis by adding evolution and technological progress, Christians should critically re‐take ownership of the role transhumanism plays in the sanctification process.     

A matter of focus: Detailed memory in the intentional autobiographical recall of older and younger adults

The intricately interwoven role of detailed autobiographical memory in our daily lives and in our imaginative envisioning of the future is increasingly recognized. But how is the detail-rich nature of autobiographical memory best assessed and, in particular, how can possible aging-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity be most effectively evaluated? This study examined whether a modified interview, involving fewer and time-matched events for older and younger adults, yielded age-related outcomes similar to those that have been previously reported. As in earlier studies, modest age-related changes in the specificity of autobiographical recall were observed, yet the largest most robust effect for both age groups was the substantial proportion of specific details retrieved. Both age groups rated recent memories as significantly less important and as less emotional than more temporally distant events. Our findings counter conceptions of older adults’ autobiographical memories as invariably less episodically rich than those of younger adults.     

Young children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactics in the developing lexicon

A series of three experiments examined children's sensitivity to probabilistic phonotactic structure as reflected in the relative frequencies with which speech sounds occur and co-occur in American English. Children, ages 212 and 312 years, participated in a nonword repetition task that examined their sensitivity to the frequency of individual phonetic segments and to the frequency of combinations of segments. After partialling out ease of articulation and lexical variables, both groups of children repeated higher phonotactic frequency nonwords more accurately than they did low phonotactic frequency nonwords, suggesting sensitivity to phoneme frequency. In addition, sensitivity to individual phonetic segments increased with age. Finally, older children, but not younger children, were sensitive to the frequency of larger (diphone) units. These results suggest not only that young children are sensitive to fine-grained acoustic-phonetic information in the developing lexicon but also that sensitivity to all aspects of the sound structure increases over development. Implications for the acoustic nature of both developing and mature lexical representations are discussed.     

The memory is in the details: Relations between memory for the specific features of events and long-term recall during infancy

The second year of life is marked by pronounced changes in the length of time over which events are remembered. We tested whether the age-related differences are related to differences in memory for the specific features of events. In our study, 16- and 20-month-olds were tested for immediate and long-term recall of individual actions and temporal order of actions of three-step sequences in an elicited imitation paradigm as well as for forced-choice recognition of the specific feature of the props used to produce the sequences. Memory for the props was related to long-term recall of the events only for the 20-month-olds. It accounted for unique variance above and beyond the variance explained by immediate recall of the individual actions and the temporal order of actions of the sequences. The different pattern of relations in the older and younger infants seemingly reflects a developmental difference in the determinants of long-term recall over the second year of life.     

Bayes and blickets: effects of knowledge on causal induction in children and adults

People are adept at inferring novel causal relations, even from only a few observations. Prior knowledge about the probability of encountering causal relations of various types and the nature of the mechanisms relating causes and effects plays a crucial role in these inferences. We test a formal account of how this knowledge can be used and acquired, based on analyzing causal induction as Bayesian inference. Five studies explored the predictions of this account with adults and 4-year-olds, using tasks in which participants learned about the causal properties of a set of objects. The studies varied the two factors that our Bayesian approach predicted should be relevant to causal induction: the prior probability with which causal relations exist, and the assumption of a deterministic or a probabilistic relation between cause and effect. Adults' judgments (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) were in close correspondence with the quantitative predictions of the model, and children's judgments (Experiments 3 and 5) agreed qualitatively with this account.     

Dynamics of the knowledge instinct: Effects of incoherence on the cognitive system

We successfully replicated a study about aesthetic emotions in a different socio-cultural environment. The present results suggest that incoherence is a strong inhibitor for aesthetic chills and verify a positive correlation between pleasure and meaning. These results allow for a scientific study of aesthetic emotions as it is now possible for the experimenter to have two groups of subjects, both exposed to the same stimulation, one group experiencing measurable aesthetic emotions whereas the other does not. We review the literature on the problem of both positive and negative psychogenic shivering and relate this phenomenon to the instinct of knowledge. We discuss the implications of our findings, stress the importance of studying the psychological and physiological effects of incoherence on the central nervous system, introduce a series of hypotheses to be tested in further research and conclude with a plausible explanation for the relation between temperature and cognition in humans.     

Spreading the words: A spacing effect in vocabulary learning

The spacing effect refers to the frequently observed finding that distributing learning across time leads to better retention than massing it into one single study session. In the present study, we examined whether the spacing effect generalises to primary school vocabulary learning. To this aim, children from Grade 3 were taught the meaning of 15 new words using a massed procedure and 15 other new words using a spaced procedure. The 15 words in the massed condition were divided into three sets of five words, and each set was taught three times in one of three learning sessions. In the spaced condition, learning was distributed across the three sessions: All 15 words were practised once in each of the three learning sessions. At the retention tests after 1 week and after 5 weeks we observed that the meaning of spaced words was remembered better than the meaning of massed words.