Another look at retroactive and proactive interference: a quantitative analysis of conversion processes

Traditionally, the causes of interference phenomena were sought in "real" or "hard" memory processes such as unlearning, response competition, or inhibition, which serve to reduce the accessibility of target items. I propose an alternative approach which does not deny the influence of such processes but highlights a second, equally important, source of interference-the conversion (Tulving, 1983) of accessible memory information into memory performance. Conversion is conceived as a problem-solving-like activity in which the rememberer tries to find solutions to a memory task. Conversion-based interference effects are traced to different conversion processes in the experimental and control conditions of interference designs. I present a simple theoretical model that quantitatively predicts the resulting amount of interference. In two paired-associate learning experiments using two different types of memory tests, these predictions were corroborated. Relations of the present approach to traditional accounts of interference phenomena and implications for eyewitness testimony are discussed.     

内隐与外显记忆的编码与提取非对称性关系

实验采用“学习-测验”范式, 考察在编码或提取中分别附加的干扰任务对内隐测验或外显测验中获得的ERP新旧效应产生的影响。结果表明, 在内隐测验中, 编码干扰对随后测验中的ERP新旧效应没有产生影响, 而提取干扰却改变了300~500ms新旧效应的脑区位置, 破坏了500~700ms新旧效应; 与之相反, 在外显测验中, 编码干扰破坏了500~700ms新旧效应, 而提取干扰对这一效应没有产生影响, 即编码与提取干扰对内隐或外显测验中的ERP新旧效应都产生了非对称性的影响, 但又存在着差异, 从而为两种记忆在编码与提取加工的关系上存在的分离现象提供了神经生理方面的证据。     

编码与提取干扰对内隐和外显记忆的非对称性影响

以往研究表明在外显记忆中,编码与提取加工存在着非对称性,但在内隐记忆中,二者的关系并不明确,因此实验采用“学习-再认”范式,考察在编码或提取中分别附加的干扰任务对词汇判断或再认产生的影响。结果证实编码与提取干扰对内隐或外显记忆都具有非对称性的影响,但又存在着差异,即编码干扰会导致随后外显记忆成绩显著减少,而提取干扰对其影响较小,相反,编码干扰对随后内隐测验中启动效应的影响较小,但提取干扰会破坏启动效应,从而为内隐记忆和外显记忆的分离提供了进一步的证据     

Competition between two memory traces for long-term recognition memory

Previous studies investigating the processes which underlie memory consolidation focused almost exclusively on isolated learning events. Here I studied the competition of two similar memory traces for consolidation non-conditioned recognition memory in adult male C57BL/6JOlaHsd mice using the olfactory cues based social discrimination procedure. My results show that the interference phenomena that cause forgetting are time-dependent, and that retroactive interference can be discriminated from proactive interference. Furthermore, both types of interference can be suppressed by subcutaneous anisomycin treatment immediately after presentation of the interference stimulus. These findings imply that interference phenomena, which result from the competition of two similar memory traces for long-term recognition memory, are related to the progress of memory consolidation and linked to protein synthesis.     

Attribution of movement: Potential links between subjective reports of agency and output monitoring

According to agency memory theory, individuals decide whether “I did it” based on a memory trace of “I am doing it”. The purpose of this study was to validate the agency memory theory. To this end, several hand actions were individually presented as samples, and participants were asked to perform the sample action, observe the performance of that action by another person, or imagine performing the action. Online feedback received by the participants during the action was manipulated among the different conditions, and output monitoring, in which participants were asked whether they had performed each hand action, was conducted. The rate at which respondents thought that they themselves had performed the action was higher when visual feedback was unaltered than when it was altered (Experiment 1A), and this tendency was observed across all types of altered feedback (Experiment 1B). The observation of an action performed by the hand of another person did not increase the rate at which respondents thought that they themselves had performed the action unless the participants actually did perform the action (Experiments 2A and 2B). In Experiment 3, a relationship was observed between the subjective feeling that “I am the one who is causing an action” and the memory that “I did perform the action”. These experiments support the hypothesis that qualitative information and sense of “self” are tagged in a memory trace and that such tags can be used as cues for judgements when the memory is related to the “self”.     

Sympathetic action in the seventeenth century: human and natural

The category of sympathy marks a number of basic divisions in early modern approaches to action explanations, whether for human agency or for change in the wider natural world. Some authors were critical of using sympathy to explain change. They call such principles “unintelligible” or assume they involve “mysterious” action at a distance. Others, including Margaret Cavendish, Anne Conway, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, appeal to sympathy to capture natural phenomena (yawn contagion, magnetism), or to supply a backbone to their metaphysics. Here I discuss how concerns about sympathetic actions form at least a partial background for differing seventeenth-century conceptions of what it is to explain action. I argue that critics of sympathy generally insist on an “atomistic” approach to action explanation, which makes primitively relational phenomena come out as problematic. Proponents of sympathy, by contrast, allow for a more holistic approach to action explanation, which allows for such basic connections. Hence, divergent attitudes toward sympathetic action in part explain differences in approaches to explanation. I conclude by showing how some of these core concerns fade into the background when in the eighteenth-century sympathy gets psychologised and individualised.     

Disruption of short-term memory by distractor speech: Does content matter?

Four experiments replicate the finding that auditory distractors that are lexically identical to the visual target items dramatically increase the irrelevant-speech effect on serial recall. This effect was previously attributed to interference of incompatible order cues. The present results suggest that a different interpretation of this effect is required. Experiment 2 replicates the order congruence effect observed by Hughes and Jones (2005), but shows that this effect is most likely due to an attenuation of interference that is caused by strategic attention shifts to the nominally irrelevant material. Experiments 3 and 4 show that the between-stream similarity effect generalizes to a condition in which the distractor items were drawn from the same category as the targets, but were not identical to them. By showing that nonacoustic distractor features can increase interference in serial recall of lists of supposedly “meaningless” items such as digits or consonants, the results are most consistent with models that postulate an integration of short-term and long-term memory such as the embedded-processes model and the feature model and are inconsistent with classical structural accounts of memory.     

Spatial distinctiveness effect in categorisation

The aim of the present study was to show that the probability of an item being retrieved is proportional to its spatial distinctiveness, and that this distinctiveness effect can be obtained in an implicit memory task. The participants were presented with two phases in which they had to categorise pictures of objects as either “kitchen utensils” or “do-it-yourself tools”. In our encoding phase, the pictures were successively presented in different positions on the screen. The positions were arranged in one of two different configurations: a “distinctive condition” in which the pictures were placed in two circles, one central and one peripheral, such that the distance between the pictures was greater when they were in a peripheral position than in a central position, and a “nondistinctive” condition, in which the distance between the pictures was constant irrespective of their central or peripheral position. In the test phase, the same pictures were presented for categorisation, mixed with new pictures at the centre of the screen. The results clearly confirmed our expectations.     

Flashbacks,intrusions, mind-wandering – Instances of an involuntary memory spectrum: A commentary on Takarangi,Strange, and Lindsay (2014)

In their paper, Takarangi, Strange, and Lindsay (2014) showed in two experiments that participants who had witnessed a shocking film frequently “mind-wandered without awareness” about the content of the film. More importantly, they equated this effect with the occurrence of traumatic intrusions. In this commentary, we argue that the authors adhered to conceptually ambiguous terms, and thereby unintentionally contribute to an already existing conceptual blur in the trauma-memory field. We postulate that clear definitions are urgently needed for phenomena such as intrusions, flashbacks, and mind-wandering, when using them in the context of trauma memory. Furthermore, our proposal is that these phenomena can fall under a spectrum of different involuntary memory instances. We propose that by adopting stricter definitions and viewing them as separate, but interrelated phenomena, different lines of trauma-memory research can be reconciled, which would considerably advance the field.     

True lies: Self-stabilization without self-deception

Self-deception entails apparent conceptual paradoxes and poses the dilemma between two competing needs: the need for stability of the self-concept, on the one hand, and the need to accept reality, on the other. It is argued, first, that conceptual difficulties can be avoided by distinguishing two levels of explanation. Whereas, in a personal language, “the person” deceives him- or her-self, a cognitive (“subpersonal”) approach explains this self-deception by reference to the interplay of cognitive processes of which the person is not aware. Second, the tension between stability and adjustment of the self can be resolved by self-immunization, which maintains the stability of central self-conceptions by adjusting peripheral aspects and their diagnostic value for the central concepts. Processes of self-immunization were investigated in a series of studies operating on both levels of explanation. Implications for psychological explanations of personal phenomena such as self-images and self-insight are discussed.     

干扰刺激类型对内隐记忆提取干扰的调节

为了探讨内隐记忆提取干扰效应是否敏于注意资源的变化,该实验沿用前期经典的“学习-测验”范式,通过在提取阶段同时设置两种不同刺激类型的干扰任务:箭头干扰和汉字干扰,以此来探讨内隐记忆提取干扰效应的本质所在。结果发现,不同提取干扰条件对内隐记忆产生不同程度的影响,汉字干扰对内隐记忆的影响比箭头产生的干扰更大。结果表明,干扰刺激类型会调节内隐记忆提取干扰效应的大小,证实内隐记忆提取干扰敏于注意资源的变化。     

Converting to Continuity: Temporality and Self in Eastern Orthodox Conversion Narratives

Based on interviews with converts to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in the United States, this article documents and analyzes a narrative form in which conversion is described as the progressive discovery of a latent religious self that was part of one's life all along, or what I term a conversion to continuity. These findings contrast markedly with those of most contemporary conversion research, which emphasize the narration of a dramatic temporal break between converts’ past and present religious selves (epitomized by the evangelical “born‐again” genre). I examine how and why temporal continuity was a characteristic feature of these conversion accounts and demonstrate how such narratives helped constitute forms of religious experience and self‐identity that differ in important respects from those documented in previous studies. In light of these findings, I argue for a reconceptualization of continuity and discontinuity within processes of religious identity change as an institutionally anchored figure/ground relationship as opposed to an either/or dichotomy. I also highlight promising avenues for future comparative research on the relationships between time, narrative, and subjectivity across religious and secular contexts.     

Updating working memory in aircraft noise and speech noise causes different fMRI activations

The present study used fMRI/BOLD neuroimaging to investigate how visual‐verbal working memory is updated when exposed to three different background‐noise conditions: speech noise, aircraft noise and silence. The number‐updating task that was used can distinguish between “substitution processes,” which involve adding new items to the working memory representation and suppressing old items, and “exclusion processes,” which involve rejecting new items and maintaining an intact memory set. The current findings supported the findings of a previous study by showing that substitution activated the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the posterior medial frontal cortex and the parietal lobes, whereas exclusion activated the anterior medial frontal cortex. Moreover, the prefrontal cortex was activated more by substitution processes when exposed to background speech than when exposed to aircraft noise. These results indicate that (a) the prefrontal cortex plays a special role when task‐irrelevant materials should be denied access to working memory and (b) that, when compensating for different types of noise, either different cognitive mechanisms are involved or those cognitive mechanisms that are involved are involved to different degrees.     

Iconic memory: A reply to Professor Holding

Professor Holding has argued that the partial report superiority normally taken as evidence for the existence of iconic memory might instead be due to cue anticipation or output interference. I have suggested that both of these alternative explanations are inconsistent with the finding that the partial report superiority diminishes rapidly with increasing cue delay. In addition, Sperling’s original partial report experiment was designed in such a way that cue anticipation could not have occurred; and both his results with selection by letter vs number and Averbach and Coriell’s bar-marker results indicate that output interference effects are absent or negligible in tachistoscopic experiments. Consequently, I have concluded that the partial report superiority, and especially its decline with increasing delay, remains as strong evidence in favor of the conventional view of iconic memory. Furthermore, if this view were wrong, there would remain no way of giving a satisfactory account of (a) Averbach and Coriell’s results, (b) “direct” investigations of visual persistence, or (c) integration and interruption effects in backward visual masking.     

The Duty of Memory Revisited: Ricoeur’s Contribution to a Crisis in French Historiography

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different “camps” in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur’s solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of “defatalizing” the past.

     

Gist-based memory for prices and “better buys” in younger and older adults

Ageing typically leads to various memory deficits which results in older adults’ tendency to remember more general information and rely on gist memory. The current study examined if younger and older adults could remember which of two comparable grocery items (e.g., two similar but different jams) was paired with a lower price (the “better buy”). Participants studied lists of grocery items and their prices, in which the two items in each category were presented consecutively (Experiment 1), or separated by intervening items (Experiment 2). At test, participants were asked to identify the “better buy” and recall the price of both items. There were negligible age-related differences for the “better buy” in Experiment 1, but age-related differences were present in Experiment 2 when there were greater memory demands involved in comparing the two items. Together, these findings suggest that when price information of two items can be evaluated and compared within a short period of time, older adults can form stable gist-based memory for prices, but that this is impaired with longer delays. We relate the findings to age-related changes in the use of gist and verbatim memory when remembering prices, as well as the associative deficit account of cognitive ageing.     

Memory belief is weak

Recently there has been extensive debate over whether “belief is weak”, viz, whether the epistemic standard for belief is lower than for assertion or knowledge. While most current studies focus on notions such as “ordinary belief” and “outright belief”, this paper purports to advance this debate by investigating a specific type of belief; memory belief. It is argued that (outright) beliefs formed on the basis of episodic memories are “weak” due to two forms of “entitlement inequality”. My key argument is thus twofold. First, by rejecting the epistemic theory of memory, I argue that one can be entitled to belief but not to knowledge. Second, by scrutinising a recent defence of the belief norm of assertion, it will be demonstrated that belief is weaker than assertion, as long as we expect one to match words with deeds.     

Improving time discrimination in children and adults in a temporal bisection task: The effects of feedback and no forced choice on decision and memory processes

In children aged 5 and 8 years old as well as in adults, Experiment 1 tested the effect of feedback on temporal performance using a bisection task. Experiment 2 added a no-forced-choice condition by giving the participants the possibility of responding “I don't know”. The results of Experiment 1 showed that providing feedback increased the bisection point value (point of subjective equality) in all age groups and increased sensitivity to time in the youngest children. The results of Experiment 2 showed that the proportion of “I don't know” responses peaked at the probe duration close to the arithmetic mean of the two anchor durations and decreased as the distance from this central value increased in both the adults and the 8-year-olds. In the 5-year-olds, the proportion of “I don't know” responses was lower and remained constant whatever the probe duration values. Unlike in the youngest children, giving the adults and the 8-year-olds the opportunity to respond “I don't know” increased their sensitivity to time. The modelling of our data suggests that providing feedback in a temporal bisection task affects both the memory and the decision processes. However, whereas the feedback-related effect had a similar effect on decision processes across the age groups, it had an opposite effect on memory processes in the 5-year-olds and the older participants, decreasing the variability of the memory representation of the anchor durations in the former while increasing it in the latter. Finally, in bisection, feedback only improved temporal performance when the memory for duration was imprecise as in the case of the children.     

Der biopsychosoziale Krankheitsbegriff in der Praxis

Many of the recent approaches in diagnostics and therapy, e. g. the behavioral medicine, consider themselves as “holistic” or “multidimensional”. By closer consideration, however, it turns out, that while more or less referring back to the system-theoretically founded “bio-psycho-social model” (Engel, Weiner et al.) its implications are not taken seriously in practice. Presenting a concrete work project (“simultaneous diagnostics”) we will show, how to implement this (theoretically potent) bio-psycho-social conception of disease in clinical practice. It can be clearly seen, that it cannot replace the conventional reductional approach of medicine which focusses on the examination of single processes and structures under simplified conditions. On the contrary, such reductionism remains indispensable, because to be able to grasp any higher (more complex) structure one has to know its elements. Comprehensive explanation of phenomena, however, is not possible in a reductionist way. Therefore, the bio-psycho-social disease model in its operationalization is not a new way of medicine, rather an expanded approach to diagnostical and therapeutic issues.