The development of memory efficiency and value-directed remembering across the life span: a cross-sectional study of memory and selectivity

Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age. The present study examined this in different age groups across the life span (N = 320, 5-96 years old). A selectivity task was used in which participants were asked to study and recall items worth different point values in order to maximize their point score. This procedure allowed for measures of memory quantity/capacity (number of words recalled) and memory efficiency/selectivity (the recall of high-value items relative to low-value items). Age-related differences were found for memory capacity, as young adults recalled more words than the other groups. However, in terms of selectivity, younger and older adults were more selective than adolescents and children. The dissociation between these measures across the life span illustrates important age-related differences in terms of memory capacity and the ability to selectively remember high-value information.     

Perceptual organization without perception. The subliminal learning of global contour

A critical step in visual perceptual processing is integrating local visual elements into contours so that shapes can be derived from them. It is often assumed that contour integration may reflect hardwired coding of low-level visual features. In this study, we present novel evidence indicating that integration of local elements into contours can be learned subliminally, despite being irrelevant to the training task and despite the local properties of the display varying randomly during training. Learning occurred only when contours were consistently paired with task-relevant targets--echoing the findings of previous studies on subliminal learning of low-level features. Our data indicate that task-irrelevant, exposure-based learning extends beyond local low-level visual features and may play a critical role at multiple levels of visual perceptual organization.     

A Randomized Trial of a Mental Health Consumer-Managed Alternative to Civil Commitment for Acute Psychiatric Crisis

This experiment compared the effectiveness of an unlocked, mental health consumer-managed, crisis residential program (CRP) to a locked, inpatient psychiatric facility (LIPF) for adults civilly committed for severe psychiatric problems. Following screening and informed consent, participants (n = 393) were randomized to the CRP or the LIPF and interviewed at baseline and at 30-day, 6-month, and 1-year post admission. Outcomes were costs, level of functioning, psychiatric symptoms, self-esteem, enrichment, and service satisfaction. Treatment outcomes were compared using hierarchical linear models. Participants in the CRP experienced significantly greater improvement on interviewer-rated and self-reported psychopathology than did participants in the LIPF condition; service satisfaction was dramatically higher in the CRP condition. CRP-style facilities are a viable alternative to psychiatric hospitalization for many individuals facing civil commitment.     

Learning to fail: reoccurring tip-of-the-tongue states

This experiment looked at elicited tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states to test the hypothesis that making an error once makes people more likely to make it again, via an implicit learning mechanism. We present a methodology that allows us to determine whether error reoccurrences are due to error learning or to the fact that some items tend to pose repeated difficulty to participants. We elicited TOTs by asking participants to supply the word that fitted a given definition. Each time participants indicated that they were experiencing a TOT they were randomly assigned a delay of either 10 or 30 seconds, during which they were asked to keep trying to retrieve the item. After the delay, the correct answer was supplied. We argue that this longer delay in a TOT state amounts to greater implicit learning of the erroneous state. A period of 48 hours later, participants returned to the laboratory and were asked to supply the words for the same definitions as those seen on Day 1. Results showed that TOTs were almost twice as likely to reoccur on words that had elicited a TOT and been followed by a long delay than on those that had been followed by a short delay.     

The Role of Women's Relationships With Their Partners in Their Adjustment Following Prenatal Genetic Testing1

This study explored how aspects of the couple relationship contributed to the adjustment of 95 women who underwent prenatal diagnostic (PND) testing because of advanced maternal age (AMA). Participants completed self‐report measures prior to genetic counseling (T1), during the waiting period for PND test results (T2), and after normal results were received (T3). At T2, distress was predicted by the degree to which women approached the PND decision jointly with their partners, and marital adjustment was predicted by women's satisfaction with the support received from their partners. Marital adjustment at T3 was predicted by earlier levels of partner agreement about PND‐related issues. Results suggest that the couple relationship has the potential to facilitate or hinder women's experience of PND testing.     

Automatic guidance of attention from working memory

Recent research has shown interactions between the process of keeping information 'online' in working memory, and the processes that select relevant information for a response. In particular, our ability to select stimuli in the environment can be modulated by whether the stimuli match the current contents of working memory. Guidance of selection from working memory occurs automatically, even when it is detrimental to performance. Neurophysiological data, from functional brain imaging, indicate that the interaction between working memory and attention is based on neuronal mechanisms distinct from the processes mediating 'bottom-up' priming effects from implicit memory. We discuss the importance of 'top-down' influences from working memory on the 'early' deployment of attention and on the processes that gate visual information into awareness.     

Sensory interactions in bilateral kinesthesia

Three experiments are reported that examine the masking effect on the detection of kinesthetic targets from noise presented simultaneously on the same hand or on a different hand as the target. Performance was facilitated when noise on the two hands was correlated versus uncorrelated or when it occurred on just one hand. The data are consistent with correlated input on the two hands being compared and used to reduce noise effects. Moreover, participants ignored uncorrelated noise from nontarget hands when they knew in which hand the targets would occur. There was no effect of shifts from uncorrelated to correlated noise 200 msec prior to targets, suggesting that such bottom-up changes were insufficient to induce comparison across the hands. In contrast, shifts from correlated to uncorrelated noise 200 msec prior to the target had performance at the same level as that with uncorrelated noise throughout the trial. This result indicates that the loss of correlation was detected within this interval and thatwhen the target's location was known, participants were then able to switch attention to the target hand. The interactions between attentional filtering and the correlation on the processing of bilateral kinesthetic inputs are discussed.     

Visual category-selectivity for faces, places and objects emerges along different developmental trajectories

The organization of category-selective regions in ventral visual cortex is well characterized in human adults. We investigated a crucial, previously unaddressed, question about how this organization emerges developmentally. We contrasted the developmental trajectories for face-, object-, and place-selective activation in the ventral visual cortex in children, adolescents, and adults. Although children demonstrated adult-like organization in object- and place-related cortex, as a group they failed to show consistent face-selective activation in classical face regions. The lack of a consistent neural signature for faces was attributable to (1) reduced face-selectivity and extent of activation within the regions that will become the FFA, OFA, and STS in adults, and (2) smaller volumes and considerable variability in the locus of face-selective activation in individual children. In contrast, adolescents showed an adult-like pattern of face-selective activation, although it was more right-lateralized. These findings reveal critical age-related differences in the emergence of category-specific functional organization in the visual cortex and support a model of brain development in which specialization emerges from interactions between experience-dependent learning and the maturing brain.     

The role of motor simulation in action perception: a neuropsychological case study

Research on embodied cognition stresses that bodily and motor processes constrain how we perceive others. Regarding action perception the most prominent hypothesis is that observed actions are matched to the observer’s own motor representations. Previous findings demonstrate that the motor laws that constrain one’s performance also constrain one’s perception of others’ actions. The present neuropsychological case study asked whether neurological impairments affect a person’s performance and action perception in the same way. The results showed that patient DS, who suffers from a frontal brain lesion, not only ignored target size when performing movements but also when asked to judge whether others can perform the same movements. In other words DS showed the same violation of Fitts’s law when performing and observing actions. These results further support the assumption of close perception action links and the assumption that these links recruit predictive mechanisms residing in the motor system.     

The development of a general associative learning account of skill acquisition in a relative arrival-time judgment task

Current theory assumes that individuals only use information from the immediate environment to perform relative arrival-time judgment tasks. This article presents a theoretical analysis of the memory requirements of this task. The authors present an analysis of the inputs to the memory system and the processes that map those inputs onto outputs. The analysis generates a set of predictions regarding the specificity of transfer and the role of context during learning. In 3 experiments, participants decided whether pairs of aircraft would violate a minimum separation standard or pass each other safely. Participants were presented with pairs of aircraft in which properties of the pair varied along 3 structural and 3 surface dimensions. Contexts were defined by the co-occurrence of specific values along stimulus dimensions and the use of a neutral label. The results suggest that transfer was limited by the dimensions that were varied in training and the context in which those dimensions were varied. The discussion focuses on the problems that complex tasks like relative judgment pose for associative learning mechanisms and the development of precise models of cognition.