Dissociating familiarity from recollection in human recognition memory: Different rates of forgetting over short retention intervals

Two functionally distinct forms of recognition memory have been identified in human and nonhuman species—the ability to recollect qualitative information about previous events, and the ability to differentiate between familiar and novel stimuli. Separate dual-process theories have been developed in the animal and human literatures to account for these findings. However, it is not clear whether these theories describe the same two underlying memory processes. On the basis of animal studies of medial temporal lobe function, familiarity is expected to exhibit disproportionately fast forgetting compared with recollection over short retention intervals. We tested this prediction in healthy human subjects by examining recognition forgetting rates across a range of 8–32 intervening items and found significant forgetting in the accuracy of familiarity-based discriminations and no evidence of forgetting in the accuracy of recollection-based discriminations. In agreement with the results from nonhuman species, the present results indicate that item familiarity decreases more rapidly than recollection over short retention intervals.     

Facial affect recognition in criminal psychopaths

Prior studies provide consistent evidence of deficits for psychopaths in processing verbal emotional material but are inconsistent regarding nonverbal emotional material. To examine whether psychopaths exhibit general versus specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing, 34 psychopaths and 33 nonpsychopaths identified with Hare's (R. D. Hare, 1991) Psychopathy Checklist--Revised were asked to complete a facial affect recognition test. Slides of prototypic facial expressions were presented. Three hypotheses regarding hemispheric lateralization anomalies in psychopaths were also tested (right-hemisphere dysfunction, reduced lateralization, and reversed lateralization). Psychopaths were less accurate than nonpsychopaths at classifying facial affect under conditions promoting reliance on right-hemisphere resources and displayed a specific deficit in classifying disgust. These findings demonstrate that psychopaths exhibit specific deficits in nonverbal emotional processing.     

The perceived position of the hand in space

This paper reports a series of experiments of the perceived position of the hand in egocentric space. The experiments focused on the bias in the proprioceptively perceived position of the hand at a series of locations spanning the midline from left to right. Perceived position was tested in a matching paradigm, in which subjects indicated the perceived position of a target, which could have been either a visual stimulus or their own fingertip, by placing the index finger of the other hand in the corresponding location on the other side of a fixed surface. Both the constant error, or bias, and the variable error, or consistency of matching attempts, were measured. Experiment 1 showed that (1) there is a far-left advantage in matching tasks, such that errors in perceived position are significantly lower in extreme-left positions than in extreme-right positions, and (2) there is a strong hand-bias effect in the absence of vision, such that the perceived positions of the left and right index fingertips held in the same actual target position in fact differ significantly. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that this hand-bias effect is genuinely due to errors in the perceived position of the matched hand, and not to the attempt at matching it with the other hand. These results suggest that there is no unifying representation of egocentric, proprioceptive space. Rather, separate representations appear to be maintained for each effector. The bias of these representations may reflect the motor function of that effector.     

Predicting individual false alarm rates and signal detection theory: A role for remembering

The relationships between hit, remember, and false alarm rates were examined across individual subjects in three remember-know experiments in order to determine whether signal detection theory would be consistent with the observed data. The experimental data differed from signal detection predictions in two critical ways. First, remember reports were unrelated, or slightly negatively related, to the commission of false alarms. Second, both response types (remembers and false alarms) were uniquely related to hit rates, which demonstrated that the hit rate cannot be viewed as the result of a single underlying strength process. These results are consistent with the dual-process signal detection model of Yonelinas (1994), in which performance is determined by two independent processes--retrieval of categorical context information (remembering) and discriminations based on continuous item strength. Remember and false alarm rates selectively tap these processes, whereas the hit rate is jointly determined. Monte Carlo simulations in which the dual-process model was used successfully reproduced the pattern in the experimental data, whereas simulations in which a signal detection model, with separate "old" and "remember" criteria, was used, did not. The results demonstrate the utility of examining individual differences in response types when one is evaluating memory models.     

Activation of Syntactic Information During Language Production

In order to produce utterances, people must draw upon syntactic information. This paper considers how evidence from syntactic priming experiments casts light upon the nature of syntactic information activation during language production. We examine three issues: the way in which syntactic information is initially activated, the circumstances under which activation may persist or dissipate, and the effects of residual activation of syntactic information on subsequent language production. Evidence from dialog experiments suggests that the information that is initially activated is the same in both production and comprehension. Evidence about the persistence of activation following initial activation is more complex. We suggest that persistence may be related to the potential relevance of the information for subsequent syntactic processing. We show that current evidence is inconclusive about how long syntactic information remains activated.     

Key Word Index Volume 4

Other Index

Key Word Index Volume 4     

The Factor Structure of the Beavers Interactional Scales

Confirmatory factor analysis and regression analyses of the Beavers Interactional Scales did not appear to support the model offered by its developers, namely, several specified family attributes contributing respectively to two global factors of Family Competence and Family Style. Moreover, regression analysis indicated that only three of 12 items predicted raters' assessments of Global Family Health, and one of seven items predicted Global Family Style. Individuals interested in the family dynamic centripetal/centrifugal might best think of that as a unitary entity and rate it accordingly.     

Secondary prevention interventions for young drug users: a systematic review of the evidence

This paper reviews the international scientific evidence on the effectiveness of secondary prevention interventions for young drug users. The review provides insight into the effectiveness of interventions that have been evaluated using moderately strong research designs. Most of the studies included are from the United States of America. Some interventions are effective in reducing drug use and associated problems while others have no or mixed effect. Those successful in reducing drug use include behavior therapy, Minnesota 12-step programs, residential care, and general drug treatment. Those with either no effect or mixed effect include schools interventions. Involving parents and other agencies may enhance an intervention's effect. There is a lack of good quality studies outside the USA. Future interventions should focus on either low- or high-risk groups of young drug users. Future research should be conducted on a wider range of services for young people and include non-medical outcomes such as communication skills, schooling, employment, family relations, and economic costs.     

Generalizability of carry-over effects in the emotional Stroop task

The emotional Stroop task has been the most widely used task to examine attentional bias to emotionally salient stimuli. In one format of this task, words are presented to participants in a mixed randomized or quasi-randomized sequence. Using a mixed smoking Stroop task, we have previously demonstrated that smokers are slower to respond to words which follow smoking-related words than words which follow neutral words. Here we show that this carry-over effect is present in heroin addicts-but not control subjects-in a heroin Stroop task, and in normal subjects in a stress Stroop task. Thus, the effect generalizes to other populations. In addition, an examination of the studies that have collected data from both mixed and blocked formats provides converging evidence for the presence of carry-over effects. We discuss the implications of the carry-over effect for research using the emotional Stroop task.     

Enduring consequences of experimentally induced biases in interpretation

Previous research has demonstrated that it is possible to induce biases in the interpretation of ambiguous text passages by training. Participants consistently trained to interpret emotionally ambiguous passages in either a negative or positive direction show training-congruent effects when presented with new ambiguous material. These training effects are demonstrated by participants' subsequent recognition ratings for disambiguating sentences, which represent both possible meanings of the novel ambiguous test passages. In this series of experiments, we investigated the durability of these training effects over time spans of up to 1 day and found them to be robust. The findings encourage us to believe that induced biases may serve as a useful analogue to those observed clinically.