Forgetting to remember: the functional relationship of decay and interference

Functional decay theory proposes that decay and interference, historically viewed as competing accounts of forgetting, are instead functionally related. The theory posits that (a) when an attribute must be updated frequently in memory, its current value decays to prevent interference with later values, and (b) the decay rate adapts to the rate of memory updates. Behavioral predictions of the theory were tested in a task-switching paradigm in which memory for the current task had to be updated every few seconds, hundreds of times. Reaction times and error rates both increased gradually between updates, reflecting decay of memory for the current task. This performance decline was slower when updates were less frequent, reflecting a decrease in the decay rate following a decrease in the update rate. A candidate mechanism for controlled decay is proposed, the data are reconciled with practice effects, and implications for models of executive control are discussed.     

Reconsolidation Reconsidered

Some of the considerations that led to a consolidation interpretation of retrograde amnesia (RA), which states that RA results from the disruption of memory processing and storage when neural activity is interrupted by a brain insult, are reviewed here. The time-dependent gradient of memory loss (i.e., new memories are more vulnerable to amnesia than old memories) that characterizes RA seemed to fit nicely with the notion of a cascade of cellular events occurring during the immediate post-acquisition period that would transform a labile representation into a more stable form (i.e., consolidate the memory). However, a variety of observations came to challenge the storage-disruption model, and among these was the finding of amnesia for old but reactivated memories. A recent study by Nader, Schafe, and LeDoux (2000) provides an important analytic extension of the work on "reconsolidation" by showing that inhibition of protein synthesis in the lateral and basal nuclei of the amygdala immediately following the reactivation of old memory will induce retrograde amnesia. We offer a retrieval-oriented conceptualization to account for the temporal gradient and the "reconsolidation" phenomena.     

Overt and covert object-based attention

To examine the role of perceptual object representations in the control of eye movements and attention, a pair of experiments adapted the object-cuing paradigm of Egly, Driver, and Rafal (1994) to require eye movements. Displays were pairs of adjacent rectangles, each containing two characters. Observers were asked to make a speeded judgment of a target character’s orientation, and a cue was provided prior to target/distractor onset to indicate the target’s likely location. Gaze-contingent presentation of target and distractors was used to demand overt scanning of displays. Eye movements during task performance evinced two forms of object-based effects. First, saccades following fixation on an invalidly cued item were more likely to be made within the cued rectangle than between rectangles. Second, saccades within the cued rectangle were preceded by shorter dwell times than saccades between rectangles. Extrafoveal processing of stimuli within the cued rectangle, however, was not facilitated, suggesting that covert attention was not allocated more densely within the cued than within the uncued object.     

Regulation of Negative Affect During Mother–Child Problem-Solving Interactions: Adolescent Depressive Status and Family Processes

Despite recent suggestions that depression can be conceptualized as a disorder of affect regulation, relatively little research has focused on affect regulation skills in depressed individuals. This paper investigated whether depressed adolescents (N = 25) differ from nondepressed adolescents (N 25) on two indices of affect regulation (i.e., duration of negative affective states and reciprocity of maternal negative affect) as well as whether these indices are related to microsocial family interactional processes. Analyses revealed that depressed teens differed from their nondepressed peers with regard to duration of negative affective states but not in their likelihood of reciprocating negative affect. Additionally, indices of adolescent affect regulation were related to family interactional processes. Duration of depressive affect was positively associated with maternal display of facilitative behavior contingent on adolescent depressive behavior. Duration of aggressive behavior was inversely related to maternal problem-solving responses to aggressive behavior. Finally, adolescent reciprocity of maternal depressive and aggressive behaviors was strongly associated with mothers' reciprocity of adolescents' negative affective behavior.     

The development of the Cultural Health Attributions Questionnaire (CHAQ)

Current general health belief measures that are used to assess health behaviors do not capture the full range of health beliefs present among Latinos. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measure of Latino health beliefs, the Cultural Health Attributions Questionnaire (CHAQ). Three hundred forty participants were recruited in 2 metropolitan areas with large Latino populations. Exploratory factor analysis revealed 2 highly interpretable 12-item subscales: the Equity Attribution and the Behavioral-Environmental Attribution scales. Examination of the relationships between the subscales and measures of acculturation provided evidence of construct validity. Moreover, the prediction of health care behavior by the CHAQ also indicated initial criterion validity.     

Multiplicative effects of intention on the perception of bistable apparent motion

When viewing ambiguous displays, observers can, via intentional efforts, affect which perceptual interpretation they perceive. Specifically, observers can increase the probability of seeing the desired percept. Little is known, however, about how intentional efforts interact with sensory inputs in exerting their effects on perception. In two experiments, the current study explored the possibility that intentional efforts might operate by multiplicatively enhancing the stimulus-based activation of the desired perceptual representation. Such a possibility is suggested by recent neurophysiological research on attention. In support of this idea, when we presented bistable apparent motion displays under stimulus conditions differentially favoring one motion percept over the other, observers' intentional efforts to see a particular motion were generally more effective under conditions in which stimulus factors favored the intended motion percept.     

Causal attribution and hindsight bias for economic developments

Hindsight bias for economic developments was studied, with particular focus on the moderating effects of attitudes and causal attributions. Participants (N = 263) rated the likelihood of several economic developments 6 months before and 6 months after the euro introduction in 2002. Hindsight bias occurred selectively for attitude-consistent economic developments: Euro supporters showed stronger hindsight bias for positive developments than for negative ones; euro opponents showed the opposite pattern. Causal attribution further moderated the hindsight bias: participants who perceived a strong connection between the euro introduction and specific economic developments showed higher attitude-consistent hindsight bias than participants who perceived those developments as unrelated to the euro. It is argued that hindsight bias serves to stabilize subjective representations of the economy.     

Do People Know How Their Personality Has Changed? Correlates of Perceived and Actual Personality Change in Young Adulthood

Abstract How much do we think our personality changes over time? How well do our perceptions of change correspond with actual personality change? Two hundred and ninety students completed measures of the Big Five personality traits when they first entered college. Four years later, they completed the same measures and rated the degree to which they believed they had changed on each dimension. Participants tended to view themselves as having changed substantially, and perceptions of change showed some correspondence with actual personality change. Perceived and actual change showed theoretically meaningful correlations with a host of variables related to different aspects of college achievement and adjustment.     

Nonverbal behavior and the vertical dimension of social relations: a meta-analysis

The vertical dimension of interpersonal relations (relating to dominance, power, and status) was examined in association with nonverbal behaviors that included facial behavior, gaze, interpersonal distance, body movement, touch, vocal behaviors, posed encoding skill, and others. Results were separately summarized for people's beliefs (perceptions) about the relation of verticality to nonverbal behavior and for actual relations between verticality and nonverbal behavior. Beliefs/perceptions were stronger and much more prevalent than were actual verticality effects. Perceived and actual relations were positively correlated across behaviors. Heterogeneity was great, suggesting that verticality is not a psychologically uniform construct in regard to nonverbal behavior. Finally, comparison of the verticality effects to those that have been documented for gender in relation to nonverbal behavior revealed only a limited degree of parallelism.