What's in a name for memory errors? Implications and ethical issues arising from the use of the term "false memory" for errors in memory for details

The term "false memories" has been used to refer to suggestibility experiments in which whole events are apparently confabulated and in media accounts of contested memories of childhood abuse. Since 1992 psychologists have increasingly used the term "false memory" when discussing memory errors for details, such as specific words within lists. Use of the term to refer to errors in details is a shift in language away from other terms used historically (e.g., "memory intrusions"). We empirically examine this shift in language and discuss implications of the new use of the term "false memories." Use of the term presents serious ethical challenges to the data-interpretation process by encouraging over-generalization and misapplication of research findings on word memory to social issues.     

Selection from perceptual and conceptual representations

The lateral prefrontal cortex has been implicated in a wide variety of functions that guide our behavior, and one such candidate function is selection. Selection mechanisms have been described in several domains spanning different stages of processing, from visual attention to response execution. Here, we consider two such mechanisms: selecting relevant information from the perceptual world (e.g., visual selective attention) and selecting relevant information from conceptual representations (e.g., selecting a specific attribute about an object from long-term memory). Although the mechanisms involved in visual selective attention have been well characterized, much less is known about the latter case of selection. In this article, we review the relevant literature from the attention domain as a springboard to understanding the mechanisms involved in conceptual selection.     

Cultural differences in perceived social norms and social anxiety

Cultural considerations in social anxiety are a rarely investigated topic although it seems likely that differences between countries in social norms may relate to the extent of social anxiety. The present study investigated individuals' personal and perceived cultural norms and their relation to social anxiety and fear of blushing. A total of 909 participants from eight countries completed vignettes describing social situations and evaluated the social acceptability of the behavior of the main actor both from their own, personal perspective as well as from a cultural viewpoint. Personal and cultural norms showed somewhat different patterns in comparison between types of countries (individualistic/collectivistic). According to reported cultural norms, collectivistic countries were more accepting toward socially reticent and withdrawn behaviors than was the case in individualistic countries. In contrast, there was no difference between individualistic and collectivistic countries on individuals' personal perspectives regarding socially withdrawn behavior. Collectivistic countries also reported greater levels of social anxiety and more fear of blushing than individualistic countries. Significant positive relations occurred between the extent to which attention-avoiding behaviors are accepted in a culture and the level of social anxiety or fear of blushing symptoms. These results provide initial evidence that social anxiety may be related to different cultural norms across countries.     

Head start is too late: integrating and applying infant observation studies, and attachment, trauma, and neurobiological research to groups with pregnant and new mothers

In this paper new knowledge generated from theoretical and empirical work in infant observation studies and attachment, trauma, and neurobiology research is integrated and applied to the development of a group for pregnant and new mothers. The purposes of this group were to (1) promote the establishment of a secure base for each baby through optimum self and dyadic affect regulation, the repair of ruptures, and the emergence of positive heightened affective moments; (2) to facilitate secure attachment between mother and infant by helping mothers mentalize the experiences of their babies; (3) to build affiliative bonds between group members and; at the very least, (4) to prevent insecure disorganized attachments. The group interactions also were thought to prevent new psychopathology from developing, as well as to minimize the intergenerational transmission of trauma. A discussion of how this group came out of gestation and birthed itself in a community setting is included.     

Personality traits and the development of nicotine, alcohol, and illicit drug disorders: prospective links from adolescence to young adulthood

The personality traits constraint (CN) and negative emotionality (NE) have been more (CN) or less (NE) consistently associated with alcoholism. The authors examined the association of personality at age 17 with timing of onset and with prospective prediction of nicotine, alcohol, and illicit drug disorders 3 years later in a twin sample (569 females; 432 males). Earlier onset of alcohol and drug disorders (by age 17) was related to significantly lower CN compared with later onsets (by age 20); high NE was related to either onset. NE, as well as CN, uniquely predicted new onsets of all 3 types of substance use disorders by follow-up, with preexisting substance disorders taken into account. Personality traits confer generalized risk for developing any substance disorder, though some traits are more strongly linked with some substance disorders than with others.     

One factor underlies individual differences in auditory informational masking within and across age groups

Masked threshold for a pure-tone signal can be substantially elevated whenever the listener is uncertain about the spectral or temporal properties of the masker, an effect referred to as auditory informational masking. Individual differences in the effect are large, with young children being most susceptible. When masker uncertainty is introduced by randomizing the frequencies of a multitone masker on each presentation, the function relating a child's pure-tone signal threshold to the number of masker components is found to be substantially elevated above that of most adults. The age effect and the individual differences among adults are not well understood, though a difference in the shapes of the masking functions suggests that different detection strategies may be involved. The present study reports results from a principal components analysis of informational masking functions obtained from 38 normal-hearing children ranging in age from 4 to 16 years and 46 normal-hearing adults ranging in age from 19 to 38 years. The premise underlying the analysis is that if different detection strategies are involved, they should add independent sources of variance to the masking functions. Hence, more than one principal component (PC) should be required to account for a substantial proportion of the variance in these functions. The results, instead, supported the operation of a single underlying strategy with all but 17% of the variance accounted for by the first PC within and across age groups. An analysis of variance on the first two PCs showed that only the first changed with age, and a cluster analysis of the masking functions showed complete separation of clusters along this PC for all but 1 listener. The results are taken to suggest that large individual differences informational masking at all ages reflect differences in the extent to which masker uncertainty adds variance to the decision variable of an otherwise optimal decision strategy.     

Psychometric properties of the Hooper Visual Organization Test

The psychometric properties of the Hooper Vsual Organization Test (VOT) have not been well investigated Here the authors present internal consistency and interrater reliability coefficients, and an item analysis, using data from a sample (N = 281) of "cognitively impaired" and "cognitively intact" patients, and patients with undetermined cognitive status. Coefficient alpha for the VOT total sample was .882. An item analysis found that 26 of the 30 items were good at discriminating among patients. Also, the interrater reliabilities for three raters (.992), two raters (.988), and one rater (.977) were excellent. Therefore, the judgmental scoring of the VOT does not interfere significantly with its clinical utility. The authors conclude that the VOT is a psychometrically sound test.     

Modulation of cholinergic transmission enhances excitability of hippocampal pyramidal neurons and ameliorates learning impairments in aging animals

Four cholinesterase inhibitors have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for treating behavioral symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. Here we review our experiences with two cholinesterase inhibitors (metrifonate and galanthamine) and a muscarinic acetylcholine receptor agonist (CI-1017) in behavioral pharmacological and brain slice experiments in aging and young rabbits. Aging rabbits are impaired in their ability to acquire the hippocampus-dependent trace eyeblink conditioning task, as compared to young controls. A large proportion of aging animals cannot reach behavioral criterion in this task. Those that do learn, do so more slowly. In addition, the post-burst afterhyperpolarization and spike frequency accommodation is increased in hippocampal pyramidal neurons from aging animals, i.e., cellular excitability is reduced as compared to those from young animals. Metrifonate, galanthamine, and CI-1017 reduced the learning deficits observed in aging rabbits so that they learned almost as quickly as young controls. These cholinergic compounds also enhanced the postsynaptic excitability of hippocampal pyramidal neurons in vitro. Therefore, we propose that the amelioration of learning impairment with the cholinergic compounds may in part be due to the enhanced excitability of hippocampal pyramidal neurons. The potential relevance of our studies to further understanding the cellular and behavioral changes that occur with normal aging and Alzheimer's Disease is discussed.     

Evidence for a double dissociation between spatial-simultaneous and spatial-sequential working memory in visuospatial (nonverbal) learning disabled children

The paper describes the performance of three children with specific visuospatial working memory (VSWM) impairments (Study 1) and three children with visuospatial (nonverbal) learning disabilities (Study 2) assessed with a battery of working memory (WM) tests and with a number of school achievement tasks. Overall, performance on WM tests provides evidence of a double dissociation between spatial-simultaneous processes, underpinning the memorization item positioning in a spatial configuration, and spatial-sequential processes, which allow memorization of the presentation order. In both groups of children of the two studies, a selective impairment either on spatial-sequential or on spatial-simultaneous working memory tasks was observed. These data support the existence of -simultaneous and -sequential modality-dependent processes in visuospatial working memory and confirm the importance of distinguishing between different subtypes of visuospatial (nonverbal) learning-disabled children.     

Self recognition versus recognition of others by biological motion: viewpoint-dependent effects

We investigated the influence of viewing angle on performance in recognising the identity of one's own person and familiar individuals such as friends or colleagues from walking patterns. Viewpoint-dependent recognition performance was tested in two groups of twelve persons who knew each other very well. Participants' motion data were acquired by recording their walking patterns in three-dimensional space with the use of a motion capture system. Size-normalised point-light displays of biological motion of these walking patterns, including one's own, were presented to the same group members on a computer screen in frontal view, half-profile view, and profile view. Observers were requested to assign the person's name to the individual gait pattern. No feedback was given. Whereas recognition performance of one's own walking patterns was viewpoint independent, recognition rate for other familiar individuals was better for frontal and half-profile view than for profile view. These findings are discussed in the context of the theory of common coding of motor and visual body representations.