It's either a cook or a baker: patients with conduction aphasia get the gist but lose the trace

Patients with conduction aphasia have been characterized as having a short-term memory deficit that leads to relative difficulty on span and repetition tasks. It has also been observed that these same patients often get the gist of what is said to them, even if they are unable to repeat the information verbatim. To study this phenomenon experimentally, patients with conduction aphasia and left hemisphere-injured controls were tested on a repetition recognition task that required them to listen to a sentence and immediately point to one of three sentences that matched it. On some trials, the distractor sentences contained substituted words that were semantically-related to the target, and on other trials, the distractor sentences contained semantically-distinct words. Patients with conduction aphasia and controls performed well on the latter condition, when distractors were semantically-distinct. However, when the distractor sentences were semantically-related, the patients with conduction aphasia were impaired at identifying the target sentence, suggesting that these patients could not rely on the verbatim trace. To further understand these results, we also tested elderly controls on the same task, except that a delay was introduced between study and test. Like the patients with conduction aphasia, the elderly controls were worse at identifying target sentences when there were semantically-related distractors. Taken together, these results suggest that patients with conduction aphasia rely on non-phonologic cues, such as lexical-semantics, to support their short-term memory, just as normal participants must do in long-term memory tasks when the phonological trace is no longer present.     

Involvement in traditional and electronic bullying among adolescents

The increasing availability of Internet and cell phones has provided new avenues through which adolescents can bully. Electronic bullying is a new form of bullying that may threaten adolescent social and emotional development. In this study the relation between involvement in electronic and traditional bullying was examined. Eighty-four adolescents completed questionnaires regarding their involvement in traditional and electronic bullying. Results show that students' roles in traditional bullying predicted the same role in electronic bullying. Also, being a victim of bullying on the Internet or via text messages was related to being a bully at school. Traditional victims were not found to be electronic bullies. Perceptions of the effects of and motivations for electronic bullying are discussed.     

Global gist extraction in children and adults

The DRM paradigm was used to examine the role of global gist extraction in producing false memories in children and adults. First-graders, third-graders, and adults watched a videotape of a woman reading seven DRM lists, and then took a recognition memory test. Blocked (vs random) presentation and instructions to attend to the theme of lists were manipulated to enhance gist processing. In the first experiment, blocked presentation increased false recognition relative to random presentation in adults but not in first-graders or third-graders. In the second experiment, instructions to attend to list themes increased false recognition in third-graders and not in adults or first-graders. The results suggest a developmental pattern in which children become more adept at global gist extraction as they get older. These results are consistent with fuzzy trace theory's prediction of better gist processing as children grow older.     

Role of muscarinic M1 receptors in inhibitory avoidance and contextual fear conditioning

The objective of the present study was to observe the effects of pre-training or post-training administration of dicyclomine, a M1 muscarinic antagonist, on inhibitory avoidance (IA) and contextual fear conditioning (CFC) and to investigate if the effects observed with the pre-training administration of dicyclomine are state-dependent. For each behavioral procedure (IA and CFC) groups of Wistar male rats were treated with saline or dicyclomine either 30 min before training (pre-training), immediately after training or 30 min before training/30 min before test (pre-training/pre-test). The animals were tested 24 h after training. The acquisition of IA and CFC was impaired by pre-training administration of dicyclomine. The consolidation of both tasks was not affected by dicyclomine given immediately after training. Pre-training/pre-test administration of dicyclomine impaired both tasks, an effect similar to that observed in the group which only received pre-training administration. Pre-test treatment induced dissociation between both tasks, impairing CFC retrieval, without interfering with the animals avoidance response. These results show that the dicyclomine did not affect IA and CFC consolidation, suggesting specific involvement of M1 muscarinic receptor only in acquisition these tasks, and these effects was not state-dependent. However, it is possible that the retrieval of these tasks may be mediated, at least in part, by different neurochemical mechanisms and may be dissociated by dicyclomine.