Hypermnesia and the Role of Delay between Study and Test

Hypermnesia is increased recall across repeated tests in the absence of any further study opportunities. Although over the years many factors have been identified that influence hypermnesia, to date not much is known about the role of delay between study and test for the effect. This study addressed the issue in four experiments. Employing both words and pictures as study material, we compared hypermnesia after shorter delay (3 min or 11.5 min) and longer delay (24 h or 1 week) between study and test. Recall occurred over three successive tests, using both free recall (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) and forced recall testing (Experiment 3). In forced recall tests, subjects are instructed to recall as many items as possible, but if unable to remember all studied items, to fill in the remaining spaces with their best guesses. With free recall testing, hypermnesia increased with delay and the effect was driven mainly by reduced item losses between tests. These results suggest a link between hypermnesia and the testing effect, which shows that demanding retrieval practice, as it happens after longer delay, can improve recall by reducing the forgetting of the practiced items. In contrast, with forced recall testing, hypermnesia decreased with delay and was even absent after longer delay. The findings indicate that recall format can influence hypermnesia and different mechanisms may mediate the effects of repeated testing in the two recall conditions.     

Individual differences in working memory capacity predict retrieval-induced forgetting

Selectively retrieving a subset of previously studied information enhances memory for the retrieved information but causes forgetting of related, nonretrieved information. Such retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) has often been attributed to inhibitory executive-control processes that supposedly suppress the nonretrieved items' memory representation. Here, we examined the role of working memory capacity (WMC) in young adults' RIF. WMC was assessed by means of the operation span task. Results revealed a positive relationship between WMC and RIF, with high-WMC individuals showing more RIF than low-WMC individuals. In contrast, individuals showed enhanced memory for retrieved information regardless of WMC. The results are consistent with previous individual-differences work that suggests a close link between WMC and inhibitory efficiency. In particular, the finding supports the inhibitory executive-control account of RIF.     

?Unsichtbare Wunden“

Exemplifying my own case I show what it meant to be subjected to political imprisonment and aggressive systematic manipulation in East Germany. With a timely distancing from my own trauma, psychoanalytic study and creative artistic work gave me enough room to treat victims of imprisonment and systematic aggression. This process took years with a gradual liberation from pursuing internal objects and the revival of the good, pretraumatic object. This process has risks and is not free from relapses. A case example shows how the therapist can be internalized as a good object and how distance can be gradually gained from malignant pursuing objects, which gives a final prospect for some kind of relief. In this process the author wishes not only to demonstrate but also to overcome the shadows of the past.     

Influences of part-list cuing on different forms of episodic forgetting

Across 3 experiments, we examined the interplay of part-list cuing and forgetting, employing 3 different methods to induce episodic forgetting-list--method directed forgetting, context-dependent forgetting, and proactive interference. For each form of forgetting, participants were asked at test to recall the target items of a previously studied list in the presence or the absence of the list's remaining items serving as retrieval cues. We found such part-list cuing to amplify the forgetting in proactive interference but to diminish the forgetting in list-method directed forgetting and context-dependent forgetting. These results show that the effects of part-list cuing on forgotten memories depend critically on the circumstances surrounding the forgetting. If the forgetting reflects impaired access to the original encoding context, as has been suggested in list-method directed forgetting and context-dependent forgetting (but not in proactive interference), part-list cues improve access to forgotten memories; if the forgetting does not reflect such a contextual effect, no such beneficial effects emerge, and access to forgotten memories may even be impaired.     

Retrieval-induced forgetting, delay, and sleep

Retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) refers to the finding that retrieval of a subset of previously studied material can cause forgetting of related unpractised material. Prior work on the role of delay between practice and test for RIF reported mixed results. Whereas some studies found RIF to be a relatively transient phenomenon, others found RIF to persist over time. We examined whether the persistence of RIF can depend on whether wakefulness or sleep follows retrieval practice. We employed a variant of the retrieval-practice paradigm with short (20 minutes) and long (12 hours) delay conditions. In all conditions participants studied a perceptually categorised list followed by retrieval practice on some of the items from some of the categories. Participants studied and practised the material in the morning or the evening. RIF was present in the short-delay conditions, and it was present in the long-delay condition if the delay included nocturnal sleep; if the long delay was filled with diurnal wakefulness, RIF was absent. Results show that whether delay eliminates RIF or not can depend on whether sleep or wake follows retrieval practice. Connections of the results to recent findings about the role of delay and sleep for RIF are discussed.     

Adaptive memory: young children show enhanced retention of fitness-related information

Evolutionary psychologists propose that human cognition evolved through natural selection to solve adaptive problems related to survival and reproduction, with its ultimate function being the enhancement of reproductive fitness. Following this proposal and the evolutionary-developmental view that ancestral selection pressures operated not only on reproductive adults, but also on pre-reproductive children, the present study examined whether young children show superior memory for information that is processed in terms of its survival value. In two experiments, we found such survival processing to enhance retention in 4- to 10-year-old children, relative to various control conditions that also required deep, meaningful processing but were not related to survival. These results suggest that, already in very young children, survival processing is a special and extraordinarily effective form of memory encoding. The results support the functional-evolutionary proposal that young children's memory is "tuned" to process and retain fitness-related information.     

Gender Differences in Risk and Promotive Classifications Associated With Adolescent Delinquency

How likely are children exposed to multiple risk factors to engage in delinquent behavior, to what extent do promotive factors mitigate exposure to these risk factors, and do the predictors of delinquent behavior differ by gender? To address these questions, the authors analyzed data from youths (229 boys, 187 girls) who completed the third wave of the Lehigh Longitudinal Study using Latent Profile Analysis. A unique risk and promotive class with slightly elevated rates of exposure to parental violence, mean levels of other risk factors and low levels of promotive factors was present for girls but not for boys. Additionally, for boys and girls, high-risk, low-promotive individuals were significantly more likely to engage in delinquent behavior than low-risk, high-promotive cases. Findings suggest the need to examine risk and promotive factors in combination to account for their shared influences on developmental outcomes for youth.     

Development of Exploration and Investigation in the Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus)

A cross-sectional study of the development of spontaneous exploratory behavior in the laboratory rat was conducted. Long-Evans hooded rat pups aged 11 to 28 days (n = 158, from 25 litters) were placed into a dimly illuminated arena for 10 min on 2 consecutive days. Analysis of videotaped records from the second session for each rat pup showed a relatively sudden emergence of locomotor exploration between 12 and 16 days of age. The behavioral topography of interactions with objects developed less uniformly, with some features (e.g., bout length) relatively unchanging and other features (e.g., number of bouts, number of different behaviors displayed) increasing with age. The data for locomotor exploration are consistent with an explanation that depends on maturation-driven emergence of species-typical behavior, but that explanation cannot account for the pattern of development for object investigation. These results provide further evidence that some important aspects of the character of exploratory behavior depend, at least partially, on experience, and that exploration is not in fact a single behavior system. In addition, they provide important baseline information for further studies of the structure and function of exploratory behavior.     

Anticipation boosts forgetting of voluntarily suppressed memories

The role of anticipatory mechanisms in human memory control is poorly understood. Addressing the issue we investigated whether the presence of an anticipatory phase can enhance effects of cognitive control, as they occur during voluntary suppression of episodic memories. Using the Think/No-Think task, participants first learned several face–word associations, and thereafter were asked to either recall (think) or suppress (no-think) the word when provided with the word's face cue. In the one condition participants performed the Think/No-Think task in the presence of an anticipatory phase, giving participants the chance to prepare for memory suppression. In the other condition participants performed the task without such an anticipatory phase. On the final cued recall test participants were asked to recall all of the previously studied words. The results showed stronger forgetting of to-be-suppressed items in the presence than absence of the anticipatory phase. The finding is first evidence for the effectiveness of anticipatory mechanisms in human memory suppression.     

Biased reasoning: adaptive responses to health risk feedback

The present study examined reactions toward repeated self-relevant feedback. Participants in a community health screening received feedback about their cholesterol level on two separate occasions. Reactions to the first feedback were examined with regard to feedback valence and expectedness. The findings showed that negative feedback was devalued, but only when it was unexpected. Feedback consistency was incorporated into analyses of the second feedback. Again, results showed that negative feedback was not always devalued-only when it was inconsistent with the first feedback. Furthermore, positive feedback was not unconditionally accepted. When receiving unexpected positive feedback of low consistency, recipients were doubtful about its accuracy. Conversely, expected positive feedback was accepted regardless of its consistency. These results suggest that negative or unexpected positive feedbacks evoke greater sensitivity to feedback consistency, indicating elaborate cognitive processing. Theoretical accounts of these findings are discussed.