Contents of Volume 138

Volume Contents

Contents of Volume 138     

Is memory for plans unique? a study using common nouns as stimuli

The present study explored the question of whether the U-shape effect, which was observed in previous experiments on memory for fictitious plans is unique to the memory for plans or not, i.e., are plans for the morning and for the evening recalled better than those for the afternoon. To investigate we used a "common noun" as the material to be memorized instead of the "action phrase" as used in Watanabe and Kawaguchi's earlier experiments. Free recall tasks were performed in two experiments: in Exp. 1, a sample of 15 undergraduates memorized "hour" and "common noun" pairs, while in Exp. 2 another 15 undergraduates memorized "number" and "common noun" pairs. The results of these experiments indicated no significant effect for time of day. This suggests that the U-shape effect observed in Watanabe and Kawaguchi's experiments, in which participants were asked to memorize a combination of an "hour" and an "action phrase" is unique to memory for plans.     

Personal conceptions of intelligence, self-esteem, and school achievement in Italian and Portuguese students

Educational research places emphasis on the fact that different cultures have different self-construals. These construals can influence cognitive, emotional, and motivational processes in individuals. Great importance is attached to individuals' implicit conceptions of the nature of their intelligence (incremental or entity) and self-esteem. In general, both representation of intelligence and self-esteem seem to play an important role in scholastic performance in terms of both a predispostion to learning and the results actually achieved. The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between variables such as school, and socioeconomic level and gender in Italian and Portuguese students. A questionnaire was administered to 1,540 high school and university students assessing socioeconomic level and school performance, the Personal Conceptions of Intelligence Test (Faira & Fontaine, 1997), and the Self-Esteem Test (Rosenberg, 1965). In general, results show that Portuguese subjects are more incremental than Italians. Moreover, significant differences have to be determined regarding motivational factors linked to school and socioeconomic level and gender.The research highlights the importance of macro-contextual factors in the social, economic, and political organizations that influence how people develop their motivational beliefs.     

Two cognitions observed in Taijin-Kyofusho and social anxiety symptoms

The offensive type is most characteristic in four types of social fear or anxiety in Japan, Taijin-kyofusho. This type is characterized by cognitions of other-offending and avoidance-by-others. The present purpose was to investigate which cognition is more important in the pathogenesis of the Offensive type. 220 undergraduates completed the Other-offending Cognition and the Avoidance-by-others Cognition Scale, the Interaction Anxiety Scale, and Audience Anxiety Scale. Partial correlations, controlling for each cognition in turn, showed a significant association only between scores on Social Anxiety Disorder and the other-offending cognition. Change in the other-offending cognition may have therapeutic importance.     

Role of gamma-band synchronization in priming of form discrimination for multiobject displays

Previous research has shown that synchronized flicker can facilitate detection of a single Kanizsa square. The present study investigated the role of temporally structured priming in discrimination tasks involving perceptual relations between multiple Kanizsa-type figures. Results indicate that visual information presented as temporally structured flicker in the gamma band can modulate the perception of multiple objects in a subsequent display. For judgments of both relative orientation and relative position of 2 rectangles, response time to identify and discriminate relations between the objects was consistently decreased when the vertices corresponding to distinct Kanizsa-type rectangles were primed asynchronously. Implications are discussed for models of the perception of objects and their interrelations.     

Color makes a difference: two-dimensional object naming in literate and illiterate subjects

Previous work has shown that illiterate subjects are better at naming two-dimensional representations of real objects when presented as colored photos as compared to black and white drawings. This raises the question if color or textural details selectively improve object recognition and naming in illiterate compared to literate subjects. In this study, we investigated whether the surface texture and/or color of objects is used to access stored object knowledge in illiterate subjects. A group of illiterate subjects and a matched literate control group were compared on an immediate object naming task with four conditions: color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) photos, as well as color and black and white (i.e., grey-scaled) drawings of common everyday objects. The results show that illiterate subjects perform significantly better when the stimuli are colored and this effect is independent of the photographic detail. In addition, there were significant differences between the literacy groups in the black and white condition for both drawings and photos. These results suggest that color object information contributes to object recognition. This effect was particularly prominent in the illiterate group.     

Neurological origins of poor reading comprehension despite fast word decoding?

Barnes, Faulkner, and Dennis (2001) found that hydrocephalic children (mean age = 11.5 years) of average or above-average verbal intelligence exhibit poor reading comprehension despite their fast and accurate decoding skills on individual words. This finding attracts the attention of reading researchers because it appears to be against the following standard principle of reading comprehension failure (Gough & Hillinger, 1980), thereby provoking basic issues centering around it (e.g., Stanovich, 1991): Reading Comprehension = Word Decoding x Listening Comprehension. This formula indicates that when listening comprehension is kept well within the normal range, reading comprehension is highly correlated with word decoding (e.g., Perfetti, 1985). In contrast, with poor listening comprehension children would be poor readers however good they may be at reading words (e.g., Cain, Oakhill, & Bryant, 2000). Although Barnes et al. clearly demonstrated that children with hydrocephalus decoded individual words better than they comprehended text, it is not readily apparent whether their findings are inconsistent with the standard principle. The purpose of the present article is twofold. The first is to examine whether Barnes et al.'s findings constitute a counterexample of the above principle. (Note that Barnes et al. did not address this question.) The second and more important purpose is to discuss the possible origins of the decoding-better-than-sentence/text-comprehension pattern. We also present some pedagogical implications for poor readers such as hydrocephalic children.     

Overhearing a language during childhood

Despite its significance for understanding of language acquisition, the role of childhood language experience has been examined only in linguistic deprivation studies focusing on what cannot be learned readily beyond childhood. This study focused instead on long-term effects of what can be learned best during childhood. Our findings revealed that adults learning a language speak with a more nativelike accent if they overheard the language regularly during childhood than if they did not. These findings have important implications for understanding of language-learning mechanisms and heritage-language acquisition.     

Dissociating perceptual and conceptual implicit memory in multiple sclerosis patients

Previous studies indicate that Multiple Sclerosis (MS) patients exhibit deficits in tests of explicit memory such as free recall, but show normal priming on implicit tests of memory such as word stem completion. However, the memory performance of patients with different MS disease subtypes has not been fully examined. In the current study, memory was assessed in Primary Progressive (PPMS), Relapsing Remitting (RRMS), and Secondary Progressive (SPMS) MS subgroups. Explicit memory as well as perceptual and conceptual implicit memory were examined using free recall, word fragment completion, and exemplar generation tests, respectively. All three groups of MS patients exhibited free recall deficits and normal priming on the exemplar generation test. However, the PPMS group exhibited a deficit in word fragment completion priming, whereas the RRMS and SPMS groups exhibited normal levels of priming on this task. Lesion load was assessed using magnetic resonance imaging and was negatively correlated with explicit memory performance, but it did not account for the observed deficits in perceptual implicit memory. The results indicate that PPMS patients exhibit a pattern of memory impairment that is distinct from that of the RRMS and SPMS groups. Moreover, the results indicate that perceptual implicit memory can be neurologically dissociated from conceptual implicit memory.     

Overexpression of hAPPswe impairs rewarded alternation and contextual fear conditioning in a transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer's disease

One of the hallmarks of the pathology in Alzheimer's disease is the deposition of amyloid plaques throughout the brain, especially within the hippocampus and amygdala. Transgenic mice that overexpress the Swedish mutation of human amyloid precursor protein (hAPPswe; Tg2576) show age-dependent memory deficits in hippocampus-dependent learning tasks. However, the performance of aged Tg2576 mice in amygdala-dependent learning tasks has not been thoroughly assessed. We trained young (2–4 mo) and old (16–18 mo) Tg2576 and wild-type mice in a T-maze alternation task (hippocampus-dependent) and a Pavlovian fear-conditioning task (amygdala- and hippocampus-dependent). As previously reported, old Tg2576 mice showed impaired acquisition of rewarded alternation; none of these mice reached the criterion of at least five out of six correct responses over three consecutive days. In contrast, old Tg2576 mice showed normal levels of conditional freezing to an auditory conditional stimulus (CS) and acquired a contextual discrimination normally. However, when the salience of the fear-conditioning context was decreased, old (12–14 mo) Tg2576 mice were impaired at acquiring fear to the conditioning context, but not to the tone CS. Histological examination of a subset of the mice verified the existence of amyloid plaques in the cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala of old, but not young, Tg2576 mice. Hence, learning and memory deficits in old Tg2576 mice are limited to hippocampus-dependent tasks, despite widespread amyloid deposition in cortex, hippocampus, and amygdala.