Probing the Brain Substrates of Cognitive Processes Responsible for Context Effects on Recognition Memory

ABSTRACT

Context effects on episodic recognition memory involve separable contributions of target-context binding, additive familiarity, and configural constancy. Here we examine whether these factors reflect contributions of processes attributed to different brain substrates. First, we challenged frontal and medial temporal lobe-based cognitive capacities in healthy young adults, employing divided attention tasks at encoding and retrieval, and extended retrieval delay, respectively. Target-context binding effects were specifically attenuated by delay, but not by divided attention. In a second experiment, older adults were identified by neuropsychological testing as having different levels of frontal and medial temporal lobe-dependent cognitive functions. Consistent with Experiment 1, older adults with low medial temporal lobe function exhibited reduced target-context binding effects, but levels of frontal function did not modulate binding effects. These findings indicate that unlike source memory, context effects on memory are associated with the integrity of medial temporal lobe-based processes but not with the integrity of frontal lobe-based processes. Our findings also emphasize the importance of discriminating between functional subgroups in the attempt to characterize memory processes in older adults.     

The Effect of Education on Age-Related Functional Activation During Working Memory

Education has been suggested to play a protective role against the development of age-related dementias. Accordingly, we examined modulation of functional activation during working memory by age and education. Eight older individuals with a college education, six older individuals with a high school education, and eight younger individuals with a college education performed a working memory task during O¹⁵ [water] PET scanning. In a voxel-by-voxel whole brain search, older participants with less education demonstrated greater left frontal activation relative to older participants with more education. Older participants with more education demonstrated greater right precuneus activation relative to older participants with less education. This suggests that older less educated participants may have used additional frontal resources to compensate for dysfunctional parietal cortex. These results occurred in the context of similar activation in well-educated younger and older participants. Younger participants had one unique area of activation in the left posterior parietal cortex and no differences in frontal activation were observed between these two groups. The results of this study indicate the need to consider education in age-related neuroimaging studies.     

Intentionality: Some Lessons from the History of the Problem from Brentano to the Present

Abstract

Intentionality (‘directedness’, ‘aboutness’) is both a central topic in contemporary philosophy of mind, phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, and one of the themes with which both analytic and Continental philosophers have separately engaged starting from Brentano and Edmund Husserl’s ground-breaking Logical Investigations (1901) through Roderick M. Chisholm, Daniel C. Dennett’s The Intentional Stance, John Searle’s Intentionality, to the recent work of Tim Crane, Robert Brandom, Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi, among many others. In this paper, I shall review recent discussions of intentionality, including some recent explorations of the history of the concept (paying particular attention to Anselm), and suggest some ways the phenomenological approach of Husserl and Heidegger can still offer insights for contemporary philosophy of mind and consciousness.     

Innovation 101: Promoting Undergraduate Innovation Through a Two-Day Boot Camp

Commitment involves how a person invests resources in a work role over long periods of time. Creativity is a novel, appropriate variation that is embraced by a field of gatekeepers and transforms the symbolic domain. This qualitative analysis (Cohen's kappas of .62, .86, .68 across three coders) addresses the different roles that commitment plays in the careers of 36 writers, depending on what level of creative influence the literary field has attributed to the writer's work. The sample was segmented into genre conformers who played by established literary rules (M = 0.15, SD = 0.18), experimentalists whose innovations have not yet caught on widely (M = 0.80, SD = 0.17), and domain transformers who changed the canon (M = 1.32, SD = 0.27). For genre conformers, commitment compensates. They invest technique in the craft of writing to improve their social standing among other writers, editors, and critics within the field. For experimentalists, commitment defies. They translate their selves into words by twisting traditions and supports to yield new meanings, which gains them an emotional rush plus increased control over their self-expression. For domain transformers, commitment impassions. They trust some beloved aspect of literature, such as a character or poetic form, to convert new minds to the latent possibilities of the domain.     

Sex differences in the original thinking of preschool and elementary school children

Abstract:

The purpose of this study was to assess the development of sex differences in the creative potential of preschool and early elementary school children. Preschool, first‐, and third‐grade children (N = 188) received the Multidimensional Stimulus Fluency Measure (MSFM). The MSFM assesses creative potential in terms of popular and original responses (ideational fluency). Comparisons of the three groups of children indicated that sex differences emerged throughout early elementary school. No sex differences were found within the preschool sample; but by third‐grade, boys were found to score significantly higher than girls on both popular and original responses. These findings were discussed with regard to evaluation, conformity, assimilative strategies, and the environmental factors which might affect creative potential.     

The effect of distance-dependent construals on schema-driven impression formation

Two experiments examine how distance-dependent construal can affect trait aggregation in impression formation. We propose that, because higher- versus lower-level construals promote the tendency to impose schematic structure on information processing, higher-level construals should enhance schema-driven trait aggregation. We test this by examining a classic impression formation phenomenon: the primacy effect (Asch, 1946). Increasing temporal distance (Study 1a) and priming higher-level construals (Study 1b) led participants to form more favorable impressions of targets described initially as intelligent versus envious. Decreasing temporal distance and priming lower-level construals, in contrast, reversed the primacy effect. Thus, the distance of a target, with its associated construal, can impact the aggregation of traits and consequently impacts people's evaluations of others.     

Leading by example: the case of leader OCB

The importance of leading by personal example or role modeling for effective leadership has been recognized in many leadership theories. However, leaders' ability to influence group behavior through exemplary behavior has received little attention in empirical work. This study explores leading by example through theoretical development and empirical testing of a moderated mediation model of the potential effects of leader organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This model suggests that a leader's OCB may promote group OCB directly and indirectly by enhancing the group's belief that OCB is worthy. It also specifies the moderators of the direct and indirect effects of leader OCB on group OCB. Data from 683 members of 67 intact work groups, 67 group managers, and their supervisors support the hypothesized model. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.     

When the rules are reversed: Action-monitoring consequences of reversing stimulus–response mappings

How does switching tasks affect our ability to monitor and adapt our behavior? Largely independent lines of research have examined how individuals monitor their actions and adjust to errors, on the one hand, and how they are able to switch between two or more tasks, on the other. Few studies, however, have explored how these two aspects of cognitive?Cbehavioral flexibility interact. That is, how individuals monitor their actions when task rules are switched remains unknown. The present study sought to address this question by examining the action-monitoring consequences of response switching??a form of task switching that involves switching the response that is associated with a particular stimulus. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) while participants performed a modified letter flanker task in which the stimulus?Cresponse (S?CR) mappings were reversed between blocks. Specifically, we examined three ERPs??the N2, the error-related negativity (ERN), and the error positivity (Pe)??that have been closely associated with action monitoring. The findings revealed that S?CR reversal blocks were associated with dynamic alterations of action-monitoring brain activity: the N2 and ERN were enhanced, whereas the Pe was reduced. Moreover, participants were less likely to adapt their posterror behavior in S?CR reversal blocks. Taken together, these data suggest that response switching results in early enhancements of effortful control mechanisms (N2 and ERN) at the expense of reductions in later response evaluation processes (Pe). Thus, when rules change, our attempts at control are accompanied by less attention to our actions.