An investigation of aspects of the cry of pain model of suicide risk: the role of defeat in impairing memory

AIM: Feelings of defeat and deficits in autobiographical memory are thought to be central to the formation of suicidal thoughts and behaviours. However, no work has established the role of defeat, specifically, in directly leading to memory problems. This study sought to assess whether a defeating event and associated defeated mood impaired memory for a story. METHOD: Participants were from a student population. Those in the experimental condition (n=37) experienced an event which was designed to induce defeat prior to both the encoding and verbal retrieval of a story. Participants in control condition (n=37) experienced no such defeating event. Visual analogue scales of five mood states were taken at baseline, prior to encoding and prior to retrieval. RESULTS: Participants in the experimental condition reported increased feelings of defeat following baseline, and recalled fewer story units relative to the control condition. DISCUSSION: These results show that appraising an event as defeating increased subsequent defeated mood and led to impaired episodic memory, independently of low mood in general, thus suggesting a causal role of a specific negative mood state on impaired memory. Implications for clinical research are discussed.     

In search of transfer following cued recall practice: The case of process‐based biology concepts

Previous work has demonstrated that cued recall of a term from a fact yields learning that does not transfer, relative to a restudy control, to recall of another term from the same fact. Here we report six experiments in which a series of manipulations during the initial study and training phases of learning, hypothesized to increase transfer for process‐based biology concepts, were investigated. In Experiments 1 and 2, fill‐in‐the‐blank questions combined with immediate or delayed and repeated correct answer feedback improved learning but not transfer. In Experiments 3 and 4, practice questions that involved recalling process steps, understanding ordinal relationships, or making inferences did not improve transfer. Positive transfer was produced, however, in Experiments 5 and 6 via retrieval–verification–scoring, a new method in which difficult fill‐in‐the‐blank questions were combined with extensive feedback processing. We discuss implications for transfer in both theoretical and applied contexts.     

Did you wash your hands? Evaluating memory for objects touched by healthy individuals and individuals with contagious and noncontagious diseases

Prior research suggests that individuals recruit a disease‐avoidance system designed to avoid sources of illness through threat detection and memory. Our study evaluated whether disease‐related memory benefits reflect the distinctive/salient nature of a diseased state versus the infectious nature of a disease by comparing memory for objects touched by healthy individuals or those with a contagious or noncontagious disease. Participants studied videos depicting an actor interacting with objects in which the actor was described as diagnosed with influenza, an infectious disease, cancer, a noninfectious disease, or was healthy, followed by free‐recall and source‐recognition tests. Correct recall and source recognition were greater overall for touched versus nontouched items, but source recognition was particularly elevated for items touched by the infectious influenza actor. Further, touched‐item recognition was positively related to participants' assessed germ aversion—supplemental evidence that disease concerns may facilitate source recollections for touched objects.     

A meta‐analysis of the effects of acute alcohol intoxication on witness recall

There is widespread belief in the legal system that alcohol impairs witness testimony. Nevertheless, most laboratory studies examining the effects of alcohol on witness testimony suggest that alcohol may affect the number of correct but not incorrect details recalled. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions because sample sizes, testing paradigms, and recall measures vary between individual studies. We conducted a meta‐analysis to address this issue. We found alcohol intoxication had a significant and moderate sized effect on the number of correct details recalled (g = 0.40). The effect of alcohol on the number of incorrect details recalled was not significant. Further, the effect of alcohol on the recall of correct details was significantly moderated by multiple factors like intoxication level, the retention interval length between encoding and recall, and the types of questions asked (i.e., free recall vs. cued recall). We discuss the applied implications of the results.     

主题关系对无线索回忆再认效应的影响

本研究采用RWCR范式,从无线索回忆再认的视角考察了主题关系对熟悉性的影响。结果发现,主题关系能够引发无线索回忆再认效应。具体表现为,在回忆错误项目中,被试对与学过项目有主题关系线索的熟悉性评分显著高于与学过项目无主题关系线索的熟悉性评分。这一结果表明,个体在信息提取失败时,概念形式的语义信息也能引发基于熟悉性的再认判断。     

青少年恋爱关系：研究取向、方法与影响因素

青少年恋爱关系是在性吸引基础上建立起来的一种相互认可的、至少持续一段时间的强烈的情感联系和互动关系, 其研究取向主要有生物社会取向、认知表征取向和发展背景取向, 研究方法主要包括自我报告法、观察法和录像回顾法。影响青少年恋爱关系的有个体因素、人际关系因素和社会因素, 未来可在理论的整合、关系品质的稳定性及微观背景作用的机制、样本的代表性等方面进一步研究。     

Facial Composite Production by Eyewitnesses

ABSTRACT— The creation of facial images by eyewitnesses using composite-production systems can be important for the investigation of crimes when the identity of the perpetrator is at issue. Despite technological advances, research indicates that composite-production systems produce poor likenesses of intended faces, even familiar faces. Furthermore, producing a composite appears to harm later recognition performance. Although morphing composites from multiple witnesses helps, likeness is still limited. The problem might stem from a mismatch between how faces are represented in memory (holistically) and how composite systems attempt to retrieve the memories (at the feature level). New methods of face recall involving judgments of whole faces hold greater promise.     

Learning related modulation of functional retrieval networks in man

The medial temporal lobe has been implicated in studies of episodic memory tasks involving spatio-temporal context and object-location conjunctions. We have previously demonstrated that an increased level of practice in a free-recall task parallels a decrease in the functional activity of several brain regions, including the medial temporal lobe, the prefrontal, the anterior cingulate, the anterior insular, and the posterior parietal cortices, that in concert demonstrate a move from elaborate controlled processing towards a higher degree of automaticity. Here we report data from two experiments that extend these initial observations. We used a similar experimental approach but probed for effects of retrieval paradigms and stimulus material. In the first experiment we investigated practice related changes during recognition of object-location conjunctions and in the second during free-recall of pseudo-words. Learning in a neural network is a dynamic consequence of information processing and network plasticity. The present and previous PET results indicate that practice can induce a learning related functional restructuring of information processing. Different adaptive processes likely subserve the functional re-organisation observed. These may in part be related to different demands for attentional and working memory processing. It appears that the role(s) of the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe in memory retrieval are complex, perhaps reflecting several different interacting processes or cognitive components. We suggest that an integrative interactive perspective on the role of the prefrontal and medial temporal lobe is necessary for an understanding of the processing significance of these regions in learning and memory. It appears necessary to develop elaborated and explicit computational models for prefrontal and medial temporal functions in order to derive detailed empirical predictions, and in combination with an efficient use and development of functional neuroimaging approaches, to further the understanding of the processing significance of these regions in memory.     

Retrospective recall of affect in clinically depressed individuals and controls

The current study examined the nature of retrospective recall of affect in depressed participants and nonclinical controls. Utilising the Experience Sampling Method, we compared average momentary affect reports to retrospective summaries of the same period of time. Both groups exhibited exaggerated retrospective summaries of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Greater bias for PA than NA was found in the controls but not the depressed. Across groups, depressed individuals exhibited more absolute inaccuracy in their recall of NA but not PA. For depressed and nonclinical individuals, retrospective summaries of PA were better predicted by an average of all weekly momentary PA than a combination of the most intense (“peak”) PA and most recent (“end”) PA experiences. For nonclinical participants, retrospective NA was better predicted by an average of all weekly momentary NA. For depressed individuals, however, no clear advantage to predicting retrospective NA by average weekly NA relative to a combination of peak NA and end NA was found. Based on our findings, clinicians should realise that depressive cognition may not lie in recall that is less positive and more negative than “reality” but in retrospective intensifications of all affect that are, compared to normal, relatively greater for negative than for positive affect.