Limits of the Retrieval-Inhibition Construct: List Segregation in Directed Forgetting

The authors hypothesized that retrieval inhibition in list method directed forgetting could be improved by presenting a task that maximized the segregation step of the retrieval-inhibition process. In Experiment 1, they presented lists of semantically related words in a list method directed-forgetting task to maximize retrieval inhibition. Contrary to predictions, this manipulation eliminated the directed-forgetting effect. The authors further investigated the results of Experiment 1 in Experiments 2 and 3 by manipulating recall instructions and by presenting lists that contained both a categorized and an unrelated list-half. They found directed-forgetting effects for semantically related word lists when participants were asked to recall only the TBR (to-be-remembered) items but not when participants were asked to recall both the TBF (to-be-forgotten) and TBR items. They also found that directed-forgetting effects were not produced when categorized items were presented in the 1st list.     

Searching for the Right Word: Performance on Four Word-Retrieval Tasks Across Childhood

Word retrieval was assessed in 207 normally developing Hebrew-speaking children aged 8–17 through four tasks: picture naming, phonemic fluency, semantic fluency, and homophone meaning generation (HMGT). Scores on all tests correlated positively and significantly with participant age. Yet, age effects and the correlation between age and test scores were weakest for the naming test and strongest for the HMGT. We discuss the nature of the word search involved in each task and suggest that the more executive demands required by a test the steeper the slope of performance increase on this test.     

The frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and future thoughts in relation to daydreaming,emotional distress,and age

We introduce a new scale, the Involuntary Autobiographical Memory Inventory (IAMI), for measuring the frequency of involuntary autobiographical memories and involuntary future thoughts. Using the scale in relation to other psychometric and demographic measures provided three important, novel findings. First, the frequency of involuntary and voluntary memories and future thoughts are similarly related to general measures of emotional distress. This challenges the idea that the involuntary mode is uniquely associated with emotional distress. Second, the frequency of involuntary autobiographical remembering does not decline with age, whereas measures of daydreaming, suppression of unwanted thoughts and dissociative experiences all do. Thus, involuntary autobiographical remembering relates differently to aging than daydreaming and other forms of spontaneous and uncontrollable thoughts. Third, unlike involuntary autobiographical remembering, the frequency of future thoughts does decrease with age. This finding underscores the need for examining past and future mental time travel in relation to aging and life span development.     

Involuntary memories and restrained eating

Most involuntary memories are elicited by external cues (e.g., smells, sounds) that have unique associations with specific memories (Berntsen’s cue-retrieval hypothesis), but involuntary memories can sometimes be elicited by weak, even imperceptible, cues that raise the activation level of an already primed memory (Berntsen’s motivation-priming hypothesis) to also reach conscious awareness during times of low attentional focus. The current study examined the effects of a motivation bias (restrained eating) on the involuntary memories recorded in daily diaries for seven days by 56 female participants. A large proportion of the involuntary memories were elicited by food-related cues and occurred in food-related contexts. A significant correlation was found between the participants’ scores on a restrained eating scale and the percentage of involuntary memories involving cooking and eating content. These results parallel previous research involving voluntary memory retrievals during restrained eating.     

Spatiotemporal configuration of memory arrays as a component of VWM representations

Visual working memory (VWM) has been found to support a very limited representation of visual information and yet relatively little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this important cognitive construct. Prior investigations have revealed that VWM performance can be affected by relatively minor changes in the test method as well as the method of encoding. In the present two experiments, we separately investigated these two factors. The results suggest that sequential object displays can improve VWM performance significantly but that a lack of context relatedness between encoding and retrieval impairs performance. This impairment seems to be caused by a mismatch in the spatiotemporal configuration of the memory and test displays, and, importantly, cannot be compensated by selective attention. These findings suggest that spatiotemporal configuration information may be a fundamental component of the information that is stored in VWM as suggested by a number of influential theories.     

Different patterns of recollection impairment in confabulation reveal different disorders of consciousness: A multiple case study

Recollection is used to refer to the active process of setting up retrieval cues, evaluating the outcome, and systematically working toward a representation of a past experience that we find acceptable.In this study we report on three patients showing different patterns of confabulation affecting recollection and consciousness differentially. All patients confabulated in the episodic past domain. However, whereas in one patient confabulation affected only recollection of events concerning his personal past, present and future, in another patient confabulation also affected recollection of impersonal knowledge. The third patient showed an intermediate pattern of confabulation, which affected selectively the retrieval of past information, both personal and impersonal. We suggest that our results are in favor of a fractionation of processes involved in recollection underling different disorders of consciousness.     

Faceted Classification for the Web

The article describes the nature of a faceted classification, and its application in document retrieval. The kinds of facet used are illustrated. Procedures are then discussed for identifying facets in a subject field, populating the facets with individual subject terms, arranging these in helpful sequences, using the scheme to classify documents, and searching the resultant classified index, with particular reference to Internet search.