Edgar Morin: From Vicious Circles to Virtuous Circles

Morin stresses the danger of the tendency to apply the method of natural sciences to human disciplines, considering the latter a natural object, and seeking one great explicative and definitive mathematical cosmological form by means of the reduction of the anthropological aspect to the biological one, of the biological to the physical–chemical aspect and the physical to the mathematical aspect. Hence the need to find a new way of organizing knowledge based on the concept of “circularity,” which is fundamental both in Morin's thought and in the philosophy of complexity in general. We must therefore establish a circular relation among the various spheres of knowledge: physics–biology–anthropology–sociology. The classical vision of a hierarchized-mechanic world is substituted by the vision of a reticulated world.     

Knowledge of memory functions in European and Asian American adults and children: The relation to autobiographical memory

This study investigated explicit knowledge of autobiographical memory functions using a newly developed questionnaire. European and Asian American adults (N = 57) and school-aged children (N = 68) indicated their agreement with 13 statements about why people think about and share memories pertaining to four broad functions—self, social, directive and emotion regulation. Children were interviewed for personal memories concurrently with the memory function knowledge assessment and again 3 months later. It was found that adults agreed to the self, social and directive purposes of memory to a greater extent than did children, whereas European American children agreed to the emotion regulation purposes of memory to a greater extent than did European American adults. Furthermore, European American children endorsed more self and emotion regulation functions than did Asian American children, whereas Asian American adults endorsed more directive functions than did European American adults. Children's endorsement of memory functions, particularly social functions, was associated with more detailed and personally meaningful memories. These findings are informative for the understanding of developmental and cultural influences on memory function knowledge and of the relation of such knowledge to autobiographical memory development.     

A matter of focus: Detailed memory in the intentional autobiographical recall of older and younger adults

The intricately interwoven role of detailed autobiographical memory in our daily lives and in our imaginative envisioning of the future is increasingly recognized. But how is the detail-rich nature of autobiographical memory best assessed and, in particular, how can possible aging-related differences in autobiographical memory specificity be most effectively evaluated? This study examined whether a modified interview, involving fewer and time-matched events for older and younger adults, yielded age-related outcomes similar to those that have been previously reported. As in earlier studies, modest age-related changes in the specificity of autobiographical recall were observed, yet the largest most robust effect for both age groups was the substantial proportion of specific details retrieved. Both age groups rated recent memories as significantly less important and as less emotional than more temporally distant events. Our findings counter conceptions of older adults’ autobiographical memories as invariably less episodically rich than those of younger adults.     

The impact of concurrent visual feedback on coding of on-line and pre-planned movement sequences

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which participants could effectively switch from on-line (OL) to pre-planned (PP) control (or vice versa) depending on previous practice conditions and whether concurrent visual feedback was available during transfer testing. The task was to reproduce a 2000 ms spatial–temporal pattern of a sequence of elbow flexions and extensions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two practice conditions termed OL or PP. In the OL condition the criterion waveform and the cursor were provided during movement production while this information was withheld during movement production for the PP condition. A retention test and two effector transfer tests were administered to half of the participants in each acquisition conditions under OL conditions and the other half under PP conditions. The mirror effector transfer test required the same pattern of muscle activation and limb joint angles as required during acquisition. The non-mirror transfer test required movements to the same visual–spatial locations as experienced during acquisition. The results indicated that when visual information was available during the transfer tests performers could switch from PP to OL. When visual information was withdrawn, they shifted from the OL to the PP-control mode. This finding suggests that performers adopt a mode of control consistent with the feedback conditions provided during testing.     

A bilateral advantage for maintaining objects in visual short term memory

Research has shown that attentional pre-cues can subsequently influence the transfer of information into visual short term memory (VSTM) (Schmidt, B., Vogel, E., Woodman, G., & Luck, S. (2002). Voluntary and automatic attentional control of visual working memory. Perception & Psychophysics, 64(5), 754–763). However, studies also suggest that those effects are constrained by the hemifield alignment of the pre-cues (Holt, J. L., & Delvenne, J.-F. (2014). A bilateral advantage in controlling access to visual short-term memory. Experimental Psychology, 61(2), 127–133), revealing better recall when distributed across hemifields relative to within a single hemifield (otherwise known as a bilateral field advantage). By manipulating the duration of the retention interval in a colour change detection task (1 s, 3 s), we investigated whether selective pre-cues can also influence how information is later maintained in VSTM. The results revealed that the pre-cues influenced the maintenance of the colours in VSTM, promoting consistent performance across retention intervals (Experiments 1 & 4). However, those effects were only shown when the pre-cues were directed to stimuli displayed across hemifields relative to stimuli within a single hemifield. Importantly, the results were not replicated when participants were required to memorise colours (Experiment 2) or locations (Experiment 3) in the absence of spatial pre-cues. Those findings strongly suggest that attentional pre-cues have a strong influence on both the transfer of information in VSTM and its subsequent maintenance, allowing bilateral items to better survive decay.     

Change deafness for simultaneous voices

Apparent changes in auditory scenes are often unnoticed. This change deafness phenomenon was examined in auditory scenes that comprise human voices. In two experiments, listeners were required to detect changes between two auditory scenes comprising two, three, and four talkers who voiced four‐syllable words. One of the voices in the first scene was randomly selected and was replaced with a new word in change trials. The rationale was that higher stimulus familiarity conferred by human voices compared to other everyday sounds, together with encoding and memory advantages for verbal stimuli and the modular processing of speech in auditory processing, should positively influence the change detection efficiency, and the change deafness phenomenon should not be observed when listeners are explicitly required to detect the obvious changes. Contrary to the prediction, change deafness was significantly observed in three‐ and four‐talker conditions. This indicates that change deafness occurs in listeners even for highly familiar stimuli. This suggests the limited ability for perceptual organization of auditory scenes comprising even a relatively small number of voices (three or four).     

Anterior medial temporal lobe activation during encoding of words: FMRI methods to optimize sensitivity

The existence of a rostrocaudal gradient of medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation during memory encoding has historically received support from positron emission tomography studies, but less so from functional MRI (FMRI) studies. More recently, FMRI studies have demonstrated that characteristics of the stimuli can affect the location of activation seen in the MTL when those stimuli are encoded. The current study tested the hypothesis that MTL activation during memory encoding is related to the modality of stimulus presentation. Subjects encoded auditorily or visually presented words in an FMRI novelty paradigm. Imaging and analysis parameters were optimized to minimize susceptibility artifact in the anterior MTL. Greater activation was observed in the anterior than posterior MTL for both modalities of stimulus presentation. The results indicate that anterior MTL activation occurred during encoding, independent of stimulus modality and provide support for the hypothesis that verbal-semantic memory processing occurs in anterior MTL. The authors suggest that technical factors are critical for observing the rostrocaudal gradient in MTL memory activation.