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ESCOP 2011, 17th MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 29th Sep. - 02nd Oct.

Memory

Saturday, October 01st,   2011 [17:20 - 19:20]

PS_2.046 - Effects of sleep deprivation on memory consolidation and resistance to interference

Deliens, G. , Schmitz, R. , Mary, A. & Peigneux, P.

UR2NF, Neuropsychology and Functional Neuroimaging Research Unit, Université Libre de Bruxelles, BRUXELLES, BELGIQUE

The aim of this study was to test post-learning consolidation and protection against interference processes in healthy volunteers (n = 9) in a within-subjects sleep deprivation (SD) paradigm. After learning a list of unrelated word pairs (A) subjects sleep or stay awake a whole night. Two days later, a novel list of word pairs (B) was learned just before delayed recall of the list A. List B was composed of 50% word pairs in which the initial word of the pair was also presented in list A, hence creating interference. Results indicate an interference effect in the sleep but not in the SD condition (p=0.004). Recall of word pairs subjected to interference in list B was lower than recall of word pairs not subjected to interference. Our findings may be in line with the reconsolidation theory in that after a night of sleep the reactivation of consolidated memory traces puts them back in a labile form, hence again sensitive to interference. By contrast, in the SD condition, subjects would create a dual trace (AB and AC) allowing them to fend off the negative impact of interference: the second list does not modify the first but the two lists coexist.




PS_2.047 - Synergistic memory: the consequences of actions enter as an input into memory judgments

Brouillet, D. 1 , Milhau, A. 1 , Heurley, L. 1 , Ferrier, L. 1 , Rolland-Thiers, E. 1 & Brouillet, T. 1, 2

1 EPSYLON Montpellier 3 FRANCE
2 LPCS NICE Sophia Antipolis France

Traditionally, action has been considered as an output from the organism, whose consequences are not integrated in key models of cognition. Yet, living beings are able to learn and adapt in their environments, because they are reflective systems which change their internal state depending on behavior. Furthermore, memory’s function is to guide pattern of possible actions in current context. Therefore, the planned actions should take into account their consequences based on prior experiences. According to the synergistic theory, we suggest that the consequences of action enter as an input into memory judgments. Two experiments showed that after a learning task, a secondary task associating color to the consequence of the responses produced (correct vs incorrect) has an impact on the recognition task, when words were presented in those colors. The results showed that the rate of recognition, such as rates of false recognition and response times were influenced by past associations of color and answers in the secondary task. These results support the idea that memory is a dynamic system. The judgment of memory is not the product of the activation of stored knowledge, but it emerges from the interacting parts of the temporal aspects of the embodied activity.




PS_2.048 - Influence of sensory interference during encoding on memory retrieval

Lesourd, M. & Versace, R.

Laboratoire EMC, Université Lumière Lyon 2

Objective. Replicate classical sensory interference effect in memory (Lehman & Murray, 2005) and explain those effects regarding Act-In model (Versace et al, 2009), which argues that knowledge are sensory-based. Specifically in this model, sensory components of memory traces are activated and progressively integrated during retrieval. In this frame, a sensory interference during encoding may selectively interfere with the activation of sensory components of the memory trace. Instead, a bimodal congruent stimulus presented during encoding should facilitate memory retrieval compared to unimodal condition. Method. First, participants had to complete a categorization task (living vs. non-living). Items could be presented either audio-visually (i.e., a visual picture presented with a semantically congruent sound or with a white noise) or only visually. In the second part of the experiment, participants completed a recognition task of visual items, which supposed to implicate familiarity and recollection processes. Results. In multimodal condition, items are globally better recognized than other ones. Instead, sensory interference (i.e., white-noise interference) selectively disrupts familiarity process compared to unimodal condition. Discussion. Retrieval from memory seems to be influenced by sensory manipulation during encoding. Theses results can be discussed related to activation mecanism in Act-In modelization.




PS_2.049 - Prospective memory in children: The role of episodic future thinking and social importance

Cosenza, M. 1 , Brandimonte, M. A. 2 , Cicogna, P. C. 3 & Nigro, G. 1

1 Department of Psychology. Second University of Naples. Naples, Italy.
2 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology. Suor Orsola Benincasa University. Naples, Italy.
3 Department of Psychology. University of Bologna. Bologna, Italy.

The primary goal of this study was to explore the relationship among retrospective memory, episodic future thinking (EFT), and prospective memory (PM) in preschool, first, and second grade children. The PM task involved a pro-social intention. One hundred twenty children (67 boys and 53 girls) took part in the experiment. Participants were from four age groups: 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, 6-year-olds, and 7-year-olds. Participants were administered a recognition memory task, a task to test the ability to pre-experience future events, and an event-based PM task. The degree of social importance of the to-be-performed action was manipulated. For each age group (N= 30), half of the participants were assigned to the high importance, whereas the other half to the low importance condition. Data were submitted to correlational analyses, ANOVAs and logistic regression analyses. Results showed that performance on the different tasks improves with age. More interestingly, results of the regression analysis showed that, independently of retrospective memory abilities, age, EFT abilities, and social importance of the to-be-performed action were significant predictors of PM performance. These novel findings suggest that the development of EFT abilities is at the root of PM functioning and that the latter is modulated by social relevance of future actions.




PS_2.050 - Telescoping effect in dating public events

Cubelli, R. , Sellaro, R. & Fiorino, L.

University of Trento

In dating tasks, public and personal events, whose dates are unknown, tend to be judged as more recent than they really are. It has been proposed that such effect, called “telescoping effect”, might be due to various factors, including how accessible an event is or how far it is in time. The present study aimed at investigating some factors that can influence the subjective time of an event: participants’ age, degree of knowledge and temporal distance. To this end, two age-groups of participants (i.e., youngsters and adults) were asked to date 30 public target events and to rate the amount of information they knew about each event. The results showed that remote events were dated as more recent than their actual dates and recent events were estimated as more distant in time. The telescoping effect was larger for remote high-knowledge events, i.e. participants produced more errors in dating known events than in dating other events. Further, youngsters were more accurate than adults. Results can be accounted for by assuming that since the most known events are recalled more frequently, participants tend to remember the last retrieval episode, thus judging the event as closer in time.




PS_2.051 - Spacing retrieval practice and long term inhibition in memory

Ortega Segura, A. 1 , Gómez-Ariza, C. J. 2 & Bajo, M. T. 1

1 University of Granada
2 University of Jaén

Retrieval Induced Forgetting (RIF) shows that selective retrieval of memories can impair later retention of related contents that compete for access during memory retrieval (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994). According to previous experiment with the retrieval practice paradigm, inhibition of related contents disappeared when a delay of 24 hours is introduced between Retrieval practice (RP) and the final memory test (MacLeod & Macrae, 1999). In three experiments we further explored this finding using specific-cue-independent final test and introducing the idea of spacing retrieval in RP paradigm. Spacing promote long lasting effects of practice (Bjork, 1975), hence we wanted to explore if spaced retrieval practice modulated temporal effects of retrieval inhibition. In Experiment 1 and 2, we assessed temporal effects of RIF and replicated MacLeod & Macrae results but with specific-cue-independent final tests. In Experiment 3, we applied a spacing practice schedule to the RP paradigm. Result supported our hypothesis.




PS_2.052 - False memories in a short-term memory task: The effects of backward associative strength and item identifiability

Albuquerque, P. & Miranda, C.

Department of Basic Psychology.University of Minho. Braga, Portugal.

Can STM tasks produce false memories? Our major objective was to understand whether false memories produced with DRM paradigm on LTM tasks can be extended to STM ones. In order to accomplish this aim we applied the Sternberg paradigm using associative lists and manipulating memory set size, probe type and backward associative strength of the words presented (0.6 and 1.2). Results showed: (1) an increase of errors and RT with the increment of set size; (2) errors decrease in high BAS condition; (3) finally, false alarms are higher and RT are slower when the probe is a critical lure. In a second study, we intended to determine whether the theme identifiability is associated with accuracy of probe detection. We found that item identifiability is higher with a higher BAS lists and no set size effect was found. Also, RTs are slower for lists with higher identifiability. We can conclude that STM paradigms can produce false memories, and theme identifiability is crucial to that memory distortion.




PS_2.053 - An inquiry in to students' knowledge about monitoring strategies

Todorov, I. , Larsson Sundqvist, M. & Jönsson, F.

Department of Psychology. Stockholm University. Stockholm, Sweden.

Properly tuned metacognitive knowledge is important for setting up realistic learning goals. One of the more robust findings in metacognitive science, the delayed JOL effect, pertains to the fact that delaying judgments of learning (JOL) leads to more accurate monitoring than immediate JOLs. We investigated students’ (n=60) knowledge about metacognitive strategies with regard to the delayed JOL effect. There was a significant effect on monitoring accuracy from delaying JOLs, yet the participants showed poor explicit knowledge of it, and neither did their choice of strategy improve with task experience. A manipulation of the JOL question, focusing it on either prediction of memory performance or current learning, failed to elicit significant change in strategy choice. The students’ predictions about their performance did not differ as a function of the altered phrasing of the JOL question. For a substantial sub-group of the participants (n=20) that kept consequently choosing the same strategy throughout the whole experiment there was a significant effect of phrasing of the JOL question. These results demonstrate the important role of correct assessment during ongoing learning, and that even experienced learners, such as, university undergraduates are seemingly unaware of which strategies lead to optimized monitoring.




PS_2.054 - Familiarity can aid prospective memory performance in older adults - but at what cost?

Entwistle, R. & Rusted, J.

Department of Psychology. University of Sussex. Brighton, U.K.

In everyday life older adults are able to compensate for age-related declines in cognitive processing resources by using pre-established knowledge structures. We investigated whether familiarity could facilitate prospective memory (PM) performance in older adults. Participants (37 older, 40 younger) were randomly assigned to sort a familiar or unfamiliar deck of cards. The number of correctly identified PM cues, reaction times to PM cues and reaction times to sort the cards were recorded. For PM accuracy, older adults performed worse than younger adults in the unfamiliar condition but performed equally as well as them in the familiar condition. Paradoxically, the cost to ongoing performance was only observed in the familiar card condition for both groups. We conclude that activation of the familiar cards improves PM performance but interferes with peoples’ ability to perform the ongoing task and does not release resources as expected.




PS_2.055 - One lump or two? How aging affects error-monitoring in a tea-making task

Balouch, S. & Rusted, J.

School of Psychology. University of Sussex. Brighton, UK.

According to the resource theory errors occur in everyday activities when cognitive resources are limited by brain damage, distraction or old age. This predicts failures in error-monitoring (ability to detect and correct errors) when resources are limited. We investigated differences in errors and error-monitoring between cognitively healthy young and older adults in a tea-making task (TT) under conditions that limited cognitive resources. Participants completed the TT in the standard condition (SC) and a dual-task distractor condition (DC). Errors and error-monitoring were comprehensively coded. Older adults made significantly more errors than young adults. The DC significantly reduced verbal checks compared to the SC in both groups, producing more microslips for young adults, but not for older adults. We conclude older adults may benefit from training that employs the effective checking strategies used by young adults, and future studies will explore this approach.




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