Subjective memory complaints among patients on sick leave are associated with symptoms of fatigue and anxiety

PubMed Central

Aasvik, Julie K.; Woodhouse, Astrid; Jacobsen, Henrik B.; Borchgrevink, Petter C.; Stiles, Tore C.; Landrø, Nils I.

2015-01-01

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify symptoms associated with subjective memory complaints (SMCs) among subjects who are currently on sick leave due to symptoms of chronic pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, subjects (n = 167) who were currently on sick leave were asked to complete an extensive survey consisting of the following: items addressing their sociodemographics, one item from the SF-8 health survey measuring pain, Chalder Fatigue Questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Insomnia Severity Index, and Everyday Memory Questionnaire – Revised. General linear modeling was used to analyze variables associated with SMCs. Results: Symptoms of fatigue (p-value < 0.001) and anxiety (p-value = 0.001) were uniquely and significantly associated with perceived memory failures. The associations with symptoms of pain, depression, and insomnia were not statistically significant. Conclusions: Subjective memory complaints should be recognized as part of the complex symptomatology among patients who report multiple symptoms, especially in cases of fatigue and anxiety. Self-report questionnaires measuring perceived memory failures may be a quick and easy way to incorporate and extend this knowledge into clinical practice. PMID:26441716

Subjective memory complaints among patients on sick leave are associated with symptoms of fatigue and anxiety.

PubMed

Aasvik, Julie K; Woodhouse, Astrid; Jacobsen, Henrik B; Borchgrevink, Petter C; Stiles, Tore C; Landrø, Nils I

2015-01-01

The aim of this study was to identify symptoms associated with subjective memory complaints (SMCs) among subjects who are currently on sick leave due to symptoms of chronic pain, fatigue, depression, anxiety, and insomnia. This was a cross-sectional study, subjects (n = 167) who were currently on sick leave were asked to complete an extensive survey consisting of the following: items addressing their sociodemographics, one item from the SF-8 health survey measuring pain, Chalder Fatigue Questionnaire, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Insomnia Severity Index, and Everyday Memory Questionnaire - Revised. General linear modeling was used to analyze variables associated with SMCs. Symptoms of fatigue (p-value < 0.001) and anxiety (p-value = 0.001) were uniquely and significantly associated with perceived memory failures. The associations with symptoms of pain, depression, and insomnia were not statistically significant. Subjective memory complaints should be recognized as part of the complex symptomatology among patients who report multiple symptoms, especially in cases of fatigue and anxiety. Self-report questionnaires measuring perceived memory failures may be a quick and easy way to incorporate and extend this knowledge into clinical practice.

Everyday Attention Failures: An Individual Differences Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Unsworth, Nash; McMillan, Brittany D.; Brewer, Gene A.; Spillers, Gregory J.

2012-01-01

The present study examined individual differences in everyday attention failures. Undergraduate students completed various cognitive ability measures in the laboratory and recorded everyday attention failures in a diary over the course of a week. The majority of attention failures were failures of distraction or mind wandering in educational…

Everyday memory measures in multiple sclerosis: a systematic review.

PubMed

dasNair, Roshan; Griffiths, Holly; Clarke, Sara; Methley, Abigail; Kneebone, Ian; Topcu, Gogem

2018-03-02

Everyday memory is one of the most affected cognitive functions in multiple sclerosis (MS). Assessing everyday memory problems is crucial for monitoring the impact of memory deficits on individuals' day-to-day lives and evaluating the effectiveness of interventions that aim to improve cognitive functions. The aim of this systematic review was to identify the research literature on everyday memory measures used with people with MS, describe the types of measures used, and summarise their psychometric properties. Empirical studies of cognitive function in MS using standardised everyday memory measures were included. Online databases (MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PsycARTICLES, Embase) and Google Scholar were searched. Forty-four studies met the inclusion criteria. A total of 12 measures were identified, with varied uses and administration methods. The majority of papers did not report any psychometric properties for MS populations. The few papers that did, reported that the measures have good reliability and appear to have good face, concurrent, and ecological validity, but these need to be evaluated further. This review presents researchers and clinicians with an overview of the various everyday memory measures used in studies with people with MS, to help them choose the appropriate measure for their evaluations.

Memory: from the laboratory to everyday life.

PubMed

Schacter, Daniel L

2013-12-01

One of the key goals of memory research is to develop a basic understanding of the nature and characteristics of memory processes and systems. Another important goal is to develop useful applications of basic research to everyday life. This editorial considers two lines of work that illustrate some of the prospects for applying memory research to everyday life: interpolated quizzing to enhance learning in educational settings, and specificity training to enhance memory and associated functions in individuals who have difficulties remembering details of their past experiences.

Measuring attention in very old adults using the Test of Everyday Attention.

PubMed

van der Leeuw, Guusje; Leveille, Suzanne G; Jones, Richard N; Hausdorff, Jeffrey M; McLean, Robert; Kiely, Dan K; Gagnon, Margaret; Milberg, William P

2017-09-01

There is a need for validated measures of attention for use in longitudinal studies of older populations. We studied 249 participants aged 80 to 101 years using the population-based MOBILIZE Boston Study. Four subscales of the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) were included, measuring attention switching, selective, sustained and divided attention and a neuropsychological battery including validated measures of multiple cognitive domains measuring attention, executive function and memory. The TEA previously has not been validated in persons aged 80 and older. Among participants who completed the TEA, scores on other attentional measures strongly with TEA domains (R=.60-.70). Proportions of participants with incomplete TEA subscales ranged from 8% (selective attention) to 19% (attentional switching). Reasons for not completing TEA tests included failure to comprehend test instructions despite repetition and practice. These results demonstrate the challenges and potential value of the Test of Everyday Attention in studies of very old populations.

A Framework for Cognitive Interventions Targeting Everyday Memory Performance and Memory Self-efficacy

PubMed Central

McDougall, Graham J.

2009-01-01

The human brain has the potential for self-renewal through adult neurogenesis, which is the birth of new neurons. Neural plasticity implies that the nervous system can change and grow. This understanding has created new possibilities for cognitive enhancement and rehabilitation. However, as individuals age, they have decreased confidence, or memory self-efficacy, which is directly related to their everyday memory performance. In this article, a developmental account of studies about memory self-efficacy and nonpharmacologic cognitive intervention models is presented and a cognitive intervention model, called the cognitive behavioral model of everyday memory, is proposed. PMID:19065089

Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence

PubMed Central

Willoughby, Karen A.; Desrocher, Mary; Levine, Brian; Rovet, Joanne F.

2012-01-01

Few studies have examined both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory (AM) performance during late childhood and early adolescence. Using the newly developed Children’s Autobiographical Interview (CAI), the present study examined the effects of age and sex on episodic and semantic AM and everyday memory in 182 children and adolescents. Results indicated that episodic and semantic AM both improved between 8 and 16 years of age; however, age-related changes were larger for episodic AM than for semantic AM. In addition, females were found to recall more episodic AM details, but not more semantic AM details, than males. Importantly, this sex difference in episodic AM recall was attenuated under conditions of high retrieval support (i.e., the use of probing questions). The ability to clearly visualize past events at the time of recollection was related to children’s episodic AM recall performance, particularly the retrieval of perceptual details. Finally, similar age and sex effects were found between episodic AM and everyday memory ability (e.g., memory for everyday activities). More specifically, older participants and females exhibited better episodic AM and everyday memory performance than younger participants and males. Overall, the present study provides important new insight into both episodic and semantic AM performance, as well as the relation between episodic AM and everyday memory, during late childhood and adolescence. PMID:22403560

Episodic and Semantic Autobiographical Memory and Everyday Memory during Late Childhood and Early Adolescence.

PubMed

Willoughby, Karen A; Desrocher, Mary; Levine, Brian; Rovet, Joanne F

2012-01-01

Few studies have examined both episodic and semantic autobiographical memory (AM) performance during late childhood and early adolescence. Using the newly developed Children's Autobiographical Interview (CAI), the present study examined the effects of age and sex on episodic and semantic AM and everyday memory in 182 children and adolescents. Results indicated that episodic and semantic AM both improved between 8 and 16 years of age; however, age-related changes were larger for episodic AM than for semantic AM. In addition, females were found to recall more episodic AM details, but not more semantic AM details, than males. Importantly, this sex difference in episodic AM recall was attenuated under conditions of high retrieval support (i.e., the use of probing questions). The ability to clearly visualize past events at the time of recollection was related to children's episodic AM recall performance, particularly the retrieval of perceptual details. Finally, similar age and sex effects were found between episodic AM and everyday memory ability (e.g., memory for everyday activities). More specifically, older participants and females exhibited better episodic AM and everyday memory performance than younger participants and males. Overall, the present study provides important new insight into both episodic and semantic AM performance, as well as the relation between episodic AM and everyday memory, during late childhood and adolescence.

Wandering in both mind and body: individual differences in mind wandering and inattention predict fidgeting.

PubMed

Carriere, Jonathan S A; Seli, Paul; Smilek, Daniel

2013-03-01

Anecdotal reports suggest that during periods of inattention or mind wandering, people tend to experience increased fidgeting. In four studies, we examined whether individual differences in the tendency to be inattentive and to mind wander in everyday life are related to the tendency to make spontaneous and involuntary movements (i.e., to fidget). To do so, we developed self-report measures of spontaneous and deliberate mind wandering, as well as a self-report scale to index fidgeting. In addition, we used several existing self-report measures of inattentiveness, attentional control, and memory failures. Across our studies, a series of multiple regression analyses indicated that fidgeting was uniquely predicted by inattentiveness and spontaneous mind wandering but not by other related factors, including deliberate mind wandering, attentional control, and memory failures. As a result, we suggest that only spontaneously wandering thoughts are related to a wandering body.

Everyday Memory and Working Memory in Adolescents with Mild Intellectual Disability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Van der Molen, M. J.; Van Luit, J. E. H.; Van der Molen, Maurits W.; Jongmans, Marian J.

2010-01-01

Everyday memory and its relationship to working memory was investigated in adolescents with mild intellectual disability and compared to typically developing adolescents of the same age (CA) and younger children matched on mental age (MA). Results showed a delay on almost all memory measures for the adolescents with mild intellectual disability…

Cognitive predictors of everyday functioning in older adults: results from the ACTIVE Cognitive Intervention Trial.

PubMed

Gross, Alden L; Rebok, George W; Unverzagt, Frederick W; Willis, Sherry L; Brandt, Jason

2011-09-01

The present study sought to predict changes in everyday functioning using cognitive tests. Data from the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly trial were used to examine the extent to which competence in different cognitive domains--memory, inductive reasoning, processing speed, and global mental status--predicts prospectively measured everyday functioning among older adults. Coefficients of determination for baseline levels and trajectories of everyday functioning were estimated using parallel process latent growth models. Each cognitive domain independently predicts a significant proportion of the variance in baseline and trajectory change of everyday functioning, with inductive reasoning explaining the most variance (R2 = .175) in baseline functioning and memory explaining the most variance (R2 = .057) in changes in everyday functioning. Inductive reasoning is an important determinant of current everyday functioning in community-dwelling older adults, suggesting that successful performance in daily tasks is critically dependent on executive cognitive function. On the other hand, baseline memory function is more important in determining change over time in everyday functioning, suggesting that some participants with low baseline memory function may reflect a subgroup with incipient progressive neurologic disease.

Quantifying Precision and Availability of Location Memory in Everyday Pictures and Some Implications for Picture Database Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lansdale, Mark W.; Oliff, Lynda; Baguley, Thom S.

2005-01-01

The authors investigated whether memory for object locations in pictures could be exploited to address known difficulties of designing query languages for picture databases. M. W. Lansdale's (1998) model of location memory was adapted to 4 experiments observing memory for everyday pictures. These experiments showed that location memory is…

Mood-Congruent Memory and Natural Mood: New Evidence.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mayer, John D.; And Others

1995-01-01

Presents new evidence that everyday mood does bring about a hypothesized effect on memory, termed mood-congruent memory (MCM). Results of three studies provided evidence for MCM among normal individuals (n=614). Findings support prior studies and bolster notions that mood and memory constantly covary in everyday experience. (RJM)

Event perception: Translations and applications

PubMed Central

Richmond, Lauren L.; Gold, David A.; Zacks, Jeffrey M.

2016-01-01

Event segmentation is the parsing of ongoing activity into meaningful events. Segmenting in a normative fashion—identifying event boundaries similar to others’ boundaries—is associated with better memory for and better performance of naturalistic actions. Given this, a reasonable hypothesis is that interventions that improve memory and attention for everyday events could lead to improvement in domains that are important for independent living, particularly in older populations. Event segmentation and memory measures may also be effective diagnostic tools for estimating people's ability to carry out tasks of daily living. Such measures preserve the rich, naturalistic character of everyday activity, but are easy to quantify in a laboratory or clinical setting. Therefore, event segmentation and memory measures may be a useful proxy for clinicians to assess everyday functioning in patient populations and an appropriate target for interventions aimed at improving everyday memory and tasks of daily living. PMID:28936393

Improving everyday memory performance after acquired brain injury: An RCT on recollection and working memory training.

PubMed

Richter, Kim Merle; Mödden, Claudia; Eling, Paul; Hildebrandt, Helmut

2018-04-26

To show the effectiveness of a combined recognition and working memory training on everyday memory performance in patients suffering from organic memory disorders. In this double-blind, randomized controlled Study 36 patients with organic memory impairments, mainly attributable to stroke, were assigned to either the experimental or the active control group. In the experimental group a working memory training was combined with a recollection training based on the repetition-lag procedure. Patients in the active control group received the memory therapy usually provided in the rehabilitation center. Both groups received nine hours of therapy. Prior (T0) and subsequent (T1) to the therapy, patients were evaluated on an everyday memory test (EMT) as well as on a neuropsychological test battery. Based on factor analysis of the neuropsychological test scores at T0 we calculated composite scores for working memory, verbal learning and word fluency. After treatment, the intervention group showed a significantly greater improvement for WM performance compared with the active control group. More importantly, performance on the EMT also improved significantly in patients receiving the recollection and working memory training compared with patients with standard memory training. Our results show that combining working memory and recollection training significantly improves performance on everyday memory tasks, demonstrating far transfer effects. The present study argues in favor of a process-based approach for treating memory impairments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

The use of metacognitive strategies to decrease false memories in source monitoring in patients with mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Deason, Rebecca G; Nadkarni, Neil A; Tat, Michelle J; Flannery, Sean; Frustace, Bruno; Ally, Brandon A; Budson, Andrew E

2017-06-01

Patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) often demonstrate high rates of false memories, leading to stressful and frustrating situations for both patients and caregivers in everyday life. Sometimes these false memories are due to failures in monitoring the source of the information. In the current study, we examined interventions aimed to enhance the use of the metacognitive "recall-to-reject" memory strategy. Such interventions could improve source memory and decrease false memory in patients with MCI. Because the picture superiority effect (better memory for pictures compared to words) has been shown to be present in both patients with MCI and healthy older controls, we investigated whether pictures could help patients with MCI use a recall-to-reject strategy in a simulation of real-world source memory task. In this experiment, patients with MCI and healthy older adults were asked to simulate preparing for and then taking a trip to the market. Subjects first studied 30 pictures of items in their "cupboard," followed by a list of 30 words of items on their "shopping list." At test, participants saw 90 pictures (30 cupboard, 30 list, 30 new) organized as they would be if walking down the market aisles, and are provided with either standard or metacognitive instructions. With standard instructions, they were asked if they needed to buy the item. With the metacognitive instructions, they were asked a series of questions to help guide them through a recall-to-reject strategy to highlight the different sources of memories. Results showed that the metacognitive instructions did significantly reduce the false memory rates for patients with MCI. Further studies need to investigate how to best implement these practical strategies into the everyday lives of patients. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cross-sectional and Longitudinal Analyses of Everyday Memory Lapses in Older Adults

PubMed Central

McAlister, Courtney; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen

2016-01-01

Everyday memory lapses experienced by older adults (OA) were examined using a daily-diary checklist and retrospective questionnaire. In Experiment 1, 138 younger and 138 OAs indicated the frequency of forgetting of 16 memory lapses, and whether each occurred daily during the course of a week. OAs reported more memory lapses on the questionnaire, but not the daily diary. OAs reported more frequently forgetting names and words, while younger adults had more difficulty with appointments and personal dates. Fewer memory lapses on the daily diary were related to better performance on a laboratory-memory measure for OAs. In Experiment 2, 62 OAs returned for a five-year follow-up and endorsed experiencing more memory lapses on the daily diary compared to baseline, specifically forgetting more names and words, but not the retrospective questionnaire. Daily checklist memory lapses again correlated with the laboratory-memory measure. A daily checklist may be a viable way to assess everyday memory lapses. PMID:26810777

Everyday episodic memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: a preliminary investigation.

PubMed

Irish, Muireann; Lawlor, Brian A; Coen, Robert F; O'Mara, Shane M

2011-08-04

Decline in episodic memory is one of the hallmark features of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and is also a defining feature of amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), which is posited as a potential prodrome of AD. While deficits in episodic memory are well documented in MCI, the nature of this impairment remains relatively under-researched, particularly for those domains with direct relevance and meaning for the patient's daily life. In order to fully explore the impact of disruption to the episodic memory system on everyday memory in MCI, we examined participants' episodic memory capacity using a battery of experimental tasks with real-world relevance. We investigated episodic acquisition and delayed recall (story-memory), associative memory (face-name pairings), spatial memory (route learning and recall), and memory for everyday mundane events in 16 amnestic MCI and 18 control participants. Furthermore, we followed MCI participants longitudinally to gain preliminary evidence regarding the possible predictive efficacy of these real-world episodic memory tasks for subsequent conversion to AD. The most discriminating tests at baseline were measures of acquisition, delayed recall, and associative memory, followed by everyday memory, and spatial memory tasks, with MCI patients scoring significantly lower than controls. At follow-up (mean time elapsed: 22.4 months), 6 MCI cases had progressed to clinically probable AD. Exploratory logistic regression analyses revealed that delayed associative memory performance at baseline was a potential predictor of subsequent conversion to AD. As a preliminary study, our findings suggest that simple associative memory paradigms with real-world relevance represent an important line of enquiry in future longitudinal studies charting MCI progression over time.

Virtual reality-based prospective memory training program for people with acquired brain injury.

PubMed

Yip, Ben C B; Man, David W K

2013-01-01

Acquired brain injuries (ABI) may display cognitive impairments and lead to long-term disabilities including prospective memory (PM) failure. Prospective memory serves to remember to execute an intended action in the future. PM problems would be a challenge to an ABI patient's successful community reintegration. While retrospective memory (RM) has been extensively studied, treatment programs for prospective memory are rarely reported. The development of a treatment program for PM, which is considered timely, can be cost-effective and appropriate to the patient's environment. A 12-session virtual reality (VR)-based cognitive rehabilitation program was developed using everyday PM activities as training content. 37 subjects were recruited to participate in a pretest-posttest control experimental study to evaluate its treatment effectiveness. Results suggest that significantly better changes were seen in both VR-based and real-life PM outcome measures, related cognitive attributes such as frontal lobe functions and semantic fluency. VR-based training may be well accepted by ABI patients as encouraging improvement has been shown. Large-scale studies of a virtual reality-based prospective memory (VRPM) training program are indicated.

Event segmentation ability uniquely predicts event memory.

PubMed

Sargent, Jesse Q; Zacks, Jeffrey M; Hambrick, David Z; Zacks, Rose T; Kurby, Christopher A; Bailey, Heather R; Eisenberg, Michelle L; Beck, Taylor M

2013-11-01

Memory for everyday events plays a central role in tasks of daily living, autobiographical memory, and planning. Event memory depends in part on segmenting ongoing activity into meaningful units. This study examined the relationship between event segmentation and memory in a lifespan sample to answer the following question: Is the ability to segment activity into meaningful events a unique predictor of subsequent memory, or is the relationship between event perception and memory accounted for by general cognitive abilities? Two hundred and eight adults ranging from 20 to 79years old segmented movies of everyday events and attempted to remember the events afterwards. They also completed psychometric ability tests and tests measuring script knowledge for everyday events. Event segmentation and script knowledge both explained unique variance in event memory above and beyond the psychometric measures, and did so as strongly in older as in younger adults. These results suggest that event segmentation is a basic cognitive mechanism, important for memory across the lifespan. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Working memory, control of interference and everyday experience of thought interference: when age makes the difference.

PubMed

Borella, Erika; Carretti, Barbara; Cornoldi, Cesare; De Beni, Rossana

2007-06-01

A number of studies suggest that age differences in working memory may be attributed to age-related differences in inhibitory efficacy. Nevertheless, little is known about the impact of intrusive thoughts, which occurs in everyday situations on working memory performance. This study investigates the role of cognitive and everyday inhibition mechanisms in working memory performance. Young, young-old and old-old adults performed a working memory task and the White Bear Suppression Inventory (WBSI). Results showed a decrease in working memory, and in inhibitory efficacy with age. In addition, old-old adults obtained higher scores in the three factors of the WBSI. Working memory performance was related to working memory control of interfering information in all age groups, and also to the tendency to suppress thoughts in old-old adults. The latter result was in the opposite direction with respect to observations collected with younger adults. Taken together, our results suggest the crucial role of intrusive thoughts in the functional capacity of working memory in late adulthood.

Event Segmentation Ability Uniquely Predicts Event Memory

PubMed Central

Sargent, Jesse Q.; Zacks, Jeffrey M.; Hambrick, David Z.; Zacks, Rose T.; Kurby, Christopher A.; Bailey, Heather R.; Eisenberg, Michelle L.; Beck, Taylor M.

2013-01-01

Memory for everyday events plays a central role in tasks of daily living, autobiographical memory, and planning. Event memory depends in part on segmenting ongoing activity into meaningful units. This study examined the relationship between event segmentation and memory in a lifespan sample to answer the following question: Is the ability to segment activity into meaningful events a unique predictor of subsequent memory, or is the relationship between event perception and memory accounted for by general cognitive abilities? Two hundred and eight adults ranging from 20 to 79 years old segmented movies of everyday events and attempted to remember the events afterwards. They also completed psychometric ability tests and tests measuring script knowledge for everyday events. Event segmentation and script knowledge both explained unique variance in event memory above and beyond the psychometric measures, and did so as strongly in older as in younger adults. These results suggest that event segmentation is a basic cognitive mechanism, important for memory across the lifespan. PMID:23942350

Everyday memory impairment in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy caused by hippocampal sclerosis.

PubMed

Rzezak, Patrícia; Lima, Ellen Marise; Gargaro, Ana Carolina; Coimbra, Erica; de Vincentiis, Silvia; Velasco, Tonicarlo Rodrigues; Leite, João Pereira; Busatto, Geraldo F; Valente, Kette D

2017-04-01

Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy caused by hippocampal sclerosis (TLE-HS) have episodic memory impairment. Memory has rarely been evaluated using an ecologic measure, even though performance on these tests is more related to patients' memory complaints. We aimed to measure everyday memory of patients with TLE-HS to age- and gender-matched controls. We evaluated 31 patients with TLE-HS and 34 healthy controls, without epilepsy and psychiatric disorders, using the Rivermead Behavioral Memory Test (RBMT), Visual Reproduction (WMS-III) and Logical Memory (WMS-III). We evaluated the impact of clinical variables such as the age of onset, epilepsy duration, AED use, history of status epilepticus, and seizure frequency on everyday memory. Statistical analyses were performed using MANCOVA with years of education as a confounding factor. Patients showed worse performance than controls on traditional memory tests and in the overall score of RBMT. Patients had more difficulties to recall names, a hidden belonging, to deliver a message, object recognition, to remember a story full of details, a previously presented short route, and in time and space orientation. Clinical epilepsy variables were not associated with RBMT performance. Memory span and working memory were correlated with worse performance on RBMT. Patients with TLE-HS demonstrated deficits in everyday memory functions. A standard neuropsychological battery, designed to assess episodic memory, would not evaluate these impairments. Impairment in recalling names, routes, stories, messages, and space/time disorientation can adversely impact social adaptation, and we must consider these ecologic measures with greater attention in the neuropsychological evaluation of patients with memory complaints. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Daily Stress Magnifies the Association between Cognitive Decline and Everyday Memory Problems: An Integration of Longitudinal and Diary Methods

PubMed Central

Rickenbach, Elizabeth H.; Almeida, David M.; Seeman, Teresa E.; Lachman, Margie E.

2014-01-01

We examined whether long-term fluid cognitive decline was associated with memory problems in everyday life, and whether stress plays a moderating role. We expected that the association between cognitive decline and everyday memory problems would be magnified in the context of self-reported and physiological stress. Data are from the Boston Longitudinal Study, a subsample of the Midlife in the United States study. Participants in the current study (n=112) completed a battery of tests measuring fluid cognitive functioning at Time 1 (T1) and 2 (T2) over ten years. At T2, participants completed weekly diaries of self-reported daily stressors and everyday memory problems for twelve consecutive weeks. Also at T2, participants provided four saliva samples over the course of one day to assess physiological stress using diurnal cortisol profiles [cortisol awakening response (CAR) and diurnal cortisol slope (DCS)]. Self-reported daily stressors and a less healthy DCS were associated with more everyday memory problems, and participants with greater cognitive decline reported more memory problems compared to those with less or no decline. Self-reported daily stressors and CAR moderated the relationship of cognitive decline and memory problems. As expected, more cognitive decline was associated with greater increases in memory problems on weeks when individuals reported more daily stressors and for individuals with a less healthy CAR. The current findings can inform interventions aimed to identify factors, such as daily stress, that contribute to daily functioning in the context of cognitive decline. PMID:25365691

Everyday episodic memory in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: a preliminary investigation

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background Decline in episodic memory is one of the hallmark features of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and is also a defining feature of amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), which is posited as a potential prodrome of AD. While deficits in episodic memory are well documented in MCI, the nature of this impairment remains relatively under-researched, particularly for those domains with direct relevance and meaning for the patient's daily life. In order to fully explore the impact of disruption to the episodic memory system on everyday memory in MCI, we examined participants' episodic memory capacity using a battery of experimental tasks with real-world relevance. We investigated episodic acquisition and delayed recall (story-memory), associative memory (face-name pairings), spatial memory (route learning and recall), and memory for everyday mundane events in 16 amnestic MCI and 18 control participants. Furthermore, we followed MCI participants longitudinally to gain preliminary evidence regarding the possible predictive efficacy of these real-world episodic memory tasks for subsequent conversion to AD. Results The most discriminating tests at baseline were measures of acquisition, delayed recall, and associative memory, followed by everyday memory, and spatial memory tasks, with MCI patients scoring significantly lower than controls. At follow-up (mean time elapsed: 22.4 months), 6 MCI cases had progressed to clinically probable AD. Exploratory logistic regression analyses revealed that delayed associative memory performance at baseline was a potential predictor of subsequent conversion to AD. Conclusions As a preliminary study, our findings suggest that simple associative memory paradigms with real-world relevance represent an important line of enquiry in future longitudinal studies charting MCI progression over time. PMID:21816065

Effects of cues to event segmentation on subsequent memory.

PubMed

Gold, David A; Zacks, Jeffrey M; Flores, Shaney

2017-01-01

To remember everyday activity it is important to encode it effectively, and one important component of everyday activity is that it consists of events. People who segment activity into events more adaptively have better subsequent memory for that activity, and event boundaries are remembered better than event middles. The current study asked whether intervening to improve segmentation by cuing effective event boundaries would enhance subsequent memory for events. We selected a set of movies that had previously been segmented by a large sample of observers and edited them to provide visual and auditory cues to encourage segmentation. For each movie, cues were placed either at event boundaries or event middles, or the movie was left unedited. To further support the encoding of our everyday event movies, we also included post-viewing summaries of the movies. We hypothesized that cuing at event boundaries would improve memory, and that this might reduce age differences in memory. For both younger and older adults, we found that cuing event boundaries improved memory-particularly for the boundaries that were cued. Cuing event middles also improved memory, though to a lesser degree; this suggests that imposing a segmental structure on activity may facilitate memory encoding, even when segmentation is not optimal. These results provide evidence that structural cuing can improve memory for everyday events in younger and older adults.

Effects of Cognitive Training with and without Aerobic Exercise on Cognitively-Demanding Everyday Activities

PubMed Central

McDaniel, Mark A.; Binder, Ellen F.; Bugg, Julie M.; Waldum, Emily R.; Dufault, Carolyn; Meyer, Amanda; Johanning, Jennifer; Zheng, Jie; Schechtman, Kenneth B.; Kudelka, Chris

2015-01-01

We investigated the potential benefits of a novel cognitive training protocol and an aerobic exercise intervention, both individually and in concert, on older adults’ performances in laboratory simulations of select real-world tasks. The cognitive training focused on a range of cognitive processes, including attentional coordination, prospective memory, and retrospective-memory retrieval, processes that are likely involved in many everyday tasks, and that decline with age. Primary outcome measures were three laboratory tasks that simulated everyday activities: Cooking Breakfast, Virtual Week, and Memory for Health Information. Two months of cognitive training improved older adults’ performance on prospective memory tasks embedded in Virtual Week. Cognitive training, either alone or in combination with six months of aerobic exercise, did not significantly improve Cooking Breakfast or Memory for Health Information. Although gains in aerobic power were comparable to previous reports, aerobic exercise did not produce improvements for the primary outcome measures. Discussion focuses on the possibility that cognitive training programs that include explicit strategy instruction and varied practice contexts may confer gains to older adults for performance on cognitively challenging everyday tasks. PMID:25244489

Everyday false memories in older persons with depressive disorder.

PubMed

Sejunaite, Karolina; Lanza, Claudia; Riepe, Matthias W

2018-03-01

Generally we tend to think that memory in daily living is complete and accurate in healthy persons. However, current memory research has revealed inconspicuous memory faults. Rarely omissions and distortions of memory are researched with tasks resembling everyday life. We investigated healthy older control subjects (HC) and patients with depressive disorder (DD). Cognitive function was assessed with a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery and mood with the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Scale (MADRS). We assessed everyday veridical and distorted memories on showing participants original news and commercials. In most aspects of attention, executive functions, and memory, patients with DD performed worse than HC. Regarding memory content on viewing news or commercials the difference between patients with DD and HC was more pronounced for false memory content than for veridical memory content. Linear regression analysis showed the extent of false memory content being associated with mental flexibility as assessed with the Trail Making Test and mood as assessed with the MADRS for both information obtained on viewing news and commercials. Increase of false memories impedes overall accuracy of memory more than decrease of veridical memories in older persons with depressive disorder. Diminished executive functions and depressive mood partly explain these memory distortions. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Is Media Multitasking Good for Cybersecurity? Exploring the Relationship Between Media Multitasking and Everyday Cognitive Failures on Self-Reported Risky Cybersecurity Behaviors.

PubMed

Hadlington, Lee; Murphy, Karen

2018-03-01

The current study focused on how engaging in media multitasking (MMT) and the experience of everyday cognitive failures impact on the individual's engagement in risky cybersecurity behaviors (RCsB). In total, 144 participants (32 males, 112 females) completed an online survey. The age range for participants was 18 to 43 years (M = 20.63, SD = 4.04). Participants completed three scales which included an inventory of weekly MMT, a measure of everyday cognitive failures, and RCsB. There was a significant difference between heavy media multitaskers (HMM), average media multitaskers (AMM), and light media multitaskers (LMM) in terms of RCsB, with HMM demonstrating more frequent risky behaviors than LMM or AMM. The HMM group also reported more cognitive failures in everyday life than the LMM group. A regression analysis showed that everyday cognitive failures and MMT acted as significant predictors for RCsB. These results expand our current understanding of the relationship between human factors and cybersecurity behaviors, which are useful to inform the design of training and intervention packages to mitigate RCsB.

Mobile phones as a new memory aid: a preliminary investigation using case studies.

PubMed

Wade, T K; Troy, J C

2001-04-01

Memory impairment is one of the most common concerns following a brain injury of any severity. The use of effective external memory aids can help minimize the devastating effects such memory impairment can have on an individual's everyday life. Reviewed in this report are case studies of five individuals suffering significant everyday memory problems that were given a new memory aid that utilizes standard mobile phones. Measurements included diary-format observations and qualitative feedback. The results of the study show promising outcomes for all of the cases, and have led to recent adaptations to allow for wider and more effective use of this memory aid.

Working memory training and transfer in older adults.

PubMed

Richmond, Lauren L; Morrison, Alexandra B; Chein, Jason M; Olson, Ingrid R

2011-12-01

There has been a great deal of interest, both privately and commercially, in using working memory training exercises to improve general cognitive function. However, many of the laboratory findings for older adults, a group in which this training is of utmost interest, are discouraging due to the lack of transfer to other tasks and skills. Importantly, improvements in everyday functioning remain largely unexamined in relation to WM training. We trained working memory in older adults using a task that encourages transfer in young adults (Chein & Morrison, 2010). We tested transfer to measures of working memory (e.g., Reading Span), everyday cognitive functioning [the Test of Everyday Attention (TEA) and the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT)], and other tasks of interest. Relative to controls, trained participants showed transfer improvements in Reading Span and the number of repetitions on the CVLT. Training group participants were also significantly more likely to self-report improvements in everyday attention. Our findings support the use of ecological tasks as a measure of transfer in an older adult population.

Memory retrieval of everyday information under stress.

PubMed

Stock, Lisa-Marie; Merz, Christian J

2018-07-01

Psychosocial stress is known to crucially influence learning and memory processes. Several studies have already shown an impairing effect of elevated cortisol concentrations on memory retrieval. These studies mainly used learning material consisting of stimuli with a limited ecological validity. When using material with a social contextual component or with educational relevant material both impairing and enhancing stress effects on memory retrieval could be observed. In line with these latter studies, the present experiment also used material with a higher ecological validity (a coherent text consisting of daily relevant numeric, figural and verbal information). After encoding, retrieval took place 24 h later after exposure to psychosocial stress or a control procedure (20 healthy men per group). The stress group was further subdivided into cortisol responders and non-responders. Results showed a significantly impaired retrieval of everyday information in non-responders compared to responders and controls. Altogether, the present findings indicate the need of an appropriate cortisol response for the successful memory retrieval of everyday information. Thus, the present findings suggest that cortisol increases - contrary to a stressful experience per se - seem to play a protective role for retrieving everyday information. Additionally, it could be speculated that the previously reported impairing stress effects on memory retrieval might depend on the used learning material. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Ecologically relevant episodic memory assessment indicates an attenuated age-related memory loss - A virtual reality study.

PubMed

Pflueger, Marlon O; Stieglitz, Rolf-Dieter; Lemoine, Patrick; Leyhe, Thomas

2018-06-07

Since the advent of imaging techniques, the role of the neuropsychological assessment has changed. Questions concerning everyday functionality became primarily important and, thus, ecologically valid neuropsychological assessments are mandatory. Virtual reality (VR) environments might provide a way of implementing immersive cognitive assessments with a higher degree of everyday-life-related cognitive demands. We report on a VR-based episodic memory examination in N = 30 young and N = 18 healthy older adults (HOA) using a kitchen scene. The test procedure was designed to be structurally comparable to clinically used California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT) in terms of repeated learning trials as well as short and long delayed recall measures. The results showed that age-related learning and performance decrements were mainly evident in the CVLT but not in the VR-memory examination. The ecologically valid VR-memory examination might provide a more accurate "age-fair" estimation of everyday-life-related memory demands in HOA than the frequently and clinically used CVLT. We concluded this from our finding of context-related automatic and effortless activations of deeply experience based encoding and retrieval strategies with regard to everyday-life-related objects in the HOA, which might not be paralleled by learning arbitrary word associations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Prospective memory impairment in "ecstasy" (MDMA) users.

PubMed

Rendell, Peter G; Gray, Timothy J; Henry, Julie D; Tolan, Anne

2007-11-01

Considerable research indicates that "ecstasy" users perceive their memory for future intentions (prospective memory) to be impaired. However, only one empirical study to date has directly tested how this capacity is affected by ecstasy use, and this study provided relatively limited information regarding the extent, scope, or implications of problems experienced. The present study assessed prospective performance on a laboratory measure of prospective memory that closely represents the types of prospective memory tasks that actually occur in everyday life and provides an opportunity to investigate the different sorts of prospective memory failures that occur ("Virtual Week"). Ecstasy user group (27 current users and 34 nonusers) was between participants, and prospective memory task (regular, irregular, time-check) was within participants. A measure sensitive to specific aspects of psychopathology was also administered. Ecstasy users were significantly impaired on Virtual Week, and these deficits were of a comparable magnitude irrespective of the specific prospective memory task demands. The pattern of results was unchanged after controlling for marijuana use, level of psychopathology, and sleep quality. Further, prospective memory was shown to be significantly impaired for both relatively infrequent and relatively frequent ecstasy users, although for the latter group the magnitude of this deficit was greater. Prospective memory performance is sensitive to regular and even moderate ecstasy use. Importantly, ecstasy users experience generalized difficulties with prospective memory, suggesting that these deficits are likely to have important implications for day-to-day functioning.

Radiologists remember mountains better than radiographs, or do they?

PubMed

Evans, Karla K; Marom, Edith M; Godoy, Myrna C B; Palacio, Diana; Sagebiel, Tara; Cuellar, Sonia Betancourt; McEntee, Mark; Tian, Charles; Brennan, Patrick C; Haygood, Tamara Miner

2016-01-01

Expertise with encoding material has been shown to aid long-term memory for that material. It is not clear how relevant this expertise is for image memorability (e.g., radiologists' memory for radiographs), and how robust over time. In two studies, we tested scene memory using a standard long-term memory paradigm. One compared the performance of radiologists to naïve observers on two image sets, chest radiographs and everyday scenes, and the other radiologists' memory with immediate as opposed to delayed recognition tests using musculoskeletal radiographs and forest scenes. Radiologists' memory was better than novices for images of expertise but no different for everyday scenes. With the heterogeneity of image sets equated, radiologists' expertise with radiographs afforded them better memory for the musculoskeletal radiographs than forest scenes. Enhanced memory for images of expertise disappeared over time, resulting in chance level performance for both image sets after weeks of delay. Expertise with the material is important for visual memorability but not to the same extent as idiosyncratic detail and variability of the image set. Similar memory decline with time for images of expertise as for everyday scenes further suggests that extended familiarity with an image is not a robust factor for visual memorability.

Is Media Multitasking Good for Cybersecurity? Exploring the Relationship Between Media Multitasking and Everyday Cognitive Failures on Self-Reported Risky Cybersecurity Behaviors

PubMed Central

Murphy, Karen

2018-01-01

Abstract The current study focused on how engaging in media multitasking (MMT) and the experience of everyday cognitive failures impact on the individual's engagement in risky cybersecurity behaviors (RCsB). In total, 144 participants (32 males, 112 females) completed an online survey. The age range for participants was 18 to 43 years (M = 20.63, SD = 4.04). Participants completed three scales which included an inventory of weekly MMT, a measure of everyday cognitive failures, and RCsB. There was a significant difference between heavy media multitaskers (HMM), average media multitaskers (AMM), and light media multitaskers (LMM) in terms of RCsB, with HMM demonstrating more frequent risky behaviors than LMM or AMM. The HMM group also reported more cognitive failures in everyday life than the LMM group. A regression analysis showed that everyday cognitive failures and MMT acted as significant predictors for RCsB. These results expand our current understanding of the relationship between human factors and cybersecurity behaviors, which are useful to inform the design of training and intervention packages to mitigate RCsB. PMID:29638157

Memory complaints in subjective cognitive impairment, amnestic mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Ryu, Seon Young; Lee, Sang Bong; Kim, Tae Woo; Lee, Taek Jun

2016-12-01

Memory complaints are a frequent phenomenon in elderly individuals and can lead to opportunistic help-seeking behavior. The aim of this study was to compare different aspects of memory complaints (i.e., prospective versus retrospective complaints) in individuals with subjective cognitive impairment (SCI), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), and mild Alzheimer's disease (AD). The study included a total of 115 participants (mean age: 68.82 ± 8.83 years) with SCI (n = 34), aMCI (n = 46), and mild AD (n = 35). Memory complaints were assessed using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), which consists of 16 items that describe everyday memory failure of both prospective memory (PM) and retrospective memory (RM). For aMCI and AD subjects, informants also completed an informant-rating of the PRMQ. All participants completed detailed neuropsychological tests. Results show that PM complaints were equivalent among the three groups. However, RM complaints differed. Specifically, RM complaints in aMCI were higher than SCI, but similar to AD. Informant-reported memory complaints were higher for AD than aMCI. Our study suggests that RM complaints of memory complaints may be helpful in discriminating between SCI and aMCI, but both PM and RM complaints are of limited value in differentiating aMCI from AD.

Experiment on Chinese Postgraduates' Recognizing 100 Everyday English Adopting "MMOASAPMI"

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Hongli; Li, Jinghua; Luo, Jing; Liu, Hong

2008-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the memory effects of the postgraduates' memorizing Everyday English from 30 to 100 using the Natural Numeral Imagery Memory (Method by memorizing the concrete objects associated with the shapes of Arabic numeral to produce marvelous imagination, MMOASAPMI). The results indicated as follows: Firstly,…

Efficacy of memory training in healthy community-dwelling older people: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Pérez, Anna; Roqué, Marta; Domènech, Sara; Monteserín, Rosa; Soriano, Núria; Blancafort, Xavier; Bosom, Maria; Vidal, Cristina; Petit, Montse; Hortal, Núria; Gil, Carles; Espelt, Albert; López, Maria José

2015-10-01

There is limited evidence on the efficacy and social utility of cognitive training. To address this, we have designed a randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of memory training workshops for healthy older people in terms of their short- and long-term impact on cognitive function, health-related quality of life, and functionality. A randomized controlled trial will be performed in health care centers in Barcelona (Spain) through comparison of a group of individuals participating in memory training workshops (experimental group) with another group with similar characteristics not participating in the workshops (control group). The intervention will consist of twelve 90-minute group sessions imparted once a week by a psychologist specialized in memory training. The groups will each comprise approximately 15 people, for a total number of 230 patients involved in the study. Each session has its own objectives, materials and activities. The content of the intervention is based on memory training from different perspectives, including cognitive and emotional aspects and social and individual skills. Data will be collected at baseline, at 3-4 months and at 6 months. To assess the efficacy of the intervention on cognitive function, health-related quality of life and functionality, a statistical analysis will be performed by fitting a repeated-measures mixed effects model for each main outcome: Self-perceived memory, measured by a Subjective Self-reported Memory Score (from 0 to 10) and by the Memory Failures in Everyday life questionnaire (MFE); Everyday memory, measured using the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test-3 (RBMT-3) and Executive control abilities, measured in terms of visual-perceptual ability, working memory and task-switching ability with the Trail Making Test (TMT) and with the digit span scale of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale III (WAIS III). The results of this study will be highly useful for social and public health policies related to older people. Given the continuous increase in the prevalence of older people, a large number of interventions targeting memory loss are funded by public resources. To ensure transparency and effective prioritization, research such as the present study is needed to provide evidence of the effectiveness and usefulness of these interventions. Number: NCT02431182 .

Radiologists remember mountains better than radiographs, or do they?

PubMed Central

Evans, Karla K.; Marom, Edith M.; Godoy, Myrna C. B.; Palacio, Diana; Sagebiel, Tara; Cuellar, Sonia Betancourt; McEntee, Mark; Tian, Charles; Brennan, Patrick C.; Haygood, Tamara Miner

2015-01-01

Abstract. Expertise with encoding material has been shown to aid long-term memory for that material. It is not clear how relevant this expertise is for image memorability (e.g., radiologists’ memory for radiographs), and how robust over time. In two studies, we tested scene memory using a standard long-term memory paradigm. One compared the performance of radiologists to naïve observers on two image sets, chest radiographs and everyday scenes, and the other radiologists’ memory with immediate as opposed to delayed recognition tests using musculoskeletal radiographs and forest scenes. Radiologists’ memory was better than novices for images of expertise but no different for everyday scenes. With the heterogeneity of image sets equated, radiologists’ expertise with radiographs afforded them better memory for the musculoskeletal radiographs than forest scenes. Enhanced memory for images of expertise disappeared over time, resulting in chance level performance for both image sets after weeks of delay. Expertise with the material is important for visual memorability but not to the same extent as idiosyncratic detail and variability of the image set. Similar memory decline with time for images of expertise as for everyday scenes further suggests that extended familiarity with an image is not a robust factor for visual memorability. PMID:26870748

Do subjective measures of attention and memory predict actual performance? Metacognition in older couples.

PubMed

Volz-Sidiropoulou, Eftychia; Gauggel, Siegfried

2012-06-01

Older individuals who recognize their cognitive difficulties are more likely to adjust their everyday life to their actual cognitive functioning, particularly when they are able to estimate their abilities accurately. We assessed self- and spouse-ratings of memory and attention difficulties in everyday life of healthy, older individuals and compared them with the respective test performance. Eighty-four older individuals (women's age, M = 67.4 years, SD = 5.2; men's age, M = 68.5 years, SD = 4.9) completed both the self and the spouse versions of the Attention Deficit Questionnaire and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire and completed two neuropsychological tests. Using the residual score approach, subjective metacognitive measures of memory and attention were created and compared with actual test performance. Significant associations between subjective and objective scores were found only for men and only for episodic memory measures. Men who underreported memory difficulties performed more poorly; men who overreported memory difficulties performed better. Men's recognition performance was best predicted by subjective measures (R² = .25), followed by delayed recall (R² = .14) and forgetting rate (R² = .13). The results indicate gender-specific differences in metacognitive accuracy and predictive validity of subjective ratings. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Naturalistic Assessment of Executive Function and Everyday Multitasking in Healthy Older Adults

PubMed Central

McAlister, Courtney; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen

2013-01-01

Everyday multitasking and its cognitive correlates were investigated in an older adult population using a naturalistic task, the Day Out Task. Fifty older adults and 50 younger adults prioritized, organized, initiated and completed a number of subtasks in a campus apartment to prepare for a day out (e.g., gather ingredients for a recipe, collect change for a bus ride). Participants also completed tests assessing cognitive constructs important in multitasking. Compared to younger adults, the older adults took longer to complete the everyday tasks and more poorly sequenced the subtasks. Although they initiated, completed, and interweaved a similar number of subtasks, the older adults demonstrated poorer task quality and accuracy, completing more subtasks inefficiently. For the older adults, reduced prospective memory abilities were predictive of poorer task sequencing, while executive processes and prospective memory were predictive of inefficiently completed subtasks. The findings suggest that executive dysfunction and prospective memory difficulties may contribute to the age-related decline of everyday multitasking abilities in healthy older adults. PMID:23557096

The Virtual Shop: A new immersive virtual reality environment and scenario for the assessment of everyday memory.

PubMed

Ouellet, Émilie; Boller, Benjamin; Corriveau-Lecavalier, Nick; Cloutier, Simon; Belleville, Sylvie

2018-06-01

Assessing and predicting memory performance in everyday life is a common assignment for neuropsychologists. However, most traditional neuropsychological tasks are not conceived to capture everyday memory performance. The Virtual Shop is a fully immersive task developed to assess memory in a more ecological way than traditional neuropsychological assessments. Two studies were undertaken to assess the feasibility of the Virtual Shop and to appraise its ecological and construct validity. In study 1, 20 younger and 19 older adults completed the Virtual Shop task to evaluate its level of difficulty and the way the participants interacted with the VR material. The construct validity was examined with the contrasted-group method, by comparing the performance of younger and older adults. In study 2, 35 individuals with subjective cognitive decline completed the Virtual Shop task. Performance was correlated with an existing questionnaire evaluating everyday memory in order to appraise its ecological validity. To add further support to its construct validity, performance was correlated with traditional episodic memory and executive tasks. All participants successfully completed the Virtual Shop. The task had an appropriate level of difficulty that helped differentiate younger and older adults, supporting the feasibility and construct validity of the task. The performance on the Virtual Shop was significantly and moderately correlated with the performance on the questionnaire and on the traditional memory and executive tasks. Results support the feasibility and both the ecological and construct validity of the Virtual Shop. Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Everyday Learning in the Kitchen. Everyday Learning Series. Volume 2, Number 4

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Darbyshire, Jo

2004-01-01

The "Everyday Learning" series has been developed to focus attention on the everyday ways in which children can be supported in their growth and development. Many of one's earliest memories are likely to be about time spent in the kitchen. Licking the bowl, setting the table, doing the dishes, chatting about the day, eating a meal,…

Multiple Types of Memory and Everyday Functional Assessment in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Beaver, Jenna

2017-01-01

Abstract Objective Current proxy measures for assessing everyday functioning (e.g., questionnaires, performance-based measures, and direct observation) show discrepancies in their rating of functional status. The present study investigated the relationship between multiple proxy measures of functional status and content memory (i.e., memory for information), temporal order memory, and prospective memory in an older adult sample. Method A total of 197 community-dwelling older adults who did (n = 45) or did not meet (n = 152) criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), completed six different assessments of functional status (two questionnaires, two performance-based tasks, and two direct observation tasks) as well as experimental measures of content memory, prospective memory, and temporal order memory. Results After controlling for demographics and content memory, the temporal order and prospective memory measures explained a significant amount of variance in all proxy functional status measures. When all variables were entered into the regression analyses, content memory and prospective memory were found to be significant predictors of all measures of functional status, whereas temporal order memory was a significant predictor for the questionnaire and direct observation measures, but not performance-based measures. Conclusion The results suggest that direct observation and questionnaire measures may be able to capture components of everyday functioning that require context and temporal sequencing abilities, such as multi-tasking, that are not as well captured in many current laboratory performance-based measures of functional status. Future research should aim to inform the development and use of maximally effective and valid proxy measures of functional ability. PMID:28334170

Coping with challenges to memory in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease: observation of behaviour in response to analogues of everyday situations.

PubMed

Oyebode, Jan Rachel; Motala, Jamilah R; Hardy, Rachel M; Oliver, Chris

2009-01-01

To describe ways of coping in people with mild to moderate AD when faced with situations that are challenging to their memory. Twenty-four participants (12 with mild and 12 with moderate AD) were presented with a set of seven tasks that were analogues of everyday situations that tax memory. The participants' responses were videotaped and analysed. Participants' coping responses were grouped into seven categories to best reflect the main strategies. Individuals used a significantly greater frequency of effortful problem solving (self-reliance and reliance on carers) (p < 0.01) than other ways of coping. Positive acknowledgement of memory difficulties was used significantly more than negative acknowledgement and defensive coping (concealment and avoidance) (p < 0.01). This study used novel methodology of observation of behavioural responses in analogues of everyday situations. The predominance of effortful problem-solving emphasizes the role of the person with AD as an active agent in the management of memory loss. An emphasis in previous literature on defensive coping and denial is counter-balanced by the finding that participants commonly coped by acknowledging their memory impairment.

Quantifying precision and availability of location memory in everyday pictures and some implications for picture database design.

PubMed

Lansdale, Mark W; Oliff, Lynda; Baguley, Thom S

2005-06-01

The authors investigated whether memory for object locations in pictures could be exploited to address known difficulties of designing query languages for picture databases. M. W. Lansdale's (1998) model of location memory was adapted to 4 experiments observing memory for everyday pictures. These experiments showed that location memory is quantified by 2 parameters: a probability that memory is available and a measure of its precision. Availability is determined by controlled attentional processes, whereas precision is mostly governed by picture composition beyond the viewer's control. Additionally, participants' confidence judgments were good predictors of availability but were insensitive to precision. This research suggests that databases using location memory are feasible. The implications of these findings for database design and for further research and development are discussed. (c) 2005 APA

Recognition-induced forgetting of faces in visual long-term memory.

PubMed

Rugo, Kelsi F; Tamler, Kendall N; Woodman, Geoffrey F; Maxcey, Ashleigh M

2017-10-01

Despite more than a century of evidence that long-term memory for pictures and words are different, much of what we know about memory comes from studies using words. Recent research examining visual long-term memory has demonstrated that recognizing an object induces the forgetting of objects from the same category. This recognition-induced forgetting has been shown with a variety of everyday objects. However, unlike everyday objects, faces are objects of expertise. As a result, faces may be immune to recognition-induced forgetting. However, despite excellent memory for such stimuli, we found that faces were susceptible to recognition-induced forgetting. Our findings have implications for how models of human memory account for recognition-induced forgetting as well as represent objects of expertise and consequences for eyewitness testimony and the justice system.

Ecological validity of the five digit test and the oral trails test.

PubMed

Paiva, Gabrielle Chequer de Castro; Fialho, Mariana Braga; Costa, Danielle de Souza; Paula, Jonas Jardim de

2016-01-01

Tests evaluating the attentional-executive system are widely used in clinical practice. However, proximity of an objective cognitive test with real-world situations (ecological validity) is not frequently investigated. The present study evaluate the association between measures of the Five Digit Test (FDT) and the Oral Trails Test (OTT) with self-reported cognitive failures in everyday life as measured by the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ). Brazilian adults from 18-to-65 years old voluntarily performed the FDT and OTT tests and reported the frequency of cognitive failures in their everyday life through the CFQ. After controlling for the age effect, the measures of controlled attentional processes were associated with cognitive failures, yet the cognitive flexibility of both FDT and OTT accounted for by the majority of variance in most aspects of the CFQ factors. The FDT and the OTT measures were predictive of real-world problems such as cognitive failures in everyday activities/situations.

Memory Performance for Everyday Motivational and Neutral Objects Is Dissociable from Attention

PubMed Central

Schomaker, Judith; Wittmann, Bianca C.

2017-01-01

Episodic memory is typically better for items coupled with monetary reward or punishment during encoding. It is yet unclear whether memory is also enhanced for everyday objects with appetitive or aversive values learned through a lifetime of experience, and to what extent episodic memory enhancement for motivational and neutral items is attributable to attention. In a first experiment, we investigated attention to everyday motivational objects using eye-tracking during free-viewing and subsequently tested episodic memory using a remember/know procedure. Attention was directed more to aversive stimuli, as evidenced by longer viewing durations, whereas recollection was higher for both appetitive and aversive objects. In the second experiment, we manipulated the visual contrast of neutral objects through changes of contrast to further dissociate attention and memory encoding. While objects presented with high visual contrast were looked at longer, recollection was best for objects presented in unmodified, medium contrast. Generalized logistic mixed models on recollection performance showed that attention as measured by eye movements did not enhance subsequent memory, while motivational value (Experiment 1) and visual contrast (Experiment 2) had quadratic effects in opposite directions. Our findings suggest that an enhancement of incidental memory encoding for appetitive items can occur without an increase in attention and, vice versa, that enhanced attention towards salient neutral objects is not necessarily associated with memory improvement. Together, our results provide evidence for a double dissociation of attention and memory effects under certain conditions. PMID:28694774

Naturalistic Assessment of Everyday Functioning in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: The Day Out Task

PubMed Central

Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; McAlister, Courtney; Weakley, Alyssa

2012-01-01

Objective The Day Out Task (DOT), a naturalistic task that requires multitasking in a real-world setting, was used to examine everyday functioning in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Method Thirty-eight participants with MCI and 38 cognitively healthy older adult controls prioritized, organized, initiated and completed a number of subtasks in a campus apartment to prepare for a day out (e.g., determine and gather change for bus, bring a magazine). Participants also completed tests assessing cognitive constructs important in multitasking (i.e., retrospective memory, prospective memory, planning). Results Compared to controls, the MCI group required more time to complete the DOT and demonstrated poorer task accuracy, performing more subtasks incompletely and inaccurately. Despite poorer DOT task accuracy, the MCI and control groups approached completion of the DOT in a similar manner. For the MCI group, retrospective memory was a unique predictor of the number of subtasks left incomplete and inaccurate, while prospective memory was a unique predictor of DOT sequencing. The DOT measures, but not the cognitive tests, were predictive of knowledgeable informant report of everyday functioning. Conclusions These findings suggest that difficulty remembering and keeping track of multiple goals and subgoals may contribute to the poorer performance of individuals with MCI in complex everyday situations. PMID:22846035

Quantitative Measurements of Autobiographical Memory Content

PubMed Central

Mainetti, Matteo; Ascoli, Giorgio A.

2012-01-01

Autobiographical memory (AM), subjective recollection of past experiences, is fundamental in everyday life. Nevertheless, characterization of the spontaneous occurrence of AM, as well as of the number and types of recollected details, remains limited. The CRAM (Cue-Recalled Autobiographical Memory) test (http://cramtest.info) adapts and combines the cue-word method with an assessment that collects counts of details recalled from different life periods. The SPAM (Spontaneous Probability of Autobiographical Memories) protocol samples introspection during everyday activity, recording memory duration and frequency. These measures provide detailed, naturalistic accounts of AM content and frequency, quantifying essential dimensions of recollection. AM content (∼20 details/recollection) decreased with the age of the episode, but less drastically than the probability of reporting remote compared to recent memories. AM retrieval was frequent (∼20/hour), each memory lasting ∼30 seconds. Testable hypotheses of the specific content retrieved in a fixed time from given life periods are presented. PMID:23028629

Let's kōrero (talk): the practice and functions of reminiscing among mothers and children in Māori families.

PubMed

Reese, Elaine; Neha, Tia

2015-01-01

Māori adults recall earlier memories than New Zealand European or Chinese adults, highlighting the importance of memory in Māori culture. In this study, Māori preschool children and their mothers (N = 41) reminisced about a diverse range of past events, including everyday events, the child's birth, cultural rituals and the child's misbehaviour. Mothers also reported how frequently they discussed past events with their children, as well as their level of affiliation with Māori culture. Mothers who reported higher levels of cultural affiliation also reported reminiscing more frequently about a diverse range of past events. Mothers reminisced in more elaborative ways about everyday events with their children compared to birth stories, cultural rituals and misbehaviours. Maternal reminiscing about cultural rituals and misbehaviours, however, along with maternal reminiscing about everyday events and birth stories, were significantly correlated with children's memory across conversations. These results underscore the continued importance of reminiscing about culturally relevant events in Māori culture, and the newfound importance for Māori families of reminiscing about everyday events.

Multiple Types of Memory and Everyday Functional Assessment in Older Adults.

PubMed

Beaver, Jenna; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen

2017-06-01

Current proxy measures for assessing everyday functioning (e.g., questionnaires, performance-based measures, and direct observation) show discrepancies in their rating of functional status. The present study investigated the relationship between multiple proxy measures of functional status and content memory (i.e., memory for information), temporal order memory, and prospective memory in an older adult sample. A total of 197 community-dwelling older adults who did (n = 45) or did not meet (n = 152) criteria for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), completed six different assessments of functional status (two questionnaires, two performance-based tasks, and two direct observation tasks) as well as experimental measures of content memory, prospective memory, and temporal order memory. After controlling for demographics and content memory, the temporal order and prospective memory measures explained a significant amount of variance in all proxy functional status measures. When all variables were entered into the regression analyses, content memory and prospective memory were found to be significant predictors of all measures of functional status, whereas temporal order memory was a significant predictor for the questionnaire and direct observation measures, but not performance-based measures. The results suggest that direct observation and questionnaire measures may be able to capture components of everyday functioning that require context and temporal sequencing abilities, such as multi-tasking, that are not as well captured in many current laboratory performance-based measures of functional status. Future research should aim to inform the development and use of maximally effective and valid proxy measures of functional ability. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Self-guided strategy-adaption training for older adults: Transfer effects to everyday tasks.

PubMed

Bottiroli, Sara; Cavallini, Elena; Dunlosky, John; Vecchi, Tomaso; Hertzog, Christopher

2017-09-01

The goal of the present research was to examine the potential of a learner-oriented approach to improving older adults' performance in tasks that are similar to real-life situations that require strategic deployment of cognitive resources. A crucial element of this approach involves encouraging older adults to explicitly analyze tasks to consider how to adapt trained skills to a new task context. In an earlier study, a specialist-directed intervention produced training gains and transfer to some untrained memory tasks. In the present study, older adults received a manual instructing them about principles of task analysis, two memory strategies, and strategy adaptation. Self-guided strategy-adaption training involved practicing some memory tasks as well as instructions on how the trained skills could be applied to new tasks that were not practiced. The criterion tasks involved practice tasks, non-practiced tasks that were discussed in the manual, and transfer tasks that were never mentioned in the manual. Two of the tests were from the Everyday Cognition Battery (inductive reasoning and working memory). As compared to a waiting-list control group, older adults assigned to self-guided strategy-adaption training showed memory improvements on tasks that were practiced or discussed during training. Most important, the learner-oriented approach produced transfer to the everyday tasks. Our findings show the potential of instructing task appraisal processes as a basis for fostering transfer, including improving older adults' performance in simulated everyday tasks. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Predictors of change in life skills in schizophrenia after cognitive remediation.

PubMed

Kurtz, Matthew M; Seltzer, James C; Fujimoto, Marco; Shagan, Dana S; Wexler, Bruce E

2009-02-01

Few studies have investigated predictors of response to cognitive remediation interventions in patients with schizophrenia. Predictor studies to date have selected treatment outcome measures that were either part of the remediation intervention itself or closely linked to the intervention with few studies investigating factors that predict generalization to measures of everyday life-skills as an index of treatment-related improvement. In the current study we investigated the relationship between four measures of neurocognitive function, crystallized verbal ability, auditory sustained attention and working memory, verbal learning and memory, and problem-solving, two measures of symptoms, total positive and negative symptoms, and the process variables of treatment intensity and duration, to change on a performance-based measure of everyday life-skills after a year of computer-assisted cognitive remediation offered as part of intensive outpatient rehabilitation treatment. Thirty-six patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were studied. Results of a linear regression model revealed that auditory attention and working memory predicted a significant amount of the variance in change in performance-based measures of everyday life skills after cognitive remediation, even when variance for all other neurocognitive variables in the model was controlled. Stepwise regression revealed that auditory attention and working memory predicted change in everyday life-skills across the trial even when baseline life-skill scores, symptoms and treatment process variables were controlled. These findings emphasize the importance of sustained auditory attention and working memory for benefiting from extended programs of cognitive remediation.

The Impact of Memory Change on Daily Life in Normal Aging and Mild Cognitive Impairment.

PubMed

Parikh, Preeyam K; Troyer, Angela K; Maione, Andrea M; Murphy, Kelly J

2016-10-01

Older adults with age-normal memory changes and those with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) report mild memory difficulties with everyday problems such as learning new names or remembering past events. Although the type and extent of memory changes in these populations have been well documented, little is known about how memory changes impact their everyday lives. Using a qualitative research design, data were collected from three focus groups of older adults with normal memory changes (n = 23) and two focus groups of older adults with aMCI (n = 14). A thematic analysis using the constant comparative method was used to identify the impacts of memory change on key life domains. Four major themes emerged from the two groups, including changes in feelings and views of the self, changes in relationships and social interactions, changes in work and leisure activities, and deliberate increases in compensatory behaviors. Participants described both positive and negative consequences of memory change, and these were more substantial and generally more adverse for individuals with aMCI than for those with age-normal memory changes. There are similarities and important differences in the impact of mild memory change on the everyday lives of older adults with age-normal memory changes and those with aMCI. Findings underscore the need for clinical interventions that aim to minimize the emotional impact of memory changes and that increase leisure and social activity in individuals with aMCI. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The Reappearance Hypothesis Revisited: Recurrent Involuntary Memories after Traumatic Events and in Everyday Life

PubMed Central

Berntsen, Dorthe; Rubin, David C.

2011-01-01

Recurrent involuntary memories are autobiographical memories that come to mind with no preceding retrieval attempt and that are subjectively experienced as being repetitive. Clinically, they are classified as a symptom of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The present work is the first to systematically examine recurrent involuntary memories outside clinical settings. Study 1 examines recurrent involuntary memories among survivors of the tsunami catastrophe in Southeast Asia in 2004. Study 2 examines recurrent involuntary memories in a large general population. Study 3 examines whether the contents of recurrent involuntary memories recorded in a diary study are duplicates of, or differ from, one another. We show that recurrent involuntary memories are not limited to clinical populations or to emotionally negative experiences, that they typically do not come to mind in a fixed and unchangeable form, and that they show the same pattern regarding accessibility as autobiographical memories in general. We argue that recurrent involuntary memories after traumas and in everyday life can be explained in terms of general and well-established mechanisms of autobiographical memory. PMID:18426073

Memory control beliefs and everyday forgetfulness in adulthood: the effects of selection, optimization, and compensation strategies.

PubMed

Scheibner, Gunnar Benjamin; Leathem, Janet

2012-01-01

Controlling for age, gender, education, and self-rated health, the present study used regression analyses to examine the relationships between memory control beliefs and self-reported forgetfulness in the context of the meta-theory of Selective Optimization with Compensation (SOC). Findings from this online survey (N = 409) indicate that, among adult New Zealanders, a higher sense of memory control accounts for a 22.7% reduction in self-reported forgetfulness. Similarly, optimization was found to account for a 5% reduction in forgetfulness while the strategies of selection and compensation were not related to self-reports of forgetfulness. Optimization partially mediated the beneficial effects that some memory beliefs (e.g., believing that memory decline is inevitable and believing in the potential for memory improvement) have on forgetfulness. It was concluded that memory control beliefs are important predictors of self-reported forgetfulness while the support for the SOC model in the context of memory controllability and everyday forgetfulness is limited.

Exploring telicity and transitivity in primordial thought language and body boundary imagery.

PubMed

Cariola, Laura A

2014-12-01

Linguistics research on 'unconscious knowledge' related to the right brain-hemisphere represents a shift from the prevalent scientific investigation of the linguistic processes of grammatical structures associated with the dominant 'verbal' left brain-hemisphere. This study explores the relationship among primordial thought language, body boundary awareness and syntactic features--i.e., telicity, perfectivity and transitivity-in autobiographical narratives of everyday and dream memories. The results showed that event descriptions with atelic predicates and intransitive structures were more frequent in dream recall than in narratives of everyday memories. Primordial thought language and body boundary awareness, however, decreased with atelic predicates and transitive structures, which might indicate both the tendency of events to describe result states, such as achievements and accomplishments, as a means to bring about an unconscious wish fulfilment and the emphasis on event arguments to be realised without the inclusion of an external object. In narratives of everyday memories, penetration imagery increased with imperfective verb forms and decreased with perfective verb forms, and emotion lexis increased with atelic predicates and transitive structures, but not in dream memories.

Cultural Differences in Autobiographical Memory of Trauma

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jobson, Laura; O'Kearney, Richard

2006-01-01

This study investigated cultural differences in autobiographical memory of trauma. Australian and Asian international students provided self-defining memories, narratives of everyday and trauma memories and self-reports assessing adjustment to the trauma. No cultural distinction was found in how Australian or Asian subjects remembered a personal…

Age differences in prospective memory for everyday life intentions: A diary approach.

PubMed

Schnitzspahn, Katharina M; Scholz, Urte; Ballhausen, Nicola; Hering, Alexandra; Ihle, Andreas; Lagner, Prune; Kliegel, Matthias

2016-01-01

The age benefit found in many naturalistic prospective memory (PM) tasks has been taken as evidence that PM performance in real life may be spared from aging. However, this conclusion lacks empirical confirmation. Hence, the aim of the present study was to examine possible age differences in the content of everyday PM intentions and their performance. Everyday PM was assessed in young and older adults using a diary approach. Results confirmed a general age benefit for real-life PM tasks. Importantly, this finding was qualified by revealing that the benefit only held true for specific types of intentions such as health and social intentions. Further, moderation analyses showed that the relationships between cognitive functioning and everyday PM were different for young and older adults. While better inhibition, short-term and long-term memory were related with successful PM performance in the young, this was not the case in the older adults. The present findings suggest that the age benefit found in naturalistic experimenter-given tasks extends to real-life PM performance, but may differ depending on the type of intention. Furthermore, cognitive functioning predicts performance in the young, but not in the older adults.

Autobiographical Memory in Semantic Dementia: A Longitudinal fMRI Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maguire, Eleanor A.; Kumaran, Dharshan; Hassabis, Demis; Kopelman, Michael D.

2010-01-01

Whilst patients with semantic dementia (SD) are known to suffer from semantic memory and language impairments, there is less agreement about whether memory for personal everyday experiences, autobiographical memory, is compromised. In healthy individuals, functional MRI (fMRI) has helped to delineate a consistent and distributed brain network…

Event Segmentation Improves Event Memory up to One Month Later

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flores, Shaney; Bailey, Heather R.; Eisenberg, Michelle L.; Zacks, Jeffrey M.

2017-01-01

When people observe everyday activity, they spontaneously parse it into discrete meaningful events. Individuals who segment activity in a more normative fashion show better subsequent memory for the events. If segmenting events effectively leads to better memory, does asking people to attend to segmentation improve subsequent memory? To answer…

Adaptive Constructive Processes and the Future of Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schacter, Daniel L.

2012-01-01

Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes…

Improving everyday prospective memory performance in older adults: comparing cognitive process and strategy training.

PubMed

Brom, Sarah Susanne; Kliegel, Matthias

2014-09-01

Considering the importance of prospective memory for independence in old age recently, research has started to examine interventions to reduce prospective memory errors. Two general approaches can be proposed: (a) process training of executive control associated with prospective memory functioning, and/or (b) strategy training to reduce executive task demands. The present study was the first to combine and compare both training methods in a sample of 62 community-dwelling older adults (60-86 years) and to explore their effects on an ecologically valid everyday life prospective memory task (here: regular blood pressure monitoring). Even though the training of executive control was successful in enhancing the trained ability, clear transfer effects on prospective memory performance could only be found for the strategy training. However, participants with low executive abilities benefited particularly from the implementation intention strategy. Conceptually, this supports models suggesting interactions between task demands and individual differences in executive control in explaining individual differences in prospective memory performance. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Thinking about memories for everyday and shocking events: do people use ease-of-retrieval cues in memory judgments?

PubMed

Echterhoff, Gerald; Hirst, William

2006-06-01

Extant research shows that people use retrieval ease, a feeling-based cue, to judge how well they remember life periods. Extending this approach, we investigated the role of retrieval ease in memory judgments for single events. In Experiment 1, participants who were asked to recall many memories of an everyday event (New Year's Eve) rated retrieval as more difficult and judged their memory as worse than did participants asked to recall only a few memories. In Experiment 2, this ease-of-retrieval effect was found to interact with the shocking character of the remembered event: There was no effect when the event was highly shocking (i.e., learning about the attacks of September 11, 2001), whereas an effect was found when the event was experienced as less shocking (due either to increased distance to "9/11" or to the nonshocking nature of the event itself). Memory vividness accounted for additional variance in memory judgments, indicating an independent contribution of content-based cues in judgments of event memories.

Concordance between Subjective and Objective Memory Impairment in Volunteer Subjects.

PubMed

Alegret, Montserrat; Rodríguez, Octavio; Espinosa, Ana; Ortega, Gemma; Sanabria, Angela; Valero, Sergi; Hernández, Isabel; Rosende-Roca, Maitée; Vargas, Liliana; Abdelnour, Carla; Mauleón, Ana; Gailhajanet, Anna; Martín, Elvira; Tárraga, Lluís; Rentz, Dorene M; Amariglio, Rebecca E; Ruíz, Agustín; Boada, Mercè

2015-01-01

Subjective memory impairment (SMI) refers to subjective awareness of initial memory decline undetectable with existing standardized cognitive tests. The Face Name Associative Memory Exam (FNAME) was created to detect memory deficits in individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD). We reported normative data of a Spanish version of FNAME (S-FNAME) in cognitively normal (CN) Spanish-speaking subjects >49. To determine whether higher SMI [a modification of Memory Failures Everyday (MFE-30)] was related to worse memory performance (S-FNAME) or associated with greater affective symptoms in subjects >49; and whether MFE-30 and FNAME were able to discriminate between CN and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) subjects. 317 subjects (CN = 196, MCI = 121) were included in the analysis because they attended the annual "Open House Initiative" at Memory Clinic Fundació ACE, were >49 years, literate, received S-FNAME, MFE-30, and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, had Mini-Mental State Examination scores ≥27, and returned to complete a comprehensive diagnostic assessment. MFE-30 scores were associated with affective symptoms but not with S-FNAME performance. S-FNAME scores were related to performance on memory variables of NBACE (neuropsychological battery used in Fundació ACE). Although the MCI group showed significantly higher MFE-30 and worse S-FNAME scores than the CN group, their discriminability values were similar (Sensitivity: 49.6 versus 52.9; Specificity: 85.1 versus 83.6, respectively). SMI was more related to depressive symptoms than to S-FNAME memory performance; and S-FNAME scores were related to other episodic memory test performances, but neither to affective symptoms nor to SMI. MFE-30 and S-FNAME are not optimal for discriminating between CN and MCI groups. Longitudinal follow-up will determine if lower S-FNAME and higher SMI are related to increased risk of AD.

Methods, apparatus and system for notification of predictable memory failure

DOEpatents

Cher, Chen-Yong; Andrade Costa, Carlos H.; Park, Yoonho; Rosenburg, Bryan S.; Ryu, Kyung D.

2017-01-03

A method for providing notification of a predictable memory failure includes the steps of: obtaining information regarding at least one condition associated with a memory; calculating a memory failure probability as a function of the obtained information; calculating a failure probability threshold; and generating a signal when the memory failure probability exceeds the failure probability threshold, the signal being indicative of a predicted future memory failure.

Language-specific memory for everyday arithmetic facts in Chinese-English bilinguals.

PubMed

Chen, Yalin; Yanke, Jill; Campbell, Jamie I D

2016-04-01

The role of language in memory for arithmetic facts remains controversial. Here, we examined transfer of memory training for evidence that bilinguals may acquire language-specific memory stores for everyday arithmetic facts. Chinese-English bilingual adults (n = 32) were trained on different subsets of simple addition and multiplication problems. Each operation was trained in one language or the other. The subsequent test phase included all problems with addition and multiplication alternating across trials in two blocks, one in each language. Averaging over training language, the response time (RT) gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems were greater in the trained language than in the untrained language. Subsequent analysis showed that English training produced larger RT gains for trained problems relative to untrained problems in English at test relative to the untrained Chinese language. In contrast, there was no evidence with Chinese training that problem-specific RT gains differed between Chinese and the untrained English language. We propose that training in Chinese promoted a translation strategy for English arithmetic (particularly multiplication) that produced strong cross-language generalization of practice, whereas training in English strengthened relatively weak, English-language arithmetic memories and produced little generalization to Chinese (i.e., English training did not induce an English translation strategy for Chinese language trials). The results support the existence of language-specific strengthening of memory for everyday arithmetic facts.

Young and Older Adults’ Beliefs about Effective Ways to Mitigate Age-Related Memory Decline

PubMed Central

Horhota, Michelle; Lineweaver, Tara; Ositelu, Monique; Summers, Kristi; Hertzog, Christopher

2013-01-01

This study investigated whether young and older adults vary in their beliefs about the impact of various mitigating factors on age-related memory decline. Eighty young (ages 18–23) and eighty older (ages 60–82) participants reported their beliefs about their own memory abilities and the strategies that they use in their everyday lives to attempt to control their memory. Participants also reported their beliefs about memory change with age for hypothetical target individuals who were described as using (or not using) various means to mitigate memory decline. There were no age differences in personal beliefs about control over current or future memory ability. However, the two age groups differed in the types of strategies they used in their everyday life to control their memory. Young adults were more likely to use internal memory strategies, whereas older adults were more likely to focus on cognitive exercise and maintaining physical health as ways to optimize their memory ability. There were no age differences in rated memory change across the life span in hypothetical individuals. Both young and older adults perceived strategies related to improving physical and cognitive health as effective means of mitigating memory loss with age, whereas internal memory strategies were perceived as less effective means for controlling age-related memory decline. PMID:22082012

Taoist Tai Chi® and Memory Intervention for Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment.

PubMed

Fogarty, Jennifer N; Murphy, Kelly J; McFarlane, Bruce; Montero-Odasso, Manuel; Wells, Jennie; Troyer, Angela K; Trinh, Daniel; Gutmanis, Iris; Hansen, Kevin T

2016-04-01

It was hypothesized that a combined Taoist Tai Chi (TTC) and a memory intervention program (MIP) would be superior to a MIP alone in improving everyday memory behaviors in individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). A secondary hypothesis was that TTC would improve cognition, self-reported health status, gait, and balance. A total of 48 individuals were randomly assigned to take part in MIP + TTC or MIP alone. The TTC intervention consisted of twenty 90 min sessions. Outcome measures were given at baseline, and after 10 and 22 weeks. Both groups significantly increased their memory strategy knowledge and use, ratings of physical health, processing speed, everyday memory, and visual attention. No preferential benefit was found for individuals in the MIP + TTC group on cognition, gait, or balance measures. Contrary to expectations, TTC exercise did not specifically improve cognition or physical mobility. Explanations for null findings are explored.

Age-related changes in neural oscillations supporting context memory retrieval

PubMed Central

Strunk, Jonathan; James, Taylor; Arndt, Jason; Duarte, Audrey

2018-01-01

Recent evidence suggests that directing attention toward single item-context associations during encoding improves young and older adults’ context memory performance and reduces demands on executive functions during retrieval. In everyday situations, there are many event features competing for our attention, and our ability to successfully recover those details may depend on our ability to ignore others. Failures of selective attention may contribute to older adults’ context memory impairments. In the current electroencephalogram (EEG) study, we assessed the effects of age on processes supporting successful context memory retrieval of selectively attended features as indexed by neural oscillations. During encoding, young and older adults were directed to attend to a picture of an object and its relationship to one of two concurrently presented contextual details: a color or scene. At retrieval, we tested their memory for the object, its attended and unattended context features, and their confidence for both the attended and unattended features. Both groups showed greater memory for attended than unattended contextual features. However, older adults showed evidence of hyper-binding between attended and unattended context features while the young adults did not. EEG results in the theta band suggest that young and older adults recollect similar amounts of information but brain-behavior correlations suggest that this information was supportive of contextual memory performance, particularly for young adults. By contrast, sustained beta desynchronization, indicative of sensory reactivation and episodic reconstruction, was correlated with contextual memory performance for older adults only. We conclude that older adults’ inhibition deficits during encoding reduced the selectivity of their contextual memories, which led to reliance on executive functions like episodic reconstruction to support successful memory retrieval. PMID:28237686

Age-related changes in neural oscillations supporting context memory retrieval.

PubMed

Strunk, Jonathan; James, Taylor; Arndt, Jason; Duarte, Audrey

2017-06-01

Recent evidence suggests that directing attention toward single item-context associations during encoding improves young and older adults' context memory performance and reduces demands on executive functions during retrieval. In everyday situations, there are many event features competing for our attention, and our ability to successfully recover those details may depend on our ability to ignore others. Failures of selective attention may contribute to older adults' context memory impairments. In the current electroencephalogram (EEG) study, we assessed the effects of age on processes supporting successful context memory retrieval of selectively attended features as indexed by neural oscillations. During encoding, young and older adults were directed to attend to a picture of an object and its relationship to one of two concurrently presented contextual details: a color or scene. At retrieval, we tested their memory for the object, its attended and unattended context features, and their confidence for both the attended and unattended features. Both groups showed greater memory for attended than unattended contextual features. However, older adults showed evidence of hyper-binding between attended and unattended context features while the young adults did not. EEG results in the theta band suggest that young and older adults recollect similar amounts of information but brain-behavior correlations suggest that this information was supportive of contextual memory performance, particularly for young adults. By contrast, sustained beta desynchronization, indicative of sensory reactivation and episodic reconstruction, was correlated with contextual memory performance for older adults only. We conclude that older adults' inhibition deficits during encoding reduced the selectivity of their contextual memories, which led to reliance on executive functions like episodic reconstruction to support successful memory retrieval. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subjective Memory Complaints in healthy older adults: Fewer complaints associated with depression and perceived health, more complaints also associated with lower memory performance.

PubMed

Montejo Carrasco, Pedro; Montenegro-Peña, Mercedes; López-Higes, Ramón; Estrada, Eduardo; Prada Crespo, David; Montejo Rubio, Christian; García Azorín, David

(i) To analyze if general cognitive performance, perceived health and depression are predictors of Subjective Memory Complaints (SMC) contrasting their effect sizes; (ii) to analyze the relationship between SMC and objective memory by comparing a test that measures memory in daily life and a classical test of associated pairs; (iii) to examine if different subgroups, formed according to the MFE score, might have different behaviors regarding the studied variables. Sample: 3921 community-dwelling people (mean age 70.41±4.70) without cognitive impairment. Consecutive non-probabilistic recruitment. Mini Cognitive Exam (MCE), daily memory Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT), Paired Associates Learning (PAL), Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Nottingham Health Profile (NHP). Dependent variable: Memory Failures Everyday Questionnaire (MFE). Two different dimensions to explain SMC were found: One subjective (MFE, GDS, NHP) and other objective (RBMT, PAL, MCE), the first more strongly associated with SMC. SMC predictors were NHP, GDS, RBMT and PAL, in this order according to effect size. Considering MFE scores we subdivided the sample into three groups (low, medium, higher scores): low MFE group was associated with GDS; medium, with GDS, NPH and RBMT, and higher, with age as well. Effect size for every variable tended to grow as the MFE score was higher. SMC were associated with both health profile and depressive symptoms and, in a lesser degree, with memory and overall cognitive performance. In people with fewer SMC, these are only associated with depressive symptomatology. More SMC are associated with depression, poor health perception and lower memory. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Applying the Concept of Working Memory to Foreign Language Listening Comprehension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Service, Elisabet

Memory research has recently moved from looking at performance in highly artificial laboratory tasks to examination of tasks in everyday life. One consequence is the development of the concept of "working memory." For the learner, foreign language comprehension makes great demands on working memory capacity. Comprehension of a message requires…

Everyday cognitive failure and depressive symptoms predict fatigue in sarcoidosis: A prospective follow-up study.

PubMed

Hendriks, Celine; Drent, Marjolein; De Kleijn, Willemien; Elfferich, Marjon; Wijnen, Petal; De Vries, Jolanda

2018-05-01

Fatigue is a major and disabling problem in sarcoidosis. Knowledge concerning correlates of the development of fatigue and possible interrelationships is lacking. A conceptual model of fatigue was developed and tested. Sarcoidosis outpatients (n = 292) of Maastricht University Medical Center completed questionnaires regarding trait anxiety, depressive symptoms, cognitive failure, dyspnea, social support, and small fiber neuropathy (SFN) at baseline. Fatigue was assessed at 6 and 12 months. Sex, age, and time since diagnosis were taken from medical records. Pathways were estimated by means of path analyses in AMOS. Everyday cognitive failure, depressive symptoms, symptoms suggestive of SFN, and dyspnea were positive predictors of fatigue. Fit indices of the model were good. The model validly explains variation in fatigue. Everyday cognitive failure and depressive symptoms were the most important predictors of fatigue. In addition to physical functioning, cognitive and psychological aspects should be included in the management of sarcoidosis patients. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Locus coeruleus and dopaminergic consolidation of everyday memory

PubMed Central

Takeuchi, Tomonori; Duszkiewicz, Adrian J.; Sonneborn, Alex; Spooner, Patrick A.; Yamasaki, Miwako; Watanabe, Masahiko; Smith, Caroline C.; Fernández, Guillén; Deisseroth, Karl; Greene, Robert W.; Morris, Richard G. M.

2016-01-01

Summary The retention of episodic-like memory is enhanced, in humans and animals, when something novel happens shortly before or after encoding. Using an everyday memory task in mice, we sought the neurons mediating this dopamine-dependent novelty effect, previously thought to originate exclusively from the tyrosine hydroxylase-expressing (TH+) neurons in the ventral tegmental area (VTA). We report that neuronal firing in the locus coeruleus (LC) is especially sensitive to environmental novelty, LC-TH+ neurons project more profusely than VTA-TH+ neurons to the hippocampus, optogenetic activation of LC-TH+ neurons mimics the novelty effect, and this novelty-associated memory enhancement is unaffected by VTA inactivation. Surprisingly, two effects of LC-TH+ photoactivation are sensitive to hippocampal D1/D5 receptor blockade and resistant to adrenoceptors blockade – memory enhancement and long lasting potentiation of synaptic transmission in CA1 ex vivo. Thus, LC-TH+ neurons can mediate post-encoding memory enhancement in a manner consistent with possible co-release of dopamine in hippocampus. PMID:27602521

Locus coeruleus and dopaminergic consolidation of everyday memory.

PubMed

Takeuchi, Tomonori; Duszkiewicz, Adrian J; Sonneborn, Alex; Spooner, Patrick A; Yamasaki, Miwako; Watanabe, Masahiko; Smith, Caroline C; Fernández, Guillén; Deisseroth, Karl; Greene, Robert W; Morris, Richard G M

2016-09-15

The retention of episodic-like memory is enhanced, in humans and animals, when something novel happens shortly before or after encoding. Using an everyday memory task in mice, we sought the neurons mediating this dopamine-dependent novelty effect, previously thought to originate exclusively from the tyrosine-hydroxylase-expressing (TH + ) neurons in the ventral tegmental area. Here we report that neuronal firing in the locus coeruleus is especially sensitive to environmental novelty, locus coeruleus TH + neurons project more profusely than ventral tegmental area TH + neurons to the hippocampus, optogenetic activation of locus coeruleus TH + neurons mimics the novelty effect, and this novelty-associated memory enhancement is unaffected by ventral tegmental area inactivation. Surprisingly, two effects of locus coeruleus TH + photoactivation are sensitive to hippocampal D 1 /D 5 receptor blockade and resistant to adrenoceptor blockade: memory enhancement and long-lasting potentiation of synaptic transmission in CA1 ex vivo. Thus, locus coeruleus TH + neurons can mediate post-encoding memory enhancement in a manner consistent with possible co-release of dopamine in the hippocampus.

Longitudinal Study of a Novel Performance-based Measure of Daily Function

DTIC Science & Technology

2015-04-01

measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had compromises in...UPSA, as well as measures of cognition (e.g., episodic memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had... memory , semantic memory , executive function, speed). We found that patients with MCI had compromises in everyday functional competence and that the

Self-Regulatory Strategies in Daily Life: Selection, Optimization, and Compensation and Everyday Memory Problems

PubMed Central

Stephanie, Robinson; Margie, Lachman; Elizabeth, Rickenbach

2015-01-01

The effective use of self-regulatory strategies, such as selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) requires resources. However, it is theorized that SOC use is most advantageous for those experiencing losses and diminishing resources. The present study explored this seeming paradox within the context of limitations or constraints due to aging, low cognitive resources, and daily stress in relation to everyday memory problems. We examined whether SOC usage varied by age and level of constraints, and if the relationship between resources and memory problems was mitigated by SOC usage. A daily diary paradigm was used to explore day-to-day fluctuations in these relationships. Participants (n=145, ages 22 to 94) completed a baseline interview and a daily diary for seven consecutive days. Multilevel models examined between- and within-person relationships between daily SOC use, daily stressors, cognitive resources, and everyday memory problems. Middle-aged adults had the highest SOC usage, although older adults also showed high SOC use if they had high cognitive resources. More SOC strategies were used on high stress compared to low stress days. Moreover, the relationship between daily stress and memory problems was buffered by daily SOC use, such that on high-stress days, those who used more SOC strategies reported fewer memory problems than participants who used fewer SOC strategies. The paradox of resources and SOC use can be qualified by the type of resource-limitation. Deficits in global resources were not tied to SOC usage or benefits. Conversely, under daily constraints tied to stress, the use of SOC increased and led to fewer memory problems. PMID:26997686

A “Misfit” Theory of Spontaneous Conscious Odor Perception (MITSCOP): reflections on the role and function of odor memory in everyday life

PubMed Central

Köster, Egon P.; Møller, Per; Mojet, Jozina

2014-01-01

Our senses have developed as an answer to the world we live in (Gibson, 1966) and so have the forms of memory that accompany them. All senses serve different purposes and do so in different ways. In vision, where orientation and object recognition are important, memory is strongly linked to identification. In olfaction, the guardian of vital functions such as breathing and food ingestion, perhaps the most important (and least noticed and researched) role of odor memory is to help us not to notice the well-known odors or flavors in our everyday surroundings, but to react immediately to the unexpected ones. At the same time it provides us with a feeling of safety when our expectancies are met. All this happens without any smelling intention or conscious knowledge of our expectations. Identification by odor naming is not involved in this and people are notoriously bad at it. Odors are usually best identified via the episodic memory of the situation in which they once occurred. Spontaneous conscious odor perception normally only occurs in situations where attention is demanded, either because the inhaled air or the food smell is particularly good or particularly bad and people search for its source or because people want to actively enjoy the healthiness and pleasantness of their surroundings or food. Odor memory is concerned with novelty detection rather than with recollection of odors. In this paper, these points are illustrated with experimental results and their consequences for doing ecologically valid odor memory research are drawn. Furthermore, suggestions for ecologically valid research on everyday odor memory and some illustrative examples are given. PMID:24575059

Memory, Space and Time: Researching Children's Lives

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Moss, Dorothy

2010-01-01

This article discusses the research approach in "Pathways through Childhood", a small qualitative study drawing on memories of childhood. The research explores how wider social arrangements and social change influence children's everyday lives. The article discusses the way that the concepts of social memory, space and time have been…

Young and older adults' beliefs about effective ways to mitigate age-related memory decline.

PubMed

Horhota, Michelle; Lineweaver, Tara; Ositelu, Monique; Summers, Kristi; Hertzog, Christopher

2012-06-01

This study investigated whether young and older adults vary in their beliefs about the impact of various mitigating factors on age-related memory decline. Eighty young (ages 18-23) and 80 older (ages 60-82) participants reported their beliefs about their own memory abilities and the strategies that they use in their everyday lives to attempt to control their memory. Participants also reported their beliefs about memory change with age for hypothetical target individuals who were described as using (or not using) various means to mitigate memory decline. There were no age differences in personal beliefs about control over current or future memory ability. However, the two age groups differed in the types of strategies they used in their everyday life to control their memory. Young adults were more likely to use internal memory strategies, whereas older adults were more likely to focus on cognitive exercise and maintaining physical health as ways to optimize their memory ability. There were no age differences in rated memory change across the life span in hypothetical individuals. Both young and older adults perceived strategies related to improving physical and cognitive health as effective means of mitigating memory loss with age, whereas internal memory strategies were perceived as less effective means for controlling age-related memory decline. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Self-Reports of Increased Prospective and Retrospective Memory Problems in Adults with Developmental Dyslexia.

PubMed

Smith-Spark, James H; Zięcik, Adam P; Sterling, Christopher

2016-08-01

Short-term and working memory problems in dyslexia are well-documented, but other memory domains have received little empirical scrutiny, despite some evidence to suggest that they might be impaired. Prospective memory is memory for delayed intentions, whilst retrospective memory relates to memory for personally experienced past events. To gain an understanding of subjective everyday memory experience, a self-report measure designed to tap prospective and retrospective memory was administered to 28 adults with dyslexia and 26 IQ-matched adults without dyslexia. Adults with dyslexia reported experiencing significantly more frequent problems with memory than the adults without dyslexia. Group differences were found across seven out of the eight questionnaire scales. Further to these analyses, the participants' own ratings were compared with proxy ratings provided by close associates. The perception of poorer memory abilities in the participants did not differ between respondent types. The self-reported difficulties are, thus, unlikely to be the result of lowered self-esteem or metacognitive awareness. More frequent difficulties with both types of memory would seem, therefore, to be experienced by adults with dyslexia in everyday life. Further laboratory-based research is recommended to explore both memory domains in dyslexia and to identify the cognitive mechanisms by which these problems occur. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Susceptibility to misleading information under social pressure in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Peters, Maarten J V; Moritz, Steffen; Tekin, Serra; Jelicic, Marko; Merckelbach, Harald

2012-11-01

Research looking at specific memory aberrations in the schizophrenia has primarily focused on their phenomenology using standardized semantic laboratory tasks. However, no study has investigated to what extent such aberrations have consequences for everyday episodic memories using more realistic false memory paradigms. Using a false memory paradigm where participants are presented with misleading suggestive information (Gudjonsson Suggestibility Scale), we investigated the susceptibility of patients with schizophrenia (n = 21) and healthy controls (n = 18) to post hoc misleading information acceptance and compliance. Patients with schizophrenia exhibited an increased susceptibility to go along with misleading suggestive items. Furthermore, they showed an increased tendency to change answers under conditions of social pressure. Underscoring previous findings on memory aberrations in schizophrenia, patients with schizophrenia had reduced levels of correct recognition (ie, true memory) relative to healthy controls. The effects remained stable when controlling for specific mediating variables such as symptom severity and intelligence in patients with schizophrenia. These findings are a first indication that social pressure and misleading information may impair source memory for everyday episodic memories in schizophrenia, and such impairment has clear consequences for treatment issues and forensic practice. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Transtibial prosthesis suspension failure during skydiving freefall: a case report.

PubMed

Gordon, Assaf T; Land, Rebekah M

2009-01-01

This report describes the unusual case of an everyday-use prosthesis suspension system failure during the freefall phase of a skydiving jump. The case individual was a 53-year-old male with a left transtibial amputation secondary to trauma. He used his everyday prosthesis, a transtibial endoskeleton with push-button, plunger-releasing, pin-locking silicon liner suction suspension and a neoprene knee suspension sleeve, for a standard recreational tandem skydive. Within seconds of exiting the plane, the suspension systems failed, resulting in the complete prosthesis floating away. Several factors may have led to suspension system failure, including an inadequate seal and material design of the knee suspension sleeve and liner, lack of auxiliary suspension mechanisms, and lack of a safety cover overlying the push-button release mechanism. This is the first report, to our knowledge, to discuss prosthetic issues specifically related to skydiving. While amputees are to be encouraged to participate in this extreme sport, special modifications to everyday components may be necessary to reduce the possibility of prosthesis failure during freefall, parachute deployment, and landing.

Decoding Overlapping Memories in the Medial Temporal Lobes Using High-Resolution fMRI

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chadwick, Martin J.; Hassabis, Demis; Maguire, Eleanor A.

2011-01-01

The hippocampus is proposed to process overlapping episodes as discrete memory traces, although direct evidence for this in human episodic memory is scarce. Using green-screen technology we created four highly overlapping movies of everyday events. Participants were scanned using high-resolution fMRI while recalling the movies. Multivariate…

Subjective memory complaints, depressive symptoms and instrumental activities of daily living in mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Ryu, Seon Young; Lee, Sang Bong; Kim, Tae Woo; Lee, Taek Jun

2016-03-01

The diagnostic relevance of subjective memory complaints (SMCs) in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) remains to be unresolved. The aim of this study is to determine clinical correlates of SMCs in MCI. Furthermore, we examined whether there are the differences due to different aspects of complaints (i.e. prospective memory (PM) versus retrospective memory (RM) complaints). We examined the cross-sectional associations between SMCs and depressive symptoms, instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), and cognitive measures in sixty-six individuals with MCI (mean age: 65.7 ± 8.01 years). The criteria for MCI included SMCs, objective cognitive impairment, normal general cognitive function, largely intact functional activities, and absence of dementia. SMCs were assessed using the Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ), which contains 16 items describing everyday memory failure of both PM and RM. SMC severity (i.e. PRMQ total score) was associated with stronger depressive symptoms and worse IADL performance. SMCs were not related to cognitive measures. For PM and RM subscores, both depressive symptoms and IADL were related to the PRMQ-PM and -RM scores. The main contributors to these PM and RM scores were depressive symptoms and IADL impairment, respectively. This study suggests that SMCs are more associated with depressive symptoms and IADL problems than with cognitive performance in individuals with MCI. Furthermore, while PM and RM complaints are related to both depressive symptoms and IADL, the differences between these main contributors suggest that RM complaints based on IADL could be more associated with the organically driven pathological features of MCI.

Experiences and management of fatigue in everyday life among adult patients living with heart failure: a systematic review of qualitative evidence.

PubMed

Schjoedt, Inge; Sommer, Irene; Bjerrum, Merete Bender

2016-03-01

Fatigue, a common and distressing symptom of heart failure, is a non-specific, invisible and subjective experience, which is difficult to describe and for which there are no effective interventions. Fatigue negatively impacts on patients' everyday life, prognosis and quality of life, therefore it is important that patients can manage, monitor and respond to changes in fatigue. To cope with fatigue patients may need or seek advice on self-management strategies. To synthesize the best available evidence on the experiences and management of fatigue in everyday life among adult patients with stable heart failure. Adults with confirmed and stable heart failure. Studies exploring the experiences and management of fatigue in everyday life among adults with heart failure. Qualitative studies focusing on qualitative data, including, but not limited to, designs within phenomenology, grounded theory or ethnography. A three-step search strategy was used to identify published and unpublished qualitative studies from 1995 to 2014. Studies that met the inclusion criteria were assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological validity using the standardized critical appraisal tools of the Joanna Briggs Institute Qualitative Assessment and Review Instrument (JBI-QARI). Data was extracted from the five included studies using JBI-QARI. Findings were identified and arranged according to the three research questions: patients' experiences of fatigue, impact of fatigue on everyday life and how patients' managed fatigue and its consequences in everyday life. Findings were pooled using JBI-QARI. From the five included studies, 108 findings were derived and subsequently aggregated into 24 categories, which were finally meta-synthesized into five syntheses: "A pervasive and unignorable bodily experience" captured the patients' descriptions of fatigue experiences; "Limited performance of daily living and social activities" and "Loss of self-esteem, identity and intellectual function" aggregated the impact of fatigue on patients' everyday life; "Using protecting and restoring strategies according to the body barometer" and "A dynamic balance between accepting and struggling against fatigue" captured how patients managed fatigue and its consequences. Three different types of bodily fatigue challenge patients with heart failure. Decreased physical capacity, unpredictability and fluctuating intensity are dominant features of fatigue experiences, which cause limitations in performing daily and social activities, increased dependency of others, and loss of self-esteem, identity and intellectual function. Patients' management of fatigue and its consequences is an ongoing process involving use of protective and restorative activities to handle the specific bodily fatigue. However it also relates to living constructively with fatigue by striking a balance between adjusting to and struggling against fatigue. Healthcare providers should be accountable to their patients, recognizing and taking into consideration patients' fatigue experiences and the meaning of fatigue, in order to provide optimal and individual care to their patients. Further qualitative research is needed to consider cultural factors of importance for managing fatigue in everyday life among patients with heart failure. Furthermore research should explore and test different kinds of physical and mind-body activities on the patients' functional capacity and wellbeing.

A Functional Examination of Intermediate Cognitive Processes.

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-01-01

memory ) and a body of accumulated information referred to as " semantic memory ". In contrast with episodic memory (which most psychological experiments...referents of input signals. (p. 386) But as Eysenck (1984) points out, there is "no precise dividing line" betveen episodic and semantic memory and although...involve), Tulving suggests that semantic memory is the more crucial to 5. .P, 31 performing everyday tasks: It is a mental thesaurus, the

Event segmentation improves event memory up to one month later.

PubMed

Flores, Shaney; Bailey, Heather R; Eisenberg, Michelle L; Zacks, Jeffrey M

2017-08-01

When people observe everyday activity, they spontaneously parse it into discrete meaningful events. Individuals who segment activity in a more normative fashion show better subsequent memory for the events. If segmenting events effectively leads to better memory, does asking people to attend to segmentation improve subsequent memory? To answer this question, participants viewed movies of naturalistic activity with instructions to remember the activity for a later test, and in some conditions additionally pressed a button to segment the movies into meaningful events or performed a control condition that required button-pressing but not attending to segmentation. In 5 experiments, memory for the movies was assessed at intervals ranging from immediately following viewing to 1 month later. Performing the event segmentation task led to superior memory at delays ranging from 10 min to 1 month. Further, individual differences in segmentation ability predicted individual differences in memory performance for up to a month following encoding. This study provides the first evidence that manipulating event segmentation affects memory over long delays and that individual differences in event segmentation are related to differences in memory over long delays. These effects suggest that attending to how an activity breaks down into meaningful events contributes to memory formation. Instructing people to more effectively segment events may serve as a potential intervention to alleviate everyday memory complaints in aging and clinical populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Rehabilitation of memory following brain injury (ReMemBrIn): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial.

PubMed

das Nair, Roshan; Lincoln, Nadina B; Ftizsimmons, Deborah; Brain, Nicola; Montgomery, Alan; Bradshaw, Lucy; Drummond, Avril; Sackley, Catherine; Newby, Gavin; Thornton, Jim; Stapleton, Sandip; Pink, Anthony

2015-01-06

Impairments of memory are commonly reported by people with traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Such deficits are persistent, debilitating, and can severely impact quality of life. Currently, many do not routinely receive follow-up appointments for residual memory problems following discharge. This is a multi-centre, randomised controlled trial investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a group-based memory rehabilitation programme. Three hundred and twelve people with a traumatic brain injury will be randomised from four centres. Participants will be eligible if they had a traumatic brain injury more than 3 months prior to recruitment, have memory problems, are 18 to 69 years of age, are able to travel to one of our centres and attend group sessions, and are able to give informed consent. Participants will be randomised in clusters of 4 to 6 to the group rehabilitation intervention or to usual care. Intervention groups will receive 10 weekly sessions of a manualised memory rehabilitation programme, which has been developed in previous pilot studies. The intervention will include restitution strategies to retrain impaired memory functions and compensation strategies to enable participants to cope with their memory problems. All participants will receive a follow-up postal questionnaire and an assessment by a research assistant at 6 and 12 months post-randomisation. The primary outcome is the Everyday Memory Questionnaire at 6 months. Secondary outcomes include the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test-3, General Health Questionnaire-30, health related quality of life, cost-effectiveness analysis determined by the EQ-5D and a service use questionnaire, individual goal attainment, European Brain Injury Questionnaire (patient and relative versions), and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire-relative version. The primary analysis will be based on intention to treat. A mixed-model regression analysis of the Everyday Memory Questionnaire at 6 months will be used to estimate the effect of the group memory rehabilitation programme. The study will hopefully provide robust evidence regarding the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a group-based memory rehabilitation intervention for civilians and military personnel following TBI. We discuss our decision-making regarding choice of outcome measures and control group, and the unique challenges to recruiting people with memory problems to trials. ISRCTN65792154; Date: 18 October 2012.

Repeated recall as an intervention to improve memory performance in heart failure patients.

PubMed

Viveiros, Jennifer; Sethares, Kristen; Shapiro, Amy

2017-12-01

Up to 50% of heart failure patients demonstrate aspects of cognitive impairment, including memory deficit. Novel interventions are needed to address memory deficit among heart failure patients. The goal of this study was to evaluate the testing effect as an intervention to improve memory performance in heart failure patients. This was a randomized controlled clinical trial ( N=84) comparing the memory performance of heart failure patients with and without mild cognitive impairment after a repeated testing intervention. Memory performance was measured by verbal word pair associates recall scores, between attention control and experimental subjects. Patients had a mean age of 71.7 ± 13.3 years and similar baseline memory (immediate p=.79 and delayed p=.47). Overall, there were no significant differences in memory between experimental and control subjects, respectively (67.2±18.87 vs. 61.9±22.3, verbal word pair associates, t = -1.179, p=.24). In the final hierarchical regression model, age ( p=.018) and education ( p=.006) were significant predictors of memory performance, with the intervention approaching significance ( p=.079). Although not statistically significant, the intervention group reported better memory. Age and education continue to be significant contributors to memory performance in the heart failure population. Continued development of interventions to improve memory performance in heart failure patients is indicated.

Differential focal and nonfocal prospective memory accuracy in a demographically diverse group of nondemented community-dwelling older adults.

PubMed

Chi, Susan Y; Rabin, Laura A; Aronov, Avner; Fogel, Joshua; Kapoor, Ashu; Wang, Cuiling

2014-11-01

Although prospective memory (PM) is compromised in mild cognitive impairment (MCI), it is unclear which specific cognitive processes underlie these PM difficulties. We investigated older adults' performance on a computerized event-based focal versus nonfocal PM task that made varying demands on the amount of attentional control required to support intention retrieval. Participants were nondemented individuals (mean age=81.8 years; female=66.1%) enrolled in a community-based longitudinal study, including those with amnestic MCI (aMCI), nonamnestic MCI (naMCI), subjective cognitive decline (SCD), and healthy controls (HC). Participants included in the primary analysis (n=189) completed the PM task and recalled and/or recognized both focal and nonfocal PM cues presented in the task. Participants and their informants also completed a questionnaire assessing everyday PM failures. Relative to HC, those with aMCI and naMCI were significantly impaired in focal PM accuracy (p<.05). In a follow-up analysis that included 13 additional participants who successfully recalled and/or recognized at least one of the two PM cues, the naMCI group showed deficits in nonfocal PM accuracy (p<.05). There was a significant negative correlation between informant reports of PM difficulties and nonfocal PM accuracy (p<.01). PM failures in aMCI may be primarily related to impairment of spontaneous retrieval processes associated with the medial temporal lobe system, while PM failures in naMCI potentially indicate additional deficits in executive control functions and prefrontal systems. The observed focal versus nonfocal PM performance profiles in aMCI and naMCI may constitute specific behavioral markers of PM decline that result from compromise of separate neurocognitive systems.

The sensitivity of a virtual reality task to planning and prospective memory impairments: group differences and the efficacy of periodic alerts on performance.

PubMed

Sweeney, Siobhan; Kersel, Denyse; Morris, Robin G; Manly, Tom; Evans, Jonathan J

2010-04-01

Executive functions have been argued to be the most vulnerable to brain injury. In providing an analogue of everyday situations amenable to control and management virtual reality (VR) may offer better insights into planning deficits consequent upon brain injury. Here 17 participants with a non-progressive brain injury and reported executive difficulties in everyday life were asked to perform a VR task (working in a furniture storage unit) that emphasised planning, rule following and prospective memory tasks. When compared with an age and IQ-matched control group, the patients were significantly poorer in terms of their strategy, their time-based prospective memory, the overall time required and their propensity to break rules. An examination of sensitivity and specificity of the VR task to group membership (brain-injured or control) showed that, with specificity set at maximum, sensitivity was only modest (at just over 50%). A second component to the study investigated whether the patients' performance could be improved by periodic auditory alerts. Previous studies have demonstrated that such cues can improve performance on laboratory tests, executive tests and everyday prospective memory tasks. Here, no significant changes in performance were detected. Potential reasons for this finding are discussed, including symptom severity and differences in the tasks employed in previous studies.

Autobiographical Memory Sharing in Everyday Life: Characteristics of a Good Story

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Baron, Jacqueline M.; Bluck, Susan

2009-01-01

Storytelling is a ubiquitous human activity that occurs across the lifespan as part of everyday life. Studies from three disparate literatures suggest that older adults (as compared to younger adults) are (a) less likely to recall story details, (b) more likely to go off-target when sharing stories, and, in contrast, (c) more likely to receive…

Method and apparatus for faulty memory utilization

DOEpatents

Cher, Chen-Yong; Andrade Costa, Carlos H.; Park, Yoonho; Rosenburg, Bryan S.; Ryu, Kyung D.

2016-04-19

A method for faulty memory utilization in a memory system includes: obtaining information regarding memory health status of at least one memory page in the memory system; determining an error tolerance of the memory page when the information regarding memory health status indicates that a failure is predicted to occur in an area of the memory system affecting the memory page; initiating a migration of data stored in the memory page when it is determined that the data stored in the memory page is non-error-tolerant; notifying at least one application regarding a predicted operating system failure and/or a predicted application failure when it is determined that data stored in the memory page is non-error-tolerant and cannot be migrated; and notifying at least one application regarding the memory failure predicted to occur when it is determined that data stored in the memory page is error-tolerant.

Internet and everyday life: the perceived implications of internet use on memory and ability to concentrate.

PubMed

Näsi, Matti; Koivusilta, Leena

2013-02-01

The growing role of Internet in all aspects of everyday life has led to speculations over the impacts beyond the traditional questions of access or sociability. This in mind, the main focus in this article was to examine how Finns, for majority of whom Internet use has become commonplace activity, perceive the impacts of Internet use since first adopting the technology. In this study, we examine how Internet user history and perceived computer skills, along with different sociodemographic factors, appear to reflect on the perceived impacts of Internet adoption in terms of memory and ability to concentrate. According to the results, almost one in five of the respondents reported changes concerning their memory or ability to concentrate, with skilled computer users and nonworkers, in particular, perceiving the change. Factors such as age-related differences and exposure to potential information overload at work were identified to explain the perceived change. Our data were collected in a survey-gathering information on the everyday life and well-being of Finns. The sample consisted of 2000 Finnish speakers aged 15 to 64 years. The response rate was 46 percent (N=908).

Parent-Child Engagement in Decision Making and the Development of Adolescent Affective Decision Capacity and Binge Drinking

PubMed Central

Xiao, Lin; Bechara, Antoine; Palmer, Paula H.; Trinidad, Dennis R.; Wei, Yonglan; Jia, Yong; Johnson, C. Anderson

2010-01-01

The goal of this study was to investigate how parents’ engagement of their child in everyday decision-making influenced their adolescent’s development on two neuropsychological functions, namely, affective decision-making and working memory, and its effect on adolescent binge-drinking behavior. We conducted a longitudinal study of 192 Chinese adolescents. In 10th grade, the adolescents were tested for their affective decision-making ability using the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and working memory capacity using the Self-ordered Pointing Test (SOPT). Questionnaires were used to assess perceived parent-child engagement in decision-making, academic performance and drinking behavior. At one-year follow-up, the same neuropsychological tasks and questionnaires were repeated. Results indicate that working memory and academic performance were uninfluenced by parent-child engagement in decision-making. However, compared to adolescents whose parents made solitary decisions for them, adolescents engaged in everyday decision-making showed significant improvement on affective decision capacity and significantly less binge-drinking one year later. These findings suggest that parental engagement of children in everyday decision-making might foster the development of neurocognitive functioning relative to affective decision-making and reduce adolescent substance use behaviors. PMID:21804682

Targeting latent function: Encouraging effective encoding for successful memory training and transfer

PubMed Central

Lustig, Cindy; Flegal, Kristin E.

2009-01-01

Cognitive training programs for older adults often result in improvements at the group level. However, there are typically large age and individual differences in the size of training benefits. These differences may be related to the degree to which participants implement the processes targeted by the training program. To test this possibility, we tested older adults in a memory-training procedure either under specific strategy instructions designed to encourage semantic, integrative encoding, or in a condition that encouraged time and attention to encoding but allowed participants to choose their own strategy. Both conditions improved the performance of old-old adults relative to an earlier study (Bissig & Lustig, 2007) and reduced self-reports of everyday memory errors. Performance in the strategy-instruction group was related to pre-existing ability, performance in the strategy-choice group was not. The strategy-choice group performed better on a laboratory transfer test of recognition memory, and training performance was correlated with reduced everyday memory errors. Training programs that target latent but inefficiently-used abilities while allowing flexibility in bringing those abilities to bear may best promote effective training and transfer. PMID:19140647

Do Schacter's Seven Sins of Memory Apply to Ratings of Children's Emotional and Behavioral Functioning?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Renk, Kimberly; Donnelly, Reesa; McKinney, Cliff; Baksh, Elizabeth

2007-01-01

Schacter (2001) proposes that there are seven memory malfunctions that occur in everyday life and that affect individuals' ability to recall occurrences in their lives. Given that these sins affect other areas of memory, it is likely that they may affect the ratings that informants provide when they are recalling characteristics of the emotional…

Temporal and visual source memory deficits among ecstasy/polydrug users.

PubMed

Fisk, John E; Gallagher, Denis T; Hadjiefthyvoulou, Florentia; Montgomery, Catharine

2014-03-01

We wished to investigate whether source memory judgements are adversely affected by recreational illicit drug use. Sixty-two ecstasy/polydrug users and 75 non ecstasy users completed a source memory task, in which they tried to determine whether or not a word had been previously presented and if so, attempted to recall the format, location and temporal position in which the word had occurred. While not differing in terms of the number of hits and false positive responses, ecstasy/polydrug users adopted a more liberal decision criterion when judging if a word had been presented previously. With regard to source memory, users were less able to determine the format in which words had been presented (upper versus lower case). Female users did worse than female nonusers in determining which list (first or second) a word was from. Unexpectedly, the current frequency of cocaine use was negative associated with list and case source memory performance. Given the role that source memory plays in everyday cognition, those who use cocaine more frequently might have more difficulty in everyday tasks such as recalling the sources of crucial information or making use of contextual information as an aid to learning.

Everyday memory strategies for medication adherence.

PubMed

Boron, Julie Blaskewicz; Rogers, Wendy A; Fisk, Arthur D

2013-01-01

The need to manage chronic diseases and multiple medications increases for many older adults. Older adults are aware of memory declines and incorporate compensatory techniques. Everyday memory strategies used to support medication adherence were investigated. A survey distributed to 2000 households in the Atlanta metropolitan area yielded a 19.9% response rate including 354 older adults, aged 60-80 years. Older adults reported forgetting to take their medications, more so as their activity deviated from normal routines, such as unexpected activities. The majority of older adults endorsed at least two compensatory strategies, which they perceived to be more helpful in normal routines. Compensatory strategies were associated with higher education, more medications, having concern, and self-efficacy to take medications. As memory changes, older adults rely on multiple cues, and perceive reliance on multiple cues to be helpful. These data have implications for the design and successful implementation of medication reminder systems and interventions. Copyright © 2013 Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Music and Video Gaming during Breaks: Influence on Habitual versus Goal-Directed Decision Making.

PubMed

Liu, Shuyan; Schad, Daniel J; Kuschpel, Maxim S; Rapp, Michael A; Heinz, Andreas

2016-01-01

Different systems for habitual versus goal-directed control are thought to underlie human decision-making. Working memory is known to shape these decision-making systems and their interplay, and is known to support goal-directed decision making even under stress. Here, we investigated if and how decision systems are differentially influenced by breaks filled with diverse everyday life activities known to modulate working memory performance. We used a within-subject design where young adults listened to music and played a video game during breaks interleaved with trials of a sequential two-step Markov decision task, designed to assess habitual as well as goal-directed decision making. Based on a neurocomputational model of task performance, we observed that for individuals with a rather limited working memory capacity video gaming as compared to music reduced reliance on the goal-directed decision-making system, while a rather large working memory capacity prevented such a decline. Our findings suggest differential effects of everyday activities on key decision-making processes.

Music and Video Gaming during Breaks: Influence on Habitual versus Goal-Directed Decision Making

PubMed Central

Kuschpel, Maxim S.; Rapp, Michael A.; Heinz, Andreas

2016-01-01

Different systems for habitual versus goal-directed control are thought to underlie human decision-making. Working memory is known to shape these decision-making systems and their interplay, and is known to support goal-directed decision making even under stress. Here, we investigated if and how decision systems are differentially influenced by breaks filled with diverse everyday life activities known to modulate working memory performance. We used a within-subject design where young adults listened to music and played a video game during breaks interleaved with trials of a sequential two-step Markov decision task, designed to assess habitual as well as goal-directed decision making. Based on a neurocomputational model of task performance, we observed that for individuals with a rather limited working memory capacity video gaming as compared to music reduced reliance on the goal-directed decision-making system, while a rather large working memory capacity prevented such a decline. Our findings suggest differential effects of everyday activities on key decision-making processes. PMID:26982326

[Subjective memory complaints, personality and prefrontal symptomatology in young adults].

PubMed

Pedrero-Pérez, Eduardo J; Ruiz-Sánchez de León, José M

2013-10-01

This work explores two issues related with the appearance of subjective memory complaints in young adults: on the one hand, the possibility of the complaints being a result of attentional and executive deficits and, on the other, whether certain characteristics of the personality favour and modulate the clinical expression of these complaints. The Memory Failures of Everyday questionnaire, Spanish version, the Prefrontal Syndromes Inventory and the Revised Temperament and Character Inventory were administered to a sample of 1132 participants (900 from the general population and 232 on treatment for drug addiction). The correlation among the variables of the memory complaints, of prefrontal functioning in daily life and of the dimensions of personality proposed by Cloninger was explored. The causal relationships among the variables were studied using structural methods. A strong correlation was observed between cognitive complaints and prefrontal symptoms, suggesting that the complaints are, in fact, a result of an inadequate management of the attentional and executive functions that favours daily errors. A relationship with a large effect size is also observed between the cognitive complaints and low self-management. This dimension of the personality offers an important predictive capacity regarding the appearance and the intensity of the complaints, either directly or modulated by other dimensions, especially harm avoidance. The data back the idea that memory complaints are the result of the self-perception of daily faults and errors that are produced at the attentional and executive level -although they are taken as instances of mnemonic oversight- and that the clinical expression of these complaints is modulated by a profile of the personality.

Dissociative detachment and memory impairment: reversible amnesia or encoding failure?

PubMed

Allen, J G; Console, D A; Lewis, L

1999-01-01

The authors propose that clinicians endeavor to differentiate between reversible and irreversible memory failures in patients with dissociative symptoms who report "memory gaps" and "lost time." The classic dissociative disorders, such as dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder, entail reversible memory failures associated with encoding experience in altered states. The authors propose another realm of memory failures associated with severe dissociative detachment that may preclude the level of encoding of ongoing experience needed to support durable autobiographical memories. They describe how dissociative detachment may be intertwined with neurobiological factors that impair memory, and they spell out the significance of distinguishing reversible and irreversible memory impairment for diagnosis, patient education, psychotherapy, and research.

Face ethnicity and measurement reliability affect face recognition performance in developmental prosopagnosia: evidence from the Cambridge Face Memory Test-Australian.

PubMed

McKone, Elinor; Hall, Ashleigh; Pidcock, Madeleine; Palermo, Romina; Wilkinson, Ross B; Rivolta, Davide; Yovel, Galit; Davis, Joshua M; O'Connor, Kirsty B

2011-03-01

The Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT, Duchaine & Nakayama, 2006) provides a validated format for testing novel face learning and has been a crucial instrument in the diagnosis of developmental prosopagnosia. Yet, some individuals who report everyday face recognition symptoms consistent with prosopagnosia, and are impaired on famous face tasks, perform normally on the CFMT. Possible reasons include measurement error, CFMT assessment of memory only at short delays, and a face set whose ethnicity is matched to only some Caucasian groups. We develop the "CFMT-Australian" (CFMT-Aus), which complements the CFMT-original by using ethnicity better matched to a different European subpopulation. Results confirm reliability (.88) and validity (convergent, divergent using cars, inversion effects). We show that face ethnicity within a race has subtle but clear effects on face processing even in normal participants (includes cross-over interaction for face ethnicity by perceiver country of origin in distinctiveness ratings). We show that CFMT-Aus clarifies diagnosis of prosopagnosia in 6 previously ambiguous cases. In 3 cases, this appears due to the better ethnic match to prosopagnosics. We also show that face memory at short (<3-min), 20-min, and 24-hr delays taps overlapping processes in normal participants. There is some suggestion that a form of prosopagnosia may exist that is long delay only and/or reflects failure to benefit from face repetition. © 2011 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Memory Circuit Fault Simulator

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sheldon, Douglas J.; McClure, Tucker

2013-01-01

Spacecraft are known to experience significant memory part-related failures and problems, both pre- and postlaunch. These memory parts include both static and dynamic memories (SRAM and DRAM). These failures manifest themselves in a variety of ways, such as pattern-sensitive failures, timingsensitive failures, etc. Because of the mission critical nature memory devices play in spacecraft architecture and operation, understanding their failure modes is vital to successful mission operation. To support this need, a generic simulation tool that can model different data patterns in conjunction with variable write and read conditions was developed. This tool is a mathematical and graphical way to embed pattern, electrical, and physical information to perform what-if analysis as part of a root cause failure analysis effort.

Cognitive Rehabilitation for Attention and Memory in people with Multiple Sclerosis: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial (CRAMMS).

PubMed

Lincoln, Nadina B; das Nair, Roshan; Bradshaw, Lucy; Constantinescu, Cris S; Drummond, Avril E R; Erven, Alexandra; Evans, Amy L; Fitzsimmons, Deborah; Montgomery, Alan A; Morgan, Miriam

2015-12-08

People with multiple sclerosis have problems with memory and attention. Cognitive rehabilitation is a structured set of therapeutic activities designed to retrain an individual's memory and other cognitive functions. Cognitive rehabilitation may be provided to teach people strategies to cope with these problems, in order to reduce the impact on everyday life. The effectiveness of cognitive rehabilitation for people with multiple sclerosis has not been established. This is a multi-centre, randomised controlled trial investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a group-based cognitive rehabilitation programme for attention and memory problems for people with multiple sclerosis. Four hundred people with multiple sclerosis will be randomised from at least four centres. Participants will be eligible if they have memory problems, are 18 to 69 years of age, are able to travel to attend group sessions and give informed consent. Participants will be randomised in a ratio of 6:5 to the group rehabilitation intervention plus usual care or usual care alone. Intervention groups will receive 10 weekly sessions of a manualised cognitive rehabilitation programme. The intervention will include both restitution strategies to retrain impaired attention and memory functions and compensation strategies to enable participants to cope with their cognitive problems. All participants will receive a follow-up questionnaire and an assessment by a research assistant at 6 and 12 months after randomisation. The primary outcome is the Multiple Sclerosis Impact Scale (MSIS) Psychological subscale at 12 months. Secondary outcomes include the Everyday Memory Questionnaire, General Health Questionnaire-30, EQ-5D and a service use questionnaire from participants, and the Everyday Memory Questionnaire-relative version and Carer Strain Index from a relative or friend. The primary analysis will be based on intention to treat. A mixed-model regression analysis of the MSIS Psychological subscale at 12 months will be used to estimate the effect of the group cognitive rehabilitation programme. The study will provide evidence regarding the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a group-based cognitive rehabilitation programme for attention and memory problems in people with multiple sclerosis. ISRCTN09697576 . Registered 14 August 2014.

Intelligence, Working Memory, and Multitasking Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Colom, Roberto; Martinez-Molina, Agustin; Shih, Pei Chun; Santacreu, Jose

2010-01-01

Multitasking performance is relevant in everyday life and job analyses highlight the influence of multitasking over several diverse occupations. Intelligence is the best single predictor of overall job performance and it is also related to individual differences in multitasking. However, it has been shown that working memory capacity (WMC) is…

Nonverbal Effects in Memory for Dialogue.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Narvaez, Alice; Hertel, Paula T.

Memory for everyday conversational speech may be influenced by the nonverbally communicated emotion of the speaker. In order to investigate this premise, three videotaped scenes with bipolar emotional perspectives (joy/fear about going away to college, fear/anger about having been robbed, and disgust/interest regarding a friend's infidelity) were…

Crystallized verbal skills in schizophrenia: relationship to neurocognition, symptoms, and functional status.

PubMed

Kurtz, Matthew M; Donato, Jad; Rose, Jennifer

2011-11-01

To study the relationship of superior (i.e., ≥ 90th percentile), average (11th-89th percentile) or extremely low (i.e., ≤ 10th percentile) crystallized verbal skills to neurocognitive profiles, symptoms and everyday life function in schizophrenia. Crystallized verbal skill was derived from Vocabulary subtest scores from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). Out of a sample of 165 stable outpatients with schizophrenia we identified 25 participants with superior crystallized verbal skill, 104 participants with average verbal skill, and 36 participants with extremely low crystallized verbal skill. Each participant was administered measures of attention, working memory, verbal learning and memory, problem-solving and processing speed, as well as symptom and performance-based adaptive life skill assessments. The magnitude of neuropsychological impairment across the three groups was different, after adjusting for group differences in education and duration of illness. Working memory, and verbal learning and memory skills were different across all three groups, while processing speed differentiated the extremely low verbal skill group from the other two groups and problem-solving differentiated the very low verbal skill group from the superior verbal skill group. There were no group differences in sustained attention. Capacity measures of everyday life skills were different across each of the three groups. Crystallized verbal skill in schizophrenia is related to the magnitude of impairment in neurocognitive function and performance-based skills in everyday life function. Patterns of neuropsychological impairment were similar across different levels of crystallized verbal skill.

Estradiol enhances retention but not organization of hippocampus-dependent memory in intact male mice.

PubMed

Al Abed, Alice Shaam; Sellami, Azza; Brayda-Bruno, Laurent; Lamothe, Valérie; Noguès, Xavier; Potier, Mylène; Bennetau-Pelissero, Catherine; Marighetto, Aline

2016-07-01

Because estrogens have mostly been studied in gonadectomized females, effects of chronic exposure to environmental estrogens in the general population are underestimated. Estrogens can enhance hippocampus-dependent memory through the modulation of information storage. However, declarative memory, the hippocampus-dependent memory of facts and events, demands more than abilities to retain information. Specifically, memory of repetitive events of everyday life such as "where I parked" requires abilities to organize/update memories to prevent proactive interference from similar memories of previous "parking events". Whether such organizational processes are estrogen-sensitive is unknown. We here studied, in intact young and aged adult mice, drinking-water (1μM) estradiol effects on both retention and organizational components of hippocampus-dependent memory, using a radial-maze task of everyday-like memory. Demand on retention vs organization was manipulated by varying the time-interval separating repetitions of similar events. Estradiol increased performance in young and aged mice under minimized organizational demand, but failed to improve the age-associated memory impairment and diminished performance in young mice under high organizational demand. In fact, estradiol prolonged mnemonic retention of successive events without improving organization abilities, hence resulted in more proactive interference from irrelevant memories. c-Fos imaging of testing-induced brain activations showed that the deterioration of young memory was associated with dentate gyrus dysconnectivity, reminiscent of that seen in aged mice. Our findings support the view that estradiol is promnesic but also reveal that such property can paradoxically impair memory. These findings have important outcomes regarding health issues relative to the impact of environmental estrogens in the general population. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Targeting latent function: encouraging effective encoding for successful memory training and transfer.

PubMed

Lustig, Cindy; Flegal, Kristin E

2008-12-01

Cognitive training programs for older adults often result in improvements at the group level. However, there are typically large age and individual differences in the size of training benefits. These differences may be related to the degree to which participants implement the processes targeted by the training program. To test this possibility, we tested older adults in a memory-training procedure either under specific strategy instructions designed to encourage semantic, integrative encoding, or in a condition that encouraged time and attention to encoding but allowed participants to choose their own strategy. Both conditions improved the performance of old-old adults relative to an earlier study (D. Bissig & C. Lustig, 2007) and reduced self-reports of everyday memory errors. Performance in the strategy-instruction group was related to preexisting ability; performance in the strategy?choice group was not. The strategy-choice group performed better on a laboratory transfer test of recognition memory, and training performance was correlated with reduced everyday memory errors. Training programs that target participants' latent but inefficiently used abilities while allowing flexibility in bringing those abilities to bear may best promote effective training and transfer. Copyright (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Evaluation of an attention and memory intervention post-childhood acquired brain injury: Preliminary efficacy, immediate and 6 months post-intervention.

PubMed

Catroppa, Cathy; Stone, Kate; Hearps, Stephen J C; Soo, Cheryl; Anderson, Vicki; Rosema, Stefanie

2015-01-01

Impairments in attention and memory are common sequelae following paediatric acquired brain injury (ABI). While it has been established that such impairments are long-term and, therefore, affect quality-of-life, there is a scarcity of evidence-based interventions to treat these difficulties. The current study aimed to pilot the efficacy of the Amsterdam Memory and Attention Training for Children (Amat-c: English version) using both neuropsychological and ecologically sensitive measures. It was expected that children with attention and memory difficulties post-ABI would show improved performance post-intervention on cognitive and ecological measures, with maintenance at 6 months post-intervention. Ten children with an ABI, between the ages of 8-13 years at the time of recruitment were identified through audits of presentations to a metropolitan paediatric hospital. Each child underwent screening, the 18 week intervention programme, pre-intervention, immediate and 6 month post-intervention assessments. Findings supported the hypothesis that children would show post-intervention (immediate and 6 month) improvement in areas of attention and memory, with generalization to everyday life. Preliminary results provide support for the efficacy of the Amat-c post-childhood ABI. A larger study is needed to confirm these findings, as a reduction in attention and memory difficulties will enhance everyday functioning.

The effects of HIV disease and older age on laboratory-based, naturalistic, and self-perceived symptoms of prospective memory: does retrieval cue type and delay interval matter?

PubMed

Avci, G; Loft, S; Sheppard, D P; Woods, S P

2016-11-01

There is a rising prevalence of older HIV+ adults who are at risk of deficits in higher order neurocognitive functions and associated problems in everyday functioning. The current study applied multiprocess theory to examine the effects of HIV and aging on measures of laboratory-based, naturalistic, and self-perceived symptoms of prospective memory (PM). Participants included 125 Younger (48 with HIV, age = 32 ± 4.6 years) and 189 Older (112 with HIV, age = 56 ± 4.9 years) adults. Controlling for global neurocognitive functioning, mood, and other demographics, older age and HIV had independent effects on long-delay time-based PM in the laboratory, whereas on a naturalistic PM task older HIV- adults performed better than older HIV+ adults and younger persons. In line with the naturalistic findings, older age, but not HIV, was associated with a relative sparing of self-perceived PM failures in daily life across longer delay self-cued intervals. Findings suggest that, even in relatively younger aging cohorts, the effects of HIV and older age on PM can vary across PM delay intervals by the strategic demands of the retrieval cue type, are expressed differently in the laboratory and in daily life, and are independent of other higher order neurocognitive functions (e.g., retrospective memory).

The Effects of HIV Disease and Older Age on Laboratory-based, Naturalistic, and Self-Perceived Symptoms of Prospective Memory: Does Retrieval Cue Type and Delay Interval Matter?

PubMed Central

Avci, G.; Loft, S.; Sheppard, D.P.; Woods, S.P.

2016-01-01

There is a rising prevalence of older HIV+ adults who are at risk of deficits in higher-order neurocognitive functions and associated problems in everyday functioning. The current study applied Multiprocess Theory to examine the effects of HIV and aging on measures of laboratory-based, naturalistic, and self-perceived symptoms of prospective memory (PM). Participants included 125 Younger (48 with HIV, age = 32±4.6 years) and 189 Older (112 with HIV, age = 56±4.9 years) adults. Controlling for global neurocognitive functioning, mood, and other demographics, older age and HIV had independent effects on long-delay time-based PM in the laboratory, whereas on a naturalistic PM task older HIV− adults performed better than older HIV+ adults and younger persons. In line with the naturalistic findings, older age, but not HIV, was associated with a relative sparing of self-perceived PM failures in daily life across longer delay self-cued intervals. Findings suggest that, even in relatively younger aging cohorts, the effects of HIV and older age on PM can vary across PM delay intervals by the strategic demands of the retrieval cue type, are expressed differently in the laboratory and in daily life, and are independent of other higher-order neurocognitive functions (e.g., retrospective memory). PMID:27002287

Cognitive functioning and everyday problem solving in older adults.

PubMed

Burton, Catherine L; Strauss, Esther; Hultsch, David F; Hunter, Michael A

2006-09-01

The relationship between cognitive functioning and a performance-based measure of everyday problem-solving, the Everyday Problems Test (EPT), thought to index instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), was examined in 291 community-dwelling non-demented older adults. Performance on the EPT was found to vary according to age, cognitive status, and education. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that, after adjusting for demographic and health variables, measures of cognitive functioning accounted for 23.6% of the variance in EPT performance. In particular, measures of global cognitive status, cognitive decline, speed of processing, executive functioning, episodic memory, and verbal ability were significant predictors of EPT performance. These findings suggest that cognitive functioning along with demographic variables are important determinants of everyday problem-solving.

32-Bit-Wide Memory Tolerates Failures

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Buskirk, Glenn A.

1990-01-01

Electronic memory system of 32-bit words corrects bit errors caused by some common type of failures - even failure of entire 4-bit-wide random-access-memory (RAM) chip. Detects failure of two such chips, so user warned that ouput of memory may contain errors. Includes eight 4-bit-wide DRAM's configured so each bit of each DRAM assigned to different one of four parallel 8-bit words. Each DRAM contributes only 1 bit to each 8-bit word.

Transfer Failure and Proactive Interference in Short-Term Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ellis, John A.

1977-01-01

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that proactive interference over a series of Brown-Peterson trials results from a combination of the subject's failure to transfer information to a permanent memory state and failure to retrieve information from permanent memory. (Editor)

Celebrating the Ordinary

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Horst, Carol

2010-01-01

Memento. Memoir. Memorable. Memory. Memorial. Commemorate. In Memoriam. These words may remind a person of stone monuments, or larger-than-life heroes and loved ones far distanced by space and time. The act of remembering, though, also belongs in the world of the everyday and the ordinary, and has a valuable place in an art classroom. In this…

Individual Differences in Depth and Breadth of Processing.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schmeck, Ronald R.; McCarthy, Patricia

Memory has been defined as traces left behind by past information processing. One approach to the study of everyday memory is to isolate reliable differences between individuals in the ways in which they process information when preparing for test events. The Inventory of Learning Processes, consisting of four scales, i.e., Deep Processing,…

Differential effects of wakeful rest, music and video game playing on working memory performance in the n-back task.

PubMed

Kuschpel, Maxim S; Liu, Shuyan; Schad, Daniel J; Heinzel, Stephan; Heinz, Andreas; Rapp, Michael A

2015-01-01

The interruption of learning processes by breaks filled with diverse activities is common in everyday life. We investigated the effects of active computer gaming and passive relaxation (rest and music) breaks on working memory performance. Young adults were exposed to breaks involving (i) eyes-open resting, (ii) listening to music and (iii) playing the video game "Angry Birds" before performing the n-back working memory task. Based on linear mixed-effects modeling, we found that playing the "Angry Birds" video game during a short learning break led to a decline in task performance over the course of the task as compared to eyes-open resting and listening to music, although overall task performance was not impaired. This effect was associated with high levels of daily mind wandering and low self-reported ability to concentrate. These findings indicate that video games can negatively affect working memory performance over time when played in between learning tasks. We suggest further investigation of these effects because of their relevance to everyday activity.

Rehabilitation of the central executive component of working memory: a re-organisation approach applied to a single case.

PubMed

Duval, J; Coyette, F; Seron, X

2008-08-01

This paper describes and evaluates a programme of neuropsychological rehabilitation which aims to improve three sub-components of the working memory central executive: processing load, updating and dual-task monitoring, by the acquisition of three re-organisation strategies (double coding, serial processing and speed reduction). Our programme has two stages: cognitive rehabilitation (graduated exercises subdivided into three sub-programmes each corresponding to a sub-component) which enables the patient to acquire the three specific strategies; and an ecological rehabilitation, including analyses of scenarios and simulations of real-life situations, which aims to transfer the strategies learned to everyday life. The programme also includes information meetings. It was applied to a single case who had working memory deficits after a surgical operation for a cerebral tumour on his left internal temporal ganglioglioma. Multiple baseline tests were used to measure the effectiveness of the rehabilitation. The programme proved to be effective for all three working memory components; a generalisation of its effects to everyday life was observed, and the effects were undiminished three months later.

Differential effects of wakeful rest, music and video game playing on working memory performance in the n-back task

PubMed Central

Kuschpel, Maxim S.; Liu, Shuyan; Schad, Daniel J.; Heinzel, Stephan; Heinz, Andreas; Rapp, Michael A.

2015-01-01

The interruption of learning processes by breaks filled with diverse activities is common in everyday life. We investigated the effects of active computer gaming and passive relaxation (rest and music) breaks on working memory performance. Young adults were exposed to breaks involving (i) eyes-open resting, (ii) listening to music and (iii) playing the video game “Angry Birds” before performing the n-back working memory task. Based on linear mixed-effects modeling, we found that playing the “Angry Birds” video game during a short learning break led to a decline in task performance over the course of the task as compared to eyes-open resting and listening to music, although overall task performance was not impaired. This effect was associated with high levels of daily mind wandering and low self-reported ability to concentrate. These findings indicate that video games can negatively affect working memory performance over time when played in between learning tasks. We suggest further investigation of these effects because of their relevance to everyday activity. PMID:26579055

Institutional Violence in the Everyday Practices of School: The Narrative of a Young Lesbian.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Herr, Kathryn

1999-01-01

Explores the role of institutionalized violence in one young lesbian's decision to drop out of high school. Casting this young woman as a school failure masks the school's unwillingness to interrupt everyday practices (errors of alienation, omission, and repression) that diminished her sense of self and learning capacity. (29 references) (MLH)

little sister: An Afro-Temporal Solo-Play.

PubMed

De Berry, Misty

2017-07-03

little sister: An Afro-Temporal Solo-Play is at once a memory-scape and a mytho-biography set to poetry, movement, and mixed media. A performance poem spanning from the Antebellum South to present-moment Chicago, it tells the story of a nomadic spirit named little-she who shape-shifts through the memories and imaginings of her sister, the narrator. Through the characters little-she and the narrator, the solo-performance explores embodied ways to rupture and relieve the impact of macro forms of violence in the micro realm of the everyday. To this end, little sister witnesses and disrupts the legacy of violence in the lives of queer Black women through a trans-temporal navigation of everyday encounters within familial, small groups and intimate partner spaces.

Reaction Times to Consecutive Automation Failures: A Function of Working Memory and Sustained Attention.

PubMed

Jipp, Meike

2016-12-01

This study explored whether working memory and sustained attention influence cognitive lock-up, which is a delay in the response to consecutive automation failures. Previous research has demonstrated that the information that automation provides about failures and the time pressure that is associated with a task influence cognitive lock-up. Previous research has also demonstrated considerable variability in cognitive lock-up between participants. This is why individual differences might influence cognitive lock-up. The present study tested whether working memory-including flexibility in executive functioning-and sustained attention might be crucial in this regard. Eighty-five participants were asked to monitor automated aircraft functions. The experimental manipulation consisted of whether or not an initial automation failure was followed by a consecutive failure. Reaction times to the failures were recorded. Participants' working-memory and sustained-attention abilities were assessed with standardized tests. As expected, participants' reactions to consecutive failures were slower than their reactions to initial failures. In addition, working-memory and sustained-attention abilities enhanced the speed with which participants reacted to failures, more so with regard to consecutive than to initial failures. The findings highlight that operators with better working memory and sustained attention have small advantages when initial failures occur, but their advantages increase across consecutive failures. The results stress the need to consider personnel selection strategies to mitigate cognitive lock-up in general and training procedures to enhance the performance of low ability operators. © 2016, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

The psychological distance of memories: Examining causal relations with mood and self-esteem in young, middle-aged and older adults.

PubMed

Demiray, Burcu; Freund, Alexandra M

2017-03-01

Three studies examined the self-enhancement function of autobiographical memory (measured with subjective temporal distance of memories). Participants recalled a memory of an attained and a failed goal and rated the subjective distance between each memory and the present. Study 1 showed that young adults with higher self-esteem felt closer to memories of attained goals and farther from failure memories than those with lower self-esteem. In Study 2, young, middle-aged and older adults with higher self-esteem felt closer to success memories, whereas self-esteem was unrelated to the temporal distance of failure memories. In both studies, feeling closer to success memories (and far from failure) led to enhanced mood. In Study 3, state self-esteem was experimentally manipulated. The manipulation had no effect on young and older adults, but middle-aged adults whose self-esteem was decreased, felt closer to success memories than failure memories. Results are discussed in relation to the temporal self-appraisal theory. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Arousal-biased competition in perception and memory

PubMed Central

Mather, Mara; Sutherland, Matthew R.

2010-01-01

Our everyday surroundings besiege us with information. The battle is for a share of our limited attention and memory, with the brain selecting the winners and discarding the losers. Previous research shows that both bottom-up and top-down factors bias competition in favor of high priority stimuli. We propose that arousal during an event increases this bias both in perception and in long-term memory of the event. Arousal-biased competition theory provides specific predictions about when arousal will enhance and when it will impair memory for events, accounting for some puzzling contradictions in the emotional memory literature. PMID:21660127

If It Is Stored in My Memory I Will Surely Retrieve It: Anatomy of a Metacognitive Belief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kornell, Nate

2015-01-01

Retrieval failures--moments when a memory will not come to mind--are a universal human experience. Yet many laypeople believe human memory is a reliable storage system in which a stored memory should be accessible. I predicted that people would see retrieval failures as aberrations and predict that fewer retrieval failures would happen in the…

Social Transmission of False Memory in Small Groups and Large Networks.

PubMed

Maswood, Raeya; Rajaram, Suparna

2018-05-21

Sharing information and memories is a key feature of social interactions, making social contexts important for developing and transmitting accurate memories and also false memories. False memory transmission can have wide-ranging effects, including shaping personal memories of individuals as well as collective memories of a network of people. This paper reviews a collection of key findings and explanations in cognitive research on the transmission of false memories in small groups. It also reviews the emerging experimental work on larger networks and collective false memories. Given the reconstructive nature of memory, the abundance of misinformation in everyday life, and the variety of social structures in which people interact, an understanding of transmission of false memories has both scientific and societal implications. © 2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Executive and memory correlates of age-related differences in wayfinding performances using a virtual reality application.

PubMed

Taillade, Mathieu; Sauzéon, Hélène; Dejos, Marie; Pala, Prashant Arvind; Larrue, Florian; Wallet, Grégory; Gross, Christian; N'Kaoua, Bernard

2013-01-01

The aim of this study was to evaluate in large-scale spaces wayfinding and spatial learning difficulties for older adults in relation to the executive and memory decline associated with aging. We compared virtual reality (VR)-based wayfinding and spatial memory performances between young and older adults. Wayfinding and spatial memory performances were correlated with classical measures of executive and visuo-spatial memory functions, but also with self-reported estimates of wayfinding difficulties. We obtained a significant effect of age on wayfinding performances but not on spatial memory performances. The overall correlations showed significant correlations between the wayfinding performances and the classical measures of both executive and visuo-spatial memory, but only when the age factor was not partialled out. Also, older adults underestimated their wayfinding difficulties. A significant relationship between the wayfinding performances and self-reported wayfinding difficulty estimates is found, but only when the age effect was partialled out. These results show that, even when older adults have an equivalent spatial knowledge to young adults, they had greater difficulties with the wayfinding task, supporting an executive decline view in age-related wayfinding difficulties. However, the correlation results are in favor of both the memory and executive decline views as mediators of age-related differences in wayfinding performances. This is discussed in terms of the relationships between memory and executive functioning in wayfinding task orchestration. Our results also favor the use of objective assessments of everyday navigation difficulties in virtual applications, instead of self-reported questionnaires, since older adults showed difficulties in estimating their everyday wayfinding problems.

Rehabilitation of executive dysfunction following brain injury: "content-free" cueing improves everyday prospective memory performance.

PubMed

Fish, Jessica; Evans, Jonathan J; Nimmo, Morag; Martin, Emma; Kersel, Denyse; Bateman, Andrew; Wilson, Barbara A; Manly, Tom

2007-03-25

Prospective memory (PM) is often claimed to rely upon executive as well as mnemonic resources. Here, we examined the contribution of executive functions towards PM by providing intermittent support for monitoring processes using "content-free" cues, which carried no direct information regarding the PM task itself. Twenty participants with non-progressive brain injury and PM difficulties received brief training in linking a cue phrase "STOP!" with pausing current activity and reviewing stored goals. The efficacy of this strategy was examined with a PM task requiring participants to make telephone calls to a voicemail service at four set times each day for 10 days. Task content was encoded using errorless learning to minimise retrospective memory-based failures. On five randomly selected days, eight text messages reading simply "STOP!" were sent to participants' mobile telephones, but crucially not within an hour of a target time. Striking improvements in performance were observed on cued days, thus demonstrating a within-subjects experimental modulation of PM performance using cues that carry no information other than by association with participants' stored memory of their intentions. In addition to the theoretical insights, the time course over which the effect was observed constitutes encouraging evidence that such strategies are useful in helping to remediate some negative consequences of executive dysfunction. It is proposed that this benefit results from enhanced efficiency of goal management via increased monitoring of current and future goals, and the steps necessary to achieve them, perhaps compensating for under-functioning fronto-parietal attention systems.

[Validation of a cognitive complaints questionnaire for young adults: the relation between subjective memory complaints, prefrontal symptoms and perceived stress].

PubMed

Lozoya-Delgado, Paz; Ruiz-Sánchez de León, José M; Pedrero-Pérez, Eduardo J

2012-02-01

Although subjective memory complaints are one of the most common causes behind visits to health services, there are hardly any validated instruments in Spanish for evaluating their magnitude. Since memory complaint questionnaires usually include items referring to attentional and executive aspects, it has been hypothesised that they may well be related with other processes that depend on the integrity of the prefrontal cortex. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of an instrument based on the Memory Failures in Everyday (MFE) questionnaire, thus providing a valuation over a broad sample of the Spanish population. A second aim of the study was to analyse the relations that exist between the appearance of the complaints, the symptoms of a prefrontal origin and perceived stress. The MFE-30 (a modified version of the MFE), the dysexecutive questionnaire and the perceived stress scale were administered to a sample of young adults from a non-clinical general population (n = 900). The analyses show that the MFE-30 is a single-factor questionnaire that evaluates a single construct called 'cognitive complaints'. Moreover, an intense pattern of correlations among these complaints, the symptoms of a prefrontal origin and perceived stress is observed. The resulting scores show that the MFE-30 is a useful instrument in clinical practice. Findings are in line with those from previous studies, thus suggesting that there is a close relation among the appearance of cognitive complaints, the presence of prefrontal symptoms and perceived stress.

Life memories and the ability to act: the meaning of autonomy and participation for older people when living with chronic illness.

PubMed

Hedman, Maria; Pöder, Ulrika; Mamhidir, Anna-Greta; Nilsson, Annika; Kristofferzon, Marja-Leena; Häggström, Elisabeth

2015-12-01

There is a lack of knowledge about how older people living with chronic illness describe the meaning of autonomy and participation, indicating a risk for reduced autonomy and participation in their everyday life. The purpose of this study was to describe the meaning of autonomy and participation among older people living with chronic illness in accordance with their lived experience. The design was descriptive with a phenomenological approach guided by Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological psychological method. Purposive sampling was used, and 16 older people living with chronic illness who lived in an ordinary home participated in individual interviews. The findings showed that the meaning of autonomy and participation among the older people emerged when it was challenged and evoked emotional considerations of the lived experience of having a chronic illness. It involved living a life apart, yet still being someone who is able, trustworthy and given responsibility--still being seen and acknowledged. The meaning of autonomy and participation was derived through life memories and used by the older people in everyday life for adjustment or adaption to the present life and the future. Our conclusion is that autonomy and participation were considered in relation to older people's life memories in the past, in their present situation and also their future wishes. Ability or disability is of less importance than the meaning of everyday life among older people. We suggest using fewer labels for limitations in everyday life when caring for older people and more use of the phrase 'ability to act' in different ways, based on older people's descriptions of the meaning of autonomy and participation. © 2015 Nordic College of Caring Science.

Location Memory in the Real World: Category Adjustment Effects in 3-Dimensional Space

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holden, Mark P.; Newcombe, Nora S.; Shipley, Thomas F.

2013-01-01

The ability to remember spatial locations is critical to human functioning, both in an evolutionary and in an everyday sense. Yet spatial memories and judgments often show systematic errors and biases. Bias has been explained by models such as the Category Adjustment model (CAM), in which fine-grained and categorical information about locations…

Pronounced impairment of everyday skills and self-care in posterior cortical atrophy.

PubMed

Shakespeare, Timothy J; Yong, Keir X X; Foxe, David; Hodges, John; Crutch, Sebastian J

2015-01-01

Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative syndrome characterized by progressive visual dysfunction and parietal, occipital, and occipitotemporal atrophy. The aim of this study was to compare the impact of PCA and typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) on everyday functional abilities and neuropsychiatric status. The Cambridge Behavioural Inventory-Revised was given to carers of 32 PCA and 71 tAD patients. PCA patients showed significantly greater impairment in everyday skills and self-care while the tAD group showed greater impairment in aspects of memory and orientation, and motivation. We suggest that PCA poses specific challenges for those caring for people affected by the condition.

Memory and communication support in dementia: research-based strategies for caregivers.

PubMed

Smith, Erin R; Broughton, Megan; Baker, Rosemary; Pachana, Nancy A; Angwin, Anthony J; Humphreys, Michael S; Mitchell, Leander; Byrne, Gerard J; Copland, David A; Gallois, Cindy; Hegney, Desley; Chenery, Helen J

2011-03-01

Difficulties with memory and communication are prominent and distressing features of dementia which impact on the person with dementia and contribute to caregiver stress and burden. There is a need to provide caregivers with strategies to support and maximize memory and communication abilities in people with dementia. In this project, a team of clinicians, researchers and educators in neuropsychology, psychogeriatrics, nursing and speech pathology translated research-based knowledge from these fields into a program of practical strategies for everyday use by family and professional caregivers. From the available research evidence, the project team identified compensatory or facilitative strategies to assist with common areas of difficulty, and structured these under the mnemonics RECAPS (for memory) and MESSAGE (for communication). This information was adapted for presentation in a DVD-based education program in accordance with known characteristics of effective caregiver education. The resultant DVD comprises (1) information on the nature and importance of memory and communication in everyday life; (2) explanations of common patterns of difficulty and preserved ability in memory and communication across the stages of dementia; (3) acted vignettes demonstrating the strategies, based on authentic samples of speech in dementia; and (4) scenarios to prompt the viewer to consider the benefits of using the strategies. Using a knowledge-translation framework, information and strategies can be provided to family and professional caregivers to help them optimize residual memory and communication in people with dementia. Future development of the materials, incorporating consumer feedback, will focus on methods for enabling wider dissemination.

Self-help memory training for healthy older adults in a residential care center: specific and transfer effects on performance and beliefs.

PubMed

Cavallini, Elena; Bottiroli, Sara; Capotosto, Emanuela; De Beni, Rossana; Pavan, Giorgio; Vecchi, Tomaso; Borella, Erika

2015-08-01

Cognitive flexibility has repeatedly been shown to improve after training programs in community-dwelling older adults, but few studies have focused on healthy older adults living in other settings. This study investigated the efficacy of self-help training for healthy older adults in a residential care center on memory tasks they practiced (associative and object list learning tasks) and any transfer to other tasks (grocery lists, face-name learning, figure-word pairing, word lists, and text learning). Transfer effects on everyday life (using a problem-solving task) and on participants' beliefs regarding their memory (efficacy and control) were also examined. With the aid of a manual, the training adopted a learner-oriented approach that directly encouraged learners to generalize strategic behavior to new tasks. The maintenance of any training benefits was assessed after 6 months. The study involved 34 residential care center residents (aged 70-99 years old) with no cognitive impairments who were randomly assigned to two programs: the experimental group followed the self-help training program, whereas the active control group was involved in general cognitive stimulation activities. Training benefits emerged in the trained group for the tasks that were practiced. Transfer effects were found in memory and everyday problem-solving tasks and on memory beliefs. The effects of training were generally maintained in both practiced and unpracticed memory tasks. These results demonstrate that learner-oriented self-help training enhances memory performance and memory beliefs, in the short term at least, even in residential care center residents. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Pathophysiology and Treatment of Memory Dysfunction after Traumatic Brain Injury

PubMed Central

Paterno, Rosalia; Folweiler, Kaitlin A.; Cohen, Akiva S.

2018-01-01

Memory is fundamental to everyday life, and cognitive impairments resulting from traumatic brain injury (TBI) have devastating effects on TBI survivors. A contributing component to memory impairments caused by TBI are alterations in the neural circuits associated with memory function. In this review, we aim to bring together experimental findings that characterize behavioral memory deficits and the underlying pathophysiology of memory-involved circuits after TBI. While there is little doubt that TBI causes memory and cognitive dysfunction, it is difficult to conclude which memory phase i.e., encoding, maintenance or retrieval is specifically altered by TBI. This is most likely due to variation in behavioral protocols and experimental models. Additionally we review a selection of experimental treatments that hold translational potential to mitigate memory dysfunction following injury. PMID:28500417

Confident failures: Lapses of working memory reveal a metacognitive blind spot.

PubMed

Adam, Kirsten C S; Vogel, Edward K

2017-07-01

Working memory performance fluctuates dramatically from trial to trial. On many trials, performance is no better than chance. Here, we assessed participants' awareness of working memory failures. We used a whole-report visual working memory task to quantify both trial-by-trial performance and trial-by-trial subjective ratings of inattention to the task. In Experiment 1 (N = 41), participants were probed for task-unrelated thoughts immediately following 20% of trials. In Experiment 2 (N = 30), participants gave a rating of their attentional state following 25% of trials. Finally, in Experiments 3a (N = 44) and 3b (N = 34), participants reported confidence of every response using a simple mouse-click judgment. Attention-state ratings and off-task thoughts predicted the number of items correctly identified on each trial, replicating previous findings that subjective measures of attention state predict working memory performance. However, participants correctly identified failures on only around 28% of failure trials. Across experiments, participants' metacognitive judgments reliably predicted variation in working memory performance but consistently and severely underestimated the extent of failures. Further, individual differences in metacognitive accuracy correlated with overall working memory performance, suggesting that metacognitive monitoring may be key to working memory success.

The Components of Working Memory Updating: An Experimental Decomposition and Individual Differences

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ecker, Ullrich K. H.; Lewandowsky, Stephan; Oberauer, Klaus; Chee, Abby E. H.

2010-01-01

Working memory updating (WMU) has been identified as a cognitive function of prime importance for everyday tasks and has also been found to be a significant predictor of higher mental abilities. Yet, little is known about the constituent processes of WMU. We suggest that operations required in a typical WMU task can be decomposed into 3 major…

Ten-year longitudinal trajectories of older adults' basic and everyday cognitive abilities.

PubMed

Yam, Anna; Gross, Alden L; Prindle, John J; Marsiske, Michael

2014-11-01

To examine the longitudinal trajectories of everyday cognition and longitudinal associations with basic (i.e., laboratory and experimentally measured) cognitive abilities, including verbal memory, inductive reasoning, visual processing speed, and vocabulary. Participants were healthy older adults drawn from the no-treatment control group (N = 698) of the Advanced Cognitive Training for the Independent and Vital Elderly (Willis et al., 2006) randomized trial and were assessed at baseline and 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 years later. Analyses were conducted using latent growth models. Modeling revealed an overall inverted-U shape (quadratic) trajectory across cognitive domains. Among basic cognitive predictors, level and slope in reasoning demonstrated the closest association to level and slope of everyday cognition, and accounted for most of the individual differences in linear gain in everyday cognition. Everyday cognition is not buffered against decline, and is most closely related to inductive reasoning in healthy older adults. To establish the clinical utility of everyday cognitive measures, future research should examine these associations in samples with more cognitive impairment. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Memory compensation in older adults: the role of health, emotion regulation, and trait mindfulness.

PubMed

de Frias, Cindy M

2014-09-01

The current study examined associations between everyday memory compensation and 3 person-level resource domains (i.e., health, emotion regulation, and trait mindfulness) in older adults. In this cross-sectional study, 89 healthy, community-dwelling older adults (ages 51-85 years) completed the multidimensional Memory Compensation Questionnaire, along with measures of self-reported health status, emotion regulation strategies, and trait mindfulness. Hierarchical regressions (covarying for age, gender, and education) showed that poorer mental health (especially for older adults) and physical health functioning were related to using compensatory strategies (e.g., reliance on others and investment of time and effort) more frequently. Cognitive reappraisers reported using more internal mnemonic strategies. Conversely, having a more mindful predisposition was associated with less frequent use of compensatory strategies, especially for middle-aged adults. The results suggest that health-related quality of life, adaptive strategies to regulate emotions, and trait mindfulness are additional contexts that determine the degree of engagement in everyday memory compensation and ultimately to successful aging. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Effects of age on a real-world What-Where-When memory task

PubMed Central

Mazurek, Adèle; Bhoopathy, Raja Meenakshi; Read, Jenny C. A.; Gallagher, Peter; Smulders, Tom V.

2015-01-01

Many cognitive abilities decline with aging, making it difficult to detect pathological changes against a background of natural changes in cognition. Most of the tests to assess cognitive decline are artificial tasks that have little resemblance to the problems faced by people in everyday life. This means both that people may have little practice doing such tasks (potentially contributing to the decline in performance) and that the tasks may not be good predictors of real-world cognitive problems. In this study, we test the performance of young people (18–25 years) and older people (60+-year-olds) on a novel, more ecologically valid test of episodic memory: the real-world What-Where-When (WWW) memory test. We also compare them on a battery of other cognitive tests, including working memory, psychomotor speed, executive function, and episodic memory. Older people show the expected age-related declines on the test battery. In the WWW memory task, older people were more likely to fail to remember any WWW combination than younger people were, although they did not significantly differ in their overall WWW score due to some older people performing as well as or better than most younger people. WWW memory performance was significantly predicted by other measures of episodic memory, such as the single-trial learning and long-term retention in the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning task and Combined Object Location Memory in the Object Relocation task. Self-reported memory complaints also predicted performance on the WWW task. These findings confirm that our real-world WWW memory task is a valid measure of episodic memory, with high ecological validity, which may be useful as a predictor of everyday memory abilities. The task will require a bit more development to improve its sensitivity to cognitive declines in aging and to potentially distinguish between mentally healthy older adults and those with early signs of cognitive pathologies. PMID:26042030

Event-related potential study to aversive auditory stimuli.

PubMed

Czigler, István; Cox, Trevor J; Gyimesi, Kinga; Horváth, János

2007-06-15

In an auditory oddball task emotionally negative (aversive) sounds (e.g. rubbing together of polystyrene) and everyday sounds (e.g. ringing of a bicycle bell) were presented as task-irrelevant (novel) sounds. Both the aversive and the everyday sounds elicited the orientation-related P3a component of the event-related potentials (ERPs). In the 154-250 ms range the ERPs for the aversive sounds were more negative than the ERP of the everyday sounds. For the aversive sounds, this negativity was followed by a frontal positive wave (372-456 ms). The aversive sounds elicited larger late positive shift than the everyday sounds. The early negativity is considered as an initial effect in a broad neural network including limbic structures, while the later is related to the cognitive assessment of the stimuli and to memory-related processes.

Prospective memory in multiple sclerosis: The impact of cue distinctiveness and executive functioning.

PubMed

Dagenais, Emmanuelle; Rouleau, Isabelle; Tremblay, Alexandra; Demers, Mélanie; Roger, Élaine; Jobin, Céline; Duquette, Pierre

2016-11-01

Prospective memory (PM), the ability to remember to do something at the appropriate time in the future, is crucial in everyday life. One way to improve PM performance is to increase the salience of a cue announcing that it is time to act. Multiple sclerosis (MS) patients often report PM failures and there is growing evidence of PM deficits among this population. However, such deficits are poorly characterized and their relation to cognitive status remains unclear. To better understand PM deficits in MS patients, this study investigated the impact of cue salience on PM, and its relation to retrospective memory (RM) and executive deficits. Thirty-nine (39) MS patients were compared to 18 healthy controls on a PM task modulating cue salience during an ongoing general knowledge test. MS patients performed worse than controls on the PM task, regardless of cue salience. MS patients' executive functions contributed significantly to the variance in PM performance, whereas age, education and RM did not. Interestingly, low- and high-executive patients' performance differed when the cue was not salient, but not when it was, suggesting that low-executive MS patients benefited more from cue salience. These findings add to the growing evidence of PM deficits in MS and highlight the contribution of executive functions to certain aspects of PM. In low-executive MS patients, high cue salience improves PM performance by reducing the detection threshold and need for environmental monitoring. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Parent ratings of working memory are uniquely related to performance-based measures of secondary memory but not primary memory.

PubMed

Ralph, Kathryn J; Gibson, Bradley S; Gondoli, Dawn M

2018-03-06

Existing evidence suggests that performance- and rating-based measures of working memory (WM) correlate poorly. Although some researchers have interpreted this evidence as suggesting that these measures may be assessing distinct cognitive constructs, another possibility is that rating-based measures are related to some but not all theoretically motivated performance-based measures. The current study distinguished between performance-based measures of primary memory (PM) and secondary memory (SM), and examined the relation between each of these components of WM and parent-ratings on the WM subscale of the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF-WM). Because SM and BRIEF-WM scores have both been associated with group differences in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), it was hypothesized that SM scores would be uniquely related to parent-rated BRIEF-WM scores. Participants were a sample of 77 adolescents with and without an ADHD diagnosis, aged 11 to 15 years, from a midwestern school district. Participant scores on verbal and spatial immediate free recall tasks were used to estimate both PM and SM capacities. Partial correlation analyses were used to evaluate the extent to which estimates of PM and SM were uniquely related parent-rated BRIEF-WM scores. Both verbal and spatial SM scores were significantly related to parent-rated BRIEF-WM scores, when corresponding PM scores were controlled. Higher verbal and spatial SM scores were associated with less frequent parent-report of WM-related failures in their child's everyday life. However, neither verbal nor spatial PM scores significantly related to parent-rated BRIEF-WM scores, when corresponding SM scores were controlled. The current study suggested that previously observed low correlations between performance- and rating-based measures of WM may result from use of performance-based WM measures that do not capture the unique contributions of PM and SM components of WM.

Salient cues improve prospective remembering in Korsakoff's syndrome.

PubMed

Altgassen, Mareike; Ariese, Laura; Wester, Arie J; Kessels, Roy P C

2016-06-01

Korsakoff's syndrome is characterized by deficits in episodic memory and executive functions. Both cognitive functions are needed to remember to execute delayed intentions (prospective memory, PM), an ability that is crucial for independent living in everyday life. So far, PM has only been targeted by one study in Korsakoff's syndrome. This study explored the effects of executive control demands on PM to shed further light on a possible interdependence of memory and executive functions in Korsakoff's syndrome, Twenty-five individuals with Korsakoff's syndrome and 23 chronic alcoholics (without amnesia) performed a categorization task into which a PM task was embedded that put either high or low demands on executive control processes (using low vs. high salient cues). Overall, Korsakoff patients had fewer PM hits than alcoholic controls. Across groups, participants had fewer PM hits when cues were low salient as compared to high salient. Korsakoff patients performed better on PM when highly salient cues were presented than cues of low salience, while there were no differential effects for alcoholic controls. While overall Korsakoff patients' showed a global PM deficit, the extent of this deficit was moderated by the executive control demands of the task applied. This indicated further support for an interrelation of executive functions and memory performance in Korsakoff. Positive clinical implications of the work Prospective memory (PM) performance in Korsakoff's syndrome is related to executive control load. Increasing cues' salience improves PM performance in Korsakoff's syndrome. Salient visual aids may be used in everyday life to improve Korsakoff individuals' planning and organization skills. Cautions or limitations of the study Results were obtained in a structured laboratory setting and need to be replicated in a more naturalistic setting to assess their transferability to everyday life. Given the relatively small sample size, individual predictors of PM performance should be determined in larger samples. © 2015 The British Psychological Society.

Design and Rationale of the Cognitive Intervention to Improve Memory in Heart Failure Patients Study.

PubMed

Pressler, Susan J; Giordani, Bruno; Titler, Marita; Gradus-Pizlo, Irmina; Smith, Dean; Dorsey, Susan G; Gao, Sujuan; Jung, Miyeon

Memory loss is an independent predictor of mortality among heart failure patients. Twenty-three percent to 50% of heart failure patients have comorbid memory loss, but few interventions are available to treat the memory loss. The aims of this 3-arm randomized controlled trial were to (1) evaluate efficacy of computerized cognitive training intervention using BrainHQ to improve primary outcomes of memory and serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels and secondary outcomes of working memory, instrumental activities of daily living, and health-related quality of life among heart failure patients; (2) evaluate incremental cost-effectiveness of BrainHQ; and (3) examine depressive symptoms and genomic moderators of BrainHQ effect. A sample of 264 heart failure patients within 4 equal-sized blocks (normal/low baseline cognitive function and gender) will be randomly assigned to (1) BrainHQ, (2) active control computer-based crossword puzzles, and (3) usual care control groups. BrainHQ is an 8-week, 40-hour program individualized to each patient's performance. Data collection will be completed at baseline and at 10 weeks and 4 and 8 months. Descriptive statistics, mixed model analyses, and cost-utility analysis using intent-to-treat approach will be computed. This research will provide new knowledge about the efficacy of BrainHQ to improve memory and increase serum brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels in heart failure. If efficacious, the intervention will provide a new therapeutic approach that is easy to disseminate to treat a serious comorbid condition of heart failure.

The first does the work, but the third time's the charm: the effects of massed repetition on episodic encoding of multimodal face-name associations.

PubMed

Mangels, Jennifer A; Manzi, Alberto; Summerfield, Christopher

2010-03-01

In social interactions, it is often necessary to rapidly encode the association between visually presented faces and auditorily presented names. The present study used event-related potentials to examine the neural correlates of associative encoding for multimodal face-name pairs. We assessed study-phase processes leading to high-confidence recognition of correct pairs (and consistent rejection of recombined foils) as compared to lower-confidence recognition of correct pairs (with inconsistent rejection of recombined foils) and recognition failures (misses). Both high- and low-confidence retrieval of face-name pairs were associated with study-phase activity suggestive of item-specific processing of the face (posterior inferior temporal negativity) and name (fronto-central negativity). However, only those pairs later retrieved with high confidence recruited a sustained centro-parietal positivity that an ancillary localizer task suggested may index an association-unique process. Additionally, we examined how these processes were influenced by massed repetition, a mnemonic strategy commonly employed in everyday situations to improve face-name memory. Differences in subsequent memory effects across repetitions suggested that associative encoding was strongest at the initial presentation, and thus, that the initial presentation has the greatest impact on memory formation. Yet, exploratory analyses suggested that the third presentation may have benefited later memory by providing an opportunity for extended processing of the name. Thus, although encoding of the initial presentation was critical for establishing a strong association, the extent to which processing was sustained across subsequent immediate (massed) presentations may provide additional encoding support that serves to differentiate face-name pairs from similar (recombined) pairs by providing additional encoding opportunities for the less dominant stimulus dimension (i.e., name).

Contralateral Delay Activity Tracks Fluctuations in Working Memory Performance.

PubMed

Adam, Kirsten C S; Robison, Matthew K; Vogel, Edward K

2018-01-08

Neural measures of working memory storage, such as the contralateral delay activity (CDA), are powerful tools in working memory research. CDA amplitude is sensitive to working memory load, reaches an asymptote at known behavioral limits, and predicts individual differences in capacity. An open question, however, is whether neural measures of load also track trial-by-trial fluctuations in performance. Here, we used a whole-report working memory task to test the relationship between CDA amplitude and working memory performance. If working memory failures are due to decision-based errors and retrieval failures, CDA amplitude would not differentiate good and poor performance trials when load is held constant. If failures arise during storage, then CDA amplitude should track both working memory load and trial-by-trial performance. As expected, CDA amplitude tracked load (Experiment 1), reaching an asymptote at three items. In Experiment 2, we tracked fluctuations in trial-by-trial performance. CDA amplitude was larger (more negative) for high-performance trials compared with low-performance trials, suggesting that fluctuations in performance were related to the successful storage of items. During working memory failures, participants oriented their attention to the correct side of the screen (lateralized P1) and maintained covert attention to the correct side during the delay period (lateralized alpha power suppression). Despite the preservation of attentional orienting, we found impairments consistent with an executive attention theory of individual differences in working memory capacity; fluctuations in executive control (indexed by pretrial frontal theta power) may be to blame for storage failures.

Daily Fluctuations in Everyday Cognition: Is It Meaningful?

PubMed

Gamaldo, Alyssa A; Allaire, Jason C

2016-08-01

This study examined whether there are daily fluctuations in everyday cognition that are consistent with daily fluctuations often observed in traditional measures of basic cognitive abilities. Two hundred six independently living older adults (age range = 60-91 years) were asked to complete a computerized cognitive battery over eight occasions within a 2- to 3-week period. Using multilevel model, significant within-person variability was observed across the Daily Everyday Cognition Assessment (DECA; 46%), with 54% between-person variability. At each occasion, better performance on the DECA was significantly associated with better performance on simple reaction time ( p < .01) and memory (Auditory Verbal Learning Task, p < .01) even after accounting for time, age, education, and performance on other cognitive measures. These findings demonstrate that within-person performance fluctuations can be observed for everyday cognition tasks, and these fluctuations are consistent with daily changes in basic cognitive abilities. © The Author(s) 2015.

Relations between the functions of autobiographical memory and psychological wellbeing.

PubMed

Waters, Theodore E A

2014-01-01

Researchers have proposed that autobiographical memory serves three basic functions in everyday life: self-definition, social connection, and directing behaviour (e.g., Bluck, Alea, Habermas, & Rubin, 2005). However, no research has examined relations between the functions of autobiographical memory and healthy functioning (i.e., psychological wellbeing). The present research examined the relations between the self, social, and directive functions of autobiographical memory and three factors of psychological wellbeing in single and recurring autobiographical memories. A total of 103 undergraduate students were recruited and provided ratings of each function for four autobiographical memories (two single, two recurring events). Results found that individuals who use their autobiographical memories to serve self, social, and directive functions reported higher levels of Purpose and Communion and Positive Relationships, and that these relations differ slightly by event type.

Strategic offloading of delayed intentions into the external environment.

PubMed

Gilbert, Sam J

2015-01-01

In everyday life, we often use external artefacts such as diaries to help us remember intended behaviours. In addition, we commonly manipulate our environment, for example by placing reminders in noticeable places. Yet strategic offloading of intentions to the external environment is not typically permitted in laboratory tasks examining memory for delayed intentions. What factors influence our use of such strategies, and what behavioural consequences do they have? This article describes four online experiments (N = 1196) examining a novel web-based task in which participants hold intentions for brief periods, with the option to strategically externalize these intentions by creating a reminder. This task significantly predicted participants' fulfilment of a naturalistic intention embedded within their everyday activities up to one week later (with greater predictive ability than more traditional prospective memory tasks, albeit with weak effect size). Setting external reminders improved performance, and it was more prevalent in older adults. Furthermore, participants set reminders adaptively, based on (a) memory load, and (b) the likelihood of distraction. These results suggest the importance of metacognitive processes in triggering intention offloading, which can increase the probability that intentions are eventually fulfilled.

Mothers' Attributions in Reminiscing Conversations about Children's Successes and Failures: Connections with Children's Self-Evaluations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodvin, Rebecca; Rolfson, Jacqueline

2014-01-01

Effects of feedback on children's self-evaluations are well established, yet little is known about how parents talk with children about everyday successes and failures, despite the importance of parent-child reminiscing in children's psychological understanding. We examine mothers' attributions and performance evaluations in conversations about…

Cognitive Predictors of Everyday Problem Solving across the Lifespan.

PubMed

Chen, Xi; Hertzog, Christopher; Park, Denise C

2017-01-01

An important aspect of successful aging is maintaining the ability to solve everyday problems encountered in daily life. The limited evidence today suggests that everyday problem solving ability increases from young adulthood to middle age, but decreases in older age. The present study examined age differences in the relative contributions of fluid and crystallized abilities to solving problems on the Everyday Problems Test (EPT). We hypothesized that due to diminishing fluid resources available with advanced age, crystallized knowledge would become increasingly important in predicting everyday problem solving with greater age. Two hundred and twenty-one healthy adults from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, aged 24-93 years, completed a cognitive battery that included measures of fluid ability (i.e., processing speed, working memory, inductive reasoning) and crystallized ability (i.e., multiple measures of vocabulary). These measures were used to predict performance on EPT. Everyday problem solving showed an increase in performance from young to early middle age, with performance beginning to decrease at about age of 50 years. As hypothesized, fluid ability was the primary predictor of performance on everyday problem solving for young adults, but with increasing age, crystallized ability became the dominant predictor. This study provides evidence that everyday problem solving ability differs with age, and, more importantly, that the processes underlying it differ with age as well. The findings indicate that older adults increasingly rely on knowledge to support everyday problem solving, whereas young adults rely almost exclusively on fluid intelligence. © 2017 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Cognitive Predictors of Everyday Problem Solving across the Lifespan

PubMed Central

Chen, Xi; Hertzog, Christopher; Park, Denise C.

2017-01-01

Background An important aspect of successful aging is maintaining the ability to solve everyday problems encountered in daily life. The limited evidence today suggests that everyday problem solving ability increases from young adulthood to middle age, but decreases in older age. Objectives The present study examined age differences in the relative contributions of fluid and crystallized abilities to solving problems on the Everyday Problems Test (EPT; [1]). We hypothesized that due to diminishing fluid resources available with advanced age, crystallized knowledge would become increasingly important in predicting everyday problem solving with greater age. Method Two hundred and twenty-one healthy adults from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study, aged 24–93 years, completed a cognitive battery that included measures of fluid ability (i.e., processing speed, working memory, inductive reasoning) and crystallized ability (i.e., multiple measures of vocabulary). These measures were used to predict performance on the Everyday Problems Test. Results Everyday problem solving showed an increase in performance from young to early middle age, with performance beginning to decrease at about age of fifty. As hypothesized, fluid ability was the primary predictor of performance on everyday problem solving for young adults, but with increasing age, crystallized ability became the dominant predictor. Conclusion This study provides evidence that everyday problem solving ability differs with age, and, more importantly, that the processes underlying it differ with age as well. The findings indicate that older adults increasingly rely on knowledge to support everyday problem solving, whereas young adults rely almost exclusively on fluid intelligence. PMID:28273664

Failure detection in high-performance clusters and computers using chaotic map computations

DOEpatents

Rao, Nageswara S.

2015-09-01

A programmable media includes a processing unit capable of independent operation in a machine that is capable of executing 10.sup.18 floating point operations per second. The processing unit is in communication with a memory element and an interconnect that couples computing nodes. The programmable media includes a logical unit configured to execute arithmetic functions, comparative functions, and/or logical functions. The processing unit is configured to detect computing component failures, memory element failures and/or interconnect failures by executing programming threads that generate one or more chaotic map trajectories. The central processing unit or graphical processing unit is configured to detect a computing component failure, memory element failure and/or an interconnect failure through an automated comparison of signal trajectories generated by the chaotic maps.

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to Address Mild Cognitive Impairment in the Elderly: A Randomized Controlled Study

PubMed Central

Drumond Marra, Hellen Livia; Myczkowski, Martin Luiz; Maia Memória, Cláudia; Arnaut, Débora; Leite Ribeiro, Philip; Sardinha Mansur, Carlos Gustavo; Lancelote Alberto, Rodrigo; Boura Bellini, Bianca; Alves Fernandes da Silva, Adriano; Ciampi de Andrade, Daniel; Teixeira, Manoel Jacobsen; Forlenza, Orestes Vicente; Marcolin, Marco Antonio

2015-01-01

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a noninvasive brain stimulation technique with potential to improve memory. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), which still lacks a specific therapy, is a clinical syndrome associated with increased risk of dementia. This study aims to assess the effects of high-frequency repetitive TMS (HF rTMS) on everyday memory of the elderly with MCI. We conducted a double-blinded randomized sham-controlled trial using rTMS over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). Thirty-four elderly outpatients meeting Petersen's MCI criteria were randomly assigned to receive 10 sessions of either active TMS or sham, 10 Hz rTMS at 110% of motor threshold, 2,000 pulses per session. Neuropsychological assessment at baseline, after the last session (10th) and at one-month follow-up, was applied. ANOVA on the primary efficacy measure, the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test, revealed a significant group-by-time interaction (p = 0.05), favoring the active group. The improvement was kept after one month. Other neuropsychological tests were heterogeneous. rTMS at 10 Hz enhanced everyday memory in elderly with MCI after 10 sessions. These findings suggest that rTMS might be effective as a therapy for MCI and probably a tool to delay deterioration. PMID:26160997

Alzheimer's disease can spare local metacognition despite global anosognosia: revisiting the confidence-accuracy relationship in episodic memory.

PubMed

Gallo, David A; Cramer, Stefanie J; Wong, Jessica T; Bennett, David A

2012-07-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) can impair metacognition in addition to more basic cognitive functions like memory. However, while global metacognitive inaccuracies are well documented (i.e., low deficit awareness, or anosognosia), the evidence is mixed regarding the effects of AD on local or task-based metacognitive judgments. Here we investigated local metacognition with respect to the confidence-accuracy relationship in episodic memory (i.e., metamemory). AD and control participants studied pictures of common objects and their verbal labels, and then took forced-choice picture recollection tests using the verbal labels as retrieval cues. We found that item-based confidence judgments discriminated between accurate and inaccurate recollection responses in both groups, implicating relatively spared metamemory in AD. By contrast, there was evidence for global metacognitive deficiencies, as AD participants underestimated the severity of their everyday problems compared to an informant's assessment. Within the AD group, individual differences in global metacognition were related to recollection accuracy, and global metacognition for everyday memory problems was related to task-based metacognitive accuracy. These findings suggest that AD can spare the confidence-accuracy relationship in recollection tasks, and that global and local metacognition measures tap overlapping neuropsychological processes. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memories and NASA Spacecraft: A Description of Memories, Radiation Failure Modes, and System Design Considerations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

LaBel, Kenneth A.; Ladbury, Ray; Oldhamm, Timothy

2010-01-01

As NASA has evolved it's usage of spaceflight computing, memory applications have followed as well. In this slide presentation, the history of NASA's memories from magnetic core and tape recorders to current semiconductor approaches is discussed. There is a brief description of current functional memory usage in NASA space systems followed by a description of potential radiation-induced failure modes along with considerations for reliable system design.

Neighborhood Predictors of Cognitive Training Outcomes and Trajectories in ACTIVE

PubMed Central

Meyer, Oanh L.; Sisco, Shannon M.; Harvey, Danielle; Zahodne, Laura B.; Glymour, M. Maria; Manly, Jennifer J.; Marsiske, Michael

2015-01-01

We examined the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic position (SEP), racial/ethnic composition, and living in a major city on cognitive trajectories and intervention outcomes. Data came from the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study (N = 2,438). Mixed effects analyses examined associations between neighborhood variables and memory, reasoning, speed of processing, and everyday cognition, estimating differences in initial gains (potentially related to practice) and long-term rate of change over 10 years. The effect of reasoning training on initial gain was weaker for individuals in a major city. For everyday cognition, there was a stronger initial gain for memory-trained and control participants in areas with more racial/ethnic minorities, and for speed-trained and control individuals in higher SEP areas. The racial/ethnic minority effect was no longer significant after adjustment for multiple comparisons. Neighborhood factors may be more important in practice-related improvement than in long-term change. PMID:26667987

Evaluation of 1.5-T Cell Flash Memory Total Ionizing Dose Response

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Clark, Lawrence T.; Holbert, Keith E.; Adams, James W.; Navale, Harshad; Anderson, Blake C.

2015-12-01

Flash memory is an essential part of systems used in harsh environments, experienced by both terrestrial and aerospace TID applications. This paper presents studies of COTS flash memory TID hardness. While there is substantial literature on flash memory TID response, this work focuses for the first time on 1.5 transistor per cell flash memory. The experimental results show hardness varying from about 100 krad(Si) to over 250 krad(Si) depending on the usage model. We explore the circuit and device aspects of the results, based on the extensive reliability literature for this flash memory type. Failure modes indicate both device damage and circuit marginalities. Sector erase failure limits, but read only operation allows TID exceeding 200 krad(Si). The failures are analyzed by type.

Fragile visual short-term memory is an object-based and location-specific store.

PubMed

Pinto, Yaïr; Sligte, Ilja G; Shapiro, Kimron L; Lamme, Victor A F

2013-08-01

Fragile visual short-term memory (FM) is a recently discovered form of visual short-term memory. Evidence suggests that it provides rich and high-capacity storage, like iconic memory, yet it exists, without interference, almost as long as visual working memory. In the present study, we sought to unveil the functional underpinnings of this memory storage. We found that FM is only completely erased when the new visual scene appears at the same location and consists of the same objects as the to-be-recalled information. This result has two important implications: First, it shows that FM is an object- and location-specific store, and second, it suggests that FM might be used in everyday life when the presentation of visual information is appropriately designed.

An Evolutionary Algorithm for Feature Subset Selection in Hard Disk Drive Failure Prediction

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bhasin, Harpreet

2011-01-01

Hard disk drives are used in everyday life to store critical data. Although they are reliable, failure of a hard disk drive can be catastrophic, especially in applications like medicine, banking, air traffic control systems, missile guidance systems, computer numerical controlled machines, and more. The use of Self-Monitoring, Analysis and…

Dose accuracy of a durable insulin pen with memory function, before and after simulated lifetime use and under stress conditions.

PubMed

Xue, Ligang; Mikkelsen, Kristian Handberg

2013-03-01

The objective of this study was to assess the dose accuracy of NovoPen® 5 in delivering low, medium and high doses of insulin before and after simulated lifetime use. A secondary objective was to evaluate the durability of the pen and its memory function under various stress conditions designed to simulate conditions that may be encountered in everyday use of an insulin pen. All testing was conducted according to International Organization for Standardization guideline 11608-1, 2000 for pen injectors. Dose accuracy was measured for the delivery of 1 unit (U) (10 mg), 30 U (300 mg) and 60 U (600 mg) test medium in standard, cool and hot conditions and before and after simulated lifetime use. Dose accuracy was also tested after preconditioning in dry heat storage; cold storage; damp cyclical heat; shock, bump and vibration; free fall and after electrostatic charge and radiated field test. Memory function was tested under all temperature and physical conditions. NovoPen 5 maintained dosing accuracy and memory function at minimum, medium and maximum doses in standard, cool and hot conditions, stress tests and simulated lifetime use. The pens remained intact and retained dosing accuracy and a working memory function at all doses after exposure to variations in temperature and after physical challenge. NovoPen 5 was accurate at all doses tested and under various functionality tests. Its durable design ensured that the dose accuracy and memory function were retained under conditions of stress likely to be encountered in everyday use.

Examining the Causes of Memory Strength Variability: Recollection, Attention Failure, or Encoding Variability?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koen, Joshua D.; Aly, Mariam; Wang, Wei-Chun; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

2013-01-01

A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test 3 competing theories for why this occurs--the "encoding variability," "attention failure", and "recollection" accounts. Distinguishing among these theories is critical…

A study of the viability of exploiting memory content similarity to improve resilience to memory errors

DOE PAGES

Levy, Scott; Ferreira, Kurt B.; Bridges, Patrick G.; ...

2014-12-09

Building the next-generation of extreme-scale distributed systems will require overcoming several challenges related to system resilience. As the number of processors in these systems grow, the failure rate increases proportionally. One of the most common sources of failure in large-scale systems is memory. In this paper, we propose a novel runtime for transparently exploiting memory content similarity to improve system resilience by reducing the rate at which memory errors lead to node failure. We evaluate the viability of this approach by examining memory snapshots collected from eight high-performance computing (HPC) applications and two important HPC operating systems. Based on themore » characteristics of the similarity uncovered, we conclude that our proposed approach shows promise for addressing system resilience in large-scale systems.« less

Neonatal Hypoxia, Hippocampal Atrophy, and Memory Impairment: Evidence of a Causal Sequence

PubMed Central

Cooper, Janine M.; Gadian, David G.; Jentschke, Sebastian; Goldman, Allan; Munoz, Monica; Pitts, Georgia; Banks, Tina; Chong, W. Kling; Hoskote, Aparna; Deanfield, John; Baldeweg, Torsten; de Haan, Michelle; Mishkin, Mortimer; Vargha-Khadem, Faraneh

2015-01-01

Neonates treated for acute respiratory failure experience episodes of hypoxia. The hippocampus, a structure essential for memory, is particularly vulnerable to such insults. Hence, some neonates undergoing treatment for acute respiratory failure might sustain bilateral hippocampal pathology early in life and memory problems later in childhood. We investigated this possibility in a cohort of 40 children who had been treated neonatally for acute respiratory failure but were free of overt neurological impairment. The cohort had mean hippocampal volumes (HVs) significantly below normal control values, memory scores significantly below the standard population means, and memory quotients significantly below those predicted by their full scale IQs. Brain white matter volume also fell below the volume of the controls, but brain gray matter volumes and scores on nonmnemonic neuropsychological tests were within the normal range. Stepwise linear regression models revealed that the cohort's HVs were predictive of degree of memory impairment, and gestational age at treatment was predictive of HVs: the younger the age, the greater the atrophy. We conclude that many neonates treated for acute respiratory failure sustain significant hippocampal atrophy as a result of the associated hypoxia and, consequently, show deficient memory later in life. PMID:24343890

Neonatal hypoxia, hippocampal atrophy, and memory impairment: evidence of a causal sequence.

PubMed

Cooper, Janine M; Gadian, David G; Jentschke, Sebastian; Goldman, Allan; Munoz, Monica; Pitts, Georgia; Banks, Tina; Chong, W Kling; Hoskote, Aparna; Deanfield, John; Baldeweg, Torsten; de Haan, Michelle; Mishkin, Mortimer; Vargha-Khadem, Faraneh

2015-06-01

Neonates treated for acute respiratory failure experience episodes of hypoxia. The hippocampus, a structure essential for memory, is particularly vulnerable to such insults. Hence, some neonates undergoing treatment for acute respiratory failure might sustain bilateral hippocampal pathology early in life and memory problems later in childhood. We investigated this possibility in a cohort of 40 children who had been treated neonatally for acute respiratory failure but were free of overt neurological impairment. The cohort had mean hippocampal volumes (HVs) significantly below normal control values, memory scores significantly below the standard population means, and memory quotients significantly below those predicted by their full scale IQs. Brain white matter volume also fell below the volume of the controls, but brain gray matter volumes and scores on nonmnemonic neuropsychological tests were within the normal range. Stepwise linear regression models revealed that the cohort's HVs were predictive of degree of memory impairment, and gestational age at treatment was predictive of HVs: the younger the age, the greater the atrophy. We conclude that many neonates treated for acute respiratory failure sustain significant hippocampal atrophy as a result of the associated hypoxia and, consequently, show deficient memory later in life. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press.

Representational constraints on the development of memory and metamemory: a developmental-representational theory.

PubMed

Ceci, Stephen J; Fitneva, Stanka A; Williams, Wendy M

2010-04-01

Traditional accounts of memory development suggest that maturation of prefrontal cortex (PFC) enables efficient metamemory, which enhances memory. An alternative theory is described, in which changes in early memory and metamemory are mediated by representational changes, independent of PFC maturation. In a pilot study and Experiment 1, younger children failed to recognize previously presented pictures, yet the children could identify the context in which they occurred, suggesting these failures resulted from inefficient metamemory. Older children seldom exhibited such failure. Experiment 2 established that this was not due to retrieval-time recoding. Experiment 3 suggested that young children's representation of a picture's attributes explained their metamemory failure. Experiment 4 demonstrated that metamemory is age-invariant when representational quality is controlled: When stimuli were equivalently represented, age differences in memory and metamemory declined. These findings do not support the traditional view that as children develop, neural maturation permits more efficient monitoring, which leads to improved memory. These findings support a theory based on developmental-representational synthesis, in which constraints on metamemory are independent of neurological development; representational features drive early memory to a greater extent than previously acknowledged, suggesting that neural maturation has been overimputed as a source of early metamemory and memory failure. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved.

Pillars of judgment: how memory abilities affect performance in rule-based and exemplar-based judgments.

PubMed

Hoffmann, Janina A; von Helversen, Bettina; Rieskamp, Jörg

2014-12-01

Making accurate judgments is an essential skill in everyday life. Although how different memory abilities relate to categorization and judgment processes has been hotly debated, the question is far from resolved. We contribute to the solution by investigating how individual differences in memory abilities affect judgment performance in 2 tasks that induced rule-based or exemplar-based judgment strategies. In a study with 279 participants, we investigated how working memory and episodic memory affect judgment accuracy and strategy use. As predicted, participants switched strategies between tasks. Furthermore, structural equation modeling showed that the ability to solve rule-based tasks was predicted by working memory, whereas episodic memory predicted judgment accuracy in the exemplar-based task. Last, the probability of choosing an exemplar-based strategy was related to better episodic memory, but strategy selection was unrelated to working memory capacity. In sum, our results suggest that different memory abilities are essential for successfully adopting different judgment strategies. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Joint effects of emotion and color on memory.

PubMed

Kuhbandner, Christof; Pekrun, Reinhard

2013-06-01

Numerous studies have shown that memory is enhanced for emotionally negative and positive information relative to neutral information. We examined whether emotion-induced memory enhancement is influenced by low-level perceptual attributes such as color. Because in everyday life red is often used as a warning signal, whereas green signals security, we hypothesized that red might enhance memory for negative information and green memory for positive information. To capture the signaling function of colors, we measured memory for words standing out from the context by color, and manipulated the color and emotional significance of the outstanding words. Making words outstanding by color strongly enhanced memory, replicating the well-known von Restorff effect. Furthermore, memory for colored words was further increased by emotional significance, replicating the memory-enhancing effect of emotion. Most intriguingly, the effects of emotion on memory additionally depended on color type. Red strongly increased memory for negative words, whereas green strongly increased memory for positive words. These findings provide the first evidence that emotion-induced memory enhancement is influenced by color and demonstrate that different colors can have different functions in human memory.

Examining the causes of memory strength variability: Recollection, attention failure, or encoding variability?

PubMed Central

Koen, Joshua D.; Aly, Mariam; Wang, Wei-Chun; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

2013-01-01

A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test three competing theories for why this occurs - the encoding variability, attention failure, and recollection accounts. Distinguishing amongst these theories is critical because each provides a fundamentally different account of the processes underlying recognition memory. The encoding variability and attention failure accounts propose that old item variance will be unaffected by retrieval manipulations because the processes producing this effect are ascribed to encoding. The recollection account predicts that both encoding and retrieval manipulations that preferentially affect recollection will affect memory variability. These contrasting predictions were tested by examining the effect of response speeding (Experiment 1), dividing attention at retrieval (Experiment 2), context reinstatement (Experiment 3), and increased test delay (Experiment 4) on recognition performance. The results of all four experiments confirmed the predictions of the recollection account, and were inconsistent with the encoding variability account. The evidence supporting the attention failure account was mixed, with two of the four experiments confirming the account and two disconfirming the account. These results indicate that encoding variability and attention failure are insufficient accounts of memory variance, and provide support for the recollection account. Several alternative theoretical accounts of the results are also considered. PMID:23834057

Factor Structure and Measurement Invariance of the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire across the Adult Life Span

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rast, Philippe; Zimprich, Daniel; Van Boxtel, Martin; Jolles, Jellemer

2009-01-01

The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) is designed to assess a person's proneness to committing cognitive slips and errors in the completion of everyday tasks. Although the CFQ is a widely used instrument, its factor structure remains an issue of scientific debate. The present study used data of a representative sample (N = 1,303, 24-83 years…

A neuropsychological investigation of multitasking in HIV infection: implications for everyday functioning.

PubMed

Scott, J Cobb; Woods, Steven Paul; Vigil, Ofilio; Heaton, Robert K; Schweinsburg, Brian C; Ellis, Ronald J; Grant, Igor; Marcotte, Thomas D

2011-07-01

A subset of individuals with HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment experience related deficits in "real world" functioning (i.e., independently performing instrumental activities of daily living [IADL]). While performance-based tests of everyday functioning are reasonably sensitive to HIV-associated IADL declines, questions remain regarding the extent to which these tests' highly structured nature fully captures the inherent complexities of daily life. The aim of this study was to assess the predictive and ecological validity of a novel multitasking measure in HIV infection. Participants included 60 individuals with HIV infection (HIV+) and 25 demographically comparable seronegative adults (HIV-). Participants were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, questionnaires assessing mood and everyday functioning, and a novel standardized test of multitasking, which involved balancing the demands of four interconnected performance-based functional tasks (i.e., financial management, cooking, medication management, and telephone communication). HIV+ individuals demonstrated significantly worse overall performance, fewer simultaneous task attempts, and increased errors on the multitasking test as compared to the HIV- group. Within the HIV+ sample, multitasking impairments were modestly associated with deficits on standard neuropsychological measures of executive functions, episodic memory, attention/working memory, and information processing speed, providing preliminary evidence for convergent validity. More importantly, multivariate prediction models revealed that multitasking deficits were uniquely predictive of IADL dependence beyond the effects of depression and global neurocognitive impairment, with excellent sensitivity (86%), but modest specificity (57%). Taken together, these data indicate that multitasking ability may play an important role in successful everyday functioning in HIV+ individuals. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

A Neuropsychological Investigation of Multitasking in HIV Infection: Implications for Everyday Functioning

PubMed Central

Scott, J. Cobb; Woods, Steven Paul; Vigil, Ofilio; Heaton, Robert K.; Schweinsburg, Brian C.; Ellis, Ronald J.; Grant, Igor; Marcotte, Thomas D.

2010-01-01

Objective A subset of individuals with HIV-associated neurocognitive impairment experience related deficits in “real world” functioning (i.e., independently performing instrumental activities of daily living [IADL]). While performance-based tests of everyday functioning are reasonably sensitive to HIV-associated IADL declines, questions remain regarding the extent to which these tests’ highly structured nature fully captures the inherent complexities of daily life. The aim of this study was to assess the predictive and ecological validity of a novel multitasking measure in HIV infection. Method Participants included 60 individuals with HIV infection (HIV+) and 25 demographically comparable seronegative adults (HIV−). Participants were administered a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, questionnaires assessing mood and everyday functioning, and a novel standardized test of multitasking, which involved balancing the demands of four interconnected performance-based functional tasks (i.e., financial management, cooking, medication management, and telephone communication). Results HIV+ individuals demonstrated significantly worse overall performance, fewer simultaneous task attempts, and increased errors on the multitasking test as compared to the HIV− sample. Within the HIV+ sample, multitasking impairments were modestly associated with deficits on standard neuropsychological measures of executive functions, episodic memory, attention/working memory, and information processing speed, providing preliminary evidence for convergent validity. More importantly, multivariate prediction models revealed that multitasking deficits were uniquely predictive of IADL dependence beyond the effects of depression and global neurocognitive impairment, with excellent sensitivity (86%), but modest specificity (57%). Conclusions Taken together, these data indicate that multitasking ability may play an important role in successful everyday functioning in HIV+ individuals. PMID:21401259

Remembrance of Things Future: Prospective Memory in Laboratory, Workplace, and Everyday Settings

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Dismukes, R. Key

2010-01-01

In this review, oriented to the human factors community, I will summarize and provide a perspective on recent research and theory on prospective memory. This will not be an exhaustive review of literature, which is already available in two excellent recent books that provide a wealth of detail on the current state of experimental research (Kliegel, McCaniel, & Einstein, 2008; McDaniel & Einstein, 2007; also see Brandimonte, Einstein, & McDaniel, 1996, for a still relevant overview of the field as it was emerging). Rather, I will explore the limits of existing experimental paradigms and theory, Vvilich, in my opinion, fail to capture some critical aspects of performance outside the laboratory. I will also review the relatively few studies in workplace and everyday settings and will discuss several studies that attempt to bridge between the bulk of experimental studies and these few naturalistic studies. Finally, I will describe countermeasures that can reduce vulnerability to forgetting to perform intended tasks, and I will propose a research agenda that would extend existing experimental and theoretical approaches and would support human factors practitioners by generating information on a wide range of issues relevant to prospective memory performance in natural settings.

How important is importance for prospective memory? A review

PubMed Central

Walter, Stefan; Meier, Beat

2014-01-01

Forgetting to carry out an intention as planned can have serious consequences in everyday life. People sometimes even forget intentions that they consider as very important. Here, we review the literature on the impact of importance on prospective memory performance. We highlight different methods used to manipulate the importance of a prospective memory task such as providing rewards, importance relative to other ongoing activities, absolute importance, and providing social motives. Moreover, we address the relationship between importance and other factors known to affect prospective memory and ongoing task performance such as type of prospective memory task (time-, event-, or activity-based), cognitive loads, and processing overlaps. Finally, we provide a connection to motivation, we summarize the effects of task importance and we identify important venues for future research. PMID:25018743

Cognitive Dysfunction in Patients with Renal Failure Requiring Hemodialysis

PubMed Central

Thimmaiah, Rohini; Murthy, K. Krishna; Pinto, Denzil

2012-01-01

Background and Objectives: Renal failure patients show significant impairment on measures of attention and memory, and consistently perform significantly better on neuropsychological measures of memory and attention, approximately 24 hours after hemodialysis treatment. The objectives are to determine the cognitive dysfunction in patients with renal failure requiring hemodialysis. Materials and Methods: A total of 60 subjects comprising of 30 renal failure patients and 30 controls were recruited. The sample was matched for age, sex, and socioeconomic status. The tools used were the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination and the Brief Cognitive Rating Scale. Results: The patients showed high cognitive dysfunction in the pre-dialysis group, in all the five dimensions (concentration, recent memory, past memory, orientation and functioning, and self-care), and the least in the 24-hour post dialysis group. This difference was found to be statistically significant (P=0.001). Conclusion: Patients with renal failure exhibited pronounced cognitive impairment and these functions significantly improved after the introduction of hemodialysis. PMID:23439613

Visual memory performance for color depends on spatiotemporal context.

PubMed

Olivers, Christian N L; Schreij, Daniel

2014-10-01

Performance on visual short-term memory for features has been known to depend on stimulus complexity, spatial layout, and feature context. However, with few exceptions, memory capacity has been measured for abruptly appearing, single-instance displays. In everyday life, objects often have a spatiotemporal history as they or the observer move around. In three experiments, we investigated the effect of spatiotemporal history on explicit memory for color. Observers saw a memory display emerge from behind a wall, after which it disappeared again. The test display then emerged from either the same side as the memory display or the opposite side. In the first two experiments, memory improved for intermediate set sizes when the test display emerged in the same way as the memory display. A third experiment then showed that the benefit was tied to the original motion trajectory and not to the display object per se. The results indicate that memory for color is embedded in a richer episodic context that includes the spatiotemporal history of the display.

The contribution of attentional lapses to individual differences in visual working memory capacity.

PubMed

Adam, Kirsten C S; Mance, Irida; Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K

2015-08-01

Attentional control and working memory capacity are important cognitive abilities that substantially vary between individuals. Although much is known about how attentional control and working memory capacity relate to each other and to constructs like fluid intelligence, little is known about how trial-by-trial fluctuations in attentional engagement impact trial-by-trial working memory performance. Here, we employ a novel whole-report memory task that allowed us to distinguish between varying levels of attentional engagement in humans performing a working memory task. By characterizing low-performance trials, we can distinguish between models in which working memory performance failures are caused by either (1) complete lapses of attention or (2) variations in attentional control. We found that performance failures increase with set-size and strongly predict working memory capacity. Performance variability was best modeled by an attentional control model of attention, not a lapse model. We examined neural signatures of performance failures by measuring EEG activity while participants performed the whole-report task. The number of items correctly recalled in the memory task was predicted by frontal theta power, with decreased frontal theta power associated with poor performance on the task. In addition, we found that poor performance was not explained by failures of sensory encoding; the P1/N1 response and ocular artifact rates were equivalent for high- and low-performance trials. In all, we propose that attentional lapses alone cannot explain individual differences in working memory performance. Instead, we find that graded fluctuations in attentional control better explain the trial-by-trial differences in working memory that we observe.

The Contribution of Attentional Lapses to Individual Differences in Visual Working Memory Capacity

PubMed Central

Adam, Kirsten C. S.; Mance, Irida; Fukuda, Keisuke; Vogel, Edward K.

2015-01-01

Attentional control and working memory capacity are important cognitive abilities that substantially vary between individuals. Although much is known about how attentional control and working memory capacity relate to each other and to constructs like fluid intelligence, little is known about how trial-by-trial fluctuations in attentional engagement impact trial-by-trial working memory performance. Here, we employ a novel whole-report memory task that allowed us to distinguish between varying levels of attentional engagement in humans performing a working memory task. By characterizing low-performance trials, we can distinguish between models in which working memory performance failures are caused by either (1) complete lapses of attention or (2) variations in attentional control. We found that performance failures increase with set-size and strongly predict working memory capacity. Performance variability was best modeled by an attentional control model of attention, not a lapse model. We examined neural signatures of performance failures by measuring EEG activity while participants performed the whole-report task. The number of items correctly recalled in the memory task was predicted by frontal theta power, with decreased frontal theta power associated with poor performance on the task. In addition, we found that poor performance was not explained by failures of sensory encoding; the P1/N1 response and ocular artifact rates were equivalent for high- and low-performance trials. In all, we propose that attentional lapses alone cannot explain individual differences in working memory performance. Instead, we find that graded fluctuations in attentional control better explain the trial-by-trial differences in working memory that we observe. PMID:25811710

How Does Heart Disease Affect Women?

MedlinePlus

... that your heart can't cope with the demands of everyday activities. Heart failure causes shortness of ... RELATED NEWS March 13, 2017 | Research Feature NHLBI, nursing sorority team up to fight heart disease in ...

Not all minds wander equally: The influence of traits, states and road environment factors on self-reported mind wandering during everyday driving.

PubMed

Burdett, Bridget R D; Charlton, Samuel G; Starkey, Nicola J

2016-10-01

Inattention is a road safety problem, but few studies have focused specifically on mind wandering during everyday driving. This paper explores differences in self-reported mind wandering according to driver demographic characteristics (including age and gender), cognitive traits (such as tendency toward cognitive failure or mindful attention), states (such as feeling tired or stressed) and road environment factors (such as route familiarity). Five hundred and two participants (113 male, average age 44.4 years, SD=14.0years) completed a series of questionnaires (Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS), Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (CFQ) and Driver Behaviour Questionnaire (DBQ)), as well as study-specific questions about mind wandering during different personal states and across a range of road and traffic situations. All respondents reported mind wandering during driving at least some of the time. Mind wandering was more likely to be reported on familiar roads than on unfamiliar roads and when drivers are tired. Drivers who reported relatively more mind wandering were younger, reported less mindful attention in daily life, more cognitive failures, and more driving violations and lapses. Together, the findings suggest that mind wandering is common in everyday driving, however any link with crash risk remains unclear. Future research using self-report and naturalistic methods could provide more insight into relationships between mind wandering, error and crash risk. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Patient Participation in Development of Quality Indicators using the Example of National Disease Management Guidelines for Chronic Heart Failure - A Qualitative Analysis of Collective Perspectives].

PubMed

Herzberg, H; Bernateck, K; Welti, F; Joos, S; Pohontsch, N J; Blozik, E; Scherer, M

2016-06-01

In this qualitative study it was investigated by group discussions with patients suffering from chronic heart failure, how relevant the existing quality indicators of the National Disease Management Guidelines for Chronic Heart Failure are being estimated. 6 group discussions were performed. The sample was formed from 4 mixed-gender groups, a male group and a female group. Participants were recruited from local heart sports groups. For the interpretation a method similar to the grounded theory was used. The main conclusion is that in principle quality indicators are accepted. However, many of these indicators neglect the everyday aspects of patients' life. Participants show a disposition of "yes - but" regarding the quality indicators. This phenomenon could be theoretically grasped using the concept of order of knowledge. While participants keep referring to an order of everyday knowledge, quality indicators make recourse to a medical order of knowledge. Both orders of knowledge may compete with each other. The professional knowledge order of medicine needs to open up to a patients' knowledge order. Patient representatives in health care bodies need to be trained to develop a reflexive point of view to different knowledge orders enabling them to represent patients' everyday knowledge more confidently. Otherwise there is danger of conformation to the professional knowledge order of medicine only for reasons of being recognised as equal partners. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Shopping versus Nature? An Exploratory Study of Everyday Experiences.

PubMed

Craig, Tony P; Fischer, Anke; Lorenzo-Arribas, Altea

2018-01-01

Although a growing volume of empirical research shows that being in nature is important for human wellbeing, the definition of what constitutes an 'experience in nature,' and how this is different from other types of experiences, is very often left implied. In this paper we contrast everyday experiences involving nature with a category of everyday experience in which most people regularly partake. We present an exploratory study in which people ( N = 357) were explicitly asked to describe a memory they had of an everyday 'experience which involved nature,' as well as an everyday 'experience which involved shopping.' The open-ended responses to these questions were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Nature experiences were generally found to be more positive than shopping experiences, and they were more likely to be rated as 'peaceful' and 'active' compared to shopping experiences. Follow-up analyses indicate a significant interaction between experience category (nature or shopping), and the relationship between connectedness to nature and the amount of pleasure associated with that experience: The more strongly connected to nature a respondent was, the larger the disparity between the pleasantness of the shopping experience and that of the experience in nature tended to be.

Examining the causes of memory strength variability: recollection, attention failure, or encoding variability?

PubMed

Koen, Joshua D; Aly, Mariam; Wang, Wei-Chun; Yonelinas, Andrew P

2013-11-01

A prominent finding in recognition memory is that studied items are associated with more variability in memory strength than new items. Here, we test 3 competing theories for why this occurs-the encoding variability, attention failure, and recollection accounts. Distinguishing among these theories is critical because each provides a fundamentally different account of the processes underlying recognition memory. The encoding variability and attention failure accounts propose that old item variance will be unaffected by retrieval manipulations because the processes producing this effect are ascribed to encoding. The recollection account predicts that both encoding and retrieval manipulations that preferentially affect recollection will affect memory variability. These contrasting predictions were tested by examining the effect of response speeding (Experiment 1), dividing attention at retrieval (Experiment 2), context reinstatement (Experiment 3), and increased test delay (Experiment 4) on recognition performance. The results of all 4 experiments confirm the predictions of the recollection account and are inconsistent with the encoding variability account. The evidence supporting the attention failure account is mixed, with 2 of the 4 experiments confirming the account and 2 disconfirming the account. These results indicate that encoding variability and attention failure are insufficient accounts of memory variance and provide support for the recollection account. Several alternative theoretical accounts of the results are also considered. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

The effects of autobiographical memory and visual perspective on working memory.

PubMed

Cheng, Zenghu; She, Yugui

2018-08-01

The present research aims to explore whether recalling and writing about autobiographical memory from different perspectives (first-person perspective vs. third-person perspective) could affect cognitive function. The participants first performed a working memory task to evaluate their working memory capacity as a baseline and then were instructed to recall (Study 1) or write about (Study 2) personal events (failures vs. successes) from the first-person perspective or the third-person perspective. Finally, they performed the working memory task again. The results suggested that autobiographical memory and perspective influence working memory interactively. When recalling a success, the participants who recalled from the third-person perspective performed better than those who recalled from the first-person perspective on the working memory capacity task; when recalling a failure, the opposite was true.

Errors made by animals in memory paradigms are not always due to failure of memory.

PubMed

Wilkie, D M; Willson, R J; Carr, J A

1999-01-01

It is commonly assumed that errors in animal memory paradigms such as delayed matching to sample, radial mazes, and food-cache recovery are due to failures in memory for information necessary to perform the task successfully. A body of research, reviewed here, suggests that this is not always the case: animals sometimes make errors despite apparently being able to remember the appropriate information. In this paper a case study of this phenomenon is described, along with a demonstration of a simple procedural modification that successfully reduced these non-memory errors, thereby producing a better measure of memory.

Turning back the hands of time: autobiographical memories in dementia cued by a museum setting.

PubMed

Miles, Amanda N; Fischer-Mogensen, Lise; Nielsen, Nadia H; Hermansen, Stine; Berntsen, Dorthe

2013-09-01

The current study examined the effects of cuing autobiographical memory retrieval in 12 older participants with dementia through immersion into a historically authentic environment that recreated the material and cultural context of the participants' youth. Participants conversed in either an everyday setting (control condition) or a museum setting furnished in early twentieth century style (experimental condition) while being presented with condition matched cues. Conversations were coded for memory content based on an adapted version of Levine, Svoboda, Hay, Winocur, and Moscovitch (2002) coding scheme. More autobiographical memories were recalled in the museum setting, and these memories were more elaborated, more spontaneous and included especially more internal (episodic) details compared to memories in the control condition. The findings have theoretical and practical implications by showing that the memories retrieved in the museum setting were both quantitatively and qualitatively different from memories retrieved during a control condition. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Adaptive constructive processes and the future of memory.

PubMed

Schacter, Daniel L

2012-11-01

Memory serves critical functions in everyday life but is also prone to error. This article examines adaptive constructive processes, which play a functional role in memory and cognition but can also produce distortions, errors, and illusions. The article describes several types of memory errors that are produced by adaptive constructive processes and focuses in particular on the process of imagining or simulating events that might occur in one's personal future. Simulating future events relies on many of the same cognitive and neural processes as remembering past events, which may help to explain why imagination and memory can be easily confused. The article considers both pitfalls and adaptive aspects of future event simulation in the context of research on planning, prediction, problem solving, mind-wandering, prospective and retrospective memory, coping and positivity bias, and the interconnected set of brain regions known as the default network. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Examination of Variables That May Affect the Relationship Between Cognition and Functional Status in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Meta-Analysis

PubMed Central

Mcalister, Courtney; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; Lamb, Richard

2016-01-01

The objective of this meta-analysis was to improve understanding of the heterogeneity in the relationship between cognition and functional status in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Demographic, clinical, and methodological moderators were examined. Cognition explained an average of 23% of the variance in functional outcomes. Executive function measures explained the largest amount of variance (37%), whereas global cognitive status and processing speed measures explained the least (20%). Short- and long-delayed memory measures accounted for more variance (35% and 31%) than immediate memory measures (18%), and the relationship between cognition and functional outcomes was stronger when assessed with informant-report (28%) compared with self-report (21%). Demographics, sample characteristics, and type of everyday functioning measures (i.e., questionnaire, performance-based) explained relatively little variance compared with cognition. Executive functioning, particularly measured by Trails B, was a strong predictor of everyday functioning in individuals with MCI. A large proportion of variance remained unexplained by cognition. PMID:26743326

The importance of source and cue type in time-based everyday prospective memory.

PubMed

Oates, Joyce M; Peynircioğlu, Zehra F

2014-01-01

We examined the effects of the source of a prospective memory task (provided or generated) and the type of cue (specific or general) triggering that task in everyday settings. Participants were asked to complete both generated and experimenter-provided tasks and to send a text message when each task was completed. The cue/context for the to-be-completed tasks was either a specific time or a general deadline (time-based cue), and the cue/context for the texting task was the completion of the task itself (activity-based cue). Although generated tasks were completed more often, generated cues/contexts were no more effective than provided ones in triggering the intention. Furthermore, generated tasks were completed more often when the cue/context comprised a specific time, whereas provided tasks were completed more often when the cue/context comprised a general deadline. However, texting was unaffected by the source of the cue/context. Finally, emotion modulated the effects. Results are discussed within a process-driven framework.

Radiation Tests on 2Gb NAND Flash Memories

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nguyen, Duc N.; Guertin, Steven M.; Patterson, J. D.

2006-01-01

We report on SEE and TID tests of highly scaled Samsung 2Gbits flash memories. Both in-situ and biased interval irradiations were used to characterize the response of the total accumulated dose failures. The radiation-induced failures can be categorized as followings: single event upset (SEU) read errors in biased and unbiased modes, write errors, and single-event-functional-interrupt (SEFI) failures.

Prospective memory failures in aviation: effects of cue salience, workload, and individual differences.

PubMed

Van Benthem, Kathleen D; Herdman, Chris M; Tolton, Rani G; LeFevre, Jo-Anne

2015-04-01

Prospective memory allows people to complete intended tasks in the future. Prospective memory failures, such as pilots forgetting to inform pattern traffic of their locations, can have fatal consequences. The present research examined the impact of system factors (memory cue salience and workload) and individual differences (pilot age, cognitive health, and expertise) on prospective memory for communication tasks in the cockpit. Pilots (N = 101) flew a Cessna 172 simulator at a non-towered aerodrome while maintaining communication with traffic and attending to flight parameters. Memory cue salience (the prominence of cues that signal an intended action) and workload were manipulated. Prospective memory was measured as radio call completion rates. Pilots' prospective memory was adversely affected by low-salience cues and high workload. An interaction of cue salience, pilots' age, and cognitive health reflected the effects of system and individual difference factors on prospective memory failures. For example, younger pilots with low levels of cognitive health completed 78% of the radio calls associated with low-salience memory cues, whereas older pilots with low cognitive health scores completed just 61% of similar radio calls. Our findings suggest that technologies designed to signal intended future tasks should target those tasks with inherently low-salience memory cues. In addition, increasing the salience of memory cues is most likely to benefit pilots with lower levels of cognitive health in high-workload conditions.

Radiation Issues and Applications of Floating Gate Memories

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Scheick, L. Z.; Nguyen, D. N.

2000-01-01

The radiation effects that affect various systems that comprise floating gate memories are presented. The wear-out degradation results of unirradiated flash memories are compared to irradiated flash memories. The procedure analyzes the failure to write and erase caused by wear-out and degradation of internal charge pump circuits. A method is described for characterizing the radiation effects of the floating gate itself. The rate dependence, stopping power dependence, SEU susceptibility and applications of floating gate in radiation environment are presented. The ramifications for dosimetry and cell failure are discussed as well as for the long term use aspects of non-volatile memories.

The ACTIVE conceptual framework as a structural equation model.

PubMed

Gross, Alden L; Payne, Brennan R; Casanova, Ramon; Davoudzadeh, Pega; Dzierzewski, Joseph M; Farias, Sarah; Giovannetti, Tania; Ip, Edward H; Marsiske, Michael; Rebok, George W; Schaie, K Warner; Thomas, Kelsey; Willis, Sherry; Jones, Richard N

2018-01-01

Background/Study Context: Conceptual frameworks are analytic models at a high level of abstraction. Their operationalization can inform randomized trial design and sample size considerations. The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) conceptual framework was empirically tested using structural equation modeling (N=2,802). ACTIVE was guided by a conceptual framework for cognitive training in which proximal cognitive abilities (memory, inductive reasoning, speed of processing) mediate treatment-related improvement in primary outcomes (everyday problem-solving, difficulty with activities of daily living, everyday speed, driving difficulty), which in turn lead to improved secondary outcomes (health-related quality of life, health service utilization, mobility). Measurement models for each proximal, primary, and secondary outcome were developed and tested using baseline data. Each construct was then combined in one model to evaluate fit (RMSEA, CFI, normalized residuals of each indicator). To expand the conceptual model and potentially inform future trials, evidence of modification of structural model parameters was evaluated by age, years of education, sex, race, and self-rated health status. Preconceived measurement models for memory, reasoning, speed of processing, everyday problem-solving, instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) difficulty, everyday speed, driving difficulty, and health-related quality of life each fit well to the data (all RMSEA < .05; all CFI > .95). Fit of the full model was excellent (RMSEA = .038; CFI = .924). In contrast with previous findings from ACTIVE regarding who benefits from training, interaction testing revealed associations between proximal abilities and primary outcomes are stronger on average by nonwhite race, worse health, older age, and less education (p < .005). Empirical data confirm the hypothesized ACTIVE conceptual model. Findings suggest that the types of people who show intervention effects on cognitive performance potentially may be different from those with the greatest chance of transfer to real-world activities.

Newly-formed emotional memories guide selective attention processes: Evidence from event-related potentials.

PubMed

Schupp, Harald T; Kirmse, Ursula; Schmälzle, Ralf; Flaisch, Tobias; Renner, Britta

2016-06-20

Emotional cues can guide selective attention processes. However, emotional stimuli can both activate long-term memory representations reflecting general world knowledge and engage newly formed memory representations representing specific knowledge from the immediate past. Here, the self-completion feature of associative memory was utilized to assess the regulation of attention processes by newly-formed emotional memory. First, new memory representations were formed by presenting pictures depicting a person either in an erotic pose or as a portrait. Afterwards, to activate newly-built memory traces, edited pictures were presented showing only the head region of the person. ERP recordings revealed the emotional regulation of attention by newly-formed memories. Specifically, edited pictures from the erotic compared to the portrait category elicited an early posterior negativity and late positive potential, similar to the findings observed for the original pictures. A control condition showed that the effect was dependent on newly-formed memory traces. Given the large number of new memories formed each day, they presumably make an important contribution to the regulation of attention in everyday life.

Newly-formed emotional memories guide selective attention processes: Evidence from event-related potentials

PubMed Central

Schupp, Harald T.; Kirmse, Ursula; Schmälzle, Ralf; Flaisch, Tobias; Renner, Britta

2016-01-01

Emotional cues can guide selective attention processes. However, emotional stimuli can both activate long-term memory representations reflecting general world knowledge and engage newly formed memory representations representing specific knowledge from the immediate past. Here, the self-completion feature of associative memory was utilized to assess the regulation of attention processes by newly-formed emotional memory. First, new memory representations were formed by presenting pictures depicting a person either in an erotic pose or as a portrait. Afterwards, to activate newly-built memory traces, edited pictures were presented showing only the head region of the person. ERP recordings revealed the emotional regulation of attention by newly-formed memories. Specifically, edited pictures from the erotic compared to the portrait category elicited an early posterior negativity and late positive potential, similar to the findings observed for the original pictures. A control condition showed that the effect was dependent on newly-formed memory traces. Given the large number of new memories formed each day, they presumably make an important contribution to the regulation of attention in everyday life. PMID:27321471

Makalu: fast recoverable allocation of non-volatile memory

DOE PAGES

Bhandari, Kumud; Chakrabarti, Dhruva R.; Boehm, Hans-J.

2016-10-19

Byte addressable non-volatile memory (NVRAM) is likely to supplement, and perhaps eventually replace, DRAM. Applications can then persist data structures directly in memory instead of serializing them and storing them onto a durable block device. However, failures during execution can leave data structures in NVRAM unreachable or corrupt. In this paper, we present Makalu, a system that addresses non-volatile memory management. Makalu offers an integrated allocator and recovery-time garbage collector that maintains internal consistency, avoids NVRAM memory leaks, and is efficient, all in the face of failures. We show that a careful allocator design can support a less restrictive andmore » a much more familiar programming model than existing persistent memory allocators. Our allocator significantly reduces the per allocation persistence overhead by lazily persisting non-essential metadata and by employing a post-failure recovery-time garbage collector. Experimental results show that the resulting online speed and scalability of our allocator are comparable to well-known transient allocators, and significantly better than state-of-the-art persistent allocators.« less

Makalu: fast recoverable allocation of non-volatile memory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bhandari, Kumud; Chakrabarti, Dhruva R.; Boehm, Hans-J.

Byte addressable non-volatile memory (NVRAM) is likely to supplement, and perhaps eventually replace, DRAM. Applications can then persist data structures directly in memory instead of serializing them and storing them onto a durable block device. However, failures during execution can leave data structures in NVRAM unreachable or corrupt. In this paper, we present Makalu, a system that addresses non-volatile memory management. Makalu offers an integrated allocator and recovery-time garbage collector that maintains internal consistency, avoids NVRAM memory leaks, and is efficient, all in the face of failures. We show that a careful allocator design can support a less restrictive andmore » a much more familiar programming model than existing persistent memory allocators. Our allocator significantly reduces the per allocation persistence overhead by lazily persisting non-essential metadata and by employing a post-failure recovery-time garbage collector. Experimental results show that the resulting online speed and scalability of our allocator are comparable to well-known transient allocators, and significantly better than state-of-the-art persistent allocators.« less

Improving the assessment of everyday cognitive functioning in patients with epilepsy by means of proxy reports.

PubMed

Karkoska, Anne; Hallmeyer-Elgner, Susanne; Berth, Hendrik; Reichmann, Heinz; Schmitz-Peiffer, Henning

2015-03-01

The self-report of cognitive deficits by of patients with epilepsy is often poorly correlated with objective test performances but highly related to mood and personality. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether information obtained by close relatives of the patient shows higher correlations with the patients' objective test scores and thereby can be a complementary measure for ensuring a reliable basis for diagnostic decision-making. Thirty-four patients and 29 relatives were asked to fill in a questionnaire about everyday cognitive deficits of the patient. All patients completed a neuropsychological test battery comprising measures of memory, attention, and executive functioning and questionnaires on anxiety, depression, and the personality trait neuroticism. Correlations between relatives' reports and patients' test performances were highly significant across all examined domains. By contrast, self-reports of the patients significantly correlated with none of the neuropsychological measures of memory and with only a subset of the objective measures of attention and executive functioning. Regression analyses additionally revealed a strong dependency of the patients' self-assessment on depression, anxiety, and neuroticism (R(2)=0.42). These results point out the risk of self-reports distorting reality and additionally recommend consulting a close relative of the patient to ensure reliable information about the patient's everyday cognitive functioning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

An investigation into prospective memory in children with developmental dyslexia.

PubMed

Khan, Azizuddin

2014-01-01

Developmental dyslexia hinders reading and writing acquisition of around 5-10% of the children all over the world. However, little is known about role of prospective memory among dyslexics. Prospective memory is realization of delayed intention. Realization of delayed intention requires self initiated process. The present study explored the role of memory (prospective and retrospective memory), meta-memory and attention among dyslexic's children. One hundred and fifteen children (51 dyslexics and 64 normal controls) participated in the study. Prospective and retrospective memory questionnaire, everyday attention questionnaire and meta-memory were administered on children. Analysis of variance was used to analyses the data. All the main effects were significant. Some interactions were also found to be significant. Results suggest that dyslexic's performance on memory (prospective and retrospective memory) was worse than normal control. Meta-memory influences both dyslexics and normal control on prospective and retrospective memory. However, meta-memory affected dyslexics much more than normal control group. Similarly, significant differential effects were observed for simple, difficult and mixed attentional condition among between dyslexics and normal control. Dyslexic's performance was deteriorated as compared to normal control group. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of the existing literature.

An investigation into prospective memory in children with developmental dyslexia

PubMed Central

Khan, Azizuddin

2014-01-01

Developmental dyslexia hinders reading and writing acquisition of around 5–10% of the children all over the world. However, little is known about role of prospective memory among dyslexics. Prospective memory is realization of delayed intention. Realization of delayed intention requires self initiated process. The present study explored the role of memory (prospective and retrospective memory), meta-memory and attention among dyslexic's children. One hundred and fifteen children (51 dyslexics and 64 normal controls) participated in the study. Prospective and retrospective memory questionnaire, everyday attention questionnaire and meta-memory were administered on children. Analysis of variance was used to analyses the data. All the main effects were significant. Some interactions were also found to be significant. Results suggest that dyslexic's performance on memory (prospective and retrospective memory) was worse than normal control. Meta-memory influences both dyslexics and normal control on prospective and retrospective memory. However, meta-memory affected dyslexics much more than normal control group. Similarly, significant differential effects were observed for simple, difficult and mixed attentional condition among between dyslexics and normal control. Dyslexic's performance was deteriorated as compared to normal control group. The findings of the study are discussed in the light of the existing literature. PMID:25538638

Proactive interference and concurrent inhibitory processes do not differentially affect item and associative recognition: Implication for the age-related associative memory deficit.

PubMed

Guez, Jonathan; Naveh-Benjamin, Moshe

2016-09-01

Previous studies have suggested an associative deficit hypothesis [Naveh-Benjamin, M. ( 2000 ). Adult age differences in memory performance: Tests of an associative deficit hypothesis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 26, 1170-1187] to explain age-related episodic memory declines. The hypothesis attributes part of the deficient episodic memory performance in older adults to a difficulty in creating and retrieving cohesive episodes. In this article, we further evaluate this hypothesis by testing two alternative processes that potentially mediate associative memory deficits in older adults. Four experiments are presented that assess whether failure of inhibitory processes (proactive interference in Experiments 1 and 2), and concurrent inhibition (in Experiments 3 and 4) are mediating factors in age-related associative deficits. The results suggest that creating conditions that require the operation of inhibitory processes, or that interfere with such processes, cannot simulate associative memory deficit in older adults. Instead, such results support the idea that associative memory deficits reflect a unique binding failure in older adults. This failure seems to be independent of other cognitive processes, including inhibitory and other resource-demanding processes.

The speed of our mental soundtracks: Tracking the tempo of involuntary musical imagery in everyday life.

PubMed

Jakubowski, Kelly; Farrugia, Nicolas; Halpern, Andrea R; Sankarpandi, Sathish K; Stewart, Lauren

2015-11-01

The study of spontaneous and everyday cognitions is an area of rapidly growing interest. One of the most ubiquitous forms of spontaneous cognition is involuntary musical imagery (INMI), the involuntarily retrieved and repetitive mental replay of music. The present study introduced a novel method for capturing temporal features of INMI within a naturalistic setting. This method allowed for the investigation of two questions of interest to INMI researchers in a more objective way than previously possible, concerning (1) the precision of memory representations within INMI and (2) the interactions between INMI and concurrent affective state. Over the course of 4 days, INMI tempo was measured by asking participants to tap to the beat of their INMI with a wrist-worn accelerometer. Participants documented additional details regarding their INMI in a diary. Overall, the tempo of music within INMI was recalled from long-term memory in a highly veridical form, although with a regression to the mean for recalled tempo that parallels previous findings on voluntary musical imagery. A significant positive relationship was found between INMI tempo and subjective arousal, suggesting that INMI interacts with concurrent mood in a similar manner to perceived music. The results suggest several parallels between INMI and voluntary imagery, music perceptual processes, and other types of involuntary memories.

Dynamic frontotemporal systems process space and time in working memory

PubMed Central

Adams, Jenna N.; Solbakk, Anne-Kristin; Endestad, Tor; Larsson, Pål G.; Ivanovic, Jugoslav; Meling, Torstein R.; Lin, Jack J.; Knight, Robert T.

2018-01-01

How do we rapidly process incoming streams of information in working memory, a cognitive mechanism central to human behavior? Dominant views of working memory focus on the prefrontal cortex (PFC), but human hippocampal recordings provide a neurophysiological signature distinct from the PFC. Are these regions independent, or do they interact in the service of working memory? We addressed this core issue in behavior by recording directly from frontotemporal sites in humans performing a visuospatial working memory task that operationalizes the types of identity and spatiotemporal information we encounter every day. Theta band oscillations drove bidirectional interactions between the PFC and medial temporal lobe (MTL; including the hippocampus). MTL theta oscillations directed the PFC preferentially during the processing of spatiotemporal information, while PFC theta oscillations directed the MTL for all types of information being processed in working memory. These findings reveal an MTL theta mechanism for processing space and time and a domain-general PFC theta mechanism, providing evidence that rapid, dynamic MTL–PFC interactions underlie working memory for everyday experiences. PMID:29601574

Negative emotion enhances mnemonic precision and subjective feelings of remembering in visual long-term memory.

PubMed

Xie, Weizhen; Zhang, Weiwei

2017-09-01

Negative emotion sometimes enhances memory (higher accuracy and/or vividness, e.g., flashbulb memories). The present study investigates whether it is the qualitative (precision) or quantitative (the probability of successful retrieval) aspect of memory that drives these effects. In a visual long-term memory task, observers memorized colors (Experiment 1a) or orientations (Experiment 1b) of sequentially presented everyday objects under negative, neutral, or positive emotions induced with International Affective Picture System images. In a subsequent test phase, observers reconstructed objects' colors or orientations using the method of adjustment. We found that mnemonic precision was enhanced under the negative condition relative to the neutral and positive conditions. In contrast, the probability of successful retrieval was comparable across the emotion conditions. Furthermore, the boost in memory precision was associated with elevated subjective feelings of remembering (vividness and confidence) and metacognitive sensitivity in Experiment 2. Altogether, these findings suggest a novel precision-based account for emotional memories. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An exploratory investigation of real-world reasoning in paranoia.

PubMed

Huddy, V; Brown, G P; Boyd, T; Wykes, T

2014-03-01

Paranoid thinking has been linked to greater availability in memory of past threats to the self. However, remembered experiences may not always closely resemble events that trigger paranoia, so novel explanations must be elaborated for the likelihood of threat to be determined. We investigated the ability of paranoid individuals to construct explanations for everyday situations and whether these modulate their emotional impact. Twenty-one participants experiencing paranoia and 21 healthy controls completed a mental simulation task that yields a measure of the coherence of reasoning in everyday situations. When responses featured positive content, clinical participants produced less coherent narratives in response to paranoid themed scenarios than healthy controls. There was no significant difference between the groups when responses featured negative content. The current study suggests that difficulty in scenario construction may exacerbate paranoia by reducing access to non-threatening explanations for everyday events, and this consequently increases distress. © 2012 The British Psychological Society.

Everyday Functioning and Cognitive Correlates in Healthy Older Adults with Subjective Cognitive Concerns

PubMed Central

McAlister, Courtney; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen

2016-01-01

Objective Few studies have examined functional abilities and complaints in healthy older adults with subjective cognitive concerns (SCC). The aims of this study were to assess everyday functioning in healthy older adults reporting high and low amounts of SCC, and examine cognitive correlates of functional abilities. Method Twenty-six healthy older adults with high SCC, and 25 healthy older adults with low SCC, as well as their knowledgeable informants completed the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living-Compensation (IADL-C), a questionnaire measure of everyday functioning. Results After controlling for depression, the high SCC group self-reported significantly more everyday difficulties on the IADL-C, including all subdomains. Compared to the low SCC group, informants for the high SCC group endorsed more difficulties on the IADL-C and specifically the social skills subdomain. For the high SCC group, poorer self-report of everyday functioning was related to poorer executive functioning and temporal order memory. Conclusions These findings indicate that there may be subtle functional changes that occur early in the spectrum of cognitive decline in individuals with high SCC, and these functional changes are evident to informants. Further work is needed to investigate whether individuals with both SCC and functional difficulties are at an even higher risk for progression to mild cognitive impairment. PMID:27240886

Shopping versus Nature? An Exploratory Study of Everyday Experiences

PubMed Central

Craig, Tony P.; Fischer, Anke; Lorenzo-Arribas, Altea

2018-01-01

Although a growing volume of empirical research shows that being in nature is important for human wellbeing, the definition of what constitutes an ‘experience in nature,’ and how this is different from other types of experiences, is very often left implied. In this paper we contrast everyday experiences involving nature with a category of everyday experience in which most people regularly partake. We present an exploratory study in which people (N = 357) were explicitly asked to describe a memory they had of an everyday ‘experience which involved nature,’ as well as an everyday ‘experience which involved shopping.’ The open-ended responses to these questions were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Nature experiences were generally found to be more positive than shopping experiences, and they were more likely to be rated as ‘peaceful’ and ‘active’ compared to shopping experiences. Follow-up analyses indicate a significant interaction between experience category (nature or shopping), and the relationship between connectedness to nature and the amount of pleasure associated with that experience: The more strongly connected to nature a respondent was, the larger the disparity between the pleasantness of the shopping experience and that of the experience in nature tended to be. PMID:29410642

The future orientation of constructive memory: an evolutionary perspective on therapeutic hypnosis and brief psychotherapy.

PubMed

Rossi, Ernest; Erickson-Klein, Roxanna; Rossi, Kathryn

2008-04-01

We explore a new distinction between the future, prospective memory system being investigated in current neuroscience and the past, retrospective memory system, which was the original theoretical foundation of therapeutic hypnosis, classical psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy. We then generalize a current evolutionary theory of sleep and dreaming, which focuses on the future, prospective memory system, to conceptualize a new evolutionary perspective on therapeutic hypnosis and brief psychotherapy. The implication of current neuroscience research is that activity-dependent gene expression and brain plasticity are the psychobiological basis of adaptive behavior, consciousness, and creativity in everyday life as well as psychotherapy. We summarize a case illustrating how this evolutionary perspective can be used to quickly resolve problems with past obstructive procrastination in school to facilitate current and future academic success.

Family Pictures = Cuadros de familia.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lomas Garza, Carmen

Bilingual (English and Spanish) text and illustrations describe the author-artist's experiences growing up in a traditional Hispanic community in south Texas, near the border with Mexico. The brightly colored paintings of her family and community show, in great detail, the everyday activities that remain vivid in her memory: picking oranges for…

Prism adaptation enhances activity of intact fronto-parietal areas in both hemispheres in neglect patients.

PubMed

Saj, Arnaud; Cojan, Yann; Vocat, Roland; Luauté, Jacques; Vuilleumier, Patrik

2013-01-01

Unilateral spatial neglect involves a failure to report or orient to stimuli in the contralesional (left) space due to right brain damage, with severe handicap in everyday activities and poor rehabilitation outcome. Because behavioral studies suggest that prism adaptation may reduce spatial neglect, we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying prism effects on visuo-spatial processing in neglect patients. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the effect of (right-deviating) prisms on seven patients with left neglect, by comparing brain activity while they performed three different spatial tasks on the same visual stimuli (bisection, search, and memory), before and after a single prism-adaptation session. Following prism adaptation, fMRI data showed increased activation in bilateral parietal, frontal, and occipital cortex during bisection and visual search, but not during the memory task. These increases were associated with significant behavioral improvement in the same two tasks. Changes in neural activity and behavior were seen only after prism adaptation, but not attributable to mere task repetition. These results show for the first time the neural substrates underlying the therapeutic benefits of prism adaptation, and demonstrate that visuo-motor adaptation induced by prism exposure can restore activation in bilateral brain networks controlling spatial attention and awareness. This bilateral recruitment of fronto-parietal networks may counteract the pathological biases produced by unilateral right hemisphere damage, consistent with recent proposals that neglect may reflect lateralized deficits induced by bilateral hemispheric dysfunction. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Schizophrenia and prospective memory impairments: a review.

PubMed

Wang, Ya; Chan, Raymond C K; Shum, David H K

2017-11-22

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to carry out intended actions in the future. Prospective forgetting has been shown to be one of the key cognitive impairments that contribute to medication non-adherence, reduced independence, and social dysfunction in individuals with schizophrenia. This review aimed to provide an up to date appraisal of the nature and extent of PM impairments in individuals with schizophrenia and those who are at risk and to discuss clinical applications in this area. We searched and reviewed relevant studies in this area between 2013 and August 2017. Findings of studies conducted so far indicate that PM is severely impaired in schizophrenia. The most frequent type of PM errors in individuals with schizophrenia is no response, or failure to carry out the intended action. PM impairments in schizophrenia have been found to be related to everyday functioning. For individuals with schizophrenia, a number of assessment techniques have been developed to assess PM. These include: self-report questionnaires, computerized tasks, psychometric test batteries, and virtual reality tasks. So far, a few studies have used the compensatory approach to improve PM performance in individuals with schizophrenia and those who are at risk, and the results reported are promising. Based on findings of these studies, suggestions for the development of interventions for PM impairments in individuals with schizophrenia are provided. PM dysfunction is an important impairment in individuals with schizophrenia, and more rehabilitation studies to improve PM performance in these individuals are needed.

Dispositional Mindfulness and Memory Problems: The Role of Perceived Stress and Sleep Quality

PubMed Central

Brisbon, Nicholas M.; Lachman, Margie E.

2016-01-01

There is a growing body of evidence exploring the beneficial effects of mindfulness on stress, sleep quality, and memory, though the mechanisms involved are less certain. The present study explored the roles of perceived stress and sleep quality as potential mediators between dispositional mindfulness and subjective memory problems. Data were from a Boston area subsample of the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS-II) assessed in 2004–2006, and again approximately one year later (N=299). As expected, higher dispositional mindfulness was associated with lower perceived stress and better sleep quality. There was no direct association found between mindfulness and subjective memory problems, however, there was a significant indirect effect through perceived stress, although not with sleep quality. The present findings suggest that perceived stress may play a mediating role between dispositional mindfulness and subjective memory problems, in that those with higher mindfulness generally report experiencing less stress than those with lower mindfulness, which may be protective of memory problems in everyday life. PMID:28344682

Self-initiated object-location memory in young and older adults.

PubMed

Berger-Mandelbaum, Anat; Magen, Hagit

2017-11-20

The present study explored self-initiated object-location memory in ecological contexts, as aspect of memory that is largely absent from the research literature. Young and older adults memorized objects-location associations they selected themselves or object-location associations provided to them, and elaborated on the strategy they used when selecting the locations themselves. Retrieval took place 30 min and 1 month after encoding. The results showed an age-related decline in self-initiated and provided object-location memory. Older adults benefited from self-initiation more than young adults when tested after 30 min, while the benefit was equal when tested after 1 month. Furthermore, elaboration enhanced memory only in older adults, and only after 30 min. Both age groups used deep encoding strategies on the majority of the trials, but their percentage was lower in older adults. Overall, the study demonstrated the processes involved in self-initiated object-location memory, which is an essential part of everyday functioning.

Dispositional Mindfulness and Memory Problems: The Role of Perceived Stress and Sleep Quality.

PubMed

Brisbon, Nicholas M; Lachman, Margie E

2017-04-01

There is a growing body of evidence exploring the beneficial effects of mindfulness on stress, sleep quality, and memory, though the mechanisms involved are less certain. The present study explored the roles of perceived stress and sleep quality as potential mediators between dispositional mindfulness and subjective memory problems. Data were from a Boston area subsample of the Midlife in the United States study (MIDUS-II) assessed in 2004-2006, and again approximately one year later (N=299). As expected, higher dispositional mindfulness was associated with lower perceived stress and better sleep quality. There was no direct association found between mindfulness and subjective memory problems, however, there was a significant indirect effect through perceived stress, although not with sleep quality. The present findings suggest that perceived stress may play a mediating role between dispositional mindfulness and subjective memory problems, in that those with higher mindfulness generally report experiencing less stress than those with lower mindfulness, which may be protective of memory problems in everyday life.

Google Calendar: A single case experimental design study of a man with severe memory problems

PubMed Central

Baldwin, Victoria N.; Powell, Theresa

2015-01-01

A single case experimental design across behaviours was utilised to explore the effectiveness of Google Calendar text alerts delivered to a mobile phone as a memory aid. The participant was a 43-year-old man (JA) with severe memory problems and executive difficulties caused by a traumatic brain injury (TBI). JA was initially very unwilling to use any memory aid and so a detailed assessment of his beliefs about memory aids, his cognitive difficulties and his social context was performed and a set of specifications for an aid was produced collaboratively. Six weeks of baseline data and six weeks of intervention data were collected for three target memory behaviours and three control memory behaviours. Results were analysed using nonoverlap of all pairs (NAP) analysis which showed a reduction in forgetting in the three target behaviours and no change in two of the three control behaviours. A subjective measure (the revised Everyday Memory Questionnaire) also suggested improvement. This study illustrates that Google Calendar is a highly effective memory aid and emphasises the importance of choosing a memory aid to suit the person's lifestyle and beliefs. PMID:25263266

Revising psychoanalytic interpretations of the past. An examination of declarative and non-declarative memory processes.

PubMed

Davis, J T

2001-06-01

The author reviews a contemporary cognitive psychology perspective on memory that views memory as being composed of multiple separate systems. Most researchers draw a fundamental distinction between declarative/explicit and non-declarative/implicit forms of memory. Declarative memory is responsible for the conscious recollection of facts and events--what is typically meant by the everyday and the common psychoanalytic use of the word 'memory'. Non-declarative forms of memory, in contrast, are specialised processes that influence experience and behaviour without representing the past in terms of any consciously accessible content. They operate outside of an individual's awareness, but are not repressed or otherwise dynamically unconscious. Using this theoretical framework, the question of how childhood relationship experiences are carried forward from the past to influence the present is examined. It is argued that incorporating a conceptualisation of non-declarative memory processing into psychoanalytic theory is essential. Non-declarative memory processes are capable of forming complex and sophisticated representations of the interpersonal world. These non-declarative memory processes exert a major impact on interpersonal experience and behaviour that needs to be analysed on its own terms and not mistakenly viewed as a form of resistance.

Processing device with self-scrubbing logic

DOEpatents

Wojahn, Christopher K.

2016-03-01

An apparatus includes a processing unit including a configuration memory and self-scrubber logic coupled to read the configuration memory to detect compromised data stored in the configuration memory. The apparatus also includes a watchdog unit external to the processing unit and coupled to the self-scrubber logic to detect a failure in the self-scrubber logic. The watchdog unit is coupled to the processing unit to selectively reset the processing unit in response to detecting the failure in the self-scrubber logic. The apparatus also includes an external memory external to the processing unit and coupled to send configuration data to the configuration memory in response to a data feed signal outputted by the self-scrubber logic.

Making It Better: Activities for Children Living in a Stressful World.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oehlberg, Barbara

Recognizing the need to empower children experiencing difficulties in their everyday lives, this book presents activities for healing and recovery designed for classroom or small group use with children ages 3 to 10 years. The activities are intended to guide children into self-directed understanding and processing of experiences and memories,…

Improving Memory after Interruption: Exploiting Soft Constraints and Manipulating Information Access Cost

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Phillip L.; Patrick, John; Waldron, Samuel M.; King, Sophia L.; Patrick, Tanya

2009-01-01

Forgetting what one was doing prior to interruption is an everyday problem. The recent soft constraints hypothesis (Gray, Sims, Fu, & Schoelles, 2006) emphasizes the strategic adaptation of information processing strategy to the task environment. It predicts that increasing information access cost (IAC: the time, and physical and mental effort…

Enhanced Multisensory Integration and Motor Reactivation after Active Motor Learning of Audiovisual Associations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Andrew J.; James, Thomas W.; James, Karin Harman

2011-01-01

Everyday experience affords us many opportunities to learn about objects through multiple senses using physical interaction. Previous work has shown that active motor learning of unisensory items enhances memory and leads to the involvement of motor systems during subsequent perception. However, the impact of active motor learning on subsequent…

Evaluations and Orientations in Mother-Child Narratives as a Function of Attachment Security: A Longitudinal Investigation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Newcombe, Rhiannon; Reese, Elaine

2004-01-01

The present study examined the socialisation of children's narrative ability across the preschool period, exploring the association between children's and mothers' narrative style and children's attachment security. Fifty-six children and their mothers engaged in past event memory conversations about everyday shared past experiences when the…

Children's Self-Regulation in the Context of Participatory Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kangas, Jonna; Ojala, Mikko; Venninen, Tuulikki

2015-01-01

Research Findings: Research has shown that self-regulation can support child development in the areas of children's attentional flexibility, working memory, and inhibitory control for excluding impulsive responses. How this is actually related in everyday pedagogical early childhood education (ECE) activities has rarely been studied in detail. In…

School Memories Situating School

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tanggaard, Lene; Nielsen, Klaus

2013-01-01

This paper reports the results of an interview study of 18 current and former pupils in the Danish "Folkeskole" (primary and secondary public school) from 1930 up to the present. The aim of the study is to provide a forum for usually unheard voices on the subject of everyday life in school. The study pays special attention to relational…

Self-Regulatory Strategies in Daily Life: Selection, Optimization, and Compensation and Everyday Memory Problems

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Stephanie A.; Rickenbach, Elizabeth H.; Lachman, Margie E.

2016-01-01

The effective use of self-regulatory strategies, such as selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC) requires resources. However, it is theorized that SOC use is most advantageous for those experiencing losses and diminishing resources. The present study explored this seeming paradox within the context of limitations or constraints due to…

Mind Wandering and Online Learning: A Latent Variable Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hollis, R. Benjamin

2013-01-01

Thoughts drift in everyday life and in the classroom. The goal of this study was to investigate how often students reported off-task thinking while watching online lectures. These findings were related to working memory capacity, topic interest, and achievement goal orientations. Structural equation modeling was used to evaluate how all of these…

Examination of Variables That May Affect the Relationship Between Cognition and Functional Status in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: A Meta-Analysis.

PubMed

Mcalister, Courtney; Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; Lamb, Richard

2016-03-01

The objective of this meta-analysis was to improve understanding of the heterogeneity in the relationship between cognition and functional status in individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Demographic, clinical, and methodological moderators were examined. Cognition explained an average of 23% of the variance in functional outcomes. Executive function measures explained the largest amount of variance (37%), whereas global cognitive status and processing speed measures explained the least (20%). Short- and long-delayed memory measures accounted for more variance (35% and 31%) than immediate memory measures (18%), and the relationship between cognition and functional outcomes was stronger when assessed with informant-report (28%) compared with self-report (21%). Demographics, sample characteristics, and type of everyday functioning measures (i.e., questionnaire, performance-based) explained relatively little variance compared with cognition. Executive functioning, particularly measured by Trails B, was a strong predictor of everyday functioning in individuals with MCI. A large proportion of variance remained unexplained by cognition. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Cultural adaptation, standardization and clinical validity of the test your memory dementia screening instrument in Greek.

PubMed

Iatraki, Eliza; Simos, Panagiotis G; Lionis, Christos; Zaganas, Ioannis; Symvoulakis, Emmanouil K; Papastefanakis, Emmanouil; Panagiotakis, Simeon; Pantelidakis, Heraklis; Papadopoulos, Konstantinos; Tziraki, Chariklia

2014-01-01

To adapt and standardize the Test Your Memory (TYM) dementia screening instrument in Greek. Normative data on the Greek version of the TYM were obtained from a community sample of 239 adults aged 21-92 years. Clinical validity was assessed in a cohort of 134 Neurology Clinic patients. Concurrent validity was examined through comparisons with the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Greek Everyday Function Scale. Correlations between the TYM and the MMSE were 0.73 and 0.82 in the community and patient samples, respectively. Scores on both tests were moderately associated with everyday functional capacity. Using age- and education-corrected cutoff scores ranging from 26/50 to 45/50 points, the sensitivity of the TYM for Alzheimer's disease detection was found to be higher than that of the MMSE (0.82 vs. 0.70), although its specificity was lower (0.71 vs. 0.90). Findings are consistent with previous reports in a variety of cultural settings supporting the potential utility of the TYM as a dementia screening tool.

An Interactive Simulation Program for Exploring Computational Models of Auto-Associative Memory.

PubMed

Fink, Christian G

2017-01-01

While neuroscience students typically learn about activity-dependent plasticity early in their education, they often struggle to conceptually connect modification at the synaptic scale with network-level neuronal dynamics, not to mention with their own everyday experience of recalling a memory. We have developed an interactive simulation program (based on the Hopfield model of auto-associative memory) that enables the user to visualize the connections generated by any pattern of neural activity, as well as to simulate the network dynamics resulting from such connectivity. An accompanying set of student exercises introduces the concepts of pattern completion, pattern separation, and sparse versus distributed neural representations. Results from a conceptual assessment administered before and after students worked through these exercises indicate that the simulation program is a useful pedagogical tool for illustrating fundamental concepts of computational models of memory.

Predictors of memory performance among Taiwanese postmenopausal women with heart failure.

PubMed

Chou, Cheng-Chen; Pressler, Susan J; Giordani, Bruno

2014-09-01

There are no studies describing the nature of memory deficits among women with heart failure (HF). The aims of this study were to examine memory performance among Taiwanese women with HF compared with age- and education-matched healthy women, and to evaluate factors that explain memory performance in women with HF. Seventy-six women with HF and 64 healthy women were recruited in Taiwan. Women completed working, verbal, and visual memory tests; HF severity was collected from the medical records. Women with HF performed significantly worse than healthy women on tests of working memory and verbal memory. Among women with HF, older age explained poorer working memory, and older age, higher HF severity, more comorbidities, and systolic HF explained poorer verbal memory. Menopausal symptoms were not associated with memory performance. Results of the study validate findings of memory loss in HF patients from the United States and Europe in a culturally different sample of women. Working memory and verbal memory were worse in Taiwanese women with HF compared with healthy participants. Studies are needed to determine mechanisms of memory deficits in these women and develop interventions to improve memory. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cooking "shrimp à la créole": a pilot study of an ecological rehabilitation in semantic dementia.

PubMed

Bier, Nathalie; Macoir, Joël; Joubert, Sven; Bottari, Carolina; Chayer, Céline; Pigot, Hélène; Giroux, Sylvain

2011-08-01

New learning in semantic dementia (SD) seems to be tied to a specific temporal and spatial context. Thus, cognitive rehabilitation could capitalise upon preserved episodic memory and focus on everyday activities which, once learned, will have an impact in everyday life. This pilot study thus explores the effectiveness of an ecological approach in one patient suffering from SD. EC, a 68-year-old woman with SD, stopped cooking complex meals due to a substantial loss of knowledge related to all food types. The therapy consisted of preparing a target recipe. She was asked to generate semantic attributes of ingredients found in one target, one control and two no-therapy recipes. The number of recipes cooked by EC between therapy sessions was computed. She was also asked to prepare a generalisation recipe combining ingredients from the target and control recipes. EC's generated semantic attributes (GSA) of ingredients pertaining to the target and control recipes increased significantly (p < .001), compared to the no-therapy recipes (ps > .79). The proportion of meals cooked also increased significantly (p = .021). For the generalisation recipe, she could not succeed without assistance. Frequent food preparation may have provided EC with new memories about the context, usage and appearance of some concepts. These memories seem very context-bound, but EC nonetheless re-introduced some recipes into her day-to-day life. The impact of these results on the relationship between semantic, episodic and procedural memory is discussed, as well as the relevance of an ecological approach in SD.

Decreased Self-Reported Cognitive Failures after Memory Training

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Preiss, Marek; Lukavsky, Jiri; Steinova, Dana

2010-01-01

In recent years, attention has been focused on investigating the effectiveness of composite memory intervention programs with different age and diagnostics groups. The goal of this study was to measure changes in cognitive lapses by Cognitive Failure Questionnaire (CFQ) in a large trained, dementia free group (Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE]…

A virtual shopping test for realistic assessment of cognitive function

PubMed Central

2013-01-01

Background Cognitive dysfunction caused by brain injury often prevents a patient from achieving a healthy and high quality of life. By now, each cognitive function is assessed precisely by neuropsychological tests. However, it is also important to provide an overall assessment of the patients’ ability in their everyday life. We have developed a Virtual Shopping Test (VST) using virtual reality technology. The objective of this study was to clarify 1) the significance of VST by comparing VST with other conventional tests, 2) the applicability of VST to brain-damaged patients, and 3) the performance of VST in relation to age differences. Methods The participants included 10 patients with brain damage, 10 age-matched healthy subjects for controls, 10 old healthy subjects, and 10 young healthy subjects. VST and neuropsychological tests/questionnaires about attention, memory and executive function were conducted on the patients, while VST and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were conducted on the controls and healthy subjects. Within the VST, the participants were asked to buy four items in the virtual shopping mall quickly in a rational way. The score for evaluation included the number of items bought correctly, the number of times to refer to hints, the number of movements between shops, and the total time spent to complete the shopping. Results Some variables on VST correlated with the scores of conventional assessment about attention and everyday memory. The mean number of times referring to hints and the mean number of movements were significantly larger for the patients with brain damage, and the mean total time was significantly longer for the patients than for the controls. In addition, the mean total time was significantly longer for the old than for the young. Conclusions The results suggest that VST is able to evaluate the ability of attention and everyday memory in patients with brain damage. The time of VST is increased by age. PMID:23777412

A virtual shopping test for realistic assessment of cognitive function.

PubMed

Okahashi, Sayaka; Seki, Keiko; Nagano, Akinori; Luo, Zhiwei; Kojima, Maki; Futaki, Toshiko

2013-06-18

Cognitive dysfunction caused by brain injury often prevents a patient from achieving a healthy and high quality of life. By now, each cognitive function is assessed precisely by neuropsychological tests. However, it is also important to provide an overall assessment of the patients' ability in their everyday life. We have developed a Virtual Shopping Test (VST) using virtual reality technology. The objective of this study was to clarify 1) the significance of VST by comparing VST with other conventional tests, 2) the applicability of VST to brain-damaged patients, and 3) the performance of VST in relation to age differences. The participants included 10 patients with brain damage, 10 age-matched healthy subjects for controls, 10 old healthy subjects, and 10 young healthy subjects. VST and neuropsychological tests/questionnaires about attention, memory and executive function were conducted on the patients, while VST and the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) were conducted on the controls and healthy subjects. Within the VST, the participants were asked to buy four items in the virtual shopping mall quickly in a rational way. The score for evaluation included the number of items bought correctly, the number of times to refer to hints, the number of movements between shops, and the total time spent to complete the shopping. Some variables on VST correlated with the scores of conventional assessment about attention and everyday memory. The mean number of times referring to hints and the mean number of movements were significantly larger for the patients with brain damage, and the mean total time was significantly longer for the patients than for the controls. In addition, the mean total time was significantly longer for the old than for the young. The results suggest that VST is able to evaluate the ability of attention and everyday memory in patients with brain damage. The time of VST is increased by age.

Prospective memory in schizophrenia: relationship to medication management skills, neurocognition, and symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Raskin, Sarah A; Maye, Jacqueline; Rogers, Alexandra; Correll, David; Zamroziewicz, Marta; Kurtz, Matthew

2014-05-01

Impaired adherence to medication regimens is a serious concern for individuals with schizophrenia linked to relapse and poorer outcomes. One possible reason for poor adherence to medication is poor ability to remember future intentions, labeled prospective memory skills. It has been demonstrated in several studies that individuals with schizophrenia have impairments in prospective memory that are linked to everyday life skills. However, there have been no studies, to our knowledge, examining the relationship of a clinical measure of prospective memory to medication management skills, a key element of successful adherence. In this Study 41 individuals with schizophrenia and 25 healthy adults were administered a standardized test battery that included measures of prospective memory, medication management skills, neurocognition, and symptoms. Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrated impairments in prospective memory (both time and event-based) relative to healthy controls. Performance on the test of prospective memory was correlated with the standardized measure of medication management in individuals with schizophrenia. Moreover, the test of prospective memory predicted skills in medication adherence even after measures of neurocognition were accounted for. This suggests that prospective memory may play a key role in medication management skills and thus should be a target of cognitive remediation programs.

The transformation of multi-sensory experiences into memories during sleep.

PubMed

Rothschild, Gideon

2018-03-26

Our everyday lives present us with a continuous stream of multi-modal sensory inputs. While most of this information is soon forgotten, sensory information associated with salient experiences can leave long-lasting memories in our minds. Extensive human and animal research has established that the hippocampus is critically involved in this process of memory formation and consolidation. However, the underlying mechanistic details are still only partially understood. Specifically, the hippocampus has often been suggested to encode information during experience, temporarily store it, and gradually transfer this information to the cortex during sleep. In rodents, ample evidence has supported this notion in the context of spatial memory, yet whether this process adequately describes the consolidation of multi-sensory experiences into memories is unclear. Here, focusing on rodent studies, I examine how multi-sensory experiences are consolidated into long term memories by hippocampal and cortical circuits during sleep. I propose that in contrast to the classical model of memory consolidation, the cortex is a "fast learner" that has a rapid and instructive role in shaping hippocampal-dependent memory consolidation. The proposed model may offer mechanistic insight into memory biasing using sensory cues during sleep. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mild cognitive impairment and prospective memory: translating the evidence into neuropsychological practice.

PubMed

Kinsella, Glynda J; Pike, Kerryn E; Cavuoto, Marina G; Lee, Stephen D

2018-04-30

There has been a recent rapid development of research characterizing prospective memory performance in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) in older age. However, this body of literature remains largely separated from routine clinical practice in neuropsychology. Furthermore, there is emerging evidence of effective interventions to improve prospective memory performance. Therefore, our objective in this article was to offer a clinical neuropsychological perspective on the existing research in order to facilitate the translation of the evidence-base into clinical practice. By conducting a critical review of the existing research related to prospective memory and MCI, we highlight how this data can be introduced into clinical practice, either within diagnostic assessment or clinical management. Prospective memory is impaired in older adults with MCI, with a pattern of performance that helps with differential diagnosis from healthy aging. Clinical neuropsychologists are encouraged to add prospective memory assessment to their toolbox for diagnostic evaluation of clients with MCI. Preliminary findings of prospective memory interventions in MCI are promising, but more work is required to determine how different approaches translate to increasing independence in everyday life.

Network resiliency through memory health monitoring and proactive management

DOEpatents

Andrade Costa, Carlos H.; Cher, Chen-Yong; Park, Yoonho; Rosenburg, Bryan S.; Ryu, Kyung D.

2017-11-21

A method for managing a network queue memory includes receiving sensor information about the network queue memory, predicting a memory failure in the network queue memory based on the sensor information, and outputting a notification through a plurality of nodes forming a network and using the network queue memory, the notification configuring communications between the nodes.

'Theory of mind' II: Difficulties and critiques.

PubMed

Plastow, Michael

2012-08-01

'Theory of mind' will be further examined firstly by looking at the experimental situation that was used to put forward this notion. A fundamental difficulty regarding the failure of 'theory of mind' to account for the misunderstandings of everyday life will be discussed. Other difficulties in the experimental conceptualisation of this notion will then be studied. Critiques that have previously been made of 'theory of mind' will also be examined. 'Theory of mind' proposes an ideal of limpid understanding of the other. It is argued here that this notion of mind-reading is belied by its failure in our everyday lives. The experimental results by which this notion was proposed are neither sensitive nor specific. It is argued that there is also a fundamental error in this conception and its experimental design due to assessing a second-person phenomenon by a third-person method. Critiques of 'theory of mind' emphasise the epistemological difficulties and the fact that it is a poor explanation for the interactions of non-autistic subjects.

Processing device with self-scrubbing logic

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Wojahn, Christopher K.

An apparatus includes a processing unit including a configuration memory and self-scrubber logic coupled to read the configuration memory to detect compromised data stored in the configuration memory. The apparatus also includes a watchdog unit external to the processing unit and coupled to the self-scrubber logic to detect a failure in the self-scrubber logic. The watchdog unit is coupled to the processing unit to selectively reset the processing unit in response to detecting the failure in the self-scrubber logic. The apparatus also includes an external memory external to the processing unit and coupled to send configuration data to the configurationmore » memory in response to a data feed signal outputted by the self-scrubber logic.« less

Autobiographical memory specificity in response to verbal and pictorial cues in clinical depression.

PubMed

Ridout, Nathan; Dritschel, Barbara; Matthews, Keith; O'Carroll, Ronan

2016-06-01

Depressed individuals have been consistently shown to exhibit problems in accessing specific memories of events from their past and instead tend to retrieve categorical summaries of events. The majority of studies examining autobiographical memory changes associated with psychopathology have tended to use word cues, but only one study to date has used images (with PTSD patients). to determine if using images to cue autobiographical memories would reduce the memory specificity deficit exhibited by patients with depression in comparison to healthy controls. Twenty-five clinically depressed patients and twenty-five healthy controls were assessed on two versions of the autobiographical memory test; cued with emotional words and images. Depressed patients retrieved significantly fewer specific memories, and a greater number of categorical, than did the controls. Controls retrieved a greater proportion of specific memories to images compared to words, whereas depressed patients retrieved a similar proportion of specific memories to both images and words. no information about the presence and severity of past trauma was collected. results suggest that the overgeneral memory style in depression generalises from verbal to pictorial cues. This is important because retrieval to images may provide a more ecologically valid test of everyday memory experiences than word-cued retrieval.. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessment of Functional Change and Cognitive Correlates in the Progression from Healthy Cognitive Aging to Dementia

PubMed Central

Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; Parsey, Carolyn M.

2014-01-01

Objective There is currently limited understanding of the course of change in everyday functioning that occurs with normal aging and dementia. To better characterize the nature of this change, we evaluated the types of errors made by participants as they performed everyday tasks in a naturalistic environment. Method Participants included cognitively healthy younger adults (YA; N = 55) and older adults (OA; N =88), and individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI: N =55) and dementia (N = 18). Participants performed eight scripted everyday activities (e.g., filling a medication dispenser) while under direct observation in a campus apartment. Task performances were coded for the following errors: inefficient actions, omissions, substitutions, and irrelevant actions. Results Performance accuracy decreased with age and level of cognitive impairment. Relative to the YAs, the OA group exhibited more inefficient actions which were linked to performance on neuropsychological measures of executive functioning. Relative to the OAs, the MCI group committed significantly more omission errors which were strongly linked to performance on memory measures. All error types were significantly more prominent in individuals with dementia. Omission errors uniquely predicted everyday functional status as measured by both informant-report and a performance-based measure. Conclusions These findings suggest that in the progression from healthy aging to MCI, everyday task difficulties may evolve from task inefficiencies to task omission errors, leading to inaccuracies in task completion that are recognized by knowledgeable informants. Continued decline in cognitive functioning then leads to more substantial everyday errors, which compromise ability to live independently. PMID:24933485

Using Rollback Avoidance to Mitigate Failures in Next-Generation Extreme-Scale Systems

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Levy, Scott N.

2016-05-01

High-performance computing (HPC) systems enable scientists to numerically model complex phenomena in many important physical systems. The next major milestone in the development of HPC systems is the construction of the rst supercomputer capable executing more than an exa op, 10 18 oating point operations per second. On systems of this scale, failures will occur much more frequently than on current systems. As a result, resilience is a key obstacle to building next-generation extremescale systems. Coordinated checkpointing is currently the most widely-used mechanism for handling failures on HPC systems. Although coordinated checkpointing remains e ective on current systems, increasing themore » scale of today's systems to build next-generation systems will increase the cost of fault tolerance as more and more time is taken away from the application to protect against or recover from failure. Rollback avoidance techniques seek to mitigate the cost of checkpoint/restart by allowing an application to continue its execution rather than rolling back to an earlier checkpoint when failures occur. These techniqes include failure prediction and preventive migration, replicated computation, fault-tolerant algorithms, and softwarebased memory fault correction. In this thesis, we examine how rollback avoidance techniques can be used to address failures on extreme-scale systems. Using a combination of analytic modeling and simulation, we evaluate the potential impact of rollback avoidance on these systems. We then present a novel rollback avoidance technique that exploits similarities in application memory. Finally, we examine the feasibility of using this technique to protect against memory faults in kernel memory.« less

The ACTIVE conceptual framework as a structural equation model

PubMed Central

Gross, Alden L.; Payne, Brennan R.; Casanova, Ramon; Davoudzadeh, Pega; Dzierzewski, Joseph M.; Farias, Sarah; Giovannetti, Tania; Ip, Edward H.; Marsiske, Michael; Rebok, George W.; Schaie, K. Warner; Thomas, Kelsey; Willis, Sherry; Jones, Richard N.

2018-01-01

Background/Study Context Conceptual frameworks are analytic models at a high level of abstraction. Their operationalization can inform randomized trial design and sample size considerations. Methods The Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) conceptual framework was empirically tested using structural equation modeling (N=2,802). ACTIVE was guided by a conceptual framework for cognitive training in which proximal cognitive abilities (memory, inductive reasoning, speed of processing) mediate treatment-related improvement in primary outcomes (everyday problem-solving, difficulty with activities of daily living, everyday speed, driving difficulty), which in turn lead to improved secondary outcomes (health-related quality of life, health service utilization, mobility). Measurement models for each proximal, primary, and secondary outcome were developed and tested using baseline data. Each construct was then combined in one model to evaluate fit (RMSEA, CFI, normalized residuals of each indicator). To expand the conceptual model and potentially inform future trials, evidence of modification of structural model parameters was evaluated by age, years of education, sex, race, and self-rated health status. Results Preconceived measurement models for memory, reasoning, speed of processing, everyday problem-solving, instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) difficulty, everyday speed, driving difficulty, and health-related quality of life each fit well to the data (all RMSEA < .05; all CFI > .95). Fit of the full model was excellent (RMSEA = .038; CFI = .924). In contrast with previous findings from ACTIVE regarding who benefits from training, interaction testing revealed associations between proximal abilities and primary outcomes are stronger on average by nonwhite race, worse health, older age, and less education (p < .005). Conclusions Empirical data confirm the hypothesized ACTIVE conceptual model. Findings suggest that the types of people who show intervention effects on cognitive performance potentially may be different from those with the greatest chance of transfer to real-world activities. PMID:29303475

The Effects of Summary Production and Encoding Condition on Children's Metacognitive Monitoring

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

von der Linden, Nicole; Schneider, Wolfgang; Roebers, Claudia M.

2011-01-01

Two studies were conducted to investigate whether context variations were suitable to improve metacognitive judgments in children in a complex, everyday memory task. In the first phase of each experiment, participants were shown a short event (video) and gave judgments-of-learning (JOLs), that is, rated their certainty that they would later be…

Cognitive Rehabilitation of Episodic Memory Disorders: From Theory to Practice

PubMed Central

Ptak, Radek; der Linden, Martial Van; Schnider, Armin

2010-01-01

Memory disorders are among the most frequent and most debilitating cognitive impairments following acquired brain damage. Cognitive remediation strategies attempt to restore lost memory capacity, provide compensatory techniques or teach the use of external memory aids. Memory rehabilitation has strongly been influenced by memory theory, and the interaction between both has stimulated the development of techniques such as spaced retrieval, vanishing cues or errorless learning. These techniques partly rely on implicit memory and therefore enable even patients with dense amnesia to acquire new information. However, knowledge acquired in this way is often strongly domain-specific and inflexible. In addition, individual patients with amnesia respond differently to distinct interventions. The factors underlying these differences have not yet been identified. Behavioral management of memory failures therefore often relies on a careful description of environmental factors and measurement of associated behavioral disorders such as unawareness of memory failures. The current evidence suggests that patients with less severe disorders benefit from self-management techniques and mnemonics whereas rehabilitation of severely amnesic patients should focus on behavior management, the transmission of domain-specific knowledge through implicit memory processes and the compensation for memory deficits with memory aids. PMID:20700383

A systematic review of cognitive failures in daily life: Healthy populations.

PubMed

Carrigan, Nicole; Barkus, Emma

2016-04-01

Cognitive failures are minor errors in thinking reported by clinical and non-clinical individuals during everyday life. It is not yet clear how subjectively-reported cognitive failures relate to objective neuropsychological ability. We aimed to consolidate the definition of cognitive failures, outline evidence for the relationship with objective cognition, and develop a unified model of factors that increase cognitive failures. We conducted a systematic review of cognitive failures, identifying 45 articles according to the PRISMA statement. Failures were defined as reflecting proneness to errors in 'real world' planned thought and action. Vulnerability to failures was not consistently associated with objective cognitive performance. A range of stable and variable factors were linked to increased risk of cognitive failures. We conclude that cognitive failures measure real world cognitive capacity rather than pure 'unchallenged' ability. Momentary state may interact with predisposing trait factors to increase the likelihood of failures occurring. Inclusion of self-reported cognitive failures in objective cognitive research will increase the translational relevance of ability into more ecologically valid aspects of real world functioning. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Egg Bungee Jump!

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fitzgerald, Mike; Brand, Lance

2004-01-01

In this article, the authors present an egg bungee jumping activity. This activity introduces students to ways that engineers might apply calculations of failure to meet a challenge. Students are required to use common, everyday materials such as rubber bands, string, plastic bags, and eggs. They will apply technological problem solving, material…

Mood, motivation, and misinformation: aging and affective state influences on memory.

PubMed

Hess, Thomas M; Popham, Lauren E; Emery, Lisa; Elliott, Tonya

2012-01-01

Normative age differences in memory have typically been attributed to declines in basic cognitive and cortical mechanisms. The present study examined the degree to which dominant everyday affect might also be associated with age-related memory errors using the misinformation paradigm. Younger and older adults viewed a positive and a negative event, and then were exposed to misinformation about each event. Older adults exhibited a higher likelihood than young adults of falsely identifying misinformation as having occurred in the events. Consistent with expectations, strength of the misinformation effect was positively associated with dominant mood, and controlling for mood eliminated any age effects. Also, motivation to engage in complex cognitive activity was negatively associated with susceptibility to misinformation, and susceptibility was stronger for negative than for positive events. We argue that motivational processes underlie all of the observed effects, and that such processes are useful in understanding age differences in memory performance.

Mood, motivation, and misinformation: Aging and affective state influences on memory

PubMed Central

Hess, Thomas M.; Popham, Lauren E.; Emery, Lisa; Elliott, Tonya

2014-01-01

Normative age differences in memory have typically been attributed to declines in basic cognitive and cortical mechanisms. The present study examined the degree to which dominant everyday affect might also be associated with age-related memory errors using the misinformation paradigm. Younger and older adults viewed a positive and a negative event, and then were exposed to misinformation about each event. Older adults exhibited a higher likelihood than young adults of falsely identifying misinformation as having occurred in the events. Consistent with expectations, strength of the misinformation effect was positively associated with dominant mood, and controlling for mood eliminated any age effects. Also, motivation to engage in complex cognitive activity was negatively associated with susceptibility to misinformation, and susceptibility was stronger for negative than for positive events. We argue that motivational processes underlie all of the observed effects, and that such processes are useful in understanding age differences in memory performance. PMID:22059441

Saving-enhanced memory: the benefits of saving on the learning and remembering of new information.

PubMed

Storm, Benjamin C; Stone, Sean M

2015-02-01

With the continued integration of technology into people's lives, saving digital information has become an everyday facet of human behavior. In the present research, we examined the consequences of saving certain information on the ability to learn and remember other information. Results from three experiments showed that saving one file before studying a new file significantly improved memory for the contents of the new file. Notably, this effect was not observed when the saving process was deemed unreliable or when the contents of the to-be-saved file were not substantial enough to interfere with memory for the new file. These results suggest that saving provides a means to strategically off-load memory onto the environment in order to reduce the extent to which currently unneeded to-be-remembered information interferes with the learning and remembering of other information. © The Author(s) 2014.

Superior memory efficiency of quantum devices for the simulation of continuous-time stochastic processes

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Elliott, Thomas J.; Gu, Mile

2018-03-01

Continuous-time stochastic processes pervade everyday experience, and the simulation of models of these processes is of great utility. Classical models of systems operating in continuous-time must typically track an unbounded amount of information about past behaviour, even for relatively simple models, enforcing limits on precision due to the finite memory of the machine. However, quantum machines can require less information about the past than even their optimal classical counterparts to simulate the future of discrete-time processes, and we demonstrate that this advantage extends to the continuous-time regime. Moreover, we show that this reduction in the memory requirement can be unboundedly large, allowing for arbitrary precision even with a finite quantum memory. We provide a systematic method for finding superior quantum constructions, and a protocol for analogue simulation of continuous-time renewal processes with a quantum machine.

State of the art on targeted memory reactivation: Sleep your way to enhanced cognition.

PubMed

Schouten, Daphne I; Pereira, Sofia I R; Tops, Mattie; Louzada, Fernando M

2017-04-01

Targeted memory reactivation is a fairly simple technique that has the potential to influence the course of memory formation through application of cues during sleep. Studies have shown that cueing memory during sleep can lead to either an enhanced or decreased representation of the information encoded in the targeted networks, depending on experimental variations. The effects have been associated with sleep parameters and accompanied by activation of memory related brain areas. The findings suggest a causal role of neuronal replay in memory consolidation and provide evidence for the active system consolidation hypothesis. However, the observed inconsistencies across studies suggest that further research is warranted regarding the underlying neural mechanisms and optimal conditions for the application of targeted memory reactivation. The goal of the present review is to integrate the currently available experimental data and to provide an overview of this technique's limitations and pitfalls, as well as its potential applications in everyday use and clinical treatment. Exploring the open questions herein identified should lead to insight into safer and more effective ways of adjusting memory representations to better suit individual needs. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memory and its role in appetite regulation.

PubMed

Higgs, Suzanne

2005-05-19

The importance of memory processes for the formation and expression of conditioned food preferences and satieties has long been appreciated. Recently, based on the eating of multiple meals in amnesic patients, it has been suggested that information about a recent eating episode may be factored into decisions about how much to consume at the next meal. In support of this, it has been shown that enhancing memory for a recent meal, by cueing neurologically intact participants to recall items eaten at lunch, suppresses intake at a taste test later in the afternoon. This effect is specific to recalling food eaten that day, since asking participants to think about lunch consumed the previous day had no effect on intake. These studies suggest that memory for recent eating has a role to play in controlling everyday eating. However, the involvement of memory and cognition does not exclude learnt control by physiological after effects of the recent meal; indeed, this seems likely from the known functions of the hippocampal system that is damaged in amnesic patients.

Executive function deficits in short-term abstinent cannabis users.

PubMed

McHale, Sue; Hunt, Nigel

2008-07-01

Few cognitive tasks are adequately sensitive to show the small decrements in performance in abstinent chronic cannabis users. In this series of three experiments we set out to demonstrate a variety of tasks that are sufficiently sensitive to show differences in visual memory, verbal memory, everyday memory and executive function between controls and cannabis users. A series of three studies explored cognitive function deficits in cannabis users (phonemic verbal fluency, visual recognition and immediate and delayed recall, and prospective memory) in short-term abstinent cannabis users. Participants were selected using snowball sampling, with cannabis users being compared to a standard control group and a tobacco-use control group. The cannabis users, compared to both control groups, had deficits on verbal fluency, visual recognition, delayed visual recall, and short- and long-interval prospective memory. There were no differences for immediate visual recall. These findings suggest that cannabis use leads to impaired executive function. Further research needs to explore the longer term impact of cannabis use. Copyright 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Remembering everyday experience through the prism of self-esteem.

PubMed

Christensen, Tamlin Conner; Wood, Joanne V; Barrett, Lisa Feldman

2003-01-01

Two studies examined whether global self-esteem was associated with bias in memory for autobiographical experience. For 7 days, participants described specific events and made ratings of their experience (i.e., state self-esteem, positive and negative emotion, and perceived valence of the event) in response to each event. Later, participants were presented with their event descriptions and were asked to recall their experience ratings from memory. As hypothesized, higher global self-esteem predicted positive shifts in memory for experience, whereas lower global self-esteem predicted negative shifts in memory for experience. Patterns of bias were strongest for remembered state self-esteem, moderate for positive emotion, and minimal for event valence. Self-esteem did not predict bias for negative emotion. Mood at the time of recall (measured in Study 2) generally did not account for the patterns. These findings strengthen the view that self-esteem is a rich source of knowledge about the self that can influence memory for some kinds of autobiographical experience. Copyright 2003 Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

Modeling of a bubble-memory organization with self-checking translators to achieve high reliability.

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bouricius, W. G.; Carter, W. C.; Hsieh, E. P.; Wadia, A. B.; Jessep, D. C., Jr.

1973-01-01

Study of the design and modeling of a highly reliable bubble-memory system that has the capabilities of: (1) correcting a single 16-adjacent bit-group error resulting from failures in a single basic storage module (BSM), and (2) detecting with a probability greater than 0.99 any double errors resulting from failures in BSM's. The results of the study justify the design philosophy adopted of employing memory data encoding and a translator to correct single group errors and detect double group errors to enhance the overall system reliability.

When the mind wanders: age-related differences between young and older adults.

PubMed

Zavagnin, Michela; Borella, Erika; De Beni, Rossana

2014-01-01

Interest in mind wandering (MW) has grown in recent years, but few studies have assessed this phenomenon in older adults. The aim of this study was to assess age-related differences between young, young-old and old-old adults in MW using two versions of the sustained attention to response task (SART), one perceptual and one semantic. Different indicators were examined (i.e., reported MW episodes and behavioral indices of MW such as response time latency and variability, incorrect response and omission errors). The relationship between MW, certain basic mechanisms of cognition (working memory, inhibition and processing speed), cognitive failures and intrusive thoughts in everyday life was also explored. Findings in both versions of the SART indicated that older adults reported a lower frequency of MW episodes than young adults, but some of the behavioral indices of MW (response time variability, incorrect response and omission errors) were higher in old-old adults. This seems to suggest that MW becomes less frequent with aging, but more pervasive and detrimental to performance. Our results also indicated that the role of age and cognitive mechanisms in explaining MW depends on the demands of the SART task considered. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Diagnosing dementia: Ethnography, interactional ethics and everyday moral reasoning.

PubMed

Hillman, Alexandra

2017-02-01

This article highlights the contribution of ethnography and qualitative sociology to the ethical challenges that frame the diagnosis of dementia. To illustrate this contribution, the paper draws on an ethnographic study of UK memory clinics carried out between 2012 and 2014. The ethnographic data, set alongside other studies and sociological theory, contest the promotion of a traditional view of autonomy; the limiting of the point of ethical interest to a distinct moment of diagnosis disclosure; and the failure to recognise risk and uncertainty in the building of clinical 'facts' and their communication. In addressing these specific concerns, this article contributes to the wider debate over the relationship between sociology and bioethics (medical ethics). At the heart of these debates lies more fundamental questions: how can we best understand and shape moral decision-making and ethics that guide behaviour in medical practice, and what should be the guiding ideas, concepts and methods to inform ethics in the clinic? Using the case of dementia diagnosis, this article illustrates the benefits of an ethnographic approach, not just for understanding this ethical problem but also for exploring if and how a more empirically informed ethics can help shape healthcare practices for the better.

VL: a further case of erroneous recollection.

PubMed

Craik, Fergus I M; Barense, Morgan D; Rathbone, Clare J; Grusec, Joan E; Stuss, Donald T; Gao, Fuqiang; Scott, Christopher J M; Black, Sandra E

2014-04-01

We report a single-case study of a female patient (VL) who exhibited frequent episodes of erroneous recollections triggered by everyday events. Based on neuropsychological testing, VL was classified as suffering from mild to moderate dementia (MMSE=18) and was given a diagnosis of probable Alzheimer׳s disease. Her memory functions were uniformly impaired but her verbal abilities were generally well preserved. A structural MRI scan showed extensive areas of gray matter atrophy particularly in frontal and medial-temporal (MTL) areas. Results of experimental recognition tests showed that VL had very high false alarm rates on tests using pictures, faces and auditory stimuli, but lower false alarm rates on verbal tests. We provide a speculative account of her erroneous recollections in terms of her MTL and frontal pathology. In outline, we suggest that owing to binding failures in MTL regions, VL׳s recognition processes were forced to rely on earlier than normal stages of analysis. Environmental features on a given recognition trial may have combined with fragments persisting from previous trials resulting in erroneous feelings of familiarity and of recollection that were not discounted or edited out, due to her impaired frontal processes. Crown Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Diagnosing dementia: Ethnography, interactional ethics and everyday moral reasoning

PubMed Central

Hillman, Alexandra

2016-01-01

This article highlights the contribution of ethnography and qualitative sociology to the ethical challenges that frame the diagnosis of dementia. To illustrate this contribution, the paper draws on an ethnographic study of UK memory clinics carried out between 2012 and 2014. The ethnographic data, set alongside other studies and sociological theory, contest the promotion of a traditional view of autonomy; the limiting of the point of ethical interest to a distinct moment of diagnosis disclosure; and the failure to recognise risk and uncertainty in the building of clinical ‘facts’ and their communication. In addressing these specific concerns, this article contributes to the wider debate over the relationship between sociology and bioethics (medical ethics). At the heart of these debates lies more fundamental questions: how can we best understand and shape moral decision-making and ethics that guide behaviour in medical practice, and what should be the guiding ideas, concepts and methods to inform ethics in the clinic? Using the case of dementia diagnosis, this article illustrates the benefits of an ethnographic approach, not just for understanding this ethical problem but also for exploring if and how a more empirically informed ethics can help shape healthcare practices for the better. PMID:28255279

Memory management and compiler support for rapid recovery from failures in computer systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Fuchs, W. K.

1991-01-01

This paper describes recent developments in the use of memory management and compiler technology to support rapid recovery from failures in computer systems. The techniques described include cache coherence protocols for user transparent checkpointing in multiprocessor systems, compiler-based checkpoint placement, compiler-based code modification for multiple instruction retry, and forward recovery in distributed systems utilizing optimistic execution.

Comparison of neural activity that leads to true memories, false memories, and forgetting: An fMRI study of the misinformation effect.

PubMed

Baym, Carol L; Gonsalves, Brian D

2010-09-01

False memories can occur when people are exposed to misinformation about a past event. Of interest here are the neural mechanisms of this type of memory failure. In the present study, participants viewed photographic vignettes of common activities during an original event phase (OEP), while we monitored their brain activity using fMRI. Later, in a misinformation phase, participants viewed sentences describing the studied photographs, some of which contained information conflicting with that depicted in the photographs. One day later, participants returned for a surprise item memory recognition test for the content of the photographs. Results showed reliable creation of false memories, in that participants reported information that had been presented in the verbal misinformation but not in the photographs. Several regions were more active during the OEP for later accurate memory than for forgetting, but they were also more active for later false memories, indicating that false memories in this paradigm are not simply caused by failure to encode the original event. There was greater activation in the ventral visual stream for subsequent true memories than for subsequent false memories, however, suggesting that differences in encoding may contribute to later susceptibility to misinformation.

Reasoning and dyslexia: is visual memory a compensatory resource?

PubMed

Bacon, Alison M; Handley, Simon J

2014-11-01

Effective reasoning is fundamental to problem solving and achievement in education and employment. Protocol studies have previously suggested that people with dyslexia use reasoning strategies based on visual mental representations, whereas non-dyslexics use abstract verbal strategies. This research presents converging evidence from experimental and individual differences perspectives. In Experiment 1, dyslexic and non-dyslexic participants were similarly accurate on reasoning problems, but scores on a measure of visual memory ability only predicted reasoning accuracy for dyslexics. In Experiment 2, a secondary task loaded visual memory resources during concurrent reasoning. Dyslexics were significantly less accurate when reasoning under conditions of high memory load and showed reduced ability to subsequently recall the visual stimuli, suggesting that the memory and reasoning tasks were competing for the same visual cognitive resource. The results are consistent with an explanation based on limitations in the verbal and executive components of working memory in dyslexia and the use of compensatory visual strategies for reasoning. There are implications for cognitive activities that do not readily support visual thinking, whether in education, employment or less formal everyday settings. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Memory and selective attention in multiple sclerosis: cross-sectional computer-based assessment in a large outpatient sample.

PubMed

Adler, Georg; Lembach, Yvonne

2015-08-01

Cognitive impairments may have a severe impact on everyday functioning and quality of life of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). However, there are some methodological problems in the assessment and only a few studies allow a representative estimate of the prevalence and severity of cognitive impairments in MS patients. We applied a computer-based method, the memory and attention test (MAT), in 531 outpatients with MS, who were assessed at nine neurological practices or specialized outpatient clinics. The findings were compared with those obtained in an age-, sex- and education-matched control group of 84 healthy subjects. Episodic short-term memory was substantially decreased in the MS patients. About 20% of them reached a score of only less than two standard deviations below the mean of the control group. The episodic short-term memory score was negatively correlated with the EDSS score. Minor but also significant impairments in the MS patients were found for verbal short-term memory, episodic working memory and selective attention. The computer-based MAT was found to be useful for a routine assessment of cognition in MS outpatients.

Declarative memory and skill-related knowledge: Evidence from a case study of amnesia and implications for theories of memory.

PubMed

Gregory, Emma; McCloskey, Michael; Ovans, Zoe; Landau, Barbara

2016-01-01

Theoretical and empirical studies of memory have long been framed by a distinction between declarative and non-declarative memory. We question the sharpness of the distinction by reporting evidence from amnesic L.S.J., who despite retrograde memory losses in declarative knowledge domains, shows sparing of declarative knowledge related to premorbid skill (e.g., playing an instrument). We previously showed that L.S.J. had severe losses of retrograde declarative knowledge across areas of premorbid expertise (e.g., artists of famous works) and everyday knowledge (e.g., company names for logos). Here we present evidence that L.S.J. has sparing of what we call skill-related declarative knowledge, in four domains in which she had premorbid skill (art, music, aviation, driving). L.S.J.'s pattern of loss and sparing raises questions about the strict separation between classically-defined memory types and aligns with a recent proposal by Stanley and Krakauer [2013. Motor skill depends on knowledge of facts. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7,1-11].

External Memory Aid Preferences of Individuals with Mild Memory Impairments.

PubMed

Lanzi, Alyssa; Wallace, Sarah E; Bourgeois, Michelle S

2018-07-01

Individuals with mild memory impairments often rely on external memory aids (EMAs) to compensate for impaired cognitive abilities and to support independent completion of activities of daily living. These strategies are evidence based; however, professionals have limited knowledge regarding individual preferences and guidance on how to incorporate a person-centered approach into the EMA development phase. The purpose of the current study was to qualitatively investigate individuals' preferences and experiences as they relate to EMAs. Data analysis included (1) evaluation of a posttreatment questionnaire to explore individual strategy preferences following intervention and (2) evaluation of group intervention videos using thematic coding to investigate individuals' experiences with strategies during intervention. Results suggest that older adults with mild memory impairments have unique preferences and experiences, despite limited variability in demographic characteristics. Some themes that emerged included memory ability awareness and attitudes toward technology. Within a person-centered approach, skilled professionals must consider individuals' unique needs, preferences, and experiences when developing strategies throughout the continuum of care to promote sustained EMA use within everyday settings. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Cognitive dysfunction in adolescents with chronic fatigue: a cross-sectional study.

PubMed

Sulheim, Dag; Fagermoen, Even; Sivertsen, Øyvind Stople; Winger, Anette; Wyller, Vegard Bruun; Øie, Merete Glenne

2015-09-01

To compare cognitive function in adolescents with chronic fatigue with cognitive function in healthy controls (HC). Cross-sectional study. Paediatric department at Oslo University Hospital, Norway. 120 adolescents with chronic fatigue (average age 15.4 years; range 12-18) and 39 HC (average age 15.2 years; range 12-18). The adolescents completed a neurocognitive test battery measuring processing speed, working memory, cognitive inhibition, cognitive flexibility, verbal learning and verbal memory, and questionnaires addressing demographic data, depression symptoms, anxiety traits, fatigue and sleep problems. Parents completed the Behaviour Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF), which measures the everyday executive functions of children. Adolescents with chronic fatigue had impaired cognitive function compared to HC regarding processing speed (mean difference 3.3, 95% CI 1.1 to 5.5, p=0.003), working memory (-2.4, -3.7 to -1.1, p<0.001), cognitive inhibition response time (6.2, 0.8 to 11.7, p=0.025) and verbal learning (-1.7, -3.2 to -0.3, p=0.022). The BRIEF results indicated that everyday executive functions were significantly worse in the chronic fatigue group compared to the HC (11.2, 8.2 to 14.3, p<0.001). Group differences remained largely unaffected when adjusted for symptoms of depression, anxiety traits and sleep problems. Adolescents with chronic fatigue had impaired cognitive function of clinical relevance, measured by objective cognitive tests, in comparison to HC. Working memory and processing speed may represent core difficulties. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Retrieval cue and delay interval influence the relationship between prospective memory and activities of daily living in older adults.

PubMed

Tierney, Savanna M; Bucks, Romola S; Weinborn, Michael; Hodgson, Erica; Woods, Steven Paul

2016-01-01

Older adults commonly experience mild declines in everyday functioning and the strategic aspects of prospective memory (PM). This study used multiprocess theory to examine whether the strategic demands of retrieval cue type (event vs. time based) and delay interval length (2 vs. 15 min) influence the relationship between PM and activities of daily living (ADLs) in older adults. Participants included 97 community-dwelling older adults recruited from the Western Australia Participant Pool. Participants were administered the Memory for Intentions Screening Test (MIST) and Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire (PRMQ) as part of a larger neurocognitive assessment. A knowledgeable informant completed the Activities of Daily Living Questionnaire (ADLQ), from which a cutpoint of ≥ 1 was used to classify participants into "ADL normal" (n = 37) or "mild ADL problems" (n = 60) groups. Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) controlling for age was conducted with ADL group as the between-subjects factor and either MIST or PRMQ cue and delay scores as the within-subjects factors. We observed a significant ADL group by PM interaction on the MIST, with pair-wise analyses showing that the mild ADL problems group performed worse than ADL normal participants on the 15-min time-based scale (p < .001, Cohen's d = 0.71). No other MIST or PRMQ cue-delay variable differed between the two ADL groups (ps > .10). Findings indicate that decrements in strategically demanding cue monitoring and detection over longer PM delays may partly explain older adults' mild problems in everyday functioning. Findings may inform neuropsychological interventions aimed at maintaining ADL independence and enhancing quality of life in older adults.

The impact of symptomatic mild traumatic brain injury on complex everyday activities and the link with alterations in cerebral functioning: Exploratory case studies.

PubMed

Bottari, Carolina; Gosselin, Nadia; Chen, Jen-Kai; Ptito, Alain

2017-07-01

The objective of the study was to explore the neurophysiological correlates of altered functional independence using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERP) after a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The participants consisted of three individuals with symptomatic mTBI (3.9 ± 3.6 months post-mTBI) and 12 healthy controls. The main measures used were the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) Profile observation-based assessment; a visual externally ordered working memory task combined to event-related potentials (ERP) and fMRI recordings; neuropsychological tests; post-concussion symptoms questionnaires; and the Activities of Daily Living (ADL) Profile interview. Compared to normal controls, all three patients had difficulty with a real-world complex budgeting activity due to deficits in planning, ineffective strategy use and/or a prolonged time to detect and correct errors. Reduced activations in the right mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex on fMRI as well as abnormal frontal or parietal components of the ERP occurred alongside these deficits. Results of this exploratory study suggest that reduced independence in complex everyday activities in symptomatic mTBI may be at least partly explained by a decrease in brain activation in the prefrontal cortex, abnormal ERP, or slower reaction times on working memory tasks. The study presents an initial attempt at combining research in neuroscience with ecological real-world evaluation research to further our understanding of the difficulties in complex everyday activities experienced by individuals with mTBI.

Measurement of Functional Cognition and Complex Everyday Activities in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Dementia: Validity of the Large Allen's Cognitive Level Screen.

PubMed

Wesson, Jacqueline; Clemson, Lindy; Crawford, John D; Kochan, Nicole A; Brodaty, Henry; Reppermund, Simone

2017-05-01

To explore the validity of the Large Allen's Cognitive Level Screen-5 (LACLS-5) as a performance-based measure of functional cognition, representing an ability to perform complex everyday activities in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and mild dementia living in the community. Using cross-sectional data from the Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, 160 community-dwelling older adults with normal cognition (CN; N = 87), MCI (N = 43), or dementia (N = 30) were studied. Functional cognition (LACLS-5), complex everyday activities (Disability Assessment for Dementia [DAD]), Assessment of Motor and Process Skills [AMPS]), and neuropsychological measures were used. Participants with dementia performed worse than CN on all clinical measures, and MCI participants were intermediate. Correlational analyses showed that LACLS-5 was most strongly related to AMPS Process scores, DAD instrumental activities of daily living subscale, Mini-Mental State Exam, Block Design, Logical Memory, and Trail Making Test B. Multiple regression analysis indicated that both cognitive (Block Design) and functional measures (AMPS Process score) and sex predicted LACLS-5 performance. Finally, LACLS-5 was able to adequately discriminate between CN and dementia and between MCI and dementia but was unable to reliably distinguish between CN and MCI. Construct validity, including convergent and discriminative validity, was supported. LACLS-5 is a valid performance-based measure for evaluating functional cognition. Discriminativevalidity is acceptable for identifying mild dementia but requires further refinement for detecting MCI. Copyright © 2017 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The importance of working memory for school achievement in primary school children with intellectual or learning disabilities.

PubMed

Maehler, Claudia; Schuchardt, Kirsten

2016-11-01

Given the well-known relation between intelligence and school achievement we expect children with normal intelligence to perform well at school and those with intelligence deficits to meet learning problems. But, contrary to these expectations, some children do not perform according to these predictions: children with normal intelligence but sub-average school achievement and children with lower intelligence but average success at school. Yet, it is an open question how the unexpected failure or success can be explained. This study examined the role of working memory sensu Baddeley (1986) for school achievement, especially for unexpected failure or success. An extensive working memory battery with a total of 14 tasks for the phonological loop, the visual-spatial sketchpad and central executive skills was presented in individual sessions to four groups of children differing in IQ (normal vs. low) and school success (good vs. poor). Results reveal that children with sub-average school achievement showed deficits in working memory functioning, irrespective of intelligence. By contrast, children with regular school achievement did not show deficits in working memory, again irrespective of intelligence. Therefore working memory should be considered an important predictor of academic success that can lead both to unexpected overachievement and failure at school. Individual working memory competencies should be taken into account with regard to diagnosis and intervention for children with learning problems. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Perceived Discrimination and Cardiovascular Outcomes in Older African Americans: Insights From the Jackson Heart Study.

PubMed

Dunlay, Shannon M; Lippmann, Steven J; Greiner, Melissa A; O'Brien, Emily C; Chamberlain, Alanna M; Mentz, Robert J; Sims, Mario

2017-05-01

To assess the associations of perceived discrimination and cardiovascular (CV) outcomes in African Americans (AAs) in the Jackson Heart Study. In 5085 AAs free of clinical CV disease at baseline enrolled in the Jackson Heart Study from September 26, 2000, through March 31, 2004, and followed through 2012, associations of everyday discrimination (frequency of occurrences of perceived unfair treatment) and lifetime discrimination (perceived unfair treatment in 9 life domains) with CV outcomes (all-cause mortality, incident coronary heart disease [CHD], incident stroke, and heart failure [HF] hospitalization) were examined using Cox proportional hazards regression models. Higher levels of everyday and lifetime discrimination were more common in participants who were younger and male and had higher education and income, lower perceived standing in the community, worse perceived health care access, and fewer comorbidities. Before adjustment, higher levels of everyday and lifetime discrimination were associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality, incident CHD, stroke, and HF hospitalization. After adjustment for potential confounders, we found no association of everyday and lifetime discrimination with incident CHD, incident stroke, or HF hospitalization; however, a decrease in all-cause mortality with progressively higher levels of everyday discrimination persisted (hazard ratio per point increase in discrimination measure, 0.90; 95% CI, 0.82-0.99; P=.02). The unexpected association of everyday discrimination and all-cause mortality was partially mediated by perceived stress. We found no independent association of perceived discrimination with risk of incident CV disease or HF hospitalization in this AA population. An observed paradoxical negative association of everyday discrimination and all-cause mortality was partially mediated by perceived stress. Copyright © 2017 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Everyday Cognition in Prodromal Huntington Disease

PubMed Central

Williams, Janet K.; Kim, Ji-In; Downing, Nancy; Farias, Sarah; Harrington, Deborah L.; Long, Jeffrey D.; Mills, James A.; Paulsen, Jane S.

2014-01-01

Objective Assessment of daily functions affected by cognitive loss in prodromal Huntington disease (HD) is necessary in practice and clinical trials. We evaluated baseline and longitudinal sensitivity of the Everyday Cognition (ECog) scales in prodromal HD and compared self- and companion-ratings. Method Everyday cognition was self-assessed by 850 participants with prodromal HD and 768 companions. We examined internal structure using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) on baseline data. For longitudinal analysis, we stratified participants into Low, Medium, and High disease progression groups. We examined ECog scores for group differences and participant-and-companion differences using linear mixed effects regression (LMER). Comparison with the Total Functional Capacity (TFC) scale was made. Results CFA revealed good fit of a 5-factor model having a global factor (total score), and sub factors (subscales) of memory, language, visuospatial perception, and executive function. At study entry, participants and companions in the Medium and High groups reported significantly worsened everyday cognition as well as significant functional decline over time. Losses became more pronounced and participant and companion ratings diverged as individuals progressed. TFC showed significant functional loss over time in the High group but not in the Medium group. Conclusions Disease progression is associated with reduced self- and companion-reported everyday cognition in prodromal HD participants who are less than 13 years to estimated motor onset. Our findings suggest companion ratings are more sensitive than participants’ for detecting longitudinal change in daily cognitive function. ECog appears more sensitive to specific functional changes in the prodrome of HD than the TFC. PMID:25000321

Prospective memory in schizophrenia: Relationship to medication management skills, neurocognition and symptoms in individuals with schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Raskin, S.; Maye, J.; Rogers, A.; Correll, D.; Zamroziewicz, M.; Kurtz, M.

2014-01-01

Objective Impaired adherence to medication regimens is a serious concern for individuals with schizophrenia linked to relapse and poorer outcomes. One possible reason for poor adherence to medication is poor ability to remember future intentions, labeled prospective memory skills. It has been demonstrated in several studies that individuals with schizophrenia have impairments in prospective memory that are linked to everyday life skills. However, there have been no studies, to our knowledge, examining the relationship of a clinical measure of prospective memory to medication management skills, a key element of successful adherence. Methods In this study 41 individuals with schizophrenia and 25 healthy adults were administered a standardized test battery that included measures of prospective memory, medication management skills, neurocognition and symptoms. Results Individuals with schizophrenia demonstrated impairments in prospective memory (both time and event-based) relative to healthy controls. Performance on the test of prospective memory was correlated with the standardized measure of medication management in individuals with schizophrenia. Moreover, the test of prospective memory predicted skills in medication adherence even after measures of neurocognition were accounted for. Conclusions This suggests that prospective memory may play a key role in medication management skills and thus should be a target of cognitive remediation programs. PMID:24188118

Teacher Education in Memory's Light and Shadow: Autobiographical Reflection and Multimodalities of Remembering and Forgetting

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lewkowich, David

2016-01-01

Though we are all inevitably familiar with the everyday effects of forgetting, we generally fail to ask about what its internal movements look like, or how we can talk about what they reveal. Despite its necessity as a structuring process of autobiographical inquiry, forgetting's invisible moves are always obscured by that which remains: the…

Developmental Profiles for Multiple Object Tracking and Spatial Memory: Typically Developing Preschoolers and People with Williams Syndrome

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Hearn, Kirsten; Hoffman, James E.; Landau, Barbara

2010-01-01

The ability to track moving objects, a crucial skill for mature performance on everyday spatial tasks, has been hypothesized to require a specialized mechanism that may be available in infancy (i.e. indexes). Consistent with the idea of specialization, our previous work showed that object tracking was more impaired than a matched spatial memory…

The Owner's Manual for the Brain: Everyday Applications from Mind-Brain Research. Second Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Pierce J.

This book discusses what is known about the brain and memory storage and how people can improve their recall of information. There are 10 parts with 37 chapters. Part 1, "Forming a Foundation: The Context for Using Your Owner's Manual," includes topics like brain basics and brain imaging. Part 2, "Wellness: Getting the Most Out of…

Narrative as a Window to the Inner Mental World of Young Children: Attachment Representations, Affect and Memory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Priddis, Lynn E.; Howieson, Noel D.

2010-01-01

This article describes a procedure which has proven useful in facilitating narratives about experience of everyday family situations in order to provide insights into the inner world of children around five-seven years. The Windows to Attachment in Young Children (WAYC) consists of the procedure itself and scoring frameworks through which the…

Memory and Kindergarten Teachers' Work: Children's Needs before the Needs of the Socialist State

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Millei, Zsuzsa

2013-01-01

More than 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, scholars and educators continue to engage with histories under socialism and re-evaluate the consequences of those education systems for everyday lives then and in the present. This article develops an understanding of how kindergarten teachers understand their historical work in the socialist…

Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Bed: The Effects of Stress Anticipation on Working Memory in Daily Life.

PubMed

Hyun, Jinshil; Sliwinski, Martin J; Smyth, Joshua M

2018-05-15

The aim of this study was to examine the association between stress anticipated for the upcoming day and cognitive function later on that day, and how this relationship differed across age. A diverse adult community sample (N = 240, age 25-65 years) completed ecological momentary assessment (EMA) reports for 2 weeks on a smartphone; each day they completed a morning survey upon waking, beeped surveys at five times during a day, and an end-of-day survey. Morning and end-of-day surveys included questions to measure stress anticipation, and each beeped survey included measures of stressful events, followed by a spatial working memory (WM) task. Results from multilevel models indicated that stress anticipation reported upon waking, but not on the previous night, was associated with deficit in WM performance later that day; importantly, this effect was over and above the effect of EMA-reported stress. The detrimental effect of stress anticipation upon waking was invariant across age. These findings suggest that anticipatory processes can produce harmful effects on cognitive functioning that are independent of everyday stress experiences. This may identify an important avenue to mitigate everyday cognitive lapses among older adults.

Cognitive Correlates of Functional Abilities in Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment: Comparison of Questionnaire, Direct Observation and Performance-based Measures

PubMed Central

Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; Parsey, Carolyn M.

2014-01-01

The relationship between and the cognitive correlates of several proxy measures of functional status were studied in a population with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Participants were 51 individuals diagnosed with MCI and 51 cognitively healthy older adults (OA). Participants completed performance-based functional status tests, standardized neuropsychological tests, and performed eight activities of daily living (e.g., watered plants, filled medication dispenser) while under direct observation in a campus apartment. An informant interview about everyday functioning was also conducted. Compared to the OA control group, the MCI group performed more poorly on all proxy measures of everyday functioning. The informant-report of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) did not correlate with the two performance-based measures; however, both the informant-report IADL and the performance-based everyday problem-solving test correlated with the direct observation measure. After controlling for age and education, cognitive predictors did not explain a significant amount of variance in the performance-based measures; however, performance on a delayed memory task was a unique predictor for the informant-report IADL, and processing speed predicted unique variance for the direct observation score. These findings indicate that differing methods for evaluating functional status are not assessing completely overlapping aspects of everyday functioning in the MCI population. PMID:24766574

Cognitive correlates of functional abilities in individuals with mild cognitive impairment: comparison of questionnaire, direct observation, and performance-based measures.

PubMed

Schmitter-Edgecombe, Maureen; Parsey, Carolyn M

2014-01-01

The relationship between, and the cognitive correlates of, several proxy measures of functional status were studied in a population with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Participants were 51 individuals diagnosed with MCI and 51 cognitively healthy older adults (OA). Participants completed performance-based functional status tests and standardized neuropsychological tests, and performed eight activities of daily living (e.g., watered plants, filled medication dispenser) while under direct observation in a campus apartment. An informant interview about everyday functioning was also conducted. Compared to the OA control group, the MCI group performed more poorly on all proxy measures of everyday functioning. The informant report of instrumental activities of daily living (IADL) did not correlate with the two performance-based measures; however, both the informant-report IADL and the performance-based everyday problem-solving test correlated with the direct observation measure. After controlling for age and education, cognitive predictors did not explain a significant amount of variance in the performance-based measures; however, performance on a delayed memory task was a unique predictor for the informant-report IADL, and processing speed predicted unique variance for the direct observation score. These findings indicate that differing methods for evaluating functional status are not assessing completely overlapping aspects of everyday functioning in the MCI population.

A situation-specific approach to measure attention in adults with ADHD: The everyday life attention scale (ELAS).

PubMed

Groen, Yvonne; Fuermaier, Anselm B M; Tucha, Lara; Weisbrod, Matthias; Aschenbrenner, Steffen; Tucha, Oliver

2018-03-14

This study describes the development and utility of a new self-report measure of attentional capacities of adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD): the Everyday Life Attention Scale (ELAS). Different from previous attention scales, attentional capacities are rated for nine everyday situations. Study 1 investigated the factor structure, validity, and reliability of the ELAS in 1206 healthy participants. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a situation-specific approach which categorizes everyday attention into nine situation scales: Reading, Movie, Activity, Lecture, Conversation, Assignment, Cooking, Cleaning up, and Driving. Each scale was composed of ratings for sustained, focused, selective, and divided attention as well as motivation, and had good internal consistency. Most scales showed weak correlations with ADHD Symptoms, Executive Functioning, and Memory Efficacy. Study 2 further investigated the sensitivity of the ELAS in 80 adults with ADHD compared to matched healthy controls and a mixed clinical group of 56 patients diagnosed with other psychiatric disorders. Compared to healthy controls, patients with ADHD reported reduced attentional capacities with large effect sizes on all situation scales and had a substantially higher number of situations with impaired attention scores. The ELAS may become useful in the clinical evaluation of ADHD and related psychiatric disorders in adults.

Forgetting, Reminding, and Remembering: The Retrieval of Lost Spatial Memory

PubMed Central

Morris, Richard G. M

2004-01-01

Retrograde amnesia can occur after brain damage because this disrupts sites of storage, interrupts memory consolidation, or interferes with memory retrieval. While the retrieval failure account has been considered in several animal studies, recent work has focused mainly on memory consolidation, and the neural mechanisms responsible for reactivating memory from stored traces remain poorly understood. We now describe a new retrieval phenomenon in which rats' memory for a spatial location in a watermaze was first weakened by partial lesions of the hippocampus to a level at which it could not be detected. The animals were then reminded by the provision of incomplete and potentially misleading information—an escape platform in a novel location. Paradoxically, both incorrect and correct place information reactivated dormant memory traces equally, such that the previously trained spatial memory was now expressed. It was also established that the reminding procedure could not itself generate new learning in either the original environment, or in a new training situation. The key finding is the development of a protocol that definitively distinguishes reminding from new place learning and thereby reveals that a failure of memory during watermaze testing can arise, at least in part, from a disruption of memory retrieval. PMID:15314651

Which behaviours? Identifying the most common and burdensome behaviour changes in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

PubMed

Andrews, Sophie Claire; Pavlis, Alexia; Staios, Mathew; Fisher, Fiona

2017-04-01

Behaviour change is increasingly recognised as a common feature of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and may be similar to that seen in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The behaviours most disturbed in ALS, and those that relate most significantly to caregiver burden, however, have not been well established. Forty ALS participants and their caregivers, and 27 age- and gender-matched healthy controls and their relatives, participated in this study. ALS participants were assessed on a disease rating scale, and caregivers and control informants completed the revised version of the Cambridge Behaviour Inventory and a measure of burden. ALS caregivers reported significantly more disturbance than healthy control informants on the functional domains of everyday skills, self-care, and sleep, and in the behavioural domains of mood and motivation. There were no differences between groups in frequency of memory and orientation difficulties, or behaviours characteristic of FTD, such as changes to eating habits or stereotypic and motor behaviour, indicating that the behavioural profile in ALS may differ from FTD. In the ALS group, the domains with the strongest relationship to caregiver burden were everyday skills, motivation and memory, likely because poor motivation, memory dysfunction and difficulties completing activities of daily living require more carer support via direct supervision, prompting or hands on care. Services to support ALS patients and caregivers need to provide targeted interventions for those functional and behavioural changes which are most burdensome in the disease.

Creativity and working memory capacity in sports: working memory capacity is not a limiting factor in creative decision making amongst skilled performers.

PubMed

Furley, Philip; Memmert, Daniel

2015-01-01

The goal of the study was to investigate the relationship between domain-general working memory capacity and domain-specific creativity amongst experienced soccer players. We administered the automated operation span task in combination with a domain-specific soccer creativity task to a group of 61 experienced soccer players to address the question whether an athlete's domain-specific creativity is restricted by their domain-general cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory capacity). Given that previous studies have either found a positive correlation, a negative correlation, or no correlation between working memory capacity and creativity, we analyzed the data in an exploratory manner by following recent recommendations to report effect-size estimations and their precision in form of 95% confidence intervals. The pattern of results provided evidence that domain-general working memory capacity is not associated with creativity in a soccer-specific creativity task. This pattern of results suggests that future research and theorizing on the role of working memory in everyday creative performance needs to distinguish between different types of creative performance while also taking the role of domain-specific experience into account.

Creativity and working memory capacity in sports: working memory capacity is not a limiting factor in creative decision making amongst skilled performers

PubMed Central

Furley, Philip; Memmert, Daniel

2015-01-01

The goal of the study was to investigate the relationship between domain-general working memory capacity and domain-specific creativity amongst experienced soccer players. We administered the automated operation span task in combination with a domain-specific soccer creativity task to a group of 61 experienced soccer players to address the question whether an athlete’s domain-specific creativity is restricted by their domain-general cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory capacity). Given that previous studies have either found a positive correlation, a negative correlation, or no correlation between working memory capacity and creativity, we analyzed the data in an exploratory manner by following recent recommendations to report effect-size estimations and their precision in form of 95% confidence intervals. The pattern of results provided evidence that domain-general working memory capacity is not associated with creativity in a soccer-specific creativity task. This pattern of results suggests that future research and theorizing on the role of working memory in everyday creative performance needs to distinguish between different types of creative performance while also taking the role of domain-specific experience into account. PMID:25713552

Episodic Memories and Their Relevance for Psychoactive Drug Use and Addiction

PubMed Central

Müller, Christian P.

2013-01-01

The majority of adult people in western societies regularly consume psychoactive drugs. While this consumption is integrated in everyday life activities and controlled in most consumers, it may escalate and result in drug addiction. Non-addicted drug use requires the systematic establishment of highly organized behaviors, such as drug-seeking and -taking. While a significant role for classical and instrumental learning processes is well established in drug use and abuse, declarative drug memories have largely been neglected in research. Episodic memories are an important part of the declarative memories. Here a role of episodic drug memories in the establishment of non-addicted drug use and its transition to addiction is suggested. In relation to psychoactive drug consumption, episodic drug memories are formed when a person prepares for consumption, when the drug is consumed and, most important, when acute effects, withdrawal, craving, and relapse are experienced. Episodic drug memories are one-trial memories with emotional components that can be much stronger than “normal” episodic memories. Their establishment coincides with drug-induced neuronal activation and plasticity. These memories may be highly extinction resistant and influence psychoactive drug consumption, in particular during initial establishment and at the transition to “drug instrumentalization.” In that, understanding how addictive drugs interact with episodic memory circuits in the brain may provide crucial information for how drug use and addiction are established. PMID:23734106

Episodic memories and their relevance for psychoactive drug use and addiction.

PubMed

Müller, Christian P

2013-01-01

The majority of adult people in western societies regularly consume psychoactive drugs. While this consumption is integrated in everyday life activities and controlled in most consumers, it may escalate and result in drug addiction. Non-addicted drug use requires the systematic establishment of highly organized behaviors, such as drug-seeking and -taking. While a significant role for classical and instrumental learning processes is well established in drug use and abuse, declarative drug memories have largely been neglected in research. Episodic memories are an important part of the declarative memories. Here a role of episodic drug memories in the establishment of non-addicted drug use and its transition to addiction is suggested. In relation to psychoactive drug consumption, episodic drug memories are formed when a person prepares for consumption, when the drug is consumed and, most important, when acute effects, withdrawal, craving, and relapse are experienced. Episodic drug memories are one-trial memories with emotional components that can be much stronger than "normal" episodic memories. Their establishment coincides with drug-induced neuronal activation and plasticity. These memories may be highly extinction resistant and influence psychoactive drug consumption, in particular during initial establishment and at the transition to "drug instrumentalization." In that, understanding how addictive drugs interact with episodic memory circuits in the brain may provide crucial information for how drug use and addiction are established.

False Memories Seconds Later: The Rapid and Compelling Onset of Illusory Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Flegal, Kristin E.; Atkins, Alexandra S.; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A.

2010-01-01

Distortions of long-term memory (LTM) in the converging associates task are thought to arise from semantic associative processes and monitoring failures due to degraded verbatim and/or contextual memory. Sensory-based coding is traditionally considered more prevalent than meaning-based coding in short-term memory (STM), whereas the converse is…

Referential communication in children with autism spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Dahlgren, Svenolof; Sandberg, Annika Dahlgren

2008-07-01

Referential communication was studied in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) including children with autism and Asperger syndrome. The aim was to study alternative explanations for the children's communicative problems in such situations. Factors studied were theory of mind, IQ, verbal ability and memory. The main results demonstrated diminished performance in children with autism spectrum disorder, mirroring performance in everyday life, in comparison to verbal IQ and mental age matched typically developing children. Among children with autism spectrum disorders, there was a positive relationship between performance in referential communication and theory of mind. Memory capacity also proved to play a role in success in the task.

Heart failure patients' attitudes, beliefs, expectations and experiences of self-management strategies: a qualitative synthesis.

PubMed

Wingham, Jennifer; Harding, Geoff; Britten, Nicky; Dalal, Hayes

2014-06-01

To develop a model of heart failure patients' attitudes, beliefs, expectations, and experiences based on published qualitative research that could influence the development of self-management strategies. A synthesis of 19 qualitative research studies using the method of meta-ethnography. This synthesis offers a conceptual model of the attitudes, beliefs, and expectations of patients with heart failure. Patients experienced a sense of disruption before developing a mental model of heart failure. Patients' reactions included becoming a strategic avoider, a selective denier, a well-intentioned manager, or an advanced self-manager. Patients responded by forming self-management strategies and finally assimilated the strategies into everyday life seeking to feel safe. This conceptual model suggests that there are a range of interplaying factors that facilitate the process of developing self-management strategies. Interventions should take into account patients' concepts of heart failure and their subsequent reactions.

Cognitive Processes that Account for Mental Addition Fluency Differences between Children Typically Achieving in Arithmetic and Children At-Risk for Failure in Arithmetic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berg, Derek H.; Hutchinson, Nancy L.

2010-01-01

This study investigated whether processing speed, short-term memory, and working memory accounted for the differential mental addition fluency between children typically achieving in arithmetic (TA) and children at-risk for failure in arithmetic (AR). Further, we drew attention to fluency differences in simple (e.g., 5 + 3) and complex (e.g., 16 +…

The ADRA2B gene in the production of false memories for affective information in healthy female volunteers.

PubMed

Fairfield, Beth; Mammarella, Nicola; Di Domenico, Alberto; D'Aurora, Marco; Stuppia, Liborio; Gatta, Valentina

2017-08-30

False memories are common memory distortions in everyday life and seem to increase with affectively connoted complex information. In line with recent studies showing a significant interaction between the noradrenergic system and emotional memory, we investigated whether healthy volunteer carriers of the deletion variant of the ADRA2B gene that codes for the α2b-adrenergic receptor are more prone to false memories than non-carriers. In this study, we collected genotype data from 212 healthy female volunteers; 91 ADRA2B carriers and 121 non-carriers. To assess gene effects on false memories for affective information, factorial mixed model analysis of variances (ANOVAs) were conducted with genotype as the between-subjects factor and type of memory error as the within-subjects factor. We found that although carriers and non-carriers made comparable numbers of false memory errors, they showed differences in the direction of valence biases, especially for inferential causal errors. Specifically, carriers produced fewer causal false memory errors for scripts with a negative outcome, whereas non-carriers showed a more general emotional effect and made fewer causal errors with both positive and negative outcomes. These findings suggest that putatively higher levels of noradrenaline in deletion carriers may enhance short-term consolidation of negative information and lead to fewer memory distortions when facing negative events. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A short cut to the past: Cueing via concrete objects improves autobiographical memory retrieval in Alzheimer's disease patients.

PubMed

Kirk, Marie; Berntsen, Dorthe

2018-02-01

Older adults diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) have difficulties accessing autobiographical memories. However, this deficit tends to spare memories dated to earlier parts of their lives, and may partially reflect retrieval deficits rather than complete memory loss. Introducing a novel paradigm, the present study examines whether autobiographical memory recall can be improved in AD by manipulating the sensory richness, concreteness and cultural dating of the memory cues. Specifically, we examine whether concrete everyday objects historically dated to the participants' youth (e.g., a skipping rope), relative to verbal cues (i.e., the verbal signifiers for the objects) facilitate access to autobiographical memories. The study includes 49 AD patients, and 50 healthy, older matched control participants, all tested on word versus object-cued recall. Both groups recalled significantly more memories, when cued by objects relative to words, but the advantage was significantly larger in the AD group. In both groups, memory descriptions were longer and significantly more episodic in nature in response to object-cued recall. Together these findings suggest that the multimodal nature of the object cues (i.e. vision, olfaction, audition, somatic sensation) along with specific cue characteristics, such as time reference, texture, shape, may constrain the retrieval search, potentially minimizing executive function demands, and hence strategic processing requirements, thus easing access to autobiographical memories in AD. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Prospective memory training in older adults and its relevance for successful aging.

PubMed

Hering, Alexandra; Rendell, Peter G; Rose, Nathan S; Schnitzspahn, Katharina M; Kliegel, Matthias

2014-11-01

In research on cognitive plasticity, two training approaches have been established: (1) training of strategies to improve performance in a given task (e.g., encoding strategies to improve episodic memory performance) and (2) training of basic cognitive processes (e.g., working memory, inhibition) that underlie a range of more complex cognitive tasks (e.g., planning) to improve both the training target and the complex transfer tasks. Strategy training aims to compensate or circumvent limitations in underlying processes, while process training attempts to augment or to restore these processes. Although research on both approaches has produced some promising findings, results are still heterogeneous and the impact of most training regimes for everyday life is unknown. We, therefore, discuss recent proposals of training regimes aiming to improve prospective memory (i.e., forming and realizing delayed intentions) as this type of complex cognition is highly relevant for independent living. Furthermore, prospective memory is associated with working memory and executive functions and age-related decline is widely reported. We review initial evidence suggesting that both training regimes (i.e., strategy and/or process training) can successfully be applied to improve prospective memory. Conceptual and methodological implications of the findings for research on age-related prospective memory and for training research in general are discussed.

Errorless learning of prospective memory tasks: An experimental investigation in people with memory disorders

PubMed Central

Fish, Jessica E.; Manly, Tom; Kopelman, Michael D.; Morris, Robin G.

2015-01-01

The term prospective memory (PM) refers to memory for future intentions. PM problems are frequent in people with cognitive impairment and, because they are central to the realisation of many everyday goals, are important in rehabilitation. Event-based PM tasks (EBPM) are environmentally-cued and have primarily mnemonic demands, whereas time-based PM tasks (TBPM) require self-initiated retrieval, and have greater executive demands. Errorless learning (EL) is an encoding method that results in superior retrospective memory compared with “errorful” learning (EF). As this EL advantage (ELA) likely stems from its reduced explicit memory demands, and there is no such advantage for executive tasks, a greater ELA for EBPM than TBPM was predicted. Fourteen adults with neurological memory impairment completed PM tasks under four counterbalanced conditions: EL of EBPM, EL of TBPM, EF of EBPM, and EF of TBPM. A significant ELA was observed for EBPM (d = .63), but not TBPM (d = –.01). These results extend the evidence for EL within cognitive rehabilitation, by showing for the first time that the method can benefit future action in addition to retrospective memory. The clinical implications are also clear: errorless learning techniques may be usefully employed to support completion of day-to-day EBPM tasks. PMID:24894460

What people know about electronic devices: A descriptive study

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kieras, D. E.

1982-10-01

Informal descriptive results on the nature of people's natural knowledge of electronic devices are presented. Expert and nonexpert subjects were given an electronic device to examine and describe orally. The devices ranged from familiar everyday devices, to those familiar only to the expert, to unusual devices unfamiliar even to an expert. College students were asked to describe everyday devices from memory. The results suggest that device knowledge consists of the major categories of what the device is for, how it is used, its structure in terms of subdevices, its physical layout, how it works, and its behavior. A preliminary theoretical framework for device knowledge is that it consists of a hierarchy of schemas, corresponding to a hierarchial decomposition of the device into subdevices, with each level containing the major categories of information.

Differential learning and memory performance in OEF/OIF veterans for verbal and visual material.

PubMed

Sozda, Christopher N; Muir, James J; Springer, Utaka S; Partovi, Diana; Cole, Michael A

2014-05-01

Memory complaints are particularly salient among veterans who experience combat-related mild traumatic brain injuries and/or trauma exposure, and represent a primary barrier to successful societal reintegration and everyday functioning. Anecdotally within clinical practice, verbal learning and memory performance frequently appears differentially reduced versus visual learning and memory scores. We sought to empirically investigate the robustness of a verbal versus visual learning and memory discrepancy and to explore potential mechanisms for a verbal/visual performance split. Participants consisted of 103 veterans with reported history of mild traumatic brain injuries returning home from U.S. military Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom referred for outpatient neuropsychological evaluation. Findings indicate that visual learning and memory abilities were largely intact while verbal learning and memory performance was significantly reduced in comparison, residing at approximately 1.1 SD below the mean for verbal learning and approximately 1.4 SD below the mean for verbal memory. This difference was not observed in verbal versus visual fluency performance, nor was it associated with estimated premorbid verbal abilities or traumatic brain injury history. In our sample, symptoms of depression, but not posttraumatic stress disorder, were significantly associated with reduced composite verbal learning and memory performance. Verbal learning and memory performance may benefit from targeted treatment of depressive symptomatology. Also, because visual learning and memory functions may remain intact, these might be emphasized when applying neurocognitive rehabilitation interventions to compensate for observed verbal learning and memory difficulties.

Cultural Development through the Interaction between Education, the Community, and Society at Large. Contributions of Education to Cultural Development.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Engstrom, K.

Museums play an important role in the transmission of culture and traditions and provide a collective memory of a community. A number of museum related institutions, known as the Science Centra, have arisen to offer self-directed learning activities in problem solving and understanding the processes related to everyday life. In a modern society,…

Effectiveness of Working Memory Training among Subjects Currently on Sick Leave Due to Complex Symptoms.

PubMed

Aasvik, Julie K; Woodhouse, Astrid; Stiles, Tore C; Jacobsen, Henrik B; Landmark, Tormod; Glette, Mari; Borchgrevink, Petter C; Landrø, Nils I

2016-01-01

Introduction: The current study examined if adaptive working memory training (Cogmed QM) has the potential to improve inhibitory control, working memory capacity, and perceptions of memory functioning in a group of patients currently on sick leave due to symptoms of pain, insomnia, fatigue, depression and anxiety. Participants who were referred to a vocational rehabilitation center volunteered to take part in the study. Methods: Participants were randomly assigned to either a training condition ( N = 25) or a control condition ( N = 29). Participants in the training condition received working memory training in addition to the clinical intervention offered as part of the rehabilitation program, while participants in the control condition received treatment as usual i.e., the rehabilitation program only. Inhibitory control was measured by The Stop Signal Task, working memory was assessed by the Spatial Working Memory Test, while perceptions of memory functioning were assessed by The Everyday Memory Questionnaire-Revised. Results: Participants in the training group showed a significant improvement on the post-tests of inhibitory control when compared with the comparison group ( p = 0.025). The groups did not differ on the post-tests of working memory. Both groups reported less memory problems at post-testing, but there was no sizeable difference between the two groups. Conclusions: Results indicate that working memory training does not improve general working memory capacity per se . Nor does it seem to give any added effects in terms of targeting and improving self-perceived memory functioning. Results do, however, provide evidence to suggest that inhibitory control is accessible and susceptible to modification by adaptive working memory training.

Benefits of computer-based memory and attention training in healthy older adults.

PubMed

Chambon, Caroline; Herrera, Cathy; Romaiguere, Patricia; Paban, Véronique; Alescio-Lautier, Béatrice

2014-09-01

Multifactorial cognitive training programs have a positive effect on cognition in healthy older adults. Among the age-sensitive cognitive domains, episodic memory is the most affected. In the present study, we evaluated the benefits on episodic memory of a computer-based memory and attention training. We targeted consciously controlled processes at encoding and minimizing processing at retrieval, by using more familiarity than recollection during recognition. Such an approach emphasizes processing at encoding and prevents subjects from reinforcing their own errors. Results showed that the training improved recognition performances and induced near transfer to recall. The largest benefits, however, were for tasks with high mental load. Improvement in free recall depended on the modality to recall; semantic recall was improved but not spatial recall. In addition, a far transfer was also observed with better memory self-perception and self-esteem of the participants. Finally, at 6-month follow up, maintenance of benefits was observed only for semantic free recall. The challenge now is to corroborate far transfer by objective measures of everyday life executive functioning. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

The Apple of the mind's eye: Everyday attention, metamemory, and reconstructive memory for the Apple logo.

PubMed

Blake, Adam B; Nazarian, Meenely; Castel, Alan D

2015-01-01

People are regularly bombarded with logos in an attempt to improve brand recognition, and logos are often designed with the central purpose of memorability. The ubiquitous Apple logo is a simple design and is often referred to as one of the most recognizable logos in the world. The present study examined recall and recognition for this simple and pervasive logo and to what degree metamemory (confidence judgements) match memory performance. Participants showed surprisingly poor memory for the details of the logo as measured through recall (drawings) and forced-choice recognition. Only 1 participant out of 85 correctly recalled the Apple logo, and fewer than half of all participants correctly identified the logo. Importantly, participants indicated higher levels of confidence for both recall and recognition, and this overconfidence was reduced if participants made the judgements after, rather than before, drawing the logo. The general findings did not differ between Apple and PC users. The results provide novel support for theories of attentional saturation, inattentional amnesia, and reconstructive memory; additionally they show how an availability heuristic can lead to overconfidence in memory for logos.

Health-care encounters create both discontinuity and continuity in daily life when living with chronic heart failure-A grounded theory study.

PubMed

Östman, Malin; Ung, Eva Jakobsson; Falk, Kristin

2015-01-01

Living with chronic heart failure (CHF) often involves lifelong contact with health care, more or less frequently, depending on fluctuating health-generating disruptions in everyday life. To reduce the influence on continuity in life, health-care professionals should preferably focus on supporting patients in managing their daily lives, based on their perspective. The aim of this study was to describe how the interaction in health-care encounters contributes to either continuity or discontinuity in the daily life for persons with CHF. Interviews with 18 participants were carried out, using the grounded theory method, through data collection and analysis. Two core concepts were constructed from data which reveal a model that illuminates the characteristics of the encounters, the actions of health-care professionals and the normative discourse. Patient-centred agenda consists of the categories: "Experiencing a subordinate approach," "Objectifying during the encounter" and "Expected to be compliant." This describes how health-care professionals enhance discontinuity in daily life by using a paternalistic approach in the encounter. Person-centred agenda consists of the categories: "Experiencing an empowering approach," "Person-centredness during the encounter" and "Expected to be capable." It describes how participants perceive that health-care professionals enable them to deal with everyday life which enhances continuity. The findings highlight the importance of health-care professionals' attitudes and communication in encounters with patients. Health care must be designed to support and promote patients' own strategic thinking by strengthening their self-image to enhance continuity in everyday life. The experience of discontinuity is based on the prevailing health-care culture which focuses on disease and medical treatment and regards it as superior to the illness experience in an everyday life context. We therefore strongly suggest a paradigm shift in the health-care organisation and culture in order to support the patients in their efforts to live a meaningful, rich life, in spite of the chronic illness CHF.

Comprehension and retrieval of failure cases in airborne observatories

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Alvarado, Sergio J.; Mock, Kenrick J.

1995-01-01

This paper describes research dealing with the computational problem of analyzing and repairing failures of electronic and mechanical systems of telescopes in NASA's airborne observatories, such as KAO (Kuiper Airborne Observatory) and SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy). The research has resulted in the development of an experimental system that acquires knowledge of failure analysis from input text, and answers questions regarding failure detection and correction. The system's design builds upon previous work on text comprehension and question answering, including: knowledge representation for conceptual analysis of failure descriptions, strategies for mapping natural language into conceptual representations, case-based reasoning strategies for memory organization and indexing, and strategies for memory search and retrieval. These techniques have been combined into a model that accounts for: (a) how to build a knowledge base of system failures and repair procedures from descriptions that appear in telescope-operators' logbooks and FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) manuals; and (b) how to use that knowledge base to search and retrieve answers to questions about causes and effects of failures, as well as diagnosis and repair procedures. This model has been implemented in FANSYS (Failure ANalysis SYStem), a prototype text comprehension and question answering program for failure analysis.

Comprehension and retrieval of failure cases in airborne observatories

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alvarado, Sergio J.; Mock, Kenrick J.

1995-05-01

This paper describes research dealing with the computational problem of analyzing and repairing failures of electronic and mechanical systems of telescopes in NASA's airborne observatories, such as KAO (Kuiper Airborne Observatory) and SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy). The research has resulted in the development of an experimental system that acquires knowledge of failure analysis from input text, and answers questions regarding failure detection and correction. The system's design builds upon previous work on text comprehension and question answering, including: knowledge representation for conceptual analysis of failure descriptions, strategies for mapping natural language into conceptual representations, case-based reasoning strategies for memory organization and indexing, and strategies for memory search and retrieval. These techniques have been combined into a model that accounts for: (a) how to build a knowledge base of system failures and repair procedures from descriptions that appear in telescope-operators' logbooks and FMEA (failure modes and effects analysis) manuals; and (b) how to use that knowledge base to search and retrieve answers to questions about causes and effects of failures, as well as diagnosis and repair procedures. This model has been implemented in FANSYS (Failure ANalysis SYStem), a prototype text comprehension and question answering program for failure analysis.

HIV-associated Prospective Memory Impairment Increases Risk of Dependence in Everyday Functioning

PubMed Central

Woods, Steven Paul; Iudicello, Jennifer E.; Moran, Lisa M.; Carey, Catherine L.; Dawson, Matthew S.; Grant, Igor

2007-01-01

HIV infection is associated with impairments in prospective memory (ProM), an aspect of episodic memory that refers to the ability to execute a future intention, such as remembering to take a medication at a specific time. The current study sought to examine the relationship between HIV-associated ProM impairment and the successful management of independent activities of daily living (IADLs). In a cohort of 66 HIV-infected individuals, ProM accounted for a significant proportion of variance in self-reported IADL dependence over and above that which was explained by retrospective memory and current affective distress. Analysis of component cognitive processes revealed that the relationship between HIV-associated ProM deficits and IADL dependence was driven by impaired cue detection and self-initiated intention retrieval. Results were not better explained by demographic factors, HIV disease severity, psychiatric comorbidity, or substance use. Collectively, these data support the potential incremental ecological validity of ProM as a predictor of dependence in IADLs among persons living with HIV infection. PMID:18211160

Emotional working memory capacity in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

PubMed Central

Schweizer, Susanne; Dalgleish, Tim

2011-01-01

Participants with a lifetime history of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and trauma-exposed controls with no PTSD history completed an emotional working memory capacity (eWMC) task. The task required them to remember lists of neutral words over short intervals while simultaneously processing sentences describing dysfunctional trauma-related thoughts (relative to neutral control sentences). The task was designed to operationalise an everyday cognitive challenge for those with mental health problems such as PTSD; namely, the ability to carry out simple, routine tasks with emotionally benign material, while at the same time tackling emotional laden intrusive thoughts and feelings. eWMC performance, indexed as the ability to remember the word lists in the context of trauma sentences, relative to neutral sentences, was poorer overall in the PTSD group compared with controls, suggestive of a particular difficulty employing working memory in emotion-related contexts in those with a history of PTSD. The possible implications for developing affective working memory training as an adjunctive treatment for PTSD are explored. PMID:21684525

A selective egocentric topographical working memory deficit in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease: a preliminary study.

PubMed

Bianchini, F; Di Vita, A; Palermo, L; Piccardi, L; Blundo, C; Guariglia, C

2014-12-01

The aim of this study was to determine whether an egocentric topographical working memory (WM) deficit is present in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease (AD) with respect to other forms of visuospatial WM. Further, we would investigate whether this deficit could be present in patients having AD without topographical disorientation (TD) signs in everyday life assessed through an informal interview to caregivers. Seven patients with AD and 20 healthy participants performed the Walking Corsi Test and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test. The former test requires memorizing a sequence of places by following a path and the latter is a well-known visuospatial memory task. Patients with AD also performed a verbal WM test to exclude the presence of general WM impairments. Preliminary results suggest that egocentric topographical WM is selectively impaired, with respect to visuospatial and verbal WM, even without TD suggesting an important role of this memory in the early stages of AD. © The Author(s) 2014.

Mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation.

PubMed

Lagner, Prune; Kliegel, Matthias; Phillips, Louise H; Ihle, Andreas; Hering, Alexandra; Ballhausen, Nicola; Schnitzspahn, Katharina M

2015-01-01

In the laboratory, studies have shown an inconsistent pattern of whether, and how, mood may affect cognitive functions indicating both mood-related enhancement as well as decline. Surprisingly, little is known about whether there are similar effects in everyday life. Hence, the present study aimed to investigate possible mood effects on memory and executive control in a real-life situation. Mood effects were examined in the context of winning in a sports competition. Sixty-one male handball players were tested with an extensive cognitive test battery (comprising memory and executive control) both after winning a match and after training as neutral baseline. Mood differed significantly between the two testing situations, while physiological arousal and motivation were comparable. Results showed lowered performance after the win compared with training in selected cognitive measures. Specifically, short-term and episodic memory performance was poorer following a win, whereas executive control performance was unaffected by condition. Differences in memory disappeared when emotional states after the match were entered as covariates into the initial analyses. Thus, findings suggest mood-related impairments in memory, but not in executive control processes after a positive real-life event.

Tactile Object Familiarity in the Blind Brain Reveals the Supramodal Perceptual-Mnemonic Nature of the Perirhinal Cortex

PubMed Central

Cacciamani, Laura; Likova, Lora T.

2016-01-01

This study is the first to investigate the neural underpinnings of tactile object familiarity in the blind during both perception and memory. In the sighted, the perirhinal cortex (PRC) has been implicated in the assessment of visual object familiarity—a crucial everyday task—as evidenced by reduced activation when an object becomes familiar. Here, to examine the PRC’s role in tactile object familiarity in the absence of vision, we trained blind participants on a unique memory-guided drawing technique and measured brain activity while they perceptually explored raised-line drawings, drew them from tactile memory, and scribbled (control). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after a week of training revealed a significant decrease in PRC activation from pre- to post-training (i.e., from unfamiliar to familiar) during perceptual exploration as well as memory-guided drawing, but not scribbling. This familiarity-based reduction is the first evidence that the PRC represents tactile object familiarity in the blind. Furthermore, the finding of this effect during both tactile perception and tactile memory provides the critical link in establishing the PRC as a structure whose representations are supramodal for both perception and memory. PMID:27148002

Sensor technology more than a support.

PubMed

Olsson, Anna; Persson, Ann-Christine; Bartfai, Aniko; Boman, Inga-Lill

2018-03-01

This interview study is a part of a project that evaluated sensor technology as a support in everyday activities for patients with memory impairment. To explore patients with memory impairment and their partners' experiences of using sensor technology in their homes. Five patients with memory impairment after stroke and three partners were interviewed. Individual semi-structured interviews were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. Installing sensor technology with individually prerecorded voice reminders as memory support in the home had a broad impact on patients' and their families' lives. These effects were both positive and negative. The sensor technology not only supported activities but also influenced the patients by changing behavior, providing a sense of security, independence and increased self-confidence. For the partners, the sensor technology eased daily life, but also gave increased responsibility for maintenance. Technical problems led to frustration and stress for the patients. The results indicate that sensor technology has potential to increase opportunities for persons with memory impairment to perform and participate in activities and to unburden their partners. The results may promote an understanding of how sensor technology can be used to support persons with memory impairment in their homes.

False Memories for Affective Information in Schizophrenia.

PubMed

Fairfield, Beth; Altamura, Mario; Padalino, Flavia A; Balzotti, Angela; Di Domenico, Alberto; Mammarella, Nicola

2016-01-01

Studies have shown a direct link between memory for emotionally salient experiences and false memories. In particular, emotionally arousing material of negative and positive valence enhanced reality monitoring compared to neutral material since emotional stimuli can be encoded with more contextual details and thereby facilitate the distinction between presented and imagined stimuli. Individuals with schizophrenia appear to be impaired in both reality monitoring and memory for emotional experiences. However, the relationship between the emotionality of the to-be-remembered material and false memory occurrence has not yet been studied. In this study, 24 patients and 24 healthy adults completed a false memory task with everyday episodes composed of 12 photographs that depicted positive, negative, or neutral outcomes. Results showed how patients with schizophrenia made a higher number of false memories than normal controls ( p  < 0.05) when remembering episodes with positive or negative outcomes. The effect of valence was apparent in the patient group. For example, it did not affect the production causal false memories ( p  > 0.05) resulting from erroneous inferences but did interact with plausible, script consistent errors in patients (i.e., neutral episodes yielded a higher degree of errors than positive and negative episodes). Affective information reduces the probability of generating causal errors in healthy adults but not in patients suggesting that emotional memory impairments may contribute to deficits in reality monitoring in schizophrenia when affective information is involved.

False Memories for Affective Information in Schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Fairfield, Beth; Altamura, Mario; Padalino, Flavia A.; Balzotti, Angela; Di Domenico, Alberto; Mammarella, Nicola

2016-01-01

Studies have shown a direct link between memory for emotionally salient experiences and false memories. In particular, emotionally arousing material of negative and positive valence enhanced reality monitoring compared to neutral material since emotional stimuli can be encoded with more contextual details and thereby facilitate the distinction between presented and imagined stimuli. Individuals with schizophrenia appear to be impaired in both reality monitoring and memory for emotional experiences. However, the relationship between the emotionality of the to-be-remembered material and false memory occurrence has not yet been studied. In this study, 24 patients and 24 healthy adults completed a false memory task with everyday episodes composed of 12 photographs that depicted positive, negative, or neutral outcomes. Results showed how patients with schizophrenia made a higher number of false memories than normal controls (p < 0.05) when remembering episodes with positive or negative outcomes. The effect of valence was apparent in the patient group. For example, it did not affect the production causal false memories (p > 0.05) resulting from erroneous inferences but did interact with plausible, script consistent errors in patients (i.e., neutral episodes yielded a higher degree of errors than positive and negative episodes). Affective information reduces the probability of generating causal errors in healthy adults but not in patients suggesting that emotional memory impairments may contribute to deficits in reality monitoring in schizophrenia when affective information is involved. PMID:27965600

Transactive memory systems scale for couples: development and validation

PubMed Central

Hewitt, Lauren Y.; Roberts, Lynne D.

2015-01-01

People in romantic relationships can develop shared memory systems by pooling their cognitive resources, allowing each person access to more information but with less cognitive effort. Research examining such memory systems in romantic couples largely focuses on remembering word lists or performing lab-based tasks, but these types of activities do not capture the processes underlying couples’ transactive memory systems, and may not be representative of the ways in which romantic couples use their shared memory systems in everyday life. We adapted an existing measure of transactive memory systems for use with romantic couples (TMSS-C), and conducted an initial validation study. In total, 397 participants who each identified as being a member of a romantic relationship of at least 3 months duration completed the study. The data provided a good fit to the anticipated three-factor structure of the components of couples’ transactive memory systems (specialization, credibility and coordination), and there was reasonable evidence of both convergent and divergent validity, as well as strong evidence of test–retest reliability across a 2-week period. The TMSS-C provides a valuable tool that can quickly and easily capture the underlying components of romantic couples’ transactive memory systems. It has potential to help us better understand this intriguing feature of romantic relationships, and how shared memory systems might be associated with other important features of romantic relationships. PMID:25999873

Memory Overview - Technologies and Needs

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

LaBel, Kenneth A.

2010-01-01

As NASA has evolved it's usage of spaceflight computing, memory applications have followed as well. In this talk, we will discuss the history of NASA's memories from magnetic core and tape recorders to current semiconductor approaches. We will briefly describe current functional memory usage in NASA space systems followed by a description of potential radiation-induced failure modes along with considerations for reliable system design.

The Failure of Memory: Reflections on Rhetoric and Public Remembrance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Phillips, Kendall R.

2010-01-01

The rapid growth of public memory studies in the field of rhetoric suggests the need to reflect upon the ways in which the practices of rhetoric and the notion of memory intersect. In this essay, I trace the intersection between memory and rhetoric back to the works of Plato and Aristotle. These early works suggest that one reason for attending to…

Self-reported and informant-reported memory functioning and awareness in patients with mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer´s disease.

PubMed

Silva, Martina Rios; Moser, Doris; Pflüger, Melanie; Pusswald, Gisela; Stögmann, Elisabeth; Dal-Bianco, Peter; Auff, Eduard; Lehrner, Johann

2016-06-01

Awareness of subjective memory is an important factor for adequate treatment of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). This study served to find out whether awareness of subjective memory complies with objective performance, if differences in awareness are observed longitudinally and whether decrease of awareness can serve as a predictor of AD in MCI patients. Thirty-four patients with MCI seeking help in a memory outpatient clinic were included. All participants underwent thorough neuropsychological examination. Awareness of subjective memory was obtained by calculating difference scores between patient and informant ratings on a 16-item questionnaire concerning complaints about loss of memory in every-day life. Retesting was performed after a mean follow-up period of 24 months. Whole group analyses showed that awareness remained relatively stable across time. Self-reported memory complaints correlated with episodic memory at baseline and with performance on a language task at follow-up. Retests displayed decrease of awareness. At group level differences in awareness between both times of assessment were not significant for MCI and MCI patients converting to mild AD at follow-up. The predictive value of awareness was low. Awareness of subjective memory deficit is linked to episodic memory function and decreases with decline of cognitive ability. Further studies evaluating predictive power of awareness of subjective memory should include a larger patient sample.

[Prospective memory - concepts, methods of assessment, neuroanatomical bases and its deficits in mental disorders].

PubMed

Wiłkość, Monika; Izdebski, Paweł; Zajac-Lamparska, Ludmiła

2013-01-01

In the last two decades of the last century there has been a shift in the studies on memory. In psychology of memory the criticism of the laboratory approach resulted in development of the ecological approach. One of the effects of this change was to initiate researches on memory that includes plans for the future, which has resulted in the distinction of the concept of prospective memory. Prospective memory is used in many aspects of everyday life. It deals with remembering intentions and plans, it is connected with remembering about specific task or activity in the future. There are three types of PM: event-based prospective memory, time-based prospective memory and activity-based prospective memory. Current research in this field have already established its own paradigm and tools measuring PM and there is still increasing scientific interest in this issue. Prospective memory assessment may be carried out in various ways. Among them, the most frequently used are: a) questionnaires, b) psychological tests, c) experimental procedures. Within the latter, the additional distinction can be introduced for: the experiments conducted under natural conditions and the laboratory procedures. In Polish literature, there are only a few articles on PM. The aim of this work is to review studies on assessment methods of PM. Its neuroanatomical bases and its functioning in different mental disorders are analyzed. The work is aimed to focus clinicians attention on prospective memory as an area which is important for complex diagnosis of cognitive processes.

Mini-Ckpts: Surviving OS Failures in Persistent Memory

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Fiala, David; Mueller, Frank; Ferreira, Kurt Brian

Concern is growing in the high-performance computing (HPC) community on the reliability of future extreme-scale systems. Current efforts have focused on application fault-tolerance rather than the operating system (OS), despite the fact that recent studies have suggested that failures in OS memory are more likely. The OS is critical to a system's correct and efficient operation of the node and processes it governs -- and in HPC also for any other nodes a parallelized application runs on and communicates with: Any single node failure generally forces all processes of this application to terminate due to tight communication in HPC. Therefore,more » the OS itself must be capable of tolerating failures. In this work, we introduce mini-ckpts, a framework which enables application survival despite the occurrence of a fatal OS failure or crash. Mini-ckpts achieves this tolerance by ensuring that the critical data describing a process is preserved in persistent memory prior to the failure. Following the failure, the OS is rejuvenated via a warm reboot and the application continues execution effectively making the failure and restart transparent. The mini-ckpts rejuvenation and recovery process is measured to take between three to six seconds and has a failure-free overhead of between 3-5% for a number of key HPC workloads. In contrast to current fault-tolerance methods, this work ensures that the operating and runtime system can continue in the presence of faults. This is a much finer-grained and dynamic method of fault-tolerance than the current, coarse-grained, application-centric methods. Handling faults at this level has the potential to greatly reduce overheads and enables mitigation of additional fault scenarios.« less

Endogenous-cue prospective memory involving incremental updating of working memory: an fMRI study.

PubMed

Halahalli, Harsha N; John, John P; Lukose, Ammu; Jain, Sanjeev; Kutty, Bindu M

2015-11-01

Prospective memory paradigms are conventionally classified on the basis of event-, time-, or activity-based intention retrieval. In the vast majority of such paradigms, intention retrieval is provoked by some kind of external event. However, prospective memory retrieval cues that prompt intention retrieval in everyday life are commonly endogenous, i.e., linked to a specific imagined retrieval context. We describe herein a novel prospective memory paradigm wherein the endogenous cue is generated by incremental updating of working memory, and investigated the hemodynamic correlates of this task. Eighteen healthy adult volunteers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a prospective memory task where the delayed intention was triggered by an endogenous cue generated by incremental updating of working memory. Working memory and ongoing task control conditions were also administered. The 'endogenous-cue prospective memory condition' with incremental working memory updating was associated with maximum activations in the right rostral prefrontal cortex, and additional activations in the brain regions that constitute the bilateral fronto-parietal network, central and dorsal salience networks as well as cerebellum. In the working memory control condition, maximal activations were noted in the left dorsal anterior insula. Activation of the bilateral dorsal anterior insula, a component of the central salience network, was found to be unique to this 'endogenous-cue prospective memory task' in comparison to previously reported exogenous- and endogenous-cue prospective memory tasks without incremental working memory updating. Thus, the findings of the present study highlight the important role played by the dorsal anterior insula in incremental working memory updating that is integral to our endogenous-cue prospective memory task.

Meritocracy, Deficit Thinking and the Invisibility of the System: Discourses on Educational Success and Failure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clycq, Noel; Nouwen, M. A. Ward; Vandenbroucke, Anneloes

2014-01-01

Socio-ethnic stratification and segregation processes present in Flemish society are reflected in the everyday school environment. Pupils with a different socio-ethnic background than the dominant majority and middle class seem to be confronted with a lot of difficulties in this school system. The dominant meritocratic discourse frequently applies…

Appetitive Pavlovian Goal-Tracking Memories Reconsolidate Only under Specific Conditions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reichelt, Amy C.; Lee, Jonathan L. C.

2013-01-01

Despite extensive evidence that appetitive memories undergo reconsolidation, two notable failures to observe reconsolidation have been reported: instrumental responding and goal-tracking. However, these studies do not provide conclusive evidence for a lack of memory reconsolidation due to the numerous boundary conditions that dictate whether a…

Self-care confidence may be more important than cognition to influence self-care behaviors in adults with heart failure: Testing a mediation model.

PubMed

Vellone, Ercole; Pancani, Luca; Greco, Andrea; Steca, Patrizia; Riegel, Barbara

2016-08-01

Cognitive impairment can reduce the self-care abilities of heart failure patients. Theory and preliminary evidence suggest that self-care confidence may mediate the relationship between cognition and self-care, but further study is needed to validate this finding. The aim of this study was to test the mediating role of self-care confidence between specific cognitive domains and heart failure self-care. Secondary analysis of data from a descriptive study. Three out-patient sites in Pennsylvania and Delaware, USA. A sample of 280 adults with chronic heart failure, 62 years old on average and mostly male (64.3%). Data on heart failure self-care and self-care confidence were collected with the Self-Care of Heart Failure Index 6.2. Data on cognition were collected by trained research assistants using a neuropsychological test battery measuring simple and complex attention, processing speed, working memory, and short-term memory. Sociodemographic data were collected by self-report. Clinical information was abstracted from the medical record. Mediation analysis was performed with structural equation modeling and indirect effects were evaluated with bootstrapping. Most participants had at least 1 impaired cognitive domain. In mediation models, self-care confidence consistently influenced self-care and totally mediated the relationship between simple attention and self-care and between working memory and self-care (comparative fit index range: .929-.968; root mean squared error of approximation range: .032-.052). Except for short-term memory, which had a direct effect on self-care maintenance, the other cognitive domains were unrelated to self-care. Self-care confidence appears to be an important factor influencing heart failure self-care even in patients with impaired cognition. As few studies have successfully improved cognition, interventions addressing confidence should be considered as a way to improve self-care in this population. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Comparing the benefits of caffeine, naps and placebo on verbal, motor and perceptual memory.

PubMed

Mednick, Sara C; Cai, Denise J; Kanady, Jennifer; Drummond, Sean P A

2008-11-03

Caffeine, the world's most common psychoactive substance, is used by approximately 90% of North Americans everyday. Little is known, however, about its benefits for memory. Napping has been shown to increase alertness and promote learning on some memory tasks. We directly compared caffeine (200mg) with napping (60-90min) and placebo on three distinct memory processes: declarative verbal memory, procedural motor skills, and perceptual learning. In the verbal task, recall and recognition for unassociated words were tested after a 7h retention period (with a between-session nap or drug intervention). A second, different, word list was administered post-intervention and memory was tested after a 20min retention period. The non-declarative tasks (finger tapping task (FTT) and texture discrimination task (TDT)) were trained before the intervention and then retested afterwards. Naps enhanced recall of words after a 7h and 20min retention interval relative to both caffeine and placebo. Caffeine significantly impaired motor learning compared to placebo and naps. Napping produced robust perceptual learning compared with placebo; however, naps and caffeine were not significantly different. These findings provide evidence of the limited benefits of caffeine for memory improvement compared with napping. We hypothesize that impairment from caffeine may be restricted to tasks that contain explicit information; whereas strictly implicit learning is less compromised.

The effects of acute hypoglycaemia on memory acquisition and recall and prospective memory in type 1 diabetes.

PubMed

Warren, R E; Zammitt, N N; Deary, I J; Frier, B M

2007-01-01

Global memory performance is impaired during acute hypoglycaemia. This study assessed whether moderate hypoglycaemia disrupts learning and recall in isolation, and utilised a novel test of prospective memory which may better reflect the role of memory in daily life than conventional tests. Thirty-six subjects with type 1 diabetes participated, 20 with normal hypoglycaemia awareness (NHA) and 16 with impaired hypoglycaemia awareness (IHA). Each underwent a hypoglycaemic clamp with target blood glucose 2.5 mmol/l. Prior to hypoglycaemia, subjects attempted to memorise instructions for a prospective memory task, and recall was assessed during hypoglycaemia. Subjects then completed the learning and immediate recall stages of three conventional memory tasks (word recall, story recall, visual recall) during hypoglycaemia. Euglycaemia was restored and delayed memory for the conventional tasks was tested. The same procedures were completed in euglycaemic control studies (blood glucose 4.5 mmol/l). Hypoglycaemia impaired performance significantly on the prospective memory task (p = 0.004). Hypoglycaemia also significantly impaired both immediate and delayed recall for the word and story recall tasks (p < 0.01 in each case). There was no significant deterioration of performance on the visual memory task. The effect of hypoglycaemia did not differ significantly between subjects with NHA and IHA. Impaired performance on the prospective memory task during hypoglycaemia demonstrates that recall is disrupted by hypoglycaemia. Impaired performance on the conventional memory tasks demonstrates that learning is also disrupted by hypoglycaemia. Results of the prospective memory task support the relevance of these findings to the everyday lives of people with diabetes.

Does working memory capacity predict cross-modally induced failures of awareness?

PubMed

Kreitz, Carina; Furley, Philip; Simons, Daniel J; Memmert, Daniel

2016-01-01

People often fail to notice unexpected stimuli when they are focusing attention on another task. Most studies of this phenomenon address visual failures induced by visual attention tasks (inattentional blindness). Yet, such failures also occur within audition (inattentional deafness), and people can even miss unexpected events in one sensory modality when focusing attention on tasks in another modality. Such cross-modal failures are revealing because they suggest the existence of a common, central resource limitation. And, such central limits might be predicted from individual differences in cognitive capacity. We replicated earlier evidence, establishing substantial rates of inattentional deafness during a visual task and inattentional blindness during an auditory task. However, neither individual working memory capacity nor the ability to perform the primary task predicted noticing in either modality. Thus, individual differences in cognitive capacity did not predict failures of awareness even though the failures presumably resulted from central resource limitations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Katti, Amogh; Di Fatta, Giuseppe; Naughton, Thomas

Future extreme-scale high-performance computing systems will be required to work under frequent component failures. The MPI Forum s User Level Failure Mitigation proposal has introduced an operation, MPI Comm shrink, to synchronize the alive processes on the list of failed processes, so that applications can continue to execute even in the presence of failures by adopting algorithm-based fault tolerance techniques. This MPI Comm shrink operation requires a failure detection and consensus algorithm. This paper presents three novel failure detection and consensus algorithms using Gossiping. The proposed algorithms were implemented and tested using the Extreme-scale Simulator. The results show that inmore » all algorithms the number of Gossip cycles to achieve global consensus scales logarithmically with system size. The second algorithm also shows better scalability in terms of memory and network bandwidth usage and a perfect synchronization in achieving global consensus. The third approach is a three-phase distributed failure detection and consensus algorithm and provides consistency guarantees even in very large and extreme-scale systems while at the same time being memory and bandwidth efficient.« less

The heterogeneity and natural history of mild cognitive impairment of visual memory predominant type.

PubMed

Ye, Byoung Seok; Chin, Juhee; Kim, Seong Yoon; Lee, Jung-Sun; Kim, Eun-Joo; Lee, Yunhwan; Hong, Chang Hyung; Choi, Seong Hye; Park, Kyung Won; Ku, Bon D; Moon, So Young; Kim, SangYun; Han, Seol-Hee; Lee, Jae-Hong; Cheong, Hae-Kwan; Park, Sun Ah; Jeong, Jee Hyang; Na, Duk L; Seo, Sang Won

2015-01-01

We evaluate the longitudinal outcomes of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) according to the modality of memory impairment involved. We recruited 788 aMCI patients and followed them up. aMCI patients were categorized into three groups according to the modality of memory impairment: Visual-aMCI, only visual memory impaired; Verbal-aMCI, only verbal memory impaired; and Both-aMCI, both visual and verbal memory impaired. Each aMCI group was further categorized according to the presence or absence of recognition failure. Risk of progression to dementia was compared with pooled logistic regression analyses while controlling for age, gender, education, and interval from baseline. Of the sample, 219 (27.8%) aMCI patients progressed to dementia. Compared to the Visual-aMCI group, Verbal-aMCI (OR = 1.98, 95% CI = 1.19-3.28, p = 0.009) and Both-aMCI (OR = 3.05, 95% CI = 1.97-4.71, p < 0.001) groups exhibited higher risks of progression to dementia. Memory recognition failure was associated with increased risk of progression to dementia only in the Visual-aMCI group, but not in the Verbal-aMCI and Both-aMCI groups. The Visual-aMCI without recognition failure group were subcategorized into aMCI with depression, small vessel disease, or accelerated aging, and these subgroups showed a variety of progression rates. Our findings underlined the importance of heterogeneous longitudinal outcomes of aMCI, especially Visual-aMCI, for designing and interpreting future treatment trials in aMCI.

Thermo-mechanical behavior and structure of melt blown shape-memory polyurethane nonwovens.

PubMed

Safranski, David L; Boothby, Jennifer M; Kelly, Cambre N; Beatty, Kyle; Lakhera, Nishant; Frick, Carl P; Lin, Angela; Guldberg, Robert E; Griffis, Jack C

2016-09-01

New processing methods for shape-memory polymers allow for tailoring material properties for numerous applications. Shape-memory nonwovens have been previously electrospun, but melt blow processing has yet to be evaluated. In order to determine the process parameters affecting shape-memory behavior, this study examined the effect of air pressure and collector speed on the mechanical behavior and shape-recovery of shape-memory polyurethane nonwovens. Mechanical behavior was measured by dynamic mechanical analysis and tensile testing, and shape-recovery was measured by unconstrained and constrained recovery. Microstructure changes throughout the shape-memory cycle were also investigated by micro-computed tomography. It was found that increasing collector speed increases elastic modulus, ultimate strength and recovery stress of the nonwoven, but collector speed does not affect the failure strain or unconstrained recovery. Increasing air pressure decreases the failure strain and increases rubbery modulus and unconstrained recovery, but air pressure does not influence recovery stress. It was also found that during the shape-memory cycle, the connectivity density of the fibers upon recovery does not fully return to the initial values, accounting for the incomplete shape-recovery seen in shape-memory nonwovens. With these parameter to property relationships identified, shape-memory nonwovens can be more easily manufactured and tailored for specific applications. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Liver failure due to antithyroid drugs: report of a case and literature review.

PubMed

Livadas, Sarantis; Xyrafis, Xenofon; Economou, Frangiskos; Boutzios, Georgios; Christou, Maria; Zerva, Aristea; Karachalios, Athanasios; Palioura, Helen; Palimeri, Sotiria; Diamanti-Kandarakis, Evanthia

2010-08-01

Hyperthyroidism is a common endocrine disorder affecting 2% of females and 0.5% of males worldwide and antithyroid drugs constitute the first line of treatment in the majority of cases. These agents may cause severe adverse effects and among them liver failure, although rare, is a potential lethal one. This case illustrates the sudden and abrupt deterioration of hepatic function due to antithyroid drug administration. This case along with a concise literature review is presented aiming to increase the awareness of endocrinologists of possible fatal complications from the everyday use of common agents such as antithyroid drugs.

A new kid on the block: The Memory Validity Profile (MVP) in children with neurological conditions.

PubMed

Brooks, Brian L; Fay-McClymont, Taryn B; MacAllister, William S; Vasserman, Marsha; Sherman, Elisabeth M S

2018-06-06

Determining the validity of obtained data is an inherent part of a neuropsychological assessment. The purpose of this study was investigate the failure rate of the Memory Validity Profile (MVP) in a large clinical sample of children and adolescents with neurological diagnoses. Data were obtained from 261 consecutive patients (mean age = 12.0, SD = 3.9, range = 5-19) who were referred for a neuropsychological assessment in a tertiary care pediatric hospital and were administered the MVP. In this sample, 4.6% of youth failed the MVP. Mean administration time for the MVP was 7.4 min, although time to complete was not associated with failure rates. Failure rates were held relatively consistent at approximately 5% across age ranges, diagnoses, and psychomotor processing speed abilities. Having very low, below normal, or above normal intellectual abilities did not alter failure rate on the MVP. However, those with intellectual disability (i.e., IQ<70) had a higher fail rate at 12% on MVP Total Score, but only 6% on the MVP Visual portion. Failure rates on the MVP were associated with lower scores on memory tests. This study provides support for using the MVP in children as young as 5 years with neurological diagnoses.

A new approach to the characterization of subtle errors in everyday action: implications for mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Seligman, Sarah C; Giovannetti, Tania; Sestito, John; Libon, David J

2014-01-01

Mild functional difficulties have been associated with early cognitive decline in older adults and increased risk for conversion to dementia in mild cognitive impairment, but our understanding of this decline has been limited by a dearth of objective methods. This study evaluated the reliability and validity of a new system to code subtle errors on an established performance-based measure of everyday action and described preliminary findings within the context of a theoretical model of action disruption. Here 45 older adults completed the Naturalistic Action Test (NAT) and neuropsychological measures. NAT performance was coded for overt errors, and subtle action difficulties were scored using a novel coding system. An inter-rater reliability coefficient was calculated. Validity of the coding system was assessed using a repeated-measures ANOVA with NAT task (simple versus complex) and error type (overt versus subtle) as within-group factors. Correlation/regression analyses were conducted among overt NAT errors, subtle NAT errors, and neuropsychological variables. The coding of subtle action errors was reliable and valid, and episodic memory breakdown predicted subtle action disruption. Results suggest that the NAT can be useful in objectively assessing subtle functional decline. Treatments targeting episodic memory may be most effective in addressing early functional impairment in older age.

Cognitive Strategy Use and Measured Numeric Ability in Immediate- and Long-Term Recall of Everyday Numeric Information

PubMed Central

Bermingham, Douglas; Hill, Robert D.; Woltz, Dan; Gardner, Michael K.

2013-01-01

The goals of this study were to assess the primary effects of the use of cognitive strategy and a combined measure of numeric ability on recall of every-day numeric information (i.e. prices). Additionally, numeric ability was assessed as a moderator in the relationship between strategy use and memory for prices. One hundred participants memorized twelve prices that varied from 1 to 6 digits; they recalled these immediately and after 7 days. The use of strategies, assessed through self-report, was associated with better overall recall, but not forgetting. Numeric ability was not associated with either better overall recall or forgetting. A small moderating interaction was found, in which higher levels of numeric ability enhanced the beneficial effects of strategy use on overall recall. Exploratory analyses found two further small moderating interactions: simple strategy use enhanced overall recall at higher levels of numeric ability, compared to complex strategy use; and complex strategy use was associated with lower levels of forgetting, but only at higher levels of numeric ability, compared to the simple strategy use. These results provide support for an objective measure of numeric ability, as well as adding to the literature on memory and the benefits of cognitive strategy use. PMID:23483964

Cognitive strategy use and measured numeric ability in immediate- and long-term recall of everyday numeric information.

PubMed

Bermingham, Douglas; Hill, Robert D; Woltz, Dan; Gardner, Michael K

2013-01-01

The goals of this study were to assess the primary effects of the use of cognitive strategy and a combined measure of numeric ability on recall of every-day numeric information (i.e. prices). Additionally, numeric ability was assessed as a moderator in the relationship between strategy use and memory for prices. One hundred participants memorized twelve prices that varied from 1 to 6 digits; they recalled these immediately and after 7 days. The use of strategies, assessed through self-report, was associated with better overall recall, but not forgetting. Numeric ability was not associated with either better overall recall or forgetting. A small moderating interaction was found, in which higher levels of numeric ability enhanced the beneficial effects of strategy use on overall recall. Exploratory analyses found two further small moderating interactions: simple strategy use enhanced overall recall at higher levels of numeric ability, compared to complex strategy use; and complex strategy use was associated with lower levels of forgetting, but only at higher levels of numeric ability, compared to the simple strategy use. These results provide support for an objective measure of numeric ability, as well as adding to the literature on memory and the benefits of cognitive strategy use.

Epidemic failure detection and consensus for extreme parallelism

DOE PAGES

Katti, Amogh; Di Fatta, Giuseppe; Naughton, Thomas; ...

2017-02-01

Future extreme-scale high-performance computing systems will be required to work under frequent component failures. The MPI Forum s User Level Failure Mitigation proposal has introduced an operation, MPI Comm shrink, to synchronize the alive processes on the list of failed processes, so that applications can continue to execute even in the presence of failures by adopting algorithm-based fault tolerance techniques. This MPI Comm shrink operation requires a failure detection and consensus algorithm. This paper presents three novel failure detection and consensus algorithms using Gossiping. The proposed algorithms were implemented and tested using the Extreme-scale Simulator. The results show that inmore » all algorithms the number of Gossip cycles to achieve global consensus scales logarithmically with system size. The second algorithm also shows better scalability in terms of memory and network bandwidth usage and a perfect synchronization in achieving global consensus. The third approach is a three-phase distributed failure detection and consensus algorithm and provides consistency guarantees even in very large and extreme-scale systems while at the same time being memory and bandwidth efficient.« less

Structural violence in Afghanistan: gendered memory, narratives, and food.

PubMed

Dossa, Parin

2013-01-01

Afghanistan has been subject to political amnesia by the occupying powers of the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies. Using the Taliban as a reference point, they have ensured that they are not implicated in the everyday and structural violence to which the people of Afghanistan have been subject over the past three decades. But Afghan women remember. Based on my ethnographic research in Kabul (in fall 2008 and 2009), I show how women in Afghanistan engage in memory work through narratives and food preparation within spaces of devastation. I argue that through these mediums, structural violence becomes knowable. I also argue that memory work is a politicized enterprise through which people remember to seek justice, in the process evoking the attention of a listening audience. This focus fosters a conversation on how the anthropology of violence can engage with issues of representation and engaged accountability.

Low working memory capacity is only spuriously related to poor reading comprehension.

PubMed

Van Dyke, Julie A; Johns, Clinton L; Kukona, Anuenue

2014-06-01

Accounts of comprehension failure, whether in the case of readers with poor skill or when syntactic complexity is high, have overwhelmingly implicated working memory capacity as the key causal factor. However, extant research suggests that this position is not well supported by evidence on the span of active memory during online sentence processing, nor is it well motivated by models that make explicit claims about the memory mechanisms that support language processing. The current study suggests that sensitivity to interference from similar items in memory may provide a better explanation of comprehension failure. Through administration of a comprehensive skill battery, we found that the previously observed association of working memory with comprehension is likely due to the collinearity of working memory with many other reading-related skills, especially IQ. In analyses which removed variance shared with IQ, we found that receptive vocabulary knowledge was the only significant predictor of comprehension performance in our task out of a battery of 24 skill measures. In addition, receptive vocabulary and non-verbal memory for serial order-but not simple verbal memory or working memory-were the only predictors of reading times in the region where interference had its primary affect. We interpret these results in light of a model that emphasizes retrieval interference and the quality of lexical representations as key determinants of successful comprehension. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Subjective memory complaints in patients with epilepsy: The role of depression, psychological distress, and attentional functions.

PubMed

Grewe, P; Nikstat, A; Koch, O; Koch-Stoecker, S; Bien, C G

2016-11-01

While objective memory dysfunctions have been thoroughly investigated in patients with epilepsy, assessment of subjective memory complaints (SMC) remains challenging. Former studies have demonstrated an impact of patients' depressive mood on SMC. However, the impact of more general psychological distress and cognitive functioning in non-memory domains on SMC has only received little attention so far. We therefore sought to determine the factors which may particularly predict SMC in a sample of patients with focal epilepsy (n=99) who accomplished (1) a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment, (2) a subjective memory questionnaire, and (3) scales of self-rated depressive mood and psychological distress. General psychological distress (as measured by the Symptom Checklist- 90-Revised) accounted for a high proportion of SMC and, critically, explained more variance than depressive mood as a single factor (as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory II). Furthermore, SMC were predicted by recall measures of a verbal serial learning task, but also by measures of attention, importantly. Hence, our data firstly indicate that beyond the impact of depressive mood, SMC may be more accurately explained by psychological distress in a more general sense. Secondly, our study provides evidence that patients' estimation of subjective memory is not solely based on functioning in memory domains. Attentional resources may also be critical for patients' perception of everyday memory functioning. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cognitive Deficits Underlying Error Behavior on a Naturalistic Task after Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

PubMed Central

Hendry, Kathryn; Ownsworth, Tamara; Beadle, Elizabeth; Chevignard, Mathilde P.; Fleming, Jennifer; Griffin, Janelle; Shum, David H. K.

2016-01-01

People with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) often make errors on everyday tasks that compromise their safety and independence. Such errors potentially arise from the breakdown or failure of multiple cognitive processes. This study aimed to investigate cognitive deficits underlying error behavior on a home-based version of the Cooking Task (HBCT) following TBI. Participants included 45 adults (9 females, 36 males) with severe TBI aged 18–64 years (M = 37.91, SD = 13.43). Participants were administered the HBCT in their home kitchens, with audiovisual recordings taken to enable scoring of total errors and error subtypes (Omissions, Additions, Estimations, Substitutions, Commentary/Questions, Dangerous Behavior, Goal Achievement). Participants also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests, including the Trail Making Test, Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised, Digit Span, Zoo Map test, Modified Stroop Test, and Hayling Sentence Completion Test. After controlling for cooking experience, greater Omissions and Estimation errors, lack of goal achievement, and longer completion time were significantly associated with poorer attention, memory, and executive functioning. These findings indicate that errors on naturalistic tasks arise from deficits in multiple cognitive domains. Assessment of error behavior in a real life setting provides insight into individuals' functional abilities which can guide rehabilitation planning and lifestyle support. PMID:27790099

Why Is Test-Restudy Practice Beneficial for Memory? An Evaluation of the Mediator Shift Hypothesis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pyc, Mary A.; Rawson, Katherine A.

2012-01-01

Although the memorial benefits of testing are well established empirically, the mechanisms underlying this benefit are not well understood. The authors evaluated the mediator shift hypothesis, which states that test-restudy practice is beneficial for memory because retrieval failures during practice allow individuals to evaluate the effectiveness…

Individualized Theory of Mind (iToM): When Memory Modulates Empathy

PubMed Central

Ciaramelli, Elisa; Bernardi, Francesco; Moscovitch, Morris

2013-01-01

Functional neuroimaging studies have noted that brain regions supporting theory of mind (ToM) overlap remarkably with those underlying episodic memory, suggesting a link between the two processes. The present study shows that memory for others’ past experiences modulates significantly our appraisal of, and reaction to, what is happening to them currently. Participants read the life story of two characters; one had experienced a long series of love-related failures, the other a long series of work-related failures. In a later faux pas recognition task, participants reported more empathy for the character unlucky in love in love-related faux pas scenarios, and for the character unlucky at work in work-related faux pas scenarios. The memory-based modulation of empathy correlated with the number of details remembered from the characters’ life story. These results suggest that individuals use memory for other people’s past experiences to simulate how they feel in similar situations they are currently facing. The integration of ToM and memory processes allows adjusting mental state inferences to fit unique social targets, constructing an individualized ToM. PMID:23378839

Soft-error tolerance and energy consumption evaluation of embedded computer with magnetic random access memory in practical systems using computer simulations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nebashi, Ryusuke; Sakimura, Noboru; Sugibayashi, Tadahiko

2017-08-01

We evaluated the soft-error tolerance and energy consumption of an embedded computer with magnetic random access memory (MRAM) using two computer simulators. One is a central processing unit (CPU) simulator of a typical embedded computer system. We simulated the radiation-induced single-event-upset (SEU) probability in a spin-transfer-torque MRAM cell and also the failure rate of a typical embedded computer due to its main memory SEU error. The other is a delay tolerant network (DTN) system simulator. It simulates the power dissipation of wireless sensor network nodes of the system using a revised CPU simulator and a network simulator. We demonstrated that the SEU effect on the embedded computer with 1 Gbit MRAM-based working memory is less than 1 failure in time (FIT). We also demonstrated that the energy consumption of the DTN sensor node with MRAM-based working memory can be reduced to 1/11. These results indicate that MRAM-based working memory enhances the disaster tolerance of embedded computers.

Importance of balanced architectures in the design of high-performance imaging systems

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sgro, Joseph A.; Stanton, Paul C.

1999-03-01

Imaging systems employed in demanding military and industrial applications, such as automatic target recognition and computer vision, typically require real-time high-performance computing resources. While high- performances computing systems have traditionally relied on proprietary architectures and custom components, recent advances in high performance general-purpose microprocessor technology have produced an abundance of low cost components suitable for use in high-performance computing systems. A common pitfall in the design of high performance imaging system, particularly systems employing scalable multiprocessor architectures, is the failure to balance computational and memory bandwidth. The performance of standard cluster designs, for example, in which several processors share a common memory bus, is typically constrained by memory bandwidth. The symptom characteristic of this problem is failure to the performance of the system to scale as more processors are added. The problem becomes exacerbated if I/O and memory functions share the same bus. The recent introduction of microprocessors with large internal caches and high performance external memory interfaces makes it practical to design high performance imaging system with balanced computational and memory bandwidth. Real word examples of such designs will be presented, along with a discussion of adapting algorithm design to best utilize available memory bandwidth.

Memory and the Moses illusion: failures to detect contradictions with stored knowledge yield negative memorial consequences.

PubMed

Bottoms, Hayden C; Eslick, Andrea N; Marsh, Elizabeth J

2010-08-01

Although contradictions with stored knowledge are common in daily life, people often fail to notice them. For example, in the Moses illusion, participants fail to notice errors in questions such as "How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark?" despite later showing knowledge that the Biblical reference is to Noah, not Moses. We examined whether error prevalence affected participants' ability to detect distortions in questions, and whether this in turn had memorial consequences. Many of the errors were overlooked, but participants were better able to catch them when they were more common. More generally, the failure to detect errors had negative memorial consequences, increasing the likelihood that the errors were used to answer later general knowledge questions. Methodological implications of this finding are discussed, as it suggests that typical analyses likely underestimate the size of the Moses illusion. Overall, answering distorted questions can yield errors in the knowledge base; most importantly, prior knowledge does not protect against these negative memorial consequences.

Knowledge representation and user interface concepts to support mixed-initiative diagnosis

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sobelman, Beverly H.; Holtzblatt, Lester J.

1989-01-01

The Remote Maintenance Monitoring System (RMMS) provides automated support for the maintenance and repair of ModComp computer systems used in the Launch Processing System (LPS) at Kennedy Space Center. RMMS supports manual and automated diagnosis of intermittent hardware failures, providing an efficient means for accessing and analyzing the data generated by catastrophic failure recovery procedures. This paper describes the design and functionality of the user interface for interactive analysis of memory dump data, relating it to the underlying declarative representation of memory dumps.

PTSD symptom severity relates to cognitive and psycho-social dysfunctioning – a study with Congolese refugees in Uganda

PubMed Central

Ainamani, Herbert E.; Elbert, Thomas; Olema, David K.; Hecker, Tobias

2017-01-01

ABSTRACT Background: In the ongoing conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), civilians have been heavily exposed to traumatic stressors. Traumatizing experiences cumulatively heighten the risk for trauma-related disorders, and with it affect cognitive and psycho-social functioning. Objectives: We aimed at investigating the association between trauma-related disorders and cognitive and psycho-social functioning and hypothesized that PTSD symptom severity would negatively correlate with executive functioning, working memory and psycho-social functioning in everyday life. Method: In total, 323 Congolese refugees (mean age: 31.3 years) who arrived in the Ugandan Nakivale refugee settlement after January 2012 were assessed regarding their exposure to traumatic events, PTSD symptom severity (posttraumatic symptom scale interview), executive functioning (Tower of London), working memory performance (Corsi block tapping task) and psycho-social dysfunctioning (Luo functioning scale). Results: Hierarchical regression analyses indicated a significant negative association between PTSD symptom severity and working memory (β = –0.32, p < 0.001), as well as executive functions (β = –0.19, p = 0.003). Furthermore, the impairment of psycho-social functioning in everyday life was positively related with PTSD symptom severity (β = 0.70, p < 0.001), and negatively with executive functioning (β = –0.15, p = 0.003). However, working memory performance was not significantly related to psycho-social dysfunctioning (β = 0.09, p > 0.05). Conclusion: Trauma survivors not only suffer from the core PTSD symptoms but also from impaired cognitive functioning. PTSD symptom severity seems furthermore to be related to impaired psycho-social functioning. Our findings suggest that trauma-related mental health problems may heighten the risk for poverty and lack of prospect and further aggravate the consequences of war and conflict. PMID:28326164

19 CFR 354.5 - Report of violation and investigation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2011 CFR

2011-04-01

... which the data were obtained by burning or shredding of the documents or by erasing electronic memory, computer disk, or tape memory, as set forth in the administrative protective order. (5) Failure to delete...

19 CFR 354.5 - Report of violation and investigation.

Code of Federal Regulations, 2010 CFR

2010-04-01

... which the data were obtained by burning or shredding of the documents or by erasing electronic memory, computer disk, or tape memory, as set forth in the administrative protective order. (5) Failure to delete...

Predicting Day-to-Day Changes in Students' School-Related Affect from Daily Academic Experiences and Social Interactions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altermatt, Ellen Rydell

2015-01-01

This study examined the role that everyday academic successes and failures--and the interactions with family members and peers that follow these events--play in predicting day-to-day changes in children's emotional responses to school. Middle school students (N = 101; mean age = 11.62 years) completed daily assessments of their academic…

Memory function and supportive technology

PubMed Central

Charness, Neil; Best, Ryan; Souders, Dustin

2013-01-01

Episodic and working memory processes show pronounced age-related decline, with other memory processes such as semantic, procedural, and metamemory less affected. Older adults tend to complain the most about prospective and retrospective memory failures. We introduce a framework for deciding how to mitigate memory decline using augmentation and substitution and discuss techniques that change the user, through mnemonics training, and change the tool or environment, by providing environmental support. We provide examples of low-tech and high-tech memory supports and discuss constraints on the utility of high-tech systems including effectiveness of devices, attitudes toward memory aids, and reliability of systems. PMID:24379752

Specificity rates for non-clinical, bilingual, Mexican Americans on three popular performance validity measures.

PubMed

Gasquoine, Philip G; Weimer, Amy A; Amador, Arnoldo

2017-04-01

To measure specificity as failure rates for non-clinical, bilingual, Mexican Americans on three popular performance validity measures: (a) the language format Reliable Digit Span; (b) visual-perceptual format Test of Memory Malingering; and (c) visual-perceptual format Dot Counting, using optimal/suboptimal effort cut scores developed for monolingual, English-speakers. Participants were 61 consecutive referrals, aged between 18 and 65 years, with <16 years of education who were subjectively bilingual (confirmed via formal assessment) and chose the language of assessment, Spanish or English, for the performance validity tests. Failure rates were 38% for Reliable Digit Span, 3% for the Test of Memory Malingering, and 7% for Dot Counting. For Reliable Digit Span, the failure rates for Spanish (46%) and English (31%) languages of administration did not differ significantly. Optimal/suboptimal effort cut scores derived for monolingual English-speakers can be used with Spanish/English bilinguals when using the visual-perceptual format Test of Memory Malingering and Dot Counting. The high failure rate for Reliable Digit Span suggests it should not be used as a performance validity measure with Spanish/English bilinguals, irrespective of the language of test administration, Spanish or English.

The use of cue familiarity during retrieval failure is affected by past versus future orientation.

PubMed

Cleary, Anne M

2015-01-01

Cue familiarity that is brought on by cue resemblance to memory representations is useful for judging the likelihood of a past occurrence with an item that fails to actually be retrieved from memory. The present study examined the extent to which this type of resemblance-based cue familiarity is used in future-oriented judgments made during retrieval failure. Cue familiarity was manipulated using a previously-established method of creating differing degrees of feature overlap between the cue and studied items in memory, and the primary interest was in how these varying degrees of cue familiarity would influence future-oriented feeling-of-knowing (FOK) judgments given in instances of cued recall failure. The present results suggest that participants do use increases in resemblance-based cue familiarity to infer an increased likelihood of future recognition of an unretrieved target, but not to the extent that they use it to infer an increased likelihood of past experience with an unretrieved target. During retrieval failure, the increase in future-oriented FOK judgments with increasing cue familiarity was significantly less than the increase in past-oriented recognition judgments with increasing cue familiarity.

Sleep for cognitive enhancement.

PubMed

Diekelmann, Susanne

2014-01-01

Sleep is essential for effective cognitive functioning. Loosing even a few hours of sleep can have detrimental effects on a wide variety of cognitive processes such as attention, language, reasoning, decision making, learning and memory. While sleep is necessary to ensure normal healthy cognitive functioning, it can also enhance performance beyond the boundaries of the normal condition. This article discusses the enhancing potential of sleep, mainly focusing on the domain of learning and memory. Sleep is known to facilitate the consolidation of memories learned before sleep as well as the acquisition of new memories to be learned after sleep. According to a widely held model this beneficial effect of sleep relies on the neuronal reactivation of memories during sleep that is associated with sleep-specific brain oscillations (slow oscillations, spindles, ripples) as well as a characteristic neurotransmitter milieu. Recent research indicates that memory processing during sleep can be boosted by (i) cueing memory reactivation during sleep; (ii) stimulating sleep-specific brain oscillations; and (iii) targeting specific neurotransmitter systems pharmacologically. Olfactory and auditory cues can be used, for example, to increase reactivation of associated memories during post-learning sleep. Intensifying neocortical slow oscillations (the hallmark of slow wave sleep (SWS)) by electrical or auditory stimulation and modulating specific neurotransmitters such as noradrenaline and glutamate likewise facilitates memory processing during sleep. With this evidence in mind, this article concludes by discussing different methodological caveats and ethical issues that should be considered when thinking about using sleep for cognitive enhancement in everyday applications.

False memory and importance: can we prioritize encoding without consequence?

PubMed

Bui, Dung C; Friedman, Michael C; McDonough, Ian M; Castel, Alan D

2013-10-01

Given the large amount of information that we encounter, we often must prioritize what information we attempt to remember. Although critical for everyday functioning, relatively little research has focused on how people prioritize the encoding of information. Recent research has shown that people can and do selectively remember information assigned with higher, relative to lower, importance. However, the mechanisms underlying this prioritization process and the consequences of these processes are still not well understood. In the present study, we sought to better understand these prioritization processes and whether implementing these processes comes at the cost of memory accuracy, by increasing false memories. We used a modified form of the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm, in which participants studied DRM lists, with each list paired with low, medium, or high point values. In Experiment 1, encoding higher values led to more false memories than did encoding lower values, possibly because prioritizing information enhanced relational processing among high-value words. In Experiment 2, disrupting relational processing selectively reduced false memories for high-value words. Finally, in Experiment 3, facilitating relational processing selectively increased false memories for low-value words. These findings suggest that while prioritizing information can enhance true memory, this process concomitantly increases false memories. Furthermore, the mechanism underlying these prioritization processes depends on the ability to successfully engage in relational processing. Thus, how we prioritize the encoding of incoming information can come at a cost in terms of accurate memory.

The effect of cue content on retrieval from autobiographical memory.

PubMed

Uzer, Tugba; Brown, Norman R

2017-01-01

It has long been argued that personal memories are usually generated in an effortful search process in word-cueing studies. However, recent research (Uzer, Lee, & Brown, 2012) shows that direct retrieval of autobiographical memories, in response to word cues, is common. This invites the question of whether direct retrieval phenomenon is generalizable beyond the standard laboratory paradigm. Here we investigated prevalence of direct retrieval of autobiographical memories cued by specific and individuated cues versus generic cues. In Experiment 1, participants retrieved memories in response to cues from their own life (e.g., the names of friends) and generic words (e.g., chair). In Experiment 2, participants provided their personal cues two or three months prior to coming to the lab (min: 75days; max: 100days). In each experiment, RT was measured and participants reported whether memories were directly retrieved or generated on each trial. Results showed that personal cues elicited a high rate of direct retrieval. Personal cues were more likely to elicit direct retrieval than generic word cues, and as a consequence, participants responded faster, on average, to the former than to the latter. These results challenge the constructive view of autobiographical memory and suggest that autobiographical memories consist of pre-stored event representations, which are largely governed by associative mechanisms. These demonstrations offer theoretically interesting questions such as why are we not overwhelmed with directly retrieved memories cued by everyday familiar surroundings? Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sleep for cognitive enhancement

PubMed Central

Diekelmann, Susanne

2014-01-01

Sleep is essential for effective cognitive functioning. Loosing even a few hours of sleep can have detrimental effects on a wide variety of cognitive processes such as attention, language, reasoning, decision making, learning and memory. While sleep is necessary to ensure normal healthy cognitive functioning, it can also enhance performance beyond the boundaries of the normal condition. This article discusses the enhancing potential of sleep, mainly focusing on the domain of learning and memory. Sleep is known to facilitate the consolidation of memories learned before sleep as well as the acquisition of new memories to be learned after sleep. According to a widely held model this beneficial effect of sleep relies on the neuronal reactivation of memories during sleep that is associated with sleep-specific brain oscillations (slow oscillations, spindles, ripples) as well as a characteristic neurotransmitter milieu. Recent research indicates that memory processing during sleep can be boosted by (i) cueing memory reactivation during sleep; (ii) stimulating sleep-specific brain oscillations; and (iii) targeting specific neurotransmitter systems pharmacologically. Olfactory and auditory cues can be used, for example, to increase reactivation of associated memories during post-learning sleep. Intensifying neocortical slow oscillations (the hallmark of slow wave sleep (SWS)) by electrical or auditory stimulation and modulating specific neurotransmitters such as noradrenaline and glutamate likewise facilitates memory processing during sleep. With this evidence in mind, this article concludes by discussing different methodological caveats and ethical issues that should be considered when thinking about using sleep for cognitive enhancement in everyday applications. PMID:24765066

[Early episodic memory impairments in Alzheimer's disease].

PubMed

Ergis, A-M; Eusop-Roussel, E

2008-05-01

Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) show early episodic memory impairments. Such deficits reflect specific impairments affecting one or several stages of encoding, storage and retrieval processes. However, AD patients not only have great difficulty retrieving memories and information but also suffer from distortions of memory, as intrusions and false recognitions. Intrusions can be defined as the unintentional recall of inappropriate information in a laboratory-learning tasks such as word-list recall and story recall. False recognition refers to the erroneous recognition of information that was not previously presented. The first objective of this review is to present studies from the literature that allowed a better understanding of the nature of episodic memory deficits in AD, and to examine recent research on false memories. The second part of this review is aimed at presenting recent research conducted on prospective memory (PM) in Alzheimer's disease. Prospective memory situations involve forming intentions and then realizing those intentions at some appropriate time in the future. Everyday examples of prospective memory include remembering to buy bread on the way home from work, remembering to give friends a message upon next encountering them, and remembering to take medication. Patients suffering from AD show difficulties in performing prospective tasks in daily life, according to the complaints of their care givers, and these difficulties are massively present at the first stages of the disease. Nevertheless, very few studies have been dedicated to this subject, although the evaluation of PM could be helpful for the early diagnosis of AD.

Plastic Deformation and Failure Analysis of Phase Change Random Access Memory

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang; Hongxin; Shi; Luping; Lee; Koon, Hock; Zhao; Rong; Li; Jianming; Lim; Guan, Kian; Chong; Chong, Tow

2009-04-01

Although lateral phase change random access memory (PCRAM) has attracted a lot of interest due to its simpler fabrication process and lower current compared to ovonic unified memory (OUM), it faces a problem of poor lifetime. This paper studied relation between plastic deformation and the failure of PCRAM through both experiment and simulation. OUM and lateral PCRAM incorporating Ge2Sb2Te5 were fabricated and tested. The overwriting test showed that lifetime of OUM exceeded 106 while that of lateral PCRAM was only about 100. Using atomic force microscopy (AFM), it was found that the plastic deformation after 106 overwriting reached several tens of nm for lateral PCRAM while it was negligible for OUM. The thermo-mechanical simulation results confirmed the similar results on larger plastic deformation of lateral PCRAM than that of OUM during overwriting. As plastic deformation involves of atomic bonds breaking and reforming in phase change material, the plastic deformation may be one main reason for the failure of lateral PCRAM.

Emotion, Cognition, and Behavior

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dolan, R. J.

2002-11-01

Emotion is central to the quality and range of everyday human experience. The neurobiological substrates of human emotion are now attracting increasing interest within the neurosciences motivated, to a considerable extent, by advances in functional neuroimaging techniques. An emerging theme is the question of how emotion interacts with and influences other domains of cognition, in particular attention, memory, and reasoning. The psychological consequences and mechanisms underlying the emotional modulation of cognition provide the focus of this article.

Memory Corruption Mitigations and Their Implementation Progress in Third-Party Windows Applications

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-09-01

coverage in the news, which helped the public recognize the importance of computers in everyday life and, more importantly, the challenges in securing...Media Players Winamp, VLC Media Player, Quicktime Player, iTunes, Real Player Instant Messaging Applications mIRC, Yahoo Messenger, AIM, Nimbuzz...as cell phones and tablets, may boost this ratio in the upcoming years. In such a highly connected world, it is becoming more and more challenging

Current implementation and future plans on new code architecture, programming language and user interface

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Brun, B.

1997-07-01

Computer technology has improved tremendously during the last years with larger media capacity, memory and more computational power. Visual computing with high-performance graphic interface and desktop computational power have changed the way engineers accomplish everyday tasks, development and safety studies analysis. The emergence of parallel computing will permit simulation over a larger domain. In addition, new development methods, languages and tools have appeared in the last several years.

Low working memory capacity is only spuriously related to poor reading comprehension

PubMed Central

Van Dyke, Julie A.; Johns, Clinton L.; Kukona, Anuenue

2014-01-01

Accounts of comprehension failure, whether in the case of readers with poor skill or when syntactic complexity is high, have overwhelmingly implicated working memory capacity as the key causal factor. However, extant research suggests that this position is not well supported by evidence on the span of active memory during online sentence processing, nor is it well motivated by models that make explicit claims about the memory mechanisms that support language processing. The current study suggests that sensitivity to interference from similar items in memory may provide a better explanation of comprehension failure. Through administration of a comprehensive skill battery, we found that the previously observed association of working memory with comprehension is likely due to the collinearity of working memory with many other reading-related skills, especially IQ. In analyses which removed variance shared with IQ, we found that receptive vocabulary knowledge was the only significant predictor of comprehension performance in our task out of a battery of 24 skill measures. In addition, receptive vocabulary and non-verbal memory for serial order—but not simple verbal memory or working memory—were the only predictors of reading times in the region where interference had its primary affect. We interpret these results in light of a model that emphasizes retrieval interference and the quality of lexical representations as key determinants of successful comprehension. PMID:24657820

HIV-infected persons with bipolar disorder are less aware of memory deficits than HIV-infected persons without bipolar disorder.

PubMed

Blackstone, Kaitlin; Tobin, Alexis; Posada, Carolina; Gouaux, Ben; Grant, Igor; Moore, David J; The Hiv Neurobehavioral Research Program Hnrp

2012-01-01

Episodic memory deficits are common in HIV infection and bipolar disorder, but patient insight into such deficits remains unclear. Thirty-four HIV-infected individuals without bipolar disorder (HIV+/BD-) and 47 HIV+ individuals with comorbid bipolar disorder (HIV+/BD+) were administered the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised and the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised to examine objective learning/memory functioning. Subjective memory complaints were assessed via the memory subscale of the Patient's Assessment of Own Functioning Inventory. HIV+/BD+ individuals performed poorer on tests of visual learning and visual/verbal recall than did HIV+/BD- participants (ps < .05). Memory complaints only predicted verbal learning (at a trend level, p = .10) and recall (p = .03) among the HIV+/BD- individuals. Memory complaints were not associated with memory performance within the HIV+/BD+ group (ps > .10). Memory complaints were associated with depressive symptoms in both groups (ps < 0.05). These complaints were also predictive of immunosuppression, higher unemployment, and greater dependence on activities of daily living among the HIV+/BD+ individuals (ps < .05). Awareness of memory abilities was particularly poor among HIV+/BD+ individuals (i.e., objective learning/memory did not correspond to reported complaints), which has important implications for the capacity of these individuals to engage in error-monitoring and compensatory strategies in daily life. Memory complaints are associated with depressed mood regardless of group membership. Among HIV+/BD+ individuals, these complaints may also signify worse HIV disease status and problems with everyday functioning. Clinicians and researchers should be cognizant of what these complaints indicate in order to lead treatment most effectively; use of objective neurocognitive assessments may still be warranted when working with these populations.

Retrieval Failure versus Memory Loss in Experimental Amnesia: Definitions and Processes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Ralph R.; Matzel, Louis D.

2006-01-01

For at least 40 years, there has been a recurring argument concerning the nature of experimental amnesia, with one side arguing that amnesic treatments interfere with the formation of enduring memories and the other side arguing that these treatments interfere with the expression of memories that were effectively encoded. The argument appears to…

Validity of a verbal incidental learning measure from the WAIS-IV in older adults.

PubMed

Hammers, Dustin B; Kucera, Amanda M; Card, Stephanie J; Tolle, Kathryn A; Atkinson, Taylor J; Duff, Kevin; Spencer, Robert J

2018-01-01

Incidental memory may reflect a form of learning in everyday life, although it is not consistently evaluated during standard neuropsychological evaluations. Further validation of a recently created measure of verbal Incidental Learning (IL) from the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV is necessary to understand the utility of such a measure in clinical settings. Sixty-eight adults aged 50 to 89 were recruited from a Cognitive Disorders Clinic while receiving a standard neuropsychological assessment, along with two additional measures of IL. IL-Total Score was significantly correlated with immediate and delayed memory trials from standard neuropsychological tests (rs = .43 to .73, ps < .001, ds = 0.94-2.14), with worse IL performance being associated with lower memory abilities. Participants with probable Alzheimer's disease performed worse on the IL-Total Score than participants with Mild Cognitive Impairment, t(39.997) = 5.46, p < .001, d = 1.13. Given the strong relationships between this IL task and traditional memory measures in our sample, and the discrimination of IL-Total Score performance among diagnostic groups despite its short administration time, this IL task may play a role as a measure of memory in brief cognitive evaluations.

The Role of Extrinsic Rewards and Cue-Intention Association in Prospective Memory in Young Children.

PubMed

Sheppard, Daniel Patrick; Kretschmer, Anett; Knispel, Elisa; Vollert, Bianka; Altgassen, Mareike

2015-01-01

The current study examined, for the first time, the effect of cue-intention association, as well as the effects of promised extrinsic rewards, on prospective memory in young children, aged 5-years-old (n = 39) and 7-years-old (n = 40). Children were asked to name pictures for a toy mole, whilst also having to remember to respond differently to certain target pictures (prospective memory task). The level to which the target picture was associated with the intention was manipulated across two conditions (low- or high-association) for all participants, whilst half of the participants were promised a reward for good prospective memory performance. Results showed a main effect of age, with the 7-year-olds outperforming the 5-year-olds. Furthermore, there was a main effect of reward, with those promised a reward performing better than those who were not. No effect was found for cue-association, with the participants of both age groups performing equally well in both association conditions. No significant interactions were found between any of the variables. The potentially important role of reward in young children's everyday prospective memory tasks, and possible reasons for the lack of a reflexive-associative effect, are discussed.

Future thinking improves prospective memory performance and plan enactment in older adults.

PubMed

Altgassen, Mareike; Rendell, Peter G; Bernhard, Anka; Henry, Julie D; Bailey, Phoebe E; Phillips, Louise H; Kliegel, Matthias

2015-01-01

Efficient intention formation might improve prospective memory by reducing the need for resource-demanding strategic processes during the delayed performance interval. The present study set out to test this assumption and provides the first empirical assessment of whether imagining a future action improves prospective memory performance equivalently at different stages of the adult lifespan. Thus, younger (n = 40) and older (n = 40) adults were asked to complete the Dresden Breakfast Task, which required them to prepare breakfast in accordance with a set of rules and time restrictions. All participants began by generating a plan for later enactment; however, after making this plan, half of the participants were required to imagine themselves completing the task in the future (future thinking condition), while the other half received standard instructions (control condition). As expected, overall younger adults outperformed older adults. Moreover, both older and younger adults benefited equally from future thinking instructions, as reflected in a higher proportion of prospective memory responses and more accurate plan execution. Thus, for both younger and older adults, imagining the specific visual-spatial context in which an intention will later be executed may serve as an easy-to-implement strategy that enhances prospective memory function in everyday life.

Cross-Cultural Differences in the Neural Correlates of Specific and General Recognition

PubMed Central

Paige, Laura E.; Ksander, John C.; Johndro, Hunter A.; Gutchess, Angela H.

2017-01-01

Research suggests that culture influences how people perceive the world, which extends to memory specificity, or how much perceptual detail is remembered. The present study investigated cross-cultural differences (Americans vs. East Asians) at the time of encoding in the neural correlates of specific vs. general memory formation. Participants encoded photos of everyday items in the scanner and 48 hours later completed a surprise recognition test. The recognition test consisted of same (i.e., previously seen in scanner), similar (i.e., same name, different features), or new photos (i.e., items not previously seen in scanner). For Americans compared to East Asians, we predicted greater activation in the hippocampus and right fusiform for specific memory at recognition, as these regions were implicated previously in encoding perceptual details. Results revealed that East Asians activated the left fusiform and left hippocampus more than Americans for specific vs. general memory. Follow-up analyses ruled out alternative explanations of retrieval difficulty and familiarity for this pattern of cross-cultural differences at encoding. Results overall suggest that culture should be considered as another individual difference that affects memory specificity and modulates neural regions underlying these processes. PMID:28256199

Cross-cultural differences in the neural correlates of specific and general recognition.

PubMed

Paige, Laura E; Ksander, John C; Johndro, Hunter A; Gutchess, Angela H

2017-06-01

Research suggests that culture influences how people perceive the world, which extends to memory specificity, or how much perceptual detail is remembered. The present study investigated cross-cultural differences (Americans vs East Asians) at the time of encoding in the neural correlates of specific versus general memory formation. Participants encoded photos of everyday items in the scanner and 48 h later completed a surprise recognition test. The recognition test consisted of same (i.e., previously seen in scanner), similar (i.e., same name, different features), or new photos (i.e., items not previously seen in scanner). For Americans compared to East Asians, we predicted greater activation in the hippocampus and right fusiform for specific memory at recognition, as these regions were implicated previously in encoding perceptual details. Results revealed that East Asians activated the left fusiform and left hippocampus more than Americans for specific versus general memory. Follow-up analyses ruled out alternative explanations of retrieval difficulty and familiarity for this pattern of cross-cultural differences at encoding. Results overall suggest that culture should be considered as another individual difference that affects memory specificity and modulates neural regions underlying these processes. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Spontaneous strategy use protects against visual working memory deficits in older adults infected with HIV.

PubMed

Woods, Steven Paul; Weber, Erica; Cameron, Marizela V; Dawson, Matthew S; Delano-Wood, Lisa; Bondi, Mark W; Grant, Igor

2010-12-01

Recent studies suggest that older human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected adults are at particular risk for HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND), including dementia. Deficits in attention/working memory are posited to play a central role in the development of HAND among older adults. The aim of the present study was to examine the possible protective benefits of spontaneous strategy use during a visual working memory task in 46 older and 42 younger adults infected with HIV. Results revealed a significant interaction between age and strategy use, with older adults who used a meta-cognitive strategy demonstrating superior working memory performance versus non-strategy users. This effect was not observed in the younger HIV-infected sample and was not better explained by possible confounding factors, such as education, comorbid medical conditions, or HIV disease severity. Within the older group, strategy use was associated with better executive functions and higher estimated verbal intelligence. Findings from this study suggest that working memory declines in older HIV-infected adults are moderated by the use of higher-level mnemonic strategies and may inform cognitive neurorehabilitation efforts to improve cognitive and everyday functioning outcomes in older persons living with HIV infection.

The influence of eating psychopathology on autobiographical memory specificity and social problem-solving.

PubMed

Ridout, Nathan; Matharu, Munveen; Sanders, Elizabeth; Wallis, Deborah J

2015-08-30

The primary aim was to examine the influence of subclinical disordered eating on autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) and social problem solving (SPS). A further aim was to establish if AMS mediated the relationship between eating psychopathology and SPS. A non-clinical sample of 52 females completed the autobiographical memory test (AMT), where they were asked to retrieve specific memories of events from their past in response to cue words, and the means-end problem-solving task (MEPS), where they were asked to generate means of solving a series of social problems. Participants also completed the Eating Disorders Inventory (EDI) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. After controlling for mood, high scores on the EDI subscales, particularly Drive-for-Thinness, were associated with the retrieval of fewer specific and a greater proportion of categorical memories on the AMT and with the generation of fewer and less effective means on the MEPS. Memory specificity fully mediated the relationship between eating psychopathology and SPS. These findings have implications for individuals exhibiting high levels of disordered eating, as poor AMS and SPS are likely to impact negatively on their psychological wellbeing and everyday social functioning and could represent a risk factor for the development of clinically significant eating disorders. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

The effect of normative context variability on recognition memory.

PubMed

Steyvers, Mark; Malmberg, Kenneth J

2003-09-01

According to some theories of recognition memory (e.g., S. Dennis & M. S. Humphreys, 2001), the number of different contexts in which words appear determines how memorable individual occurrences of words will be: A word that occurs in a small number of different contexts should be better recognized than a word that appears in a larger number of different contexts. To empirically test this prediction, a normative measure is developed, referred to here as context variability, that estimates the number of different contexts in which words appear in everyday life. These findings confirm the prediction that words low in context variability are better recognized (on average) than words that are high in context variability. (c) 2003 APA, all rights reserved

Improving Medication Knowledge among Older Adults with Heart Failure: A Patient-Centered Approach to Instruction Design

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morrow, Daniel G.; Weiner, Michael; Young, James; Steinley, Douglas; Deer, Melissa; Murray, Michael D.

2005-01-01

Purpose: We investigated whether patient-centered instructions for chronic heart failure medications increase comprehension and memory for medication information in older adults diagnosed with chronic heart failure. Design and Methods: Patient-centered instructions for familiar and unfamiliar medications were compared with instructions for the…

Lesion mapping of social problem solving

PubMed Central

Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick J.; Chau, Aileen; Solomon, Jeffrey; Grafman, Jordan H.

2014-01-01

Accumulating neuroscience evidence indicates that human intelligence is supported by a distributed network of frontal and parietal regions that enable complex, goal-directed behaviour. However, the contributions of this network to social aspects of intellectual function remain to be well characterized. Here, we report a human lesion study (n = 144) that investigates the neural bases of social problem solving (measured by the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory) and examine the degree to which individual differences in performance are predicted by a broad spectrum of psychological variables, including psychometric intelligence (measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), emotional intelligence (measured by the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), and personality traits (measured by the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory). Scores for each variable were obtained, followed by voxel-based lesion–symptom mapping. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that working memory, processing speed, and emotional intelligence predict individual differences in everyday problem solving. A targeted analysis of specific everyday problem solving domains (involving friends, home management, consumerism, work, information management, and family) revealed psychological variables that selectively contribute to each. Lesion mapping results indicated that social problem solving, psychometric intelligence, and emotional intelligence are supported by a shared network of frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, including white matter association tracts that bind these areas into a coordinated system. The results support an integrative framework for understanding social intelligence and make specific recommendations for the application of the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory to the study of social problem solving in health and disease. PMID:25070511

The relationship between cognitive function and life space: the potential role of personal control beliefs.

PubMed

Sartori, Andrea C; Wadley, Virginia G; Clay, Olivio J; Parisi, Jeanine M; Rebok, George W; Crowe, Michael

2012-06-01

We examined the relationship of cognitive and functional measures with life space (a measure of spatial mobility examining extent of movement within a person's environment) in older adults, and investigated the potential moderating role of personal control beliefs. Internal control beliefs reflect feelings of competence and personal agency, while attributions of external control imply a more dependent or passive point of view. Participants were 2,737 adults from the ACTIVE study, with a mean age of 74 years. Females comprised 76% of the sample, with good minority representation (27% African American). In multiple regression models controlling for demographic factors, cognitive domains of memory, reasoning, and processing speed were significantly associated with life space (p < .001 for each), and reasoning ability appeared most predictive (B = .117). Measures of everyday function also showed significant associations with life space, independent from the traditional cognitive measures. Interactions between cognitive function and control beliefs were tested, and external control beliefs moderated the relationship between memory and life space, with the combination of high objective memory and low external control beliefs yielding the highest life space (t = -2.07; p = .039). In conclusion, older adults with better cognitive function have a larger overall life space. Performance-based measures of everyday function may also be useful in assessing the functional outcome of life space. Additionally, subjective external control beliefs may moderate the relationship between objective cognitive function and life space. Future studies examining the relationships between these factors longitudinally appear worthwhile to further elucidate the interrelationships of cognitive function, control beliefs, and life space. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved

Comparing the benefits of Caffeine, Naps and Placebo on Verbal, Motor and Perceptual Memory

PubMed Central

Mednick, Sara C.; Cai, Denise J.; Kanady, Jennifer; Drummond, Sean P.A.

2008-01-01

Caffeine, the world’s most common psychoactive substance, is used by approximately 90% of North Americans everyday. Little is known, however, about its benefits for memory. Napping has been shown to increase alertness and promote learning on some memory tasks. We directly compared caffeine (200mg) with napping (60–90 minutes) and placebo on three distinct memory processes: declarative verbal memory, procedural motor skills, and perceptual learning. In the verbal task, recall and recognition for unassociated words were tested after a 7hr retention period (with a between-session nap or drug intervention). A second, different, word list was administered post-intervention and memory was tested after a 20min retention period. The non-declarative tasks (finger tapping task and texture discrimination task) were trained before the intervention and then retested afterwards. Naps enhanced recall of words after a 7hr and 20min retention interval relative to both caffeine and placebo. Caffeine significantly impaired motor learning compared to placebo and naps. Napping produced robust perceptual learning compared with placebo; however, naps and caffeine were not significantly different. These findings provide evidence of the limited benefits of caffeine for memory improvement compared with napping. We hypothesize that impairment from caffeine may be restricted to tasks that contain explicit information; whereas strictly implicit learning is less compromised. PMID:18554731

Large capacity temporary visual memory.

PubMed

Endress, Ansgar D; Potter, Mary C

2014-04-01

Visual working memory (WM) capacity is thought to be limited to 3 or 4 items. However, many cognitive activities seem to require larger temporary memory stores. Here, we provide evidence for a temporary memory store with much larger capacity than past WM capacity estimates. Further, based on previous WM research, we show that a single factor--proactive interference--is sufficient to bring capacity estimates down to the range of previous WM capacity estimates. Participants saw a rapid serial visual presentation of 5-21 pictures of familiar objects or words presented at rates of 4/s or 8/s, respectively, and thus too fast for strategies such as rehearsal. Recognition memory was tested with a single probe item. When new items were used on all trials, no fixed memory capacities were observed, with estimates of up to 9.1 retained pictures for 21-item lists, and up to 30.0 retained pictures for 100-item lists, and no clear upper bound to how many items could be retained. Further, memory items were not stored in a temporally stable form of memory but decayed almost completely after a few minutes. In contrast, when, as in most WM experiments, a small set of items was reused across all trials, thus creating proactive interference among items, capacity remained in the range reported in previous WM experiments. These results show that humans have a large-capacity temporary memory store in the absence of proactive interference, and raise the question of whether temporary memory in everyday cognitive processing is severely limited, as in WM experiments, or has the much larger capacity found in the present experiments.

Using the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB) to assess the cognitive impact of electroconvulsive therapy on visual and visuospatial memory.

PubMed

Falconer, D W; Cleland, J; Fielding, S; Reid, I C

2010-06-01

The cognitive impact of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is rarely measured systematically in everyday clinical practice even though patient and clinician acceptance is limited by its adverse affect on memory. If patients are tested it is often with simple paper and pencil tests of visual or verbal memory. There are no reported studies of computerized neuropsychological testing to assess the cognitive impact of ECT on visuospatial memory. Twenty-four patients with severe depression were treated with a course of bilateral ECT and assessed with a battery of visual memory tests within the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). These included spatial and pattern recognition memory, pattern-location associative learning and a delayed matching to sample test. Testing was carried out before ECT, during ECT, within the week after ECT and 1 month after ECT. Patients showed significant impairments in visual and visuospatial memory both during and within the week after ECT. Most impairments resolved 1 month following ECT; however, significant impairment in spatial recognition memory remained. This is one of only a few studies that have detected anterograde memory deficits more than 2 weeks after treatment. Patients receiving ECT displayed a range of visual and visuospatial deficits over the course of their treatment. These deficits were most prominent for tasks dependent on the use of the right medial temporal lobe; frontal lobe function may also be implicated. The CANTAB appears to be a useful instrument for measuring the adverse cognitive effects of ECT on aspects of visual and visuospatial memory.

Behavioral profiles in frontal lobe epilepsy: Autobiographic memory versus mood impairment.

PubMed

Rayner, Genevieve; Jackson, Graeme D; Wilson, Sarah J

2015-02-01

Autobiographic memory encompasses the encoding and retrieval of episodes, people, and places encountered in everyday life. It can be impaired in both epilepsy and frontal lobe damage. Here, we performed an initial investigation of how autobiographic memory is impacted by chronic frontal lobe epilepsy (FLE) together with its underlying pathology. We prospectively studied a series of nine consecutive patients with medically refractory FLE, relative to 24 matched healthy controls. Seven of the nine patients had frontal lobe structural abnormalities. Episodic and semantic autobiographic memory functioning was profiled, and factors associated with impaired autobiographic memory were identified among epileptologic, neuroimaging, neuropsychiatric, and cognitive variables including auditory-verbal and visual memory, and the executive function of cognitive control. Results showed that the FLE group experienced significantly higher rates of autobiographic memory and mood disturbance (p < 0.001), with detailed assessment of individual patients revealing two profiles of impairment, primarily characterized by cognitive or mood disturbance. Five of the patients (56%) exhibited significant episodic autobiographic memory deficits, whereas in three of these, knowledge of semantic autobiographic facts was preserved. Four of them also had reduced cognitive control. Mood disorder was largely unrelated to poor autobiographic memory. In contrast, the four cases with preserved autobiographic memory were notable for their past or current depressive symptoms. These findings provide preliminary data that frontal lobe seizure activity with its underlying pathology may selectively disrupt large-scale cognitive or affective networks, giving rise to different neurobehavioral profiles that may be used to inform clinical management. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2015 International League Against Epilepsy.

Improving prospective memory in persons with Parkinson disease: A randomized controlled trial

PubMed Central

Foster, Erin R.; McDaniel, Mark A.; Rendell, Peter G.

2017-01-01

Background Prospective memory is essential for productive and independent living and necessary for compliance with prescribed health behaviors. Parkinson disease (PD) can cause prospective memory deficits that are associated with activity limitations and reduced quality of life. Forming implementation intentions is an encoding strategy that may improve prospective memory in this population. Objective To determine the effect of implementation intentions on prospective memory performance in PD. Methods This was a laboratory-based randomized controlled trial. Participants with mild to moderate PD without dementia (N = 62) performed a computerized prospective memory test (Virtual Week) under standard instructions. One week later they were randomly allocated to perform it again while using either implementation intentions or a rehearsal encoding strategy. Results Prospective memory performance was better with the use of both strategies relative to standard instructions. This effect was larger for tasks with event-based compared to time-based cues. In addition, implementation intentions resulted in a larger effect than rehearsal for the non-repeated tasks. Conclusions Strategies that support full encoding of prospective memory cues and actions can improve prospective memory performance among people with PD, particularly for tasks with cues that are readily available in the environment. Implementation intentions may be more effective than rehearsal for non-repeated tasks, but this finding warrants verification. Future work should address transfer of strategy use from the laboratory to everyday life. Targeted strategies to manage prospective memory impairment could improve function and quality of life and significantly impact clinical care for people with PD. (NCT01469741) PMID:28176547

Binding biological motion and visual features in working memory.

PubMed

Ding, Xiaowei; Zhao, Yangfan; Wu, Fan; Lu, Xiqian; Gao, Zaifeng; Shen, Mowei

2015-06-01

Working memory mechanisms for binding have been examined extensively in the last decade, yet few studies have explored bindings relating to human biological motion (BM). Human BM is the most salient and biologically significant kinetic information encountered in everyday life and is stored independently from other visual features (e.g., colors). The current study explored 3 critical issues of BM-related binding in working memory: (a) how many BM binding units can be retained in working memory, (b) whether involuntarily object-based binding occurs during BM binding, and (c) whether the maintenance of BM bindings in working memory requires attention above and beyond that needed to maintain the constituent dimensions. We isolated motion signals of human BM from non-BM sources by using point-light displays as to-be-memorized BM and presented the participants colored BM in a change detection task. We found that working memory capacity for BM-color bindings is rather low; only 1 or 2 BM-color bindings could be retained in working memory regardless of the presentation manners (Experiments 1-3). Furthermore, no object-based encoding took place for colored BM stimuli regardless of the processed dimensions (Experiments 4 and 5). Central executive attention contributes to the maintenance of BM-color bindings, yet maintaining BM bindings in working memory did not require more central attention than did maintaining the constituent dimensions in working memory (Experiment 6). Overall, these results suggest that keeping BM bindings in working memory is a fairly resource-demanding process, yet central executive attention does not play a special role in this cross-module binding. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Idiosyncratic responding during movie-watching predicted by age differences in attentional control

PubMed Central

Campbell, Karen L.; Shafto, Meredith A.; Wright, Paul; Tsvetanov, Kamen A.; Geerligs, Linda; Cusack, Rhodri; Tyler, Lorraine K.; Brayne, Carol; Bullmore, Ed; Calder, Andrew; Cusack, Rhodri; Dalgleish, Tim; Duncan, John; Henson, Rik; Matthews, Fiona; Marslen-Wilson, William; Rowe, James; Shafto, Meredith; Campbell, Karen; Cheung, Teresa; Davis, Simon; Geerligs, Linda; Kievit, Rogier; McCarrey, Anna; Price, Darren; Taylor, Jason; Tsvetanov, Kamen; Williams, Nitin; Bates, Lauren; Emery, Tina; Erzinçlioglu, Sharon; Gadie, Andrew; Gerbase, Sofia; Georgieva, Stanimira; Hanley, Claire; Parkin, Beth; Troy, David; Allen, Jodie; Amery, Gillian; Amunts, Liana; Barcroft, Anne; Castle, Amanda; Dias, Cheryl; Dowrick, Jonathan; Fair, Melissa; Fisher, Hayley; Goulding, Anna; Grewal, Adarsh; Hale, Geoff; Hilton, Andrew; Johnson, Frances; Johnston, Patricia; Kavanagh-Williamson, Thea; Kwasniewska, Magdalena; McMinn, Alison; Norman, Kim; Penrose, Jessica; Roby, Fiona; Rowland, Diane; Sargeant, John; Squire, Maggie; Stevens, Beth; Stoddart, Aldabra; Stone, Cheryl; Thompson, Tracy; Yazlik, Ozlem; Dixon, Marie; Barnes, Dan; Hillman, Jaya; Mitchell, Joanne; Villis, Laura; Tyler, Lorraine K.

2015-01-01

Much is known about how age affects the brain during tightly controlled, though largely contrived, experiments, but do these effects extrapolate to everyday life? Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, closely mimic the real world and provide a window onto the brain's ability to respond in a timely and measured fashion to complex, everyday events. Young adults respond to these stimuli in a highly synchronized fashion, but it remains to be seen how age affects neural responsiveness during naturalistic viewing. To this end, we scanned a large (N = 218), population-based sample from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) during movie-watching. Intersubject synchronization declined with age, such that older adults' response to the movie was more idiosyncratic. This decreased synchrony related to cognitive measures sensitive to attentional control. Our findings suggest that neural responsivity changes with age, which likely has important implications for real-world event comprehension and memory. PMID:26359527

Does the internet change how we die and mourn? Overview and analysis.

PubMed

Walter, Tony; Hourizi, Rachid; Moncur, Wendy; Pitsillides, Stacey

The article outlines the issues that the internet presents to death studies. Part 1 describes a range of online practices that may affect dying, the funeral, grief and memorialization, inheritance and archaeology; it also summarizes the kinds of research that have been done in these fields. Part 2 argues that these new online practices have implications for, and may be illuminated by, key concepts in death studies: the sequestration (or separation from everyday life) of death and dying, disenfranchisement of grief, private grief, social death, illness and grief narratives, continuing bonds with the dead, and the presence of the dead in society. In particular, social network sites can bring dying and grieving out of both the private and public realms and into the everyday life of social networks beyond the immediate family, and provide an audience for once private communications with the dead.

Analysis and design of ion-implanted bubble memory devices

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wullert, J. R., II; Kryder, M. H.

1987-04-01

4-μm period ion-implanted contiguous disk bubble memory circuits, designed and fabricated at AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ, have been investigated. Quasistatic testing has provided information about both the operational bias field ranges and the exact failure modes. A variety of major loop layouts were investigated and two turns found to severely limit bias field margins are discussed. The generation process, using a hairpin nucleator, was tested and several interesting failure modes were uncovered. Propagation on four different minor loop paths was observed and each was found to have characteristic failure modes. The transfer processes, both into and out of the minor loops, were investigated at higher frequencies to avoid local heating due to long transfer pulses at low frequencies. Again specific failure modes were identified. Overall bias margins for the chip were 9% at 50 Oe drive field and were limited by transfer-in.

Motor Anticipation Failure in Infants with Autism: A Retrospective Analysis of Feeding Situations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brisson, Julie; Warreyn, Petra; Serres, Josette; Foussier, Stephane; Adrien-Louis, Jean

2012-01-01

Previous studies on autism have shown a lack of motor anticipation in children and adults with autism. As part of a programme of research into early detection of autism, we focussed on an everyday situation: spoon-feeding. We hypothesize that an anticipation deficit may be found very early on by observing whether the baby opens his or her mouth in…

"Ni De Aqui Ni from There". Navigating between Contexts: Counter-Narratives of Undocumented Mexican Students in the United States

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Castro-Salazar, Ricardo; Bagley, Carl

2010-01-01

Research has documented the ways in which students of Mexican origin are not succeeding academically in the same proportion as the rest of the US population. This process of educational failure occurs in the context of overt and more subtle forms of racism experienced throughout their schooling and everyday lives. Undocumented Mexican students…

Effects of Age and Ability on Self-Reported Memory Functioning and Knowledge of Memory Aging

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reese, Celinda M.; Cherry, Katie E.

2006-01-01

The authors examined the effects of age and ability (as measured by education and verbal ability) on self-reported memory functioning in adulthood. In Study 1, the age and ability groups responded similarly to the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire (D. E. Broadbent, P. F. Cooper, P. Fitzgerald, & K. R. Parkes, 1982), but differences emerged when the…

The effect of individual differences in working memory in older adults on performance with different degrees of automated technology.

PubMed

Pak, Richard; McLaughlin, Anne Collins; Leidheiser, William; Rovira, Ericka

2017-04-01

A leading hypothesis to explain older adults' overdependence on automation is age-related declines in working memory. However, it has not been empirically examined. The purpose of the current experiment was to examine how working memory affected performance with different degrees of automation in older adults. In contrast to the well-supported idea that higher degrees of automation, when the automation is correct, benefits performance but higher degrees of automation, when the automation fails, increasingly harms performance, older adults benefited from higher degrees of automation when the automation was correct but were not differentially harmed by automation failures. Surprisingly, working memory did not interact with degree of automation but did interact with automation correctness or failure. When automation was correct, older adults with higher working memory ability had better performance than those with lower abilities. But when automation was incorrect, all older adults, regardless of working memory ability, performed poorly. Practitioner Summary: The design of automation intended for older adults should focus on ways of making the correctness of the automation apparent to the older user and suggest ways of helping them recover when it is malfunctioning.

The role of executive functioning in memory performance in pediatric focal epilepsy

PubMed Central

Sepeta, Leigh N.; Casaletto, Kaitlin Blackstone; Terwilliger, Virginia; Facella-Ervolini, Joy; Sady, Maegan; Mayo, Jessica; Gaillard, William D.; Berl, Madison M.

2016-01-01

Objective Learning and memory are essential for academic success and everyday functioning, but the pattern of memory skills and its relationship to executive functioning in children with focal epilepsy is not fully delineated. We address a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between memory and executive functioning in a pediatric focal epilepsy population. Methods Seventy children with focal epilepsy and 70 typically developing children matched on age, intellectual functioning, and gender underwent neuropsychological assessment, including measures of intelligence (WASI/DAS), as well as visual (CMS Dot Locations) and verbal episodic memory (WRAML Story Memory and CVLT-C). Executive functioning was measured directly (WISC-IV Digit Span Backward; CELF-IV Recalling Sentences) and by parent report (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF)). Results Children with focal epilepsy had lower delayed free recall scores than controls across visual and verbal memory tasks (p = 0.02; partial η2 = .12). In contrast, recognition memory performance was similar for patients and controls (p = 0.36; partial η2 = .03). Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated difficulties in working memory (p = 0.02; partial η2 = .08) and planning/organization (p = 0.02) compared to controls. Working memory predicted 9–19% of the variance in delayed free recall for verbal and visual memory; organization predicted 9–10% of the variance in verbal memory. Patients with both left and right focal epilepsy demonstrated more difficulty on verbal versus visual tasks (p = 0.002). Memory performance did not differ by location of seizure foci (temporal vs. extra-temporal, frontal vs. extra-frontal). Significance Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated memory ability within age-level expectations, but delayed free recall was inefficient compared to typically developing controls. Memory difficulties were not related to general cognitive impairment or seizure localization. Executive functioning accounted for significant variance in memory performance, suggesting that poor executive control negatively influences memory retrieval. PMID:28111742

'Tagging' along memories in aging: Synaptic tagging and capture mechanisms in the aged hippocampus.

PubMed

Shivarama Shetty, Mahesh; Sajikumar, Sreedharan

2017-05-01

Aging is accompanied by a general decline in the physiological functions of the body with the deteriorating organ systems. Brain is no exception to this and deficits in cognitive functions are quite common in advanced aging. Though a variety of age-related alterations are observed in the structure and function throughout the brain, certain regions show selective vulnerability. Medial temporal lobe, especially the hippocampus, is one such preferentially vulnerable region and is a crucial structure involved in the learning and long-term memory functions. Hippocampal synaptic plasticity, such as long-term potentiation (LTP) and depression (LTD), are candidate cellular correlates of learning and memory and alterations in these properties have been well documented in aging. A related phenomenon called synaptic tagging and capture (STC) has been proposed as a mechanism for cellular memory consolidation and to account for temporal association of memories. Mounting evidences from behavioral settings suggest that STC could be a physiological phenomenon. In this article, we review the recent data concerning STC and provide a framework for how alterations in STC-related mechanisms could contribute to the age-associated memory impairments. The enormity of impairment in learning and memory functions demands an understanding of age-associated memory deficits at the fundamental level given its impact in the everyday tasks, thereby in the quality of life. Such an understanding is also crucial for designing interventions and preventive measures for successful brain aging. Copyright © 2017 National University of Singapore. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Prospective memory, level of disability, and return to work in severe mental illness.

PubMed

Burton, Cynthia Z; Vella, Lea; Twamley, Elizabeth W

2018-02-25

Prospective memory (the ability to remember to do things) has clear implications for everyday functioning, including employment, in people with severe mental illnesses (SMI). This study aimed to evaluate prospective memory performance and its relationship to real-world functional variables in an employment-seeking sample of people with SMI (Clinical Trial registration number NCT00895258). 153 individuals with DSM-IV diagnosis of depression (n = 58), bipolar disorder (n = 37), or schizophrenia (n = 58) who were receiving outpatient psychiatric care at a university clinic enrolled in a trial of supported employment and completed a baseline assessment. Prospective memory was measured with the Memory for Intentions Test (MIST); real-world functional status included work history variables, clinical history variables, baseline functional capacity (UCSD Performance-based Skills Assessment-Brief), and work outcomes (weeks worked and wages earned during two years of supported employment). Participants with schizophrenia performed worse on the MIST than did those with affective disorders. Independent of diagnosis, education, and estimated intellectual functioning, prospective memory significantly predicted variance in measures of disability and illness burden (disability benefits, hospitalization history, current functional capacity), and work outcomes over two years of supported employment (weeks worked). Worse prospective memory appears to be associated with greater illness burden and functional disability in SMI. Mental health clinicians and employment specialists may counsel clients to use compensatory prospective memory strategies to improve work performance and decrease functional disability associated with SMI.

Source memory errors in schizophrenia, hallucinations and negative symptoms: a synthesis of research findings.

PubMed

Brébion, G; Ohlsen, R I; Bressan, R A; David, A S

2012-12-01

Previous research has shown associations between source memory errors and hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia. We bring together here findings from a broad memory investigation to specify better the type of source memory failure that is associated with auditory and visual hallucinations. Forty-one patients with schizophrenia and 43 healthy participants underwent a memory task involving recall and recognition of lists of words, recognition of pictures, memory for temporal and spatial context of presentation of the stimuli, and remembering whether target items were presented as words or pictures. False recognition of words and pictures was associated with hallucination scores. The extra-list intrusions in free recall were associated with verbal hallucinations whereas the intra-list intrusions were associated with a global hallucination score. Errors in discriminating the temporal context of word presentation and the spatial context of picture presentation were associated with auditory hallucinations. The tendency to remember verbal labels of items as pictures of these items was associated with visual hallucinations. Several memory errors were also inversely associated with affective flattening and anhedonia. Verbal and visual hallucinations are associated with confusion between internal verbal thoughts or internal visual images and perception. In addition, auditory hallucinations are associated with failure to process or remember the context of presentation of the events. Certain negative symptoms have an opposite effect on memory errors.

Intracarotid amobarbital procedure: I. Prediction of decreased modality-specific memory scores after temporal lobectomy.

PubMed

Wyllie, E; Naugle, R; Awad, I; Chelune, G; Lüders, H; Dinner, D; Skibinski, C; Ahl, J

1991-01-01

To assess predictive value of the intracarotid amobarbital procedure (IAP) for decreased postoperative modality-specific memory, we studied 37 temporal lobectomy patients with intractable partial epilepsy who were selected for operation independent of preoperative IAP findings. When ipsilateral IAP failure was defined by an absolute method as a retention score less than 67%, the results were not associated with decreased modality-specific memory after operation. When ipsilateral IAP failure was defined by a comparative method as a retention score at least 20% lower after ipsilateral than contralateral injection, the results showed greater differences between groups, but differences still did not achieve statistical significance. Four left-resection patients who failed the ipsilateral IAP had a median postoperative change in the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) Verbal Memory Index score of -14%, whereas 16 left-resection patients who passed the ipsilateral IAP had a mean postoperative change in the WMS-R Verbal Memory Index score of -7.5% (p = 0.12). These results suggested that the IAP interpreted comparatively may be a helpful adjunctive test in assessment of relative risk for modality-specific memory dysfunction after temporal lobectomy, but larger series of operated patients are needed to confirm this possibility. In this series, complete amnesia was not noted after ipsilateral injection, even in patients with postoperative modality-specific memory decline.

Compared to controls, patients with ruptured aneurysm and surgical intervention show increase in symptoms of depression and lower cognitive performance, but their objective sleep is not affected.

PubMed

Brand, Serge; Zimmerer, Stefan; Kalak, Nadeem; Planta, Sandra Von; Schwenzer-Zimmerer, Katja; Müller, Andreas Albert; Zeilhofer, Hans-Florian; Holsboer-Trachsler, Edith

2015-02-01

Patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (aSAH) have impaired sleep and cognitive performance together with more difficulties in social and everyday life. Hypocortisolism has also been reported. However, a study assessing all dimensions between aSAH severity, objective and subjective sleep, cortisol secretion, cognitive performance and social and everyday life has not so far been performed. The aim of the present study was therefore two-fold: (1) to assess, in a sample of patients with aSAH, objective and subjective sleep, cognitive functioning, social skills and cortisol secretion concurrently, and (2) to compare patients on these variables with a control group. Twenty-one patients (17 females; mean age: 58.80 years) with ruptured aneurysm and surgical intervention and 21 (14 females; mean age: 58.90 years) age- and gender-matched controls took part in the study. Assessments covered objective sleep-EGG recordings, subjective sleep, salivary cortisol analysis, and psychological functioning including memory performance, mood, and emotion recognition. Compared to healthy controls, patients had lower scores for verbal memory performance and emotion recognition; they also reported more marked depressive symptoms and complained of poor sleep. However, no differences were found for objective sleep or cortisol secretion. Subjective and objective sleep, cortisol secretion and psychological functioning were unrelated. Findings indicate that patients with aSAH face psychological rather than physiological issues.

Training Older Adults to Use Tablet Computers: Does It Enhance Cognitive Function?

PubMed

Chan, Micaela Y; Haber, Sara; Drew, Linda M; Park, Denise C

2016-06-01

Recent evidence shows that engaging in learning new skills improves episodic memory in older adults. In this study, older adults who were computer novices were trained to use a tablet computer and associated software applications. We hypothesize that sustained engagement in this mentally challenging training would yield a dual benefit of improved cognition and enhancement of everyday function by introducing useful skills. A total of 54 older adults (age 60-90) committed 15 hr/week for 3 months. Eighteen participants received extensive iPad training, learning a broad range of practical applications. The iPad group was compared with 2 separate controls: a Placebo group that engaged in passive tasks requiring little new learning; and a Social group that had regular social interaction, but no active skill acquisition. All participants completed the same cognitive battery pre- and post-engagement. Compared with both controls, the iPad group showed greater improvements in episodic memory and processing speed but did not differ in mental control or visuospatial processing. iPad training improved cognition relative to engaging in social or nonchallenging activities. Mastering relevant technological devices have the added advantage of providing older adults with technological skills useful in facilitating everyday activities (e.g., banking). This work informs the selection of targeted activities for future interventions and community programs. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America.

Training Older Adults to Use Tablet Computers: Does It Enhance Cognitive Function?

PubMed Central

Chan, Micaela Y.; Haber, Sara; Drew, Linda M.; Park, Denise C.

2016-01-01

Purpose of the Study: Recent evidence shows that engaging in learning new skills improves episodic memory in older adults. In this study, older adults who were computer novices were trained to use a tablet computer and associated software applications. We hypothesize that sustained engagement in this mentally challenging training would yield a dual benefit of improved cognition and enhancement of everyday function by introducing useful skills. Design and Methods: A total of 54 older adults (age 60-90) committed 15 hr/week for 3 months. Eighteen participants received extensive iPad training, learning a broad range of practical applications. The iPad group was compared with 2 separate controls: a Placebo group that engaged in passive tasks requiring little new learning; and a Social group that had regular social interaction, but no active skill acquisition. All participants completed the same cognitive battery pre- and post-engagement. Results: Compared with both controls, the iPad group showed greater improvements in episodic memory and processing speed but did not differ in mental control or visuospatial processing. Implications: iPad training improved cognition relative to engaging in social or nonchallenging activities. Mastering relevant technological devices have the added advantage of providing older adults with technological skills useful in facilitating everyday activities (e.g., banking). This work informs the selection of targeted activities for future interventions and community programs. PMID:24928557

Awareness of memory failures and motivation for cognitive training in mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Werheid, Katja; Ziegler, Matthias; Klapper, Annina; Kühl, Klaus-Peter

2010-01-01

Awareness of cognitive deficits is considered to be decisive for the effectiveness of cognitive training in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). However, it is unclear in what way awareness influences motivation to participate in cognitive training. Thirty-two elderly adults with MCI and 72 controls completed the 5-scale Memory Functioning Questionnaire (MFQ) and a motivation questionnaire. The predictive value of the MFQ scales on motivation was analyzed using regression analysis. In the MCI group, but not in controls, higher perceived frequency of memory failures was associated with a lower motivation score. Our findings indicate that, in MCI, greater awareness of cognitive deficits does not necessarily increase motivation to participate in cognitive trainings, and suggest that success expectancy may be a moderating factor. Copyright © 2010 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Fatigue of graphite/epoxy /0/90/45/-45/s laminates under dual stress levels

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Yang, J. N.; Jones, D. L.

1982-01-01

A model for the prediction of loading sequence effects on the statistical distribution of fatigue life and residual strength in composite materials is generalized and applied to (0/90/45/-45)s graphite/epoxy laminates. Load sequence effects are found to be caused by both the difference in residual strength when failure occurs (boundary effect) and the effect of previously applied loads (memory effect). The model allows the isolation of these two effects, and the estimation of memory effect magnitudes under dual fatigue loading levels. It is shown that the material memory effect is insignificant, and that correlations between predictions of the number of early failures agree with the verification tests, as do predictions of fatigue life and residual strength degradation under dual stress levels.

The Incidental Influence of Memories of Past Eating Occasions on Consumers' Emotional Responses to Food and Food-Related Behaviors.

PubMed

Piqueras-Fiszman, Betina; Jaeger, Sara R

2016-01-01

Our memories of past eating experiences are influential in shaping food preferences and consumption behavior, and the emotions that people associate to these memories are linked to their attitudes toward foods and their everyday food-related behaviors. This work studies the impact that food-related memories have on peoples' emotional state and how this state is projected in a subsequent evaluation of images pertaining to food and food-related behaviors. Focus is placed on guilt and shame emotions. Through an online survey, three memories were investigated (a positive meal, a routine evening meal, and an overeating occasion) among UK consumers (N = 710). Participants primed with the overeating memory evaluated images related to junk food as conveying more feelings of guilt and shame than did participants primed with the memory of a positive meal. Moreover, this effect was moderated by participants' dietary restraint status. Participants classified as having a high dietary restraint had stronger associations with the emotions guilt and shame than participants classified as low in dietary restraint. In contrast, a memory of a positive meal did not lead to positive valuations of any of the food-related images shown. Overall, the findings from the present study illustrate the partial impact that personal food memories have on consumers' emotional response toward food-related issues, which in turn has the potential to affect future behavior. This study therefore contributes to the literature about cognitive effects on food attitudes and behavior. Furthermore, the results suggest that the empirical approach may be tapping into possibly unconscious emotions toward foods and food-related behavior.

Free and Cued Recall Memory in Parkinson’s Disease Associated with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

PubMed Central

Costa, Alberto; Monaco, Marco; Zabberoni, Silvia; Peppe, Antonella; Perri, Roberta; Fadda, Lucia; Iannarelli, Francesca; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni A.

2014-01-01

The hypothesis has been advanced that memory disorders in individuals with Parkinson’s disease (PD) are related to either retrieval or consolidation failure. However, the characteristics of the memory impairments of PD patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment have not been clarified. This study was aimed at investigating whether memory deficits in PD patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (PDaMCI) are due to failure of retrieval or consolidation processes. Sixteen individuals with PDaMCI, 20 with amnestic mild cognitive impairment without PD (aMCINPD), and 20 healthy controls were recruited. Participants were administered the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test. An index of cueing was computed for each subject to capture the advantage in retrieval of cued compared to free recall. Individuals with PDaMCI performed worse than healthy controls on the free recall (p<0.01) but not the cued recall (p>0.10) task, and they performed better than aMCINPD subjects on both recall measures (p<0.01). The index of cueing of subjects with PD was comparable to that of healthy controls (p>0.10) but it was significantly higher than that of the aMCINPD sample (p<0.01). Moreover, PD patients’ performance on free recall trials was significantly predicted by scores on a test investigating executive functions (i.e., the Modified Card Sorting Test; p = 0.042). Findings of the study document that, in subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment associated to PD, episodic memory impairment is related to retrieval rather than to consolidation failure. The same data suggest that, in these individuals, memory deficits might be due to altered frontal-related executive functioning. PMID:24465977

Free and cued recall memory in Parkinson's disease associated with amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

PubMed

Costa, Alberto; Monaco, Marco; Zabberoni, Silvia; Peppe, Antonella; Perri, Roberta; Fadda, Lucia; Iannarelli, Francesca; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni A

2014-01-01

The hypothesis has been advanced that memory disorders in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) are related to either retrieval or consolidation failure. However, the characteristics of the memory impairments of PD patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment have not been clarified. This study was aimed at investigating whether memory deficits in PD patients with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (PDaMCI) are due to failure of retrieval or consolidation processes. Sixteen individuals with PDaMCI, 20 with amnestic mild cognitive impairment without PD (aMCINPD), and 20 healthy controls were recruited. Participants were administered the Free and Cued Selective Reminding Test. An index of cueing was computed for each subject to capture the advantage in retrieval of cued compared to free recall. Individuals with PDaMCI performed worse than healthy controls on the free recall (p<0.01) but not the cued recall (p>0.10) task, and they performed better than aMCINPD subjects on both recall measures (p<0.01). The index of cueing of subjects with PD was comparable to that of healthy controls (p>0.10) but it was significantly higher than that of the aMCINPD sample (p<0.01). Moreover, PD patients' performance on free recall trials was significantly predicted by scores on a test investigating executive functions (i.e., the Modified Card Sorting Test; p = 0.042). Findings of the study document that, in subjects with amnestic mild cognitive impairment associated to PD, episodic memory impairment is related to retrieval rather than to consolidation failure. The same data suggest that, in these individuals, memory deficits might be due to altered frontal-related executive functioning.

Merging of long-term memories in an insect.

PubMed

Hunt, Kathryn L; Chittka, Lars

2015-03-16

Research on comparative cognition has largely focused on successes and failures of animals to solve certain cognitive tasks, but in humans, memory errors can be more complex than simple failures to retrieve information [1, 2]. The existence of various types of "false memories," in which individuals remember events that they have never actually encountered, are now well established in humans [3, 4]. We hypothesize that such systematic memory errors may be widespread in animals whose natural lifestyle involves the processing and recollection of memories for multiple stimuli [5]. We predict that memory traces for various stimuli may "merge," such that features acquired in distinct bouts of training are combined in an animal's mind, so that stimuli that have never been viewed before, but are a combination of the features presented in training, may be chosen during recall. We tested this using bumblebees, Bombus terrestris. When individuals were first trained to a solid single-colored stimulus followed by a black and white (b/w)-patterned stimulus, a subsequent preference for the last entrained stimulus was found in both short-term- and long-term-memory tests. However, when bees were first trained to b/w-patterned stimuli followed by solid single-colored stimuli and were tested in long-term-memory tests 1 or 3 days later, they only initially preferred the most recently rewarded stimulus, and then switched their preference to stimuli that combined features from the previous color and pattern stimuli. The observed merging of long-term memories is thus similar to the memory conjunction error found in humans [6]. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Same as it ever was: vividness modulates the similarities and differences between the neural networks that support retrieving remote and recent autobiographical memories.

PubMed

Sheldon, Signy; Levine, Brian

2013-12-01

The comparison of recent and remote autobiographical memories is often confounded by qualitative disparities across memories of different ages, such as vividness. In this study, ten individuals prospectively collected audio recordings that were used to cue memories of recent (~1 month old) and remote (~1.5 year old) everyday events. Because the retrieval cues were recorded at the time of event, they were highly potent. Although remote events did not differ in novelty, importance, or emotional change at the time at the time of encoding, half of the cues for these events induced retrieval comparable in vividness to recent events (all of which were vividly re-experienced). Recent and remote vivid memories were associated with a neural pattern that included right frontal, left parietal and limbic regions that were active early in the retrieval period. Non-vivid remote memories were associated with a later onset of a bilateral distributed pattern that included regions in the frontal, parietal, and temporal lobes. Functional connectivity analysis indicated that the left anterior hippocampus was co-activated with bilateral frontal, parahippocampal, and parietal regions for vivid memories (irrespective of memory age) early in the retrieval period, whereas non-vivid memories, alongside recent memories, showed later and broader co-activation with frontal, parietal, occipital, and temporal regions. The absence of a significant difference between the recent and remote vivid memories may be due to insufficient power to detect potential subtle differences between these conditions. Nonetheless, there was evidence for different patterns of hippocampal-neocortical connectivity for remote memories and recent memories, irrespective of vividness. These findings suggest that while there is a functional shift in hippocampal connectivity that is associated with memory age when very recent events are used, vividness is strongly associated with both activation and functional connectivity patterns irrespective of memory age. © 2013.

Only "efficient" emotional stimuli affect the content of working memory during free-recollection from natural scenes.

PubMed

Buttafuoco, Arianna; Pedale, Tiziana; Buchanan, Tony W; Santangelo, Valerio

2018-02-01

Emotional events are thought to have privileged access to attention and memory, consuming resources needed to encode competing emotionally neutral stimuli. However, it is not clear whether this detrimental effect is automatic or depends on the successful maintenance of the specific emotional object within working memory. Here, participants viewed everyday scenes including an emotional object among other neutral objects followed by a free-recollection task. Results showed that emotional objects-irrespective of their perceptual saliency-were recollected more often than neutral objects. The probability of being recollected increased as a function of the arousal of the emotional objects, specifically for negative objects. Successful recollection of emotional objects (positive or negative) from a scene reduced the overall number of recollected neutral objects from the same scene. This indicates that only emotional stimuli that are efficient in grabbing (and then consuming) available attentional resources play a crucial role during the encoding of competing information, with a subsequent bias in the recollection of neutral representations.

The cortical underpinnings of context-based memory distortion.

PubMed

Aminoff, Elissa; Schacter, Daniel L; Bar, Moshe

2008-12-01

Everyday contextual settings create associations that later afford generating predictions about what objects to expect in our environment. The cortical network that takes advantage of such contextual information is proposed to connect the representation of associated objects such that seeing one object (bed) will activate the visual representations of other objects sharing the same context (pillow). Given this proposal, we hypothesized that the cortical activity elicited by seeing a strong contextual object would predict the occurrence of false memories whereby one erroneously "remembers" having seen a new object that is related to a previously presented object. To test this hypothesis, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging during encoding of contextually related objects, and later tested recognition memory. New objects that were contextually related to previously presented objects were more often falsely judged as "old" compared with new objects that were contextually unrelated to old objects. This phenomenon was reflected by activity in the cortical network mediating contextual processing, which provides a better understanding of how the brain represents and processes context.

Decoding the content of visual short-term memory under distraction in occipital and parietal areas.

PubMed

Bettencourt, Katherine C; Xu, Yaoda

2016-01-01

Recent studies have provided conflicting accounts regarding where in the human brain visual short-term memory (VSTM) content is stored, with strong univariate fMRI responses being reported in superior intraparietal sulcus (IPS), but robust multivariate decoding being reported in occipital cortex. Given the continuous influx of information in everyday vision, VSTM storage under distraction is often required. We found that neither distractor presence nor predictability during the memory delay affected behavioral performance. Similarly, superior IPS exhibited consistent decoding of VSTM content across all distractor manipulations and had multivariate responses that closely tracked behavioral VSTM performance. However, occipital decoding of VSTM content was substantially modulated by distractor presence and predictability. Furthermore, we found no effect of target-distractor similarity on VSTM behavioral performance, further challenging the role of sensory regions in VSTM storage. Overall, consistent with previous univariate findings, our results indicate that superior IPS, but not occipital cortex, has a central role in VSTM storage.

Suppress to Forget: The Effect of a Mindfulness-Based Strategy during an Emotional Item-Directed Forgetting Paradigm.

PubMed

Gamboa, Olga L; Garcia-Campayo, Javier; Müller, Teresa; von Wegner, Frederic

2017-01-01

Forgetting is a common phenomenon in everyday life. Although it often has negative connotations, forgetting is an important adaptive mechanism to avoid loading the memory storage with irrelevant information. A very important aspect of forgetting is its interaction with emotion. Affective events are often granted special and priority treatment over neutral ones with regards to memory storage. As a consequence, emotional information is more resistant to extinction than neutral information. It has been suggested that intentional forgetting serves as a mechanism to cope with unwanted or disruptive emotional memories and the main goal of this study was to assess forgetting of emotional auditory material using the item-method directed forgetting (DF) paradigm using a forgetting strategy based on mindfulness as a means to enhance DF. Contrary to our prediction, the mindfulness-based strategy not only did not improve DF but reduced it for neutral material. These results suggest that an interaction between processes such as response inhibition and attention is required for intentional forgetting to succeed.

Setting and changing feature priorities in visual short-term memory.

PubMed

Kalogeropoulou, Zampeta; Jagadeesh, Akshay V; Ohl, Sven; Rolfs, Martin

2017-04-01

Many everyday tasks require prioritizing some visual features over competing ones, both during the selection from the rich sensory input and while maintaining information in visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here, we show that observers can change priorities in VSTM when, initially, they attended to a different feature. Observers reported from memory the orientation of one of two spatially interspersed groups of black and white gratings. Using colored pre-cues (presented before stimulus onset) and retro-cues (presented after stimulus offset) predicting the to-be-reported group, we manipulated observers' feature priorities independently during stimulus encoding and maintenance, respectively. Valid pre-cues reliably increased observers' performance (reduced guessing, increased report precision) as compared to neutral ones; invalid pre-cues had the opposite effect. Valid retro-cues also consistently improved performance (by reducing random guesses), even if the unexpected group suddenly became relevant (invalid-valid condition). Thus, feature-based attention can reshape priorities in VSTM protecting information that would otherwise be forgotten.

Solving Tomorrow's Problems Today? Daily Anticipatory Coping and Reactivity to Daily Stressors.

PubMed

Neupert, Shevaun D; Ennis, Gilda E; Ramsey, Jennifer L; Gall, Agnes A

2016-07-01

The present study examined the day-to-day fluctuation of state-like anticipatory coping (coping employed prior to stressors) and how these coping processes relate to important outcomes for older adults (i.e., physical health, affect, memory failures). Forty-three older adults aged 60-96 (M = 74.65, SD = 8.19) participated in an 8-day daily diary study of anticipatory coping, stressors, health, affect, and memory failures. Participants reported anticipatory coping behaviors on one day with respect to 6 distinct stressor domains that could occur the following day. Multilevel models indicated that anticipatory coping changes from day to day and within stressor domains. Lagged associations suggested that yesterday's anticipatory coping for potential upcoming arguments is related to today's physical health and affect. Increased stagnant deliberation is associated with reduced cognitive reactivity (i.e., fewer memory failures) to arguments the next day. Taken together, these findings suggest that anticipatory coping is dynamic and associated with important daily outcomes. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Cognitive failures in late adulthood: The role of age, social context and depressive symptoms.

PubMed

Hitchcott, Paul Kenneth; Fastame, Maria Chiara; Langiu, Dalila; Penna, Maria Pietronilla

2017-01-01

The incidence of self-reported cognitive failures among older adults may be an index of successful cognitive aging. However, self-reported cognitive failures are biased by variation in depressive symptomatology. This study examined age-related and socio-cultural context effects on cognitive failures while controlling for depressive symptoms. Both overall and specific factors of cognitive failures were determined. A further goal was to investigate the relationship between working memory and cognitive efficiency measures and cognitive failures. One hundred and thirty-nine cognitively healthy adults were recruited from two populations known to differ in their dispositions toward cognitive failures and depressive symptoms (Sardinia and northern Italy). The participants were assigned to Young Old (65-74 years old), Old (75-84 years of age) or Oldest Old (≥85 years of age) groups, and individually presented with a test battery including the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire, the Centre for Epidemiological Studies of Depression Scale, and Forward and Backward Digit Span tests. Specific factors of cognitive failures were differentially associated with measures of depression and working memory. While age had no impact on any aspect of cognitive failures, overall and specific dispositions varied between the two populations. The overall liability to cognitive failure was lower in participants from Sardinia, however, this group also had a higher liability to lapses of action (Blunders factor). Overall, these findings highlight that richer information about cognitive failures may be revealed through the investigation of specific factors of cognitive failures. They also confirm that the absence of changes in cognitive failures across old age is independent of variation in depressive symptoms, at least among cognitively healthy elders.

The efficacy of cognitive prosthetic technology for people with memory impairments: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

PubMed

Jamieson, Matthew; Cullen, Breda; McGee-Lennon, Marilyn; Brewster, Stephen; Evans, Jonathan J

2014-01-01

Technology can compensate for memory impairment. The efficacy of assistive technology for people with memory difficulties and the methodology of selected studies are assessed. A systematic search was performed and all studies that investigated the impact of technology on memory performance for adults with impaired memory resulting from acquired brain injury (ABI) or a degenerative disease were included. Two 10-point scales were used to compare each study to an ideally reported single case experimental design (SCED) study (SCED scale; Tate et al., 2008 ) or randomised control group study (PEDro-P scale; Maher, Sherrington, Herbert, Moseley, & Elkins, 2003 ). Thirty-two SCED (mean = 5.9 on the SCED scale) and 11 group studies (mean = 4.45 on the PEDro-P scale) were found. Baseline and intervention performance for each participant in the SCED studies was re-calculated using non-overlap of all pairs (Parker & Vannest, 2009 ) giving a mean score of 0.85 on a 0 to 1 scale (17 studies, n = 36). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of technology vs. control in seven group studies gave a large effect size (d = 1.27) (n = 147). It was concluded that prosthetic technology can improve performance on everyday tasks requiring memory. There is a specific need for investigations of technology for people with degenerative diseases.

Memory Resilience to Alzheimer's Genetic Risk: Sex Effects in Predictor Profiles.

PubMed

McDermott, Kirstie L; McFall, G Peggy; Andrews, Shea J; Anstey, Kaarin J; Dixon, Roger A

2017-10-01

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) ɛ4 and Clusterin (CLU) C alleles are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and episodic memory (EM) decline. Memory resilience occurs when genetically at-risk adults perform at high and sustained levels. We investigated whether (a) memory resilience to AD genetic risk is predicted by biological and other risk markers and (b) the prediction profiles vary by sex and AD risk variant. Using a longitudinal sample of nondemented adults (n = 642, aged 53-95) we focused on memory resilience (over 9 years) to 2 AD risk variants (APOE, CLU). Growth mixture models classified resilience. Random forest analysis, stratified by sex, tested the predictive importance of 22 nongenetic risk factors from 5 domains (n = 24-112). For both sexes, younger age, higher education, stronger grip, and everyday novel cognitive activity predicted memory resilience. For women, 9 factors from functional, health, mobility, and lifestyle domains were also predictive. For men, only fewer depressive symptoms was an additional important predictor. The prediction profiles were similar for APOE and CLU. Although several factors predicted resilience in both sexes, a greater number applied only to women. Sex-specific mechanisms and intervention targets are implied. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Large capacity temporary visual memory

PubMed Central

Endress, Ansgar D.; Potter, Mary C.

2014-01-01

Visual working memory (WM) capacity is thought to be limited to three or four items. However, many cognitive activities seem to require larger temporary memory stores. Here, we provide evidence for a temporary memory store with much larger capacity than past WM capacity estimates. Further, based on previous WM research, we show that a single factor — proactive interference — is sufficient to bring capacity estimates down to the range of previous WM capacity estimates. Participants saw a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) of 5 to 21 pictures of familiar objects or words presented at rates of 4/s or 8/s, respectively, and thus too fast for strategies such as rehearsal. Recognition memory was tested with a single probe item. When new items were used on all trials, no fixed memory capacities were observed, with estimates of up to 9.1 retained pictures for 21-item lists, and up to 30.0 retained pictures for 100-item lists, and no clear upper bound to how many items could be retained. Further, memory items were not stored in a temporally stable form of memory, but decayed almost completely after a few minutes. In contrast, when, as in most WM experiments, a small set of items was reused across all trials, thus creating proactive interference among items, capacity remained in the range reported in previous WM experiments. These results show that humans have a large-capacity temporary memory store in the absence of proactive interference, and raise the question of whether temporary memory in everyday cognitive processing is severely limited as in WM experiments, or has the much larger capacity found in the present experiments. PMID:23937181

Event Boundaries Trigger Rapid Memory Reinstatement of the Prior Events to Promote Their Representation in Long-Term Memory.

PubMed

Sols, Ignasi; DuBrow, Sarah; Davachi, Lila; Fuentemilla, Lluís

2017-11-20

Although everyday experiences unfold continuously over time, shifts in context, or event boundaries, can influence how those events come to be represented in memory [1-4]. Specifically, mnemonic binding across sequential representations is more challenging at context shifts, such that successful temporal associations are more likely to be formed within than across contexts [1, 2, 5-9]. However, in order to preserve a subjective sense of continuity, it is important that the memory system bridge temporally adjacent events, even if they occur in seemingly distinct contexts. Here, we used pattern similarity analysis to scalp electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings during a sequential learning task [2, 3] in humans and showed that the detection of event boundaries triggered a rapid memory reinstatement of the just-encoded sequence episode. Memory reactivation was detected rapidly (∼200-800 ms from the onset of the event boundary) and was specific to context shifts that were preceded by an event sequence with episodic content. Memory reinstatement was not observed during the sequential encoding of events within an episode, indicating that memory reactivation was induced specifically upon context shifts. Finally, the degree of neural similarity between neural responses elicited during sequence encoding and at event boundaries correlated positively with participants' ability to later link across sequences of events, suggesting a critical role in binding temporally adjacent events in long-term memory. Current results shed light onto the neural mechanisms that promote episodic encoding not only for information within the event, but also, importantly, in the ability to link across events to create a memory representation of continuous experience. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Understanding the Cognitive and Genetic Underpinnings of Procrastination: Evidence for Shared Genetic Influences with Goal Management and Executive Function Abilities

PubMed Central

Gustavson, Daniel E.; Miyake, Akira; Hewitt, John K.; Friedman, Naomi P.

2015-01-01

Previous research has suggested that individual differences in procrastination are tied to everyday goal-management abilities, but little research has been conducted on specific cognitive abilities that may underlie tendencies for procrastination, such as executive functions (EFs). In this study, we used behavioral genetics methodology to investigate two hypotheses about the relationships between procrastination and EF ability: (a) that procrastination is negatively correlated with general EF ability, and (b) that this relationship is due to the genetic components of procrastination that are most related to other everyday goal-management abilities. The results confirmed both of these hypotheses. Procrastination was related to worse general EF ability at both the phenotypic and genetic levels, and this relationship was due to the component of procrastination shared with self-report measures of everyday goal-management failures. These results were observed even after controlling for potential self-report biases stemming from the urge to respond in a socially desirable manner. Together, these findings provide strong evidence for growing theories of procrastination emphasizing the importance of goal-related cognitive abilities and further highlight important genetic influences that underlie procrastination. PMID:26389573

Understanding the cognitive and genetic underpinnings of procrastination: Evidence for shared genetic influences with goal management and executive function abilities.

PubMed

Gustavson, Daniel E; Miyake, Akira; Hewitt, John K; Friedman, Naomi P

2015-12-01

Previous research has suggested that individual differences in procrastination are tied to everyday goal-management abilities, but little research has been conducted on specific cognitive abilities that may underlie tendencies for procrastination, such as executive functions (EFs). In this study, we used behavioral genetics methodology to investigate 2 hypotheses about the relationships between procrastination and EF ability: (a) that procrastination is negatively correlated with general EF ability, and (b) that this relationship is due to the genetic components of procrastination that are most related to other everyday goal-management abilities. The results confirmed both of these hypotheses. Procrastination was related to worse general EF ability at both the phenotypic and genetic levels, and this relationship was due to the component of procrastination shared with self-report measures of everyday goal-management failures. These results were observed even after controlling for potential self-report biases stemming from the urge to respond in a socially desirable manner. Together, these findings provide strong evidence for growing theories of procrastination emphasizing the importance of goal-related cognitive abilities and further highlight important genetic influences that underlie procrastination. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Parietal cortex integrates contextual and saliency signals during the encoding of natural scenes in working memory.

PubMed

Santangelo, Valerio; Di Francesco, Simona Arianna; Mastroberardino, Serena; Macaluso, Emiliano

2015-12-01

The Brief presentation of a complex scene entails that only a few objects can be selected, processed indepth, and stored in memory. Both low-level sensory salience and high-level context-related factors (e.g., the conceptual match/mismatch between objects and scene context) contribute to this selection process, but how the interplay between these factors affects memory encoding is largely unexplored. Here, during fMRI we presented participants with pictures of everyday scenes. After a short retention interval, participants judged the position of a target object extracted from the initial scene. The target object could be either congruent or incongruent with the context of the scene, and could be located in a region of the image with maximal or minimal salience. Behaviourally, we found a reduced impact of saliency on visuospatial working memory performance when the target was out-of-context. Encoding-related fMRI results showed that context-congruent targets activated dorsoparietal regions, while context-incongruent targets de-activated the ventroparietal cortex. Saliency modulated activity both in dorsal and ventral regions, with larger context-related effects for salient targets. These findings demonstrate the joint contribution of knowledge-based and saliency-driven attention for memory encoding, highlighting a dissociation between dorsal and ventral parietal regions. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Effects of capacity limits, memory loss, and sound type in change deafness.

PubMed

Gregg, Melissa K; Irsik, Vanessa C; Snyder, Joel S

2017-11-01

Change deafness, the inability to notice changes to auditory scenes, has the potential to provide insights about sound perception in busy situations typical of everyday life. We determined the extent to which change deafness to sounds is due to the capacity of processing multiple sounds and the loss of memory for sounds over time. We also determined whether these processing limitations work differently for varying types of sounds within a scene. Auditory scenes composed of naturalistic sounds, spectrally dynamic unrecognizable sounds, tones, and noise rhythms were presented in a change-detection task. On each trial, two scenes were presented that were same or different. We manipulated the number of sounds within each scene to measure memory capacity and the silent interval between scenes to measure memory loss. For all sounds, change detection was worse as scene size increased, demonstrating the importance of capacity limits. Change detection to the natural sounds did not deteriorate much as the interval between scenes increased up to 2,000 ms, but it did deteriorate substantially with longer intervals. For artificial sounds, in contrast, change-detection performance suffered even for very short intervals. The results suggest that change detection is generally limited by capacity, regardless of sound type, but that auditory memory is more enduring for sounds with naturalistic acoustic structures.

Decoding individual episodic memory traces in the human hippocampus.

PubMed

Chadwick, Martin J; Hassabis, Demis; Weiskopf, Nikolaus; Maguire, Eleanor A

2010-03-23

In recent years, multivariate pattern analyses have been performed on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, permitting prediction of mental states from local patterns of blood oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal across voxels. We previously demonstrated that it is possible to predict the position of individuals in a virtual-reality environment from the pattern of activity across voxels in the hippocampus. Although this shows that spatial memories can be decoded, substantially more challenging, and arguably only possible to investigate in humans, is whether it is feasible to predict which complex everyday experience, or episodic memory, a person is recalling. Here we document for the first time that traces of individual rich episodic memories are detectable and distinguishable solely from the pattern of fMRI BOLD signals across voxels in the human hippocampus. In so doing, we uncovered a possible functional topography in the hippocampus, with preferential episodic processing by some hippocampal regions over others. Moreover, our results imply that the neuronal traces of episodic memories are stable (and thus predictable) even over many re-activations. Finally, our data provide further evidence for functional differentiation within the medial temporal lobe, in that we show the hippocampus contains significantly more episodic information than adjacent structures. 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Memory flexibility training for autobiographical memory as an intervention for maintaining social and mental well-being in older adults.

PubMed

Leahy, Fiona; Ridout, Nathan; Holland, Carol

2018-05-07

Autobiographical memory specificity (AMS) reduces with increasing age and is associated with depression, social problem-solving and functional limitations. However, ability to switch between general and specific, as well as between positive and negative retrieval, may be more important for the strategic use of autobiographical information in everyday life. Ability to switch between retrieval modes is likely to rely on aspects of executive function. We propose that age-related deficits in cognitive flexibility impair AMS, but the "positivity effect" protects positively valenced memories from impaired specificity. A training programme to improve the ability to flexibly retrieve different types of memories in depressed adults (MemFlex) was examined in non-depressed older adults to determine effects on AMS, valence and the executive functions underlying cognitive flexibility. Thirty-nine participants aged 70+ (MemFlex, n = 20; control, n = 19) took part. AMS and the inhibition aspect of executive function improved in both groups, suggesting these abilities are amenable to change, although not differentially affected by this type of training. Lower baseline inhibition scores correlated with increased negative, but not positive AMS, suggesting that positive AMS is an automatic process in older adults. Changes in AMS correlated with changes in social problem-solving, emphasising the usefulness of AMs in a social environment.

Memory improvements in elderly women following 16 weeks treatment with a combined multivitamin, mineral and herbal supplement: A randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Macpherson, Helen; Ellis, Kathryn A; Sali, Avni; Pipingas, Andrew

2012-03-01

There is potential for multivitamin supplementation to improve cognition in the elderly. This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted to investigate the effects of 16 weeks multivitamin supplementation (Swisse Women's 50+ Ultivite ®) on cognition in elderly women. Participants in this study were 56 community dwelling, elderly women, with subjective complaints of memory loss. Cognition was assessed using a computerized battery of memory and attention tasks designed to be sensitive to age-related declines to fluid intelligence, and a measure of verbal recall. Biochemical measures of selected nutrients, homocysteine, markers of inflammation, oxidative stress, and blood safety parameters were also collected. All cognitive and haematological parameters were assessed at baseline and 16 weeks post-treatment. The multivitamin improved speed of response on a measure of spatial working memory, however benefits to other cognitive processes were not observed. Multivitamin supplementation decreased levels of homocysteine and increased levels of vitamin B(6) and B(12), with a trend for vitamin E to increase. There were no hepatotoxic effects of the multivitamin formula indicating this supplement was safe for everyday usage in the elderly. Sixteen weeks ssupplementation with a combined multivitamin, mineral and herbal formula may benefit working memory in elderly women at risk of cognitive decline.

Determining the relationship between sleep architecture, seizure variables and memory in patients with focal epilepsy.

PubMed

Miller, Laurie A; Ricci, Monica; van Schalkwijk, Frank J; Mohamed, Armin; van der Werf, Ysbrand D

2016-06-01

Sleep has been shown to be important to memory. Both sleep and memory have been found to be abnormal in patients with epilepsy. In this study, we explored the effects that nocturnal epileptiform discharges and the presence of a hippocampal lesion have on sleep patterns and memory. Twenty-five patients with focal epilepsy who underwent a 24-hr ambulatory EEG also completed the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ). The EEG record was scored for length of time spent in the various sleep stages, time spent awake after sleep onset, and rapid eye movement (REM) latency. Of these sleep variables, only REM latency differed when the epilepsy patients were divided on the bases of either presence/absence of nocturnal discharges or presence/absence of a hippocampal lesion. In both cases, presence of the abnormality was associated with longer latency. Furthermore, longer REM latency was found to be a better predictor of EMQ score than either number of discharges or presence of a hippocampal lesion. Longer REM latency was associated with a smaller percentage of time spent in slow-wave sleep in the early part of the night and may serve as a particularly sensitive marker to disturbances in sleep architecture. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Memorable Audiovisual Narratives Synchronize Sensory and Supramodal Neural Responses

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Abstract Our brains integrate information across sensory modalities to generate perceptual experiences and form memories. However, it is difficult to determine the conditions under which multisensory stimulation will benefit or hinder the retrieval of everyday experiences. We hypothesized that the determining factor is the reliability of information processing during stimulus presentation, which can be measured through intersubject correlation of stimulus-evoked activity. We therefore presented biographical auditory narratives and visual animations to 72 human subjects visually, auditorily, or combined, while neural activity was recorded using electroencephalography. Memory for the narrated information, contained in the auditory stream, was tested 3 weeks later. While the visual stimulus alone led to no meaningful retrieval, this related stimulus improved memory when it was combined with the story, even when it was temporally incongruent with the audio. Further, individuals with better subsequent memory elicited neural responses during encoding that were more correlated with their peers. Surprisingly, portions of this predictive synchronized activity were present regardless of the sensory modality of the stimulus. These data suggest that the strength of sensory and supramodal activity is predictive of memory performance after 3 weeks, and that neural synchrony may explain the mnemonic benefit of the functionally uninformative visual context observed for these real-world stimuli. PMID:27844062

Training Working Memory in Childhood Enhances Coupling between Frontoparietal Control Network and Task-Related Regions.

PubMed

Barnes, Jessica J; Nobre, Anna Christina; Woolrich, Mark W; Baker, Kate; Astle, Duncan E

2016-08-24

Working memory is a capacity upon which many everyday tasks depend and which constrains a child's educational progress. We show that a child's working memory can be significantly enhanced by intensive computer-based training, relative to a placebo control intervention, in terms of both standardized assessments of working memory and performance on a working memory task performed in a magnetoencephalography scanner. Neurophysiologically, we identified significantly increased cross-frequency phase amplitude coupling in children who completed training. Following training, the coupling between the upper alpha rhythm (at 16 Hz), recorded in superior frontal and parietal cortex, became significantly coupled with high gamma activity (at ∼90 Hz) in inferior temporal cortex. This altered neural network activity associated with cognitive skill enhancement is consistent with a framework in which slower cortical rhythms enable the dynamic regulation of higher-frequency oscillatory activity related to task-related cognitive processes. Whether we can enhance cognitive abilities through intensive training is one of the most controversial topics of cognitive psychology in recent years. This is particularly controversial in childhood, where aspects of cognition, such as working memory, are closely related to school success and are implicated in numerous developmental disorders. We provide the first neurophysiological account of how working memory training may enhance ability in childhood, using a brain recording technique called magnetoencephalography. We borrowed an analysis approach previously used with intracranial recordings in adults, or more typically in other animal models, called "phase amplitude coupling." Copyright © 2016 Barnes et al.

Integrative assessment of brain function in PTSD: brain stability and working memory.

PubMed

Veltmeyer, Melinda D; McFarlane, Alexander C; Bryant, Richard A; Mayo, Therese; Gordon, Evian; Clark, C Richard

2006-03-01

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is characterized by symptoms of hyperarousal, avoidance and intrusive trauma-related memories and deficits in everyday memory and attention. Separate studies in PTSD have found abnormalities in electroencephalogram EEG, in event-related potential (ERP) and behavioral measures of working memory and attention. The present study seeks to determine whether these abnormalities are related and the extent to which they share this relationship with clinical symptoms. EEG data were collected during an eyes-open paradigm and a one-back working memory task. Behavioral and clinical data (CAPS) were also collected. The PTSD group showed signs of altered cortical arousal as indexed by reduced alpha power and an increased theta/alpha ratio, and clinical and physiological measures of arousal were found to be related. The normal relationship between theta power and ERP indices of working memory was not affected in PTSD, with both sets of measures reduced in the disordered group. Medication appeared to underpin a number of abnormal parameters, including P3 amplitude to targets and the accuracy, though not speed, of target detection. The present study helps to overcome a limitation of earlier studies that assess such parameters independently in different groups of patients that vary in factors such as comorbidity, medication status, gender and symptom profile. The present study begins to shed light on the relationship between these measures and suggests that abnormalities in brain working memory may be linked to underlying abnormalities in brain stability.

Training Working Memory in Childhood Enhances Coupling between Frontoparietal Control Network and Task-Related Regions

PubMed Central

Barnes, Jessica J.; Nobre, Anna Christina; Woolrich, Mark W.; Baker, Kate

2016-01-01

Working memory is a capacity upon which many everyday tasks depend and which constrains a child's educational progress. We show that a child's working memory can be significantly enhanced by intensive computer-based training, relative to a placebo control intervention, in terms of both standardized assessments of working memory and performance on a working memory task performed in a magnetoencephalography scanner. Neurophysiologically, we identified significantly increased cross-frequency phase amplitude coupling in children who completed training. Following training, the coupling between the upper alpha rhythm (at 16 Hz), recorded in superior frontal and parietal cortex, became significantly coupled with high gamma activity (at ∼90 Hz) in inferior temporal cortex. This altered neural network activity associated with cognitive skill enhancement is consistent with a framework in which slower cortical rhythms enable the dynamic regulation of higher-frequency oscillatory activity related to task-related cognitive processes. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Whether we can enhance cognitive abilities through intensive training is one of the most controversial topics of cognitive psychology in recent years. This is particularly controversial in childhood, where aspects of cognition, such as working memory, are closely related to school success and are implicated in numerous developmental disorders. We provide the first neurophysiological account of how working memory training may enhance ability in childhood, using a brain recording technique called magnetoencephalography. We borrowed an analysis approach previously used with intracranial recordings in adults, or more typically in other animal models, called “phase amplitude coupling.” PMID:27559180

The influence of age and mild cognitive impairment on associative memory performance and underlying brain networks.

PubMed

Oedekoven, Christiane S H; Jansen, Andreas; Keidel, James L; Kircher, Tilo; Leube, Dirk

2015-12-01

Associative memory is essential to everyday activities, such as the binding of faces and corresponding names to form single bits of information. However, this ability often becomes impaired with increasing age. The most important neural substrate of associative memory is the hippocampus, a structure crucially implicated in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The main aim of this study was to compare neural correlates of associative memory in healthy aging and mild cognitive impairment (MCI), an at-risk state for AD. We used fMRI to investigate differences in brain activation and connectivity between young controls (n = 20), elderly controls (n = 32) and MCI patients (n = 21) during associative memory retrieval. We observed lower hippocampal activation in MCI patients than control groups during a face-name recognition task, and the magnitude of this decrement was correlated with lower associative memory performance. Further, increased activation in precentral regions in all older adults indicated a stronger involvement of the task positive network (TPN) with age. Finally, functional connectivity analysis revealed a stronger link of hippocampal and striatal components in older adults in comparison to young controls, regardless of memory impairment. In elderly controls, this went hand-in-hand with a stronger activation of striatal areas. Increased TPN activation may be linked to greater reliance on cognitive control in both older groups, while increased functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the striatum may suggest dedifferentiation, especially in elderly controls.

Achilles' ear? Inferior human short-term and recognition memory in the auditory modality.

PubMed

Bigelow, James; Poremba, Amy

2014-01-01

Studies of the memory capabilities of nonhuman primates have consistently revealed a relative weakness for auditory compared to visual or tactile stimuli: extensive training is required to learn auditory memory tasks, and subjects are only capable of retaining acoustic information for a brief period of time. Whether a parallel deficit exists in human auditory memory remains an outstanding question. In the current study, a short-term memory paradigm was used to test human subjects' retention of simple auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli that were carefully equated in terms of discriminability, stimulus exposure time, and temporal dynamics. Mean accuracy did not differ significantly among sensory modalities at very short retention intervals (1-4 s). However, at longer retention intervals (8-32 s), accuracy for auditory stimuli fell substantially below that observed for visual and tactile stimuli. In the interest of extending the ecological validity of these findings, a second experiment tested recognition memory for complex, naturalistic stimuli that would likely be encountered in everyday life. Subjects were able to identify all stimuli when retention was not required, however, recognition accuracy following a delay period was again inferior for auditory compared to visual and tactile stimuli. Thus, the outcomes of both experiments provide a human parallel to the pattern of results observed in nonhuman primates. The results are interpreted in light of neuropsychological data from nonhuman primates, which suggest a difference in the degree to which auditory, visual, and tactile memory are mediated by the perirhinal and entorhinal cortices.

A Layered Solution for Supercomputing Storage

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Grider, Gary

To solve the supercomputing challenge of memory keeping up with processing speed, a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory developed two innovative memory management and storage technologies. Burst buffers peel off data onto flash memory to support the checkpoint/restart paradigm of large simulations. MarFS adds a thin software layer enabling a new tier for campaign storage—based on inexpensive, failure-prone disk drives—between disk drives and tape archives.

What success can teach us about failure: the plasma metabolome of older adults with superior memory and lessons for Alzheimer's disease.

PubMed

Mapstone, Mark; Lin, Feng; Nalls, Mike A; Cheema, Amrita K; Singleton, Andrew B; Fiandaca, Massimo S; Federoff, Howard J

2017-03-01

As the world population ages, primary prevention of age-related cognitive decline and disability will become increasingly important. Prevention strategies are often developed from an understanding of disease pathobiology, but models of biological success may provide additional useful insights. Here, we studied 224 older adults, some with superior memory performance (n = 41), some with normal memory performance (n = 109), and some with mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's disease (AD; n = 74) to understand metabolomic differences which might inform future interventions to promote cognitive health. Plasma metabolomics revealed significant differential abundance of 12 metabolites in those with superior memory relative to controls (receiver operating characteristic area under the curve [AUC] = 0.89) and the inverse abundance pattern in the mild cognitive impairment, AD (AUC = 1.0) and even preclinical AD groups relative to controls (AUC = 0.97). The 12 metabolites are components of key metabolic pathways regulating oxidative stress, inflammation, and nitric oxide bioavailability. These findings from opposite ends of the cognitive continuum highlight the role of these pathways in superior memory abilities and whose failure may contribute to age-related memory impairment. These pathways may be targeted to promote successful cognitive aging. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Mnemonic anosognosia in Alzheimer's disease is caused by a failure to transfer online evaluations of performance: Evidence from memory training programs.

PubMed

Silva, Ana Rita; Pinho, Maria Salomé; Macedo, Luís; Souchay, Céline; Moulin, Christopher

2017-06-01

There is a debate about the ability of patients with Alzheimer's disease to build an up-to-date representation of their memory function, which has been termed mnemonic anosognosia. This form of anosognosia is typified by accurate online evaluations of performance, but dysfunctional or outmoded representations of function more generally. We tested whether people with Alzheimer's disease could adapt or change their representations of memory performance across three different six-week memory training programs using global judgements of learning. We showed that whereas online assessments of performance were accurate, patients continued to make inaccurate overestimations of their memory performance. This was despite the fact that the magnitude of predictions shifted according to the memory training. That is, on some level patients showed an ability to change and retain a representation of performance over time, but it was a dysfunctional one. For the first time in the literature we were able to use an analysis using correlations to support this claim, based on a large heterogeneous sample of 51 patients with Alzheimer's disease. The results point not to a failure to retain online metamemory information, but rather that this information is never used or incorporated into longer term representations, supporting but refining the mnemonic anosognosia hypothesis.

The role of executive functioning in memory performance in pediatric focal epilepsy.

PubMed

Sepeta, Leigh N; Casaletto, Kaitlin Blackstone; Terwilliger, Virginia; Facella-Ervolini, Joy; Sady, Maegan; Mayo, Jessica; Gaillard, William D; Berl, Madison M

2017-02-01

Learning and memory are essential for academic success and everyday functioning, but the pattern of memory skills and its relationship to executive functioning in children with focal epilepsy is not fully delineated. We address a gap in the literature by examining the relationship between memory and executive functioning in a pediatric focal epilepsy population. Seventy children with focal epilepsy and 70 typically developing children matched on age, intellectual functioning, and gender underwent neuropsychological assessment, including measures of intelligence (Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence [WASI]/Differential Ability Scales [DAS]), as well as visual Children's Memory Scale (CMS Dot Locations) and verbal episodic memory (Wide Range Assessment of Memory and Learning [WRAML] Story Memory and California Verbal Learning Test for Children [CVLT-C]). Executive functioning was measured directly (WISC-IV Digit Span Backward; Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals, Fourth Edition (CELF-IV) Recalling Sentences) and by parent report (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function [BRIEF]). Children with focal epilepsy had lower delayed free-recall scores than controls across visual and verbal memory tasks (p = 0.02; partial η 2 = 0.12). In contrast, recognition memory performance was similar for patients and controls (p = 0.36; partial η 2 = 0.03). Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated difficulties in working memory (p = 0.02; partial η 2 = 0.08) and planning/organization (p = 0.02) compared to controls. Working memory predicted 9-19% of the variance in delayed free recall for verbal and visual memory; organization predicted 9-10% of the variance in verbal memory. Patients with both left and right focal epilepsy demonstrated more difficulty on verbal versus visual tasks (p = 0.002). Memory performance did not differ by location of seizure foci (temporal vs. extratemporal, frontal vs. extrafrontal). Children with focal epilepsy demonstrated memory ability within age-level expectations, but delayed free recall was inefficient compared to typically developing controls. Memory difficulties were not related to general cognitive impairment or seizure localization. Executive functioning accounted for significant variance in memory performance, suggesting that poor executive control negatively influences memory retrieval. Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 International League Against Epilepsy.

Dehydroepiandrosterone impacts working memory by shaping cortico-hippocampal structural covariance during development.

PubMed

Nguyen, Tuong-Vi; Wu, Mia; Lew, Jimin; Albaugh, Matthew D; Botteron, Kelly N; Hudziak, James J; Fonov, Vladimir S; Collins, D Louis; Campbell, Benjamin C; Booij, Linda; Herba, Catherine; Monnier, Patricia; Ducharme, Simon; McCracken, James T

2017-12-01

Existing studies suggest that dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) may be important for human brain development and cognition. For example, molecular studies have hinted at the critical role of DHEA in enhancing brain plasticity. Studies of human brain development also support the notion that DHEA is involved in preserving cortical plasticity. Further, some, though not all, studies show that DHEA administration may lead to improvements in working memory in adults. Yet these findings remain limited by an incomplete understanding of the specific neuroanatomical mechanisms through which DHEA may impact the CNS during development. Here we examined associations between DHEA, cortico-hippocampal structural covariance, and working memory (216 participants [female=123], age range 6-22 years old, mean age: 13.6 +/-3.6 years, each followed for a maximum of 3 visits over the course of 4 years). In addition to administering performance-based, spatial working memory tests to these children, we also collected ecological, parent ratings of working memory in everyday situations. We found that increasingly higher DHEA levels were associated with a shift toward positive insular-hippocampal and occipito-hippocampal structural covariance. In turn, DHEA-related insular-hippocampal covariance was associated with lower spatial working memory but higher overall working memory as measured by the ecological parent ratings. Taken together with previous research, these results support the hypothesis that DHEA may optimize cortical functions related to general attentional and working memory processes, but impair the development of bottom-up, hippocampal-to-cortical connections, resulting in impaired encoding of spatial cues. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Psychometric characteristics of the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT) as an early detection instrument for dementia and mild cognitive impairment in Brazil.

PubMed

Yassuda, Mônica Sanches; Flaks, Mariana Kneese; Viola, Luciane Fátima; Pereira, Fernanda Speggiorin; Memória, Claudia Maia; Nunes, Paula Villela; Forlenza, Orestes Vicente

2010-09-01

The Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test (RBMT) assesses everyday memory by means of tasks which mimic daily challenges. The objective was to examine the validity of the Brazilian version of the RBMT to detect cognitive decline. 195 older adults were diagnosed as normal controls (NC) or with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer's disease (AD) by a multidisciplinary team, after participants completed clinical and neuropsychological protocols. Cronbach's alpha was high for the total sample for the RBMT profile (PS) and screening scores (SS) (PS = 0.91, SS = 0.87) and for the AD group (PS = 0.84, SS = 0.85), and moderate for the MCI (PS = 0.62, SS = 0.55) and NC (PS = 0.62, SS = 0.60) groups. RBMT total scores, Appointment, Pictures, Immediate and Delayed Story, Immediate and Delayed Route, Delayed Message and Date contributed to differentiate NC from MCI. ROC curve analyses indicated high accuracy to differentiate NC from AD patients, and, moderate accuracy to differentiate NC from MCI. The Brazilian version of the RBMT seems to be an appropriate instrument to identify memory decline in Brazilian older adults.

Categorizing words through semantic memory navigation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Borge-Holthoefer, J.; Arenas, A.

2010-03-01

Semantic memory is the cognitive system devoted to storage and retrieval of conceptual knowledge. Empirical data indicate that semantic memory is organized in a network structure. Everyday experience shows that word search and retrieval processes provide fluent and coherent speech, i.e. are efficient. This implies either that semantic memory encodes, besides thousands of words, different kind of links for different relationships (introducing greater complexity and storage costs), or that the structure evolves facilitating the differentiation between long-lasting semantic relations from incidental, phenomenological ones. Assuming the latter possibility, we explore a mechanism to disentangle the underlying semantic backbone which comprises conceptual structure (extraction of categorical relations between pairs of words), from the rest of information present in the structure. To this end, we first present and characterize an empirical data set modeled as a network, then we simulate a stochastic cognitive navigation on this topology. We schematize this latter process as uncorrelated random walks from node to node, which converge to a feature vectors network. By doing so we both introduce a novel mechanism for information retrieval, and point at the problem of category formation in close connection to linguistic and non-linguistic experience.

Emotion and false memory: How goal-irrelevance can be relevant for what people remember.

PubMed

Van Damme, Ilse; Kaplan, Robin L; Levine, Linda J; Loftus, Elizabeth F

2017-02-01

Elaborating on misleading information concerning emotional events can lead people to form false memories. The present experiment compared participants' susceptibility to false memories when they elaborated on information associated with positive versus negative emotion and pregoal versus postgoal emotion. Pregoal emotion reflects appraisals that goal attainment or failure is anticipated but has not yet occurred (e.g., hope and fear). Postgoal emotion reflects appraisals that goal attainment or failure has already occurred (e.g., happiness and devastation). Participants watched a slideshow depicting an interaction between a couple and were asked to empathise with the protagonist's feelings of hope (positive pregoal), happiness (positive postgoal), fear (negative pregoal), or devastation (negative postgoal); in control conditions, no emotion was mentioned. Participants were then asked to reflect on details of the interaction that had occurred (true) or had not occurred (false), and that were relevant or irrelevant to the protagonist's goal. Irrespective of emotional valence, participants in the pregoal conditions were more susceptible to false memories concerning goal-irrelevant details than were participants in the other conditions. These findings support the view that pregoal emotions narrow attention to information relevant to goal pursuit, increasing susceptibility to false memories for irrelevant information.

A Contextual View of Adult Learning and Memory.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Glynn, Shawn M.

Explanations of age-related differences in adult memory usually assume two forms: processing deficits and structural deficits. Processing deficit explanations attribute recall differences to a failure of older adults to effectively use the processes of attention, organization, mediation (the use of such devices as visual images and verbal images…

A model of memory impairment in schizophrenia: cognitive and clinical factors associated with memory efficiency and memory errors.

PubMed

Brébion, Gildas; Bressan, Rodrigo A; Ohlsen, Ruth I; David, Anthony S

2013-12-01

Memory impairments in patients with schizophrenia have been associated with various cognitive and clinical factors. Hallucinations have been more specifically associated with errors stemming from source monitoring failure. We conducted a broad investigation of verbal memory and visual memory as well as source memory functioning in a sample of patients with schizophrenia. Various memory measures were tallied, and we studied their associations with processing speed, working memory span, and positive, negative, and depressive symptoms. Superficial and deep memory processes were differentially associated with processing speed, working memory span, avolition, depression, and attention disorders. Auditory/verbal and visual hallucinations were differentially associated with specific types of source memory error. We integrated all the results into a revised version of a previously published model of memory functioning in schizophrenia. The model describes the factors that affect memory efficiency, as well as the cognitive underpinnings of hallucinations within the source monitoring framework. © 2013.

Nonvolatile Memory Technology for Space Applications

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Oldham, Timothy R.; Irom, Farokh; Friendlich, Mark; Nguyen, Duc; Kim, Hak; Berg, Melanie; LaBel, Kenneth A.

2010-01-01

This slide presentation reviews several forms of nonvolatile memory for use in space applications. The intent is to: (1) Determine inherent radiation tolerance and sensitivities, (2) Identify challenges for future radiation hardening efforts, (3) Investigate new failure modes and effects, and technology modeling programs. Testing includes total dose, single event (proton, laser, heavy ion), and proton damage (where appropriate). Test vehicles are expected to be a variety of non-volatile memory devices as available including Flash (NAND and NOR), Charge Trap, Nanocrystal Flash, Magnetic Memory (MRAM), Phase Change--Chalcogenide, (CRAM), Ferroelectric (FRAM), CNT, and Resistive RAM.

The Incidental Influence of Memories of Past Eating Occasions on Consumers’ Emotional Responses to Food and Food-Related Behaviors

PubMed Central

Piqueras-Fiszman, Betina; Jaeger, Sara R.

2016-01-01

Our memories of past eating experiences are influential in shaping food preferences and consumption behavior, and the emotions that people associate to these memories are linked to their attitudes toward foods and their everyday food-related behaviors. This work studies the impact that food-related memories have on peoples’ emotional state and how this state is projected in a subsequent evaluation of images pertaining to food and food-related behaviors. Focus is placed on guilt and shame emotions. Through an online survey, three memories were investigated (a positive meal, a routine evening meal, and an overeating occasion) among UK consumers (N = 710). Participants primed with the overeating memory evaluated images related to junk food as conveying more feelings of guilt and shame than did participants primed with the memory of a positive meal. Moreover, this effect was moderated by participants’ dietary restraint status. Participants classified as having a high dietary restraint had stronger associations with the emotions guilt and shame than participants classified as low in dietary restraint. In contrast, a memory of a positive meal did not lead to positive valuations of any of the food-related images shown. Overall, the findings from the present study illustrate the partial impact that personal food memories have on consumers’ emotional response toward food-related issues, which in turn has the potential to affect future behavior. This study therefore contributes to the literature about cognitive effects on food attitudes and behavior. Furthermore, the results suggest that the empirical approach may be tapping into possibly unconscious emotions toward foods and food-related behavior. PMID:27445911

Augmented Reality for the Assessment of Children's Spatial Memory in Real Settings

PubMed Central

Juan, M.-Carmen; Mendez-Lopez, Magdalena; Perez-Hernandez, Elena; Albiol-Perez, Sergio

2014-01-01

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user's movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children's skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5–6 year olds) and primary school (7–8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent's questionnaire about a child's everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task's usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement. PMID:25438146

Augmented reality for the assessment of children's spatial memory in real settings.

PubMed

Juan, M-Carmen; Mendez-Lopez, Magdalena; Perez-Hernandez, Elena; Albiol-Perez, Sergio

2014-01-01

Short-term memory can be defined as the capacity for holding a small amount of information in mind in an active state for a short period of time. Although some instruments have been developed to study spatial short-term memory in real environments, there are no instruments that are specifically designed to assess visuospatial short-term memory in an attractive way to children. In this paper, we present the ARSM (Augmented Reality Spatial Memory) task, the first Augmented Reality task that involves a user's movement to assess spatial short-term memory in healthy children. The experimental procedure of the ARSM task was designed to assess the children's skill to retain visuospatial information. They were individually asked to remember the real place where augmented reality objects were located. The children (N = 76) were divided into two groups: preschool (5-6 year olds) and primary school (7-8 year olds). We found a significant improvement in ARSM task performance in the older group. The correlations between scores for the ARSM task and traditional procedures were significant. These traditional procedures were the Dot Matrix subtest for the assessment of visuospatial short-term memory of the computerized AWMA-2 battery and a parent's questionnaire about a child's everyday spatial memory. Hence, we suggest that the ARSM task has high verisimilitude with spatial short-term memory skills in real life. In addition, we evaluated the ARSM task's usability and perceived satisfaction. The study revealed that the younger children were more satisfied with the ARSM task. This novel instrument could be useful in detecting visuospatial short-term difficulties that affect specific developmental navigational disorders and/or school academic achievement.

SAHAYOG: A Testbed for Load Sharing under Failure,

DTIC Science & Technology

1987-07-01

messages, shared memory and semaphores . To communicate using messages, processes create message queues using system-provided prim- itives. The message...The size of the memory that is to be shared is decided by the process when it makes a request for memory allocation. The semaphore option of IPC can be...used to prevent two or more concurrent processes from executing their critical sections at the same time. Semaphores must be used when the processes

A Layered Solution for Supercomputing Storage

ScienceCinema

Grider, Gary

2018-06-13

To solve the supercomputing challenge of memory keeping up with processing speed, a team at Los Alamos National Laboratory developed two innovative memory management and storage technologies. Burst buffers peel off data onto flash memory to support the checkpoint/restart paradigm of large simulations. MarFS adds a thin software layer enabling a new tier for campaign storage—based on inexpensive, failure-prone disk drives—between disk drives and tape archives.

In Search for Boundary Conditions of Reconsolidation: A Failure of Fear Memory Interference

PubMed Central

Schroyens, Natalie; Beckers, Tom; Kindt, Merel

2017-01-01

The presentation of a fear memory cue can result in mere memory retrieval, destabilization of the reactivated memory trace, or the formation of an extinction memory. The interaction between the degree of novelty during reactivation and previous learning conditions is thought to determine the outcome of a reactivation session. This study aimed to evaluate whether contextual novelty can prevent cue-induced destabilization and disruption of a fear memory acquired by non-asymptotic learning. To this end, fear memory was reactivated in a novel context or in the original context of learning, and fear memory reactivation was followed by the administration of propranolol, an amnestic drug. Remarkably, fear memory was not impaired by post-reactivation propranolol administration or extinction training under the usual conditions used in our lab, irrespective of the reactivation context. These unexpected findings are discussed in the light of our current experimental parameters and alleged boundary conditions on memory destabilization. PMID:28469565

Significantly improved neurocognitive function in major depressive disorders 6 weeks after ECT.

PubMed

Mohn, Christine; Rund, Bjørn Rishovd

2016-09-15

Cognitive side effects may occur after electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) in depressive disorder patients. Previous studies have been limited by small numbers of cognitive functions assessed. The present study reports the first results from a prospective project monitoring cognitive effects of ECT using a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery and subjective report of everyday cognitive function. Thirty-one patients with major depressive disorder were assessed with the MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery (MCCB). Subjective cognitive complaints were described with the Everyday Memory Questionnaire (EMQ). Severity of depression symptoms were assessed with the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). These assessments were performed prior to and 6 weeks after non-standardized ECT. Compared to baseline, the mean depression severity level was nearly halved and there were significant improvements in mean levels of Speed of Processing, Attention/Vigilance, and Visual Learning 6 weeks after ECT. The other cognitive domains were not altered from baseline. There was no significant change in subjective cognitive complaints. At baseline, there were several significant correlations between the MADRS and MCCB scores. There was no strong association between the EMQ and MCCB scores at either assessment point, but the post-ECT EMQ score was significantly correlated with depression severity. Major limitations were low N and lack of uniform ECT procedure. There was significant improvement in Speed of Processing, Attention/Vigilance, and Visual Learning 6 weeks after ECT. Cognitive tests scores were related to severity of depression, but not to subjective memory complaints. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The effect of mindfulness meditation on time perception.

PubMed

Kramer, Robin S S; Weger, Ulrich W; Sharma, Dinkar

2013-09-01

Research has increasingly focussed on the benefits of meditation in everyday life and performance. Mindfulness in particular improves attention, working memory capacity, and reading comprehension. Given its emphasis on moment-to-moment awareness, we hypothesised that mindfulness meditation would alter time perception. Using a within-subjects design, participants carried out a temporal bisection task, where several probe durations are compared to "short" and "long" standards. Following this, participants either listened to an audiobook or a meditation that focussed on the movement of breath in the body. Finally, participants completed the temporal bisection task for a second time. The control group showed no change after the listening task. However, meditation led to a relative overestimation of durations. Within an internal clock framework, a change in attentional resources can produce longer perceived durations. This meditative effect has wider implications for the use of mindfulness as an everyday practice and a basis for clinical treatment. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A "present" for the future: the unexpected value of rediscovery.

PubMed

Zhang, Ting; Kim, Tami; Brooks, Alison Wood; Gino, Francesca; Norton, Michael I

2014-10-01

Although documenting everyday activities may seem trivial, four studies reveal that creating records of the present generates unexpected benefits by allowing future rediscoveries. In Study 1, we used a time-capsule paradigm to show that individuals underestimate the extent to which rediscovering experiences from the past will be curiosity provoking and interesting in the future. In Studies 2 and 3, we found that people are particularly likely to underestimate the pleasure of rediscovering ordinary, mundane experiences, as opposed to extraordinary experiences. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates that underestimating the pleasure of rediscovery leads to time-inconsistent choices: Individuals forgo opportunities to document the present but then prefer rediscovering those moments in the future to engaging in an alternative fun activity. Underestimating the value of rediscovery is linked to people's erroneous faith in their memory of everyday events. By documenting the present, people provide themselves with the opportunity to rediscover mundane moments that may otherwise have been forgotten. © The Author(s) 2014.

Idiosyncratic responding during movie-watching predicted by age differences in attentional control.

PubMed

Campbell, Karen L; Shafto, Meredith A; Wright, Paul; Tsvetanov, Kamen A; Geerligs, Linda; Cusack, Rhodri; Tyler, Lorraine K

2015-11-01

Much is known about how age affects the brain during tightly controlled, though largely contrived, experiments, but do these effects extrapolate to everyday life? Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, closely mimic the real world and provide a window onto the brain's ability to respond in a timely and measured fashion to complex, everyday events. Young adults respond to these stimuli in a highly synchronized fashion, but it remains to be seen how age affects neural responsiveness during naturalistic viewing. To this end, we scanned a large (N = 218), population-based sample from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) during movie-watching. Intersubject synchronization declined with age, such that older adults' response to the movie was more idiosyncratic. This decreased synchrony related to cognitive measures sensitive to attentional control. Our findings suggest that neural responsivity changes with age, which likely has important implications for real-world event comprehension and memory. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

What Causes a Memory Strategy Utilization Deficiency?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Patricia H.; And Others

1994-01-01

In memory strategy utilization deficiency, a child spontaneously produces an appropriate strategy but receives little or no benefit from it for recall. Three studies suggest two causes: children's failure to relate the task situation to their event knowledge, or to link the strategy to a second strategy, in this case linking a selective attention…

Epidemiology of NIV for Acute Respiratory Failure in COPD Patients: Results from the International Surveys vs. the "Real World".

PubMed

Ozsancak Ugurlu, Aylin; Habesoglu, Mehmet Ali

2017-08-01

Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) has been recommended as the  first-line ventilation modality for acute respiratory failure (ARF) due to acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) based on strong evidence. However, everyday clinical practice may differ from findings of multiple randomized controlled trials. Physicians and respiratory therapists involved in NIV management have been queried about its utilization and effectiveness. In addition to these estimates, cohort studies and analysis of large inpatient dataset of patients with AECOPD and ARF managed with NIV have been extensively published over the last two decades. This review summarizes the perception of medical staff vs. the "real life" data about NIV use for ARF in AECOPD patients.

Compensation or inhibitory failure? Testing hypotheses of age-related right frontal lobe involvement in verbal memory ability using structural and diffusion MRI

PubMed Central

Cox, Simon R.; Bastin, Mark E.; Ferguson, Karen J.; Allerhand, Mike; Royle, Natalie A.; Maniega, Susanna Muñoz; Starr, John M.; MacLullich, Alasdair M.J.; Wardlaw, Joanna M.; Deary, Ian J.; MacPherson, Sarah E.

2015-01-01

Functional neuroimaging studies report increased right prefrontal cortex (PFC) involvement during verbal memory tasks amongst low-scoring older individuals, compared to younger controls and their higher-scoring contemporaries. Some propose that this reflects inefficient use of neural resources through failure of the left PFC to inhibit non-task-related right PFC activity, via the anterior corpus callosum (CC). For others, it indicates partial compensation – that is, the right PFC cannot completely supplement the failing neural network, but contributes positively to performance. We propose that combining structural and diffusion brain MRI can be used to test predictions from these theories which have arisen from fMRI studies. We test these hypotheses in immediate and delayed verbal memory ability amongst 90 healthy older adults of mean age 73 years. Right hippocampus and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) volumes, and fractional anisotropy (FA) in the splenium made unique contributions to verbal memory ability in the whole group. There was no significant effect of anterior callosal white matter integrity on performance. Rather, segmented linear regression indicated that right DLPFC volume was a significantly stronger positive predictor of verbal memory for lower-scorers than higher-scorers, supporting a compensatory explanation for the differential involvement of the right frontal lobe in verbal memory tasks in older age. PMID:25241394

Effects of Sulpiride on True and False Memories of Thematically Related Pictures and Associated Words in Healthy Volunteers

PubMed Central

Guarnieri, Regina V.; Ribeiro, Rafaela L.; de Souza, Altay A. Lino; Galduróz, José Carlos F.; Covolan, Luciene; Bueno, Orlando F. A.

2016-01-01

Episodic memory, working memory, emotional memory, and attention are subject to dopaminergic modulation. However, the potential role of dopamine on the generation of false memories is unknown. This study defined the role of the dopamine D2 receptor on true and false recognition memories. Twenty-four young, healthy volunteers ingested a single dose of placebo or 400 mg oral sulpiride, a dopamine D2-receptor antagonist, just before starting the recognition memory task in a randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled trial. The sulpiride group presented more false recognitions during visual and verbal processing than the placebo group, although both groups had the same indices of true memory. These findings demonstrate that dopamine D2 receptors blockade in healthy volunteers can specifically increase the rate of false recognitions. The findings fit well the two-process view of causes of false memories, the activation/monitoring failures model. PMID:27047394

Semantic similarity between old and new items produces false alarms in recognition memory.

PubMed

Montefinese, Maria; Zannino, Gian Daniele; Ambrosini, Ettore

2015-09-01

In everyday life, human beings can report memories of past events that did not occur or that occurred differently from the way they remember them because memory is an imperfect process of reconstruction and is prone to distortion and errors. In this recognition study using word stimuli, we investigated whether a specific operationalization of semantic similarity among concepts can modulate false memories while controlling for the possible effect of associative strength and word co-occurrence in an old-new recognition task. The semantic similarity value of each new concept was calculated as the mean cosine similarity between pairs of vectors representing that new concept and each old concept belonging to the same semantic category. Results showed that, compared with (new) low-similarity concepts, (new) high-similarity concepts had significantly higher probability of being falsely recognized as old, even after partialling out the effect of confounding variables, including associative relatedness and lexical co-occurrence. This finding supports the feature-based view of semantic memory, suggesting that meaning overlap and sharing of semantic features (which are greater when more similar semantic concepts are being processed) have an influence on recognition performance, resulting in more false alarms for new high-similarity concepts. We propose that the associative strength and word co-occurrence among concepts are not sufficient to explain illusory memories but is important to take into account also the effects of feature-based semantic relations, and, in particular, the semantic similarity among concepts.

Flexible Retrieval: When True Inferences Produce False Memories

PubMed Central

Carpenter, Alexis C.; Schacter, Daniel L.

2016-01-01

Episodic memory involves flexible retrieval processes that allow us to link together distinct episodes, make novel inferences across overlapping events, and recombine elements of past experiences when imagining future events. However, the same flexible retrieval and recombination processes that underpin these adaptive functions may also leave memory prone to error or distortion, such as source misattributions in which details of one event are mistakenly attributed to another related event. To determine whether the same recombination-related retrieval mechanism supports both successful inference and source memory errors, we developed a modified version of an associative inference paradigm in which participants encoded everyday scenes comprised of people, objects, and other contextual details. These scenes contained overlapping elements (AB, BC) that could later be linked to support novel inferential retrieval regarding elements that had not appeared together previously (AC). Our critical experimental manipulation concerned whether contextual details were probed before or after the associative inference test, thereby allowing us to assess whether a) false memories increased for successful versus unsuccessful inferences, and b) any such effects were specific to after as compared to before participants received the inference test. In each of four experiments that used variants of this paradigm, participants were more susceptible to false memories for contextual details after successful than unsuccessful inferential retrieval, but only when contextual details were probed after the associative inference test. These results suggest that the retrieval-mediated recombination mechanism that underlies associative inference also contributes to source misattributions that result from combining elements of distinct episodes. PMID:27918169

From everyday emotions to aesthetic emotions: towards a unified theory of musical emotions.

PubMed

Juslin, Patrik N

2013-09-01

The sound of music may arouse profound emotions in listeners. But such experiences seem to involve a 'paradox', namely that music--an abstract form of art, which appears removed from our concerns in everyday life--can arouse emotions - biologically evolved reactions related to human survival. How are these (seemingly) non-commensurable phenomena linked together? Key is to understand the processes through which sounds are imbued with meaning. It can be argued that the survival of our ancient ancestors depended on their ability to detect patterns in sounds, derive meaning from them, and adjust their behavior accordingly. Such an ecological perspective on sound and emotion forms the basis of a recent multi-level framework that aims to explain emotional responses to music in terms of a large set of psychological mechanisms. The goal of this review is to offer an updated and expanded version of the framework that can explain both 'everyday emotions' and 'aesthetic emotions'. The revised framework--referred to as BRECVEMA--includes eight mechanisms: Brain Stem Reflex, Rhythmic Entrainment, Evaluative Conditioning, Contagion, Visual Imagery, Episodic Memory, Musical Expectancy, and Aesthetic Judgment. In this review, it is argued that all of the above mechanisms may be directed at information that occurs in a 'musical event' (i.e., a specific constellation of music, listener, and context). Of particular significance is the addition of a mechanism corresponding to aesthetic judgments of the music, to better account for typical 'appreciation emotions' such as admiration and awe. Relationships between aesthetic judgments and other mechanisms are reviewed based on the revised framework. It is suggested that the framework may contribute to a long-needed reconciliation between previous approaches that have conceptualized music listeners' responses in terms of either 'everyday emotions' or 'aesthetic emotions'. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cognitive training plus a comprehensive psychosocial programme (OPUS) versus the comprehensive psychosocial programme alone for patients with first-episode schizophrenia (the NEUROCOM trial): a study protocol for a centrally randomised, observer-blinded multi-centre clinical trial.

PubMed

Vesterager, Lone; Christensen, Torben Ø; Olsen, Birthe B; Krarup, Gertrud; Forchhammer, Hysse B; Melau, Marianne; Gluud, Christian; Nordentoft, Merete

2011-02-09

Up to 85% of patients with schizophrenia demonstrate cognitive dysfunction in at least one domain. Cognitive dysfunction plays a major role in functional outcome. It is hypothesized that addition of cognitive training to a comprehensive psychosocial programme (OPUS) enhances both cognitive and everyday functional capacity of patients more than the comprehensive psychosocial programme alone. The NEUROCOM trial examines the effect on cognitive functioning and everyday functional capacity of patients with schizophrenia of a 16-week manualised programme of individual cognitive training integrated in a comprehensive psychosocial programme versus the comprehensive psychosocial programme alone. The cognitive training consists of four modules focusing on attention, executive functioning, learning, and memory. Cognitive training involves computer-assisted training tasks as well as practical everyday tasks and calendar training. It takes place twice a week, and every other week the patient and trainer engage in a dialogue on the patient's cognitive difficulties, motivational goals, and progress in competence level. Cognitive training relies on errorless learning principles, scaffolding, and verbalisation in its effort to improve cognitive abilities and teach patients how to apply compensation strategies as well as structured problem solving techniques. At 16-week post-training and at ten-months follow-up, assessments are conducted to investigate immediate outcome and possible long-term effects of cognitive training. We conduct blinded assessments of cognition, everyday functional capacity and associations with the labour market, symptom severity, and self-esteem. Results from four-month and ten-month follow-ups have the potential of reliably providing documentation of the long-term effect of CT for patients with schizophrenia. Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00472862.

Lesion mapping of social problem solving.

PubMed

Barbey, Aron K; Colom, Roberto; Paul, Erick J; Chau, Aileen; Solomon, Jeffrey; Grafman, Jordan H

2014-10-01

Accumulating neuroscience evidence indicates that human intelligence is supported by a distributed network of frontal and parietal regions that enable complex, goal-directed behaviour. However, the contributions of this network to social aspects of intellectual function remain to be well characterized. Here, we report a human lesion study (n = 144) that investigates the neural bases of social problem solving (measured by the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory) and examine the degree to which individual differences in performance are predicted by a broad spectrum of psychological variables, including psychometric intelligence (measured by the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale), emotional intelligence (measured by the Mayer, Salovey, Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test), and personality traits (measured by the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory). Scores for each variable were obtained, followed by voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping. Stepwise regression analyses revealed that working memory, processing speed, and emotional intelligence predict individual differences in everyday problem solving. A targeted analysis of specific everyday problem solving domains (involving friends, home management, consumerism, work, information management, and family) revealed psychological variables that selectively contribute to each. Lesion mapping results indicated that social problem solving, psychometric intelligence, and emotional intelligence are supported by a shared network of frontal, temporal, and parietal regions, including white matter association tracts that bind these areas into a coordinated system. The results support an integrative framework for understanding social intelligence and make specific recommendations for the application of the Everyday Problem Solving Inventory to the study of social problem solving in health and disease. © The Author (2014). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

From everyday emotions to aesthetic emotions: Towards a unified theory of musical emotions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Juslin, Patrik N.

2013-09-01

The sound of music may arouse profound emotions in listeners. But such experiences seem to involve a ‘paradox’, namely that music - an abstract form of art, which appears removed from our concerns in everyday life - can arouse emotions - biologically evolved reactions related to human survival. How are these (seemingly) non-commensurable phenomena linked together? Key is to understand the processes through which sounds are imbued with meaning. It can be argued that the survival of our ancient ancestors depended on their ability to detect patterns in sounds, derive meaning from them, and adjust their behavior accordingly. Such an ecological perspective on sound and emotion forms the basis of a recent multi-level framework that aims to explain emotional responses to music in terms of a large set of psychological mechanisms. The goal of this review is to offer an updated and expanded version of the framework that can explain both ‘everyday emotions’ and ‘aesthetic emotions’. The revised framework - referred to as BRECVEMA - includes eight mechanisms: Brain Stem Reflex, Rhythmic Entrainment, Evaluative Conditioning, Contagion, Visual Imagery, Episodic Memory, Musical Expectancy, and Aesthetic Judgment. In this review, it is argued that all of the above mechanisms may be directed at information that occurs in a ‘musical event’ (i.e., a specific constellation of music, listener, and context). Of particular significance is the addition of a mechanism corresponding to aesthetic judgments of the music, to better account for typical ‘appreciation emotions’ such as admiration and awe. Relationships between aesthetic judgments and other mechanisms are reviewed based on the revised framework. It is suggested that the framework may contribute to a long-needed reconciliation between previous approaches that have conceptualized music listeners' responses in terms of either ‘everyday emotions’ or ‘aesthetic emotions’.

Stress in telephone helpline nurses is associated with failures of concentration, attention and memory, and with more conservative referral decisions.

PubMed

Allan, Julia L; Farquharson, Barbara; Johnston, Derek W; Jones, Martyn C; Choudhary, Carolyn J; Johnston, Marie

2014-05-01

Nurses working for telephone-based medical helplines must maintain attentional focus while quickly and accurately processing information given by callers to make safe and appropriate treatment decisions. In this study, both higher levels of general occupational stress and elevated stress levels on particular shifts were associated with more frequent failures of attention, memory, and concentration in telephone nurses. Exposure to a stressful shift was also associated with a measurable increase in objectively assessed information-processing errors. Nurses who experienced more frequent cognitive failures at work made more conservative decisions, tending to refer patients on to other health professionals more often than other nurses. As stress is associated with cognitive performance decrements in telephone nursing, stress-reduction interventions could improve the quality and safety of care that callers to medical helplines receive. © 2013 The British Psychological Society.

Parallel effects of memory set activation and search on timing and working memory capacity.

PubMed

Schweickert, Richard; Fortin, Claudette; Xi, Zhuangzhuang; Viau-Quesnel, Charles

2014-01-01

Accurately estimating a time interval is required in everyday activities such as driving or cooking. Estimating time is relatively easy, provided a person attends to it. But a brief shift of attention to another task usually interferes with timing. Most processes carried out concurrently with timing interfere with it. Curiously, some do not. Literature on a few processes suggests a general proposition, the Timing and Complex-Span Hypothesis: A process interferes with concurrent timing if and only if process performance is related to complex span. Complex-span is the number of items correctly recalled in order, when each item presented for study is followed by a brief activity. Literature on task switching, visual search, memory search, word generation and mental time travel supports the hypothesis. Previous work found that another process, activation of a memory set in long term memory, is not related to complex-span. If the Timing and Complex-Span Hypothesis is true, activation should not interfere with concurrent timing in dual-task conditions. We tested such activation in single-task memory search task conditions and in dual-task conditions where memory search was executed with concurrent timing. In Experiment 1, activating a memory set increased reaction time, with no significant effect on time production. In Experiment 2, set size and memory set activation were manipulated. Activation and set size had a puzzling interaction for time productions, perhaps due to difficult conditions, leading us to use a related but easier task in Experiment 3. In Experiment 3 increasing set size lengthened time production, but memory activation had no significant effect. Results here and in previous literature on the whole support the Timing and Complex-Span Hypotheses. Results also support a sequential organization of activation and search of memory. This organization predicts activation and set size have additive effects on reaction time and multiplicative effects on percent correct, which was found.

Reliability measurement for mixed mode failures of 33/11 kilovolt electric power distribution stations.

PubMed

Alwan, Faris M; Baharum, Adam; Hassan, Geehan S

2013-01-01

The reliability of the electrical distribution system is a contemporary research field due to diverse applications of electricity in everyday life and diverse industries. However a few research papers exist in literature. This paper proposes a methodology for assessing the reliability of 33/11 Kilovolt high-power stations based on average time between failures. The objective of this paper is to find the optimal fit for the failure data via time between failures. We determine the parameter estimation for all components of the station. We also estimate the reliability value of each component and the reliability value of the system as a whole. The best fitting distribution for the time between failures is a three parameter Dagum distribution with a scale parameter [Formula: see text] and shape parameters [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]. Our analysis reveals that the reliability value decreased by 38.2% in each 30 days. We believe that the current paper is the first to address this issue and its analysis. Thus, the results obtained in this research reflect its originality. We also suggest the practicality of using these results for power systems for both the maintenance of power systems models and preventive maintenance models.

Reliability Measurement for Mixed Mode Failures of 33/11 Kilovolt Electric Power Distribution Stations

PubMed Central

Alwan, Faris M.; Baharum, Adam; Hassan, Geehan S.

2013-01-01

The reliability of the electrical distribution system is a contemporary research field due to diverse applications of electricity in everyday life and diverse industries. However a few research papers exist in literature. This paper proposes a methodology for assessing the reliability of 33/11 Kilovolt high-power stations based on average time between failures. The objective of this paper is to find the optimal fit for the failure data via time between failures. We determine the parameter estimation for all components of the station. We also estimate the reliability value of each component and the reliability value of the system as a whole. The best fitting distribution for the time between failures is a three parameter Dagum distribution with a scale parameter and shape parameters and . Our analysis reveals that the reliability value decreased by 38.2% in each 30 days. We believe that the current paper is the first to address this issue and its analysis. Thus, the results obtained in this research reflect its originality. We also suggest the practicality of using these results for power systems for both the maintenance of power systems models and preventive maintenance models. PMID:23936346

Functional compensation in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex improves memory-dependent decisions in older adults.

PubMed

Lighthall, Nichole R; Huettel, Scott A; Cabeza, Roberto

2014-11-19

Everyday consumer choices frequently involve memory, as when we retrieve information about consumer products when making purchasing decisions. In this context, poor memory may affect decision quality, particularly in individuals with memory decline, such as older adults. However, age differences in choice behavior may be reduced if older adults can recruit additional neural resources that support task performance. Although such functional compensation is well documented in other cognitive domains, it is presently unclear whether it can support memory-guided decision making and, if so, which brain regions play a role in compensation. The current study engaged younger and older humans in a memory-dependent choice task in which pairs of consumer products from a popular online-shopping site were evaluated with different delays between the first and second product. Using functional imaging (fMRI), we found that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) supports compensation as defined by three a priori criteria: (1) increased vmPFC activation was observed in older versus younger adults; (2) age-related increases in vmPFC activity were associated with increased retrieval demands; and (3) increased vmPFC activity was positively associated with performance in older adults-evidence of successful compensation. Extending these results, we observed evidence for compensation in connectivity between vmPFC and the dorsolateral PFC during memory-dependent choice. In contrast, we found no evidence for age differences in value-related processing or age-related compensation for choices without delayed retrieval. Together, these results converge on the conclusion that age-related decline in memory-dependent choice performance can be minimized via functional compensation in vmPFC. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3415648-10$15.00/0.

Functional Compensation in the Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex Improves Memory-Dependent Decisions in Older Adults

PubMed Central

Huettel, Scott A.; Cabeza, Roberto

2014-01-01

Everyday consumer choices frequently involve memory, as when we retrieve information about consumer products when making purchasing decisions. In this context, poor memory may affect decision quality, particularly in individuals with memory decline, such as older adults. However, age differences in choice behavior may be reduced if older adults can recruit additional neural resources that support task performance. Although such functional compensation is well documented in other cognitive domains, it is presently unclear whether it can support memory-guided decision making and, if so, which brain regions play a role in compensation. The current study engaged younger and older humans in a memory-dependent choice task in which pairs of consumer products from a popular online-shopping site were evaluated with different delays between the first and second product. Using functional imaging (fMRI), we found that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) supports compensation as defined by three a priori criteria: (1) increased vmPFC activation was observed in older versus younger adults; (2) age-related increases in vmPFC activity were associated with increased retrieval demands; and (3) increased vmPFC activity was positively associated with performance in older adults—evidence of successful compensation. Extending these results, we observed evidence for compensation in connectivity between vmPFC and the dorsolateral PFC during memory-dependent choice. In contrast, we found no evidence for age differences in value-related processing or age-related compensation for choices without delayed retrieval. Together, these results converge on the conclusion that age-related decline in memory-dependent choice performance can be minimized via functional compensation in vmPFC. PMID:25411493

Effects of penetrating traumatic brain injury on event segmentation and memory.

PubMed

Zacks, Jeffrey M; Kurby, Christopher A; Landazabal, Claudia S; Krueger, Frank; Grafman, Jordan

2016-01-01

Penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) is associated with deficits in cognitive tasks including comprehension and memory, and also with impairments in tasks of daily living. In naturalistic settings, one important component of cognitive task performance is event segmentation, the ability to parse the ongoing stream of behavior into meaningful units. Event segmentation ability is associated with memory performance and with action control, but is not well assessed by standard neuropsychological assessments or laboratory tasks. Here, we measured event segmentation and memory in a sample of 123 male military veterans aged 59-81 who had suffered a traumatic brain injury as young men, and 34 demographically similar controls. Participants watched movies of everyday activities and segmented them to identify fine-grained or coarse-grained events, and then completed tests of recognition memory for pictures from the movies and of memory for the temporal order of actions in the movies. Lesion location and volume were assessed with computed tomography (CT) imaging. Patients with traumatic brain injury were impaired on event segmentation. Those with larger lesions had larger impairments for fine segmentation and also impairments for both memory measures. Further, the degree of memory impairment was statistically mediated by the degree of event segmentation impairment. There was some evidence that lesions to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) selectively impaired coarse segmentation; however, lesions outside of a priori regions of interest also were associated with impaired segmentation. One possibility is that the effect of vmPFC damage reflects the role of prefrontal event knowledge representations in ongoing comprehension. These results suggest that assessment of naturalistic event comprehension can be a valuable component of cognitive assessment in cases of traumatic brain injury, and that interventions aimed at event segmentation could be clinically helpful. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Effects of Steady-State Noise on Verbal Working Memory in Young Adults

PubMed Central

Alt, Mary; DeDe, Gayle; Olson, Sarah; Shehorn, James

2015-01-01

Purpose We set out to examine the impact of perceptual, linguistic, and capacity demands on performance of verbal working-memory tasks. The Ease of Language Understanding model (Rönnberg et al., 2013) provides a framework for testing the dynamics of these interactions within the auditory-cognitive system. Methods Adult native speakers of English (n = 45) participated in verbal working-memory tasks requiring processing and storage of words involving different linguistic demands (closed/open set). Capacity demand ranged from 2 to 7 words per trial. Participants performed the tasks in quiet and in speech-spectrum-shaped noise. Separate groups of participants were tested at different signal-to-noise ratios. Word-recognition measures were obtained to determine effects of noise on intelligibility. Results Contrary to predictions, steady-state noise did not have an adverse effect on working-memory performance in every situation. Noise negatively influenced performance for the task with high linguistic demand. Of particular importance is the finding that the adverse effects of background noise were not confined to conditions involving declines in recognition. Conclusions Perceptual, linguistic, and cognitive demands can dynamically affect verbal working-memory performance even in a population of healthy young adults. Results suggest that researchers and clinicians need to carefully analyze task demands to understand the independent and combined auditory-cognitive factors governing performance in everyday listening situations. PMID:26384291

Examining Recall Memory in Infancy and Early Childhood Using the Elicited Imitation Paradigm.

PubMed

Lukowski, Angela F; Milojevich, Helen M

2016-04-28

The ability to recall the past allows us to report on details of previous experiences, from the everyday to the significant. Because recall memory is commonly assessed using verbal report paradigms in adults, studying the development of this ability in preverbal infants and children proved challenging. Over the past 30 years, researchers have developed a non-verbal means of assessing recall memory known as the elicited or deferred imitation paradigm. In one variant of the procedure, participants are presented with novel three-dimensional stimuli for a brief baseline period before a researcher demonstrates a series of actions that culminate in an end- or goal-state. The participant is allowed to imitate the demonstrated actions immediately, after a delay, or both. Recall performance is then compared to baseline or to performance on novel control sequences presented at the same session; memory can be assessed for the individual target actions and the order in which they were completed. This procedure is an accepted analogue to the verbal report techniques used with adults, and it has served to establish a solid foundation of the nature of recall memory in infancy and early childhood. In addition, the elicited or deferred imitation procedure has been modified and adapted to answer questions relevant to other aspects of cognitive functioning. The broad utility and application of imitation paradigms is discussed, along with limitations of the approach and directions for future research.

Misremembering Future Intentions in Methamphetamine Dependent Individuals

PubMed Central

Iudicello, Jennifer E.; Weber, Erica; Grant, Igor; Weinborn, Michael; Woods, Steven Paul

2012-01-01

Methamphetamine (MA) dependence is associated with neural abnormalities (e.g., frontal systems neurotoxicity) and corresponding cognitive deficits, including impairment in episodic memory and executive functions. This study evaluated the hypothesis that MA use is associated with impairment in memory for intentions, or prospective memory (ProM), which is an ecologically relevant aspect of episodic memory that involves the execution of a previously encoded intention at an appropriate moment in the future and is known to rely on frontal systems integrity. Thirty-nine MA-dependent individuals and 26 demographically similar non-MA-using comparison subjects were administered the Memory for Intentions Screening Test (MIST). The MA group performed significantly lower than the comparison participants on overall ProM, an effect that could not be better explained by demographics, psychiatric factors, infectious disease comorbidity, or other substance use disorders. The ProM impairment observed in the MA group was comparable on time- and event-based tasks and was marked by an increased rate of task substitution (i.e., intrusions) and loss of time (e.g., early responding) errors. Within the MA cohort, ProM impairment was associated with executive dysfunction and earlier age at first MA use. Findings suggest that individuals with MA dependence experience difficulty in the strategic components involved in the retrieval of future intentions and are discussed with regard to their implications for everyday functioning. PMID:21331980