Recollection (Psychology)

Natural language categories are considered as concepts
which can be described in terms of a prototype, wit h some
category i terns more "typical" of their categories than others .
One hypothesis tested was that typicality effects on free
recall performance were due to atypical items not being
encoded by their category labels. An alternative hypothesis
argues that the structural base behind typicality effects
is "family resemblances" (feature overlap). In the task,
subjects were given either a list of typical or atypical
items for three study/recall trials. Further, one half of
the subjects in each materials condition received category
cues at input to test the differential encoding hypothesis.
The results showed large typicality effects in the no cue
condition. However, there were small typicality effects
in the cue condition. These results were interpreted as
indicating that typicality effects on a free recall performance
task are largely eliminated when category coding is relatively
complete. Thus, the feature overlap hypothesis cannot be
accepted.

In order for memory questions to accomplish the goals of questions, teachers need to determine specific content and cognitive goals for each question so that questions can direct learners' attention and reinforce an organizational structure for the encoding of information. The purpose of this study was to examine the language used in memory questions for assessment purposes and to examine whether different language options used when formulating memory questions engaged brain areas related to memory and cognition. The language of the questions can affect the cognitive process by which the answer is derived. The two language options that affect cognitive processes are non-specific and specific. This study supplements teachers' working knowledge of the methods and techniques for questioning by providing a basic understanding of cognitive processes that different questions can evoke. This study used techniques from neuroscience to test hypotheses derived directly from education-based theories of cognition in order to validate educational theory. Neuroscience provides knowledge about how the brain senses, processes, stores, and retrieves information. It also provides findings that can be translated into practical applications for the classroom. Therefore, the relationship between education and neuroscience contributes to effective planning, practices, and assessment; it allows a more comprehensive understanding of the difficulties and apprehensions associated with learning. The following study utilized fMRI to answer the general question of the relationship between the memory processes associated with specific and non-specific questions. Seventeen undergraduate and graduate students from a university in South Florida served as subjects. Subjects were presented with a stimulus consisting of specific questions, non-specific questions, and control statements. All questions/statements followed the design of 8 seconds to read the question/statement, 10 seconds to "think" about the answer to the question or the material presented in the statement, 4 seconds for response using a "yes" or "no" button, and a 12 second rest period. Images collected were analyzed using AFNI. Specific cognitive operations improved efficiency for the retrieval of information from memory. Results elucidate differences in neural activity associated with encoding processes and the retrieval of information from memory based on the language used in specific and non-specific questions.

Two basic problems were addressed in this study: (1) Was there a significant difference between good/average and poor comprehenders on level of use of top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of expository material? (2) Was there a significant difference in recall at each level of use of top-level structure for good/average
comprehenders and for poor comprehenders? To investigate these problems, three phases of
research were conducted: At Phase 1, a standardized
reading test was administered to determine the student's
level of ability in comprehending literal and inferential
types of questions and level of vocabulary. The student's
level of prior knowledge of the strategy and his/her
performance in free recall were assessed from protocols
written in a pretest. At Phase 2 , an experimental manipulation was
introduced in which all students received intensive training
in the nature of top-level structure, in -how to find it in
expository material, and in how to use it to organize
written, free recall. Immediately following instruction,
use of the strategy and free recall were assessed from
protocols written.

Activation of the representations of the two languages in bilingual memory has been shown to affect recognition during initial word comprehension (e.g., Dijkstra & Van Heuven, 2002). This study investigated whether the activation of semantic (i.e., meaning) and lexical (i.e., form) representations of words in a bilingual's two languages affects word recognition after the first stages of word comprehension. False recognition of words in one language that were similar in meaning and/or form to words studied in the other language was an indication of these effects. This study further investigated whether false recognition based on meaning and/or form is modulated by bilingual language proficiency.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the impact of poser and perceiver gender on the Happiness/Anger Superiority effect and the Female Advantage in facial expression recognition. Happy, neutral, and angry facial expressions were presented on male and female faces under Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS). Participants of both genders indicated when the presented faces broke through the suppression. In the second experiment, angry and happy expressions were reduced to 50% intensity. At full intensity, there was no difference in the reaction time for female neutral and angry faces, but male faces showed a difference in detection between all expressions. Across experiments, male faces were detected later than female faces for all facial expressions. Happiness was generally detected faster than anger, except when on female faces at 50% intensity. No main effect for perceiver gender emerged. It was concluded that happiness is superior to anger in CFS, and that poser gender affects facial expression recognition.

Many errors in recognition are made because various features of a stimulus are attended inefficiently. Those features are not bound together and can then be confused with other information. One of the most common types of these errors is conjunction errors. These happen when mismatched features of memories are combined to form a composite memory. This study tests how likely conjunction errors, along with other recognition errors, occur when participants watch videos of people both with and without unusual facial features performing actions after a week time lag. It was hypothesized that participants would falsely recognize actresses in the conjunction item condition over the other conditions. The likelihood of falsely recognizing a new person increased when presented with a feature, but the conjunction items overall were most often falsely recognized.

This experiment was designed to investigate the effect of emotion on an individual's ability to bind actors and actions in memories for events. Binding is the process of creating associations among features of a stimulus in order to represent that they belong together; however, errors can occur when a feature from one stimulus is incorrectly associated with a feature from another stimulus. Participants viewed a series of video clips, each depicting an actor performing a simple emotional or non-emotional action. One week later, they viewed a series of retrieval video clips consisting of old, (previously seen), conjunction (previously seen action performed by a different actor) and also new video clips. Participants responded "yes" to viewing the old clips the most, followed by both conjunction clips, and then new clips. Participants also responded "yes" more often to emotional items and also displayed higher confidence ratings to "yes" responses for emotional items.

This experiment investigated an individual's memory of specific motion events, unique actor, intrinsic motion, and extrinsic motion combination. Intrinsic motions involve the movement of an individual's body parts in a specific manner to move around, while extrinsic motions specify a path in reference to an external object. Participants viewed video clips, each depicting an actor performing a unique extrinsic and intrinsic motion combination. One week later, they viewed a different series of retrieval video clips consisting of old (identical to encoding), extrinsic conjunction (extrinsic motion previously performed by different actor), intrinsic conjunction (intrinsic motion previously performed by different actor), and new (novel extrinsic or intrinsic motion) video clips. Participants responded "yes" to viewing the old video clips the most often, followed by conjunction video clips, and then new video clips. Furthermore, there were a greater number of "yes" event memory recognition responses for extrinsic conjunction items than intrinsic conjunction items.

Event memory studies have shown that older adults typically have poorer memories for events than do younger adults. Unfortunately, these studies tested memory for events that contained only young adults as the actors. It could be that the younger adults remembered the events better due to an own-age bias. One particular type of event memory error is called unconscious transference. In unconscious transference, a binding error results in false conjunction memories. Several studies have shown that older adults are more likely to make these errors. This study aims to look more closely at the effects of own-age bias on face recognition and conjunction errors made in memory for events. Younger adults were tested on their memory for both younger and older adults seen performing simple actions in video clips as well as in "mug shot" photograph tests.

Two separate groups of young and middle-aged adults watched videos of events being performed by a number of different college-aged females. Both the young goup of adults and the middle-aged group of adults were later tested on their memory for both the individual features of these events (i.e., actors and actions), and for conjunctions of features (i.e., which actor performed which action) in order to determine how likely they were to remember which actors performed which actions. Our results showed that frontal lobe functioning is not affected with age. However, there is a slight decrease in medial temporal functioning that continues on throughout life. There was a main effect of Question, Item Type, and Age Group explained through a three-way ANOVA. Binding errors increase with age because specific areas of the brain, such as the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, deteriorate with age.