News reports of research into memory August 2005
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August 2005
Hearing loss in older adults may compromise cognitive resources for memory
A study involving older adults with good hearing and a group with
mild-to-moderate hearing loss has found that even when older adults
could hear words well enough to repeat them, their ability to
memorize and remember these words was poorer in comparison to other
individuals of the same age with good hearing. The researchers
suggest that the effect of expending extra effort comprehending
words means there are fewer cognitive resources for higher level
comprehension.
Working memory
capacity tends to diminish as we age.
The study was published in the June issue of
Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/bu-hli082905.php
Prenatal alcohol exposure can lead to lasting changes in cognitive processing
A study involving 337 African-American children, 7.5 years of
age, selected from the Detroit Prenatal Alcohol Longitudinal Cohort,
has found that although children known to have been prenatally
exposed to moderate-to-heavy levels of alcohol were able to perform
as well as other children when tasks were simple – such as naming
colors within a timed period – when pressed to respond quickly while
having to think about the response, their processing speed slowed
down significantly. The observed deficits in
working memory
are thought to be partly a result of the slower processing speed.
The study also confirmed earlier suggestions that number processing
is particularly affected.
Results were published in the August issue of
Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/ace-pae080705.php
Talking and listening impairs your ability to drive safely
A study involving almost 100 students driving virtual cars has
provided evidence that people have greater difficultly maintaining a
fixed speed when performing tasks that simulated conversing on a
mobile phone. Both speaking and listening were equally distracting.
The study was published in the August issue of
Applied Cognitive Psychology.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/jws-cpu082205.php
Rare learning disability particularly impacts face recognition
A study of 14 children with Nonverbal Learning Disability (NLD)
has found that the children were poor at recognizing faces. NLD has
been associated with difficulties in visual spatial processing, but
this specific deficit with faces hasn’t been identified before. NLD
affects less than 1% of the population and appears to be congenital.
The study appeared in the August issue of
Learning Disablilities Research & Practice.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uoa-sra081005.php
Babies detect unfamiliar music rhythms easier than adults
According to a recent study, six-month-old babies can detect
subtle variations in the complex rhythm patterns of Balkan folkdance
tunes as easily as can adult Bulgarian and Macedonian U.S.
immigrants, but other Western adults find it exceedingly difficult.
A follow-up study has reported that by the time the babies are a
year old, their performance more closely resembles adults. However,
brief exposure to foreign music still enables 12-month-olds, but not
adults, to perceive rhythmic distinctions in foreign musical
contexts.
The first study was published in the January issue of
Psychological Science.
Full reference
The second study was published August 15-19 in the Online Early
Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/cuns-bdu081205.php
Insight into the processes of 'positive' and 'negative' learners
An intriguing study of the electrical signals emanating from the
brain has revealed two types of learners. A brainwave event called
an "event-related potential" (ERP) is important in learning; a
particular type of ERP called "error-related negativity" (ERN), is
associated with activity in the
anterior cingulate cortex. This region is activated during
demanding cognitive tasks, and ERNs are typically more negative
after participants make incorrect responses compared to correct
choices. Unexpectedly, studies of this ERN found a difference
between "positive" learners, who perform better at choosing the
correct response than avoiding the wrong one, and "negative"
learners, who learn better to avoid incorrect responses. The
negative learners showed larger ERNs, suggesting that "these
individuals are more affected by, and therefore learn more from,
their errors.” Positive learners had larger ERNs when faced with
high-conflict win/win decisions among two good options than during
lose/lose decisions among two bad options, whereas negative learners
showed the opposite pattern.
The report appeared in the August 18 issue of
Neuron.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/cp-iit081205.php
Rating familiarity: how we do it
Previous research has indicated that recognizing a familiar
object is accompanied by a reduction in activity in the
medial temporal
lobe. A new imaging study has confirmed the reduced activity and
demonstrated that the degree of reduction is correlated with the
degree of familiarity of the object (a face in this instance). The
reduction began very rapidly in the recognition process. The
researchers suggested that the graded response of medial temporal
structures are what allows us to assess how familiar an object is.
The study was reported in the September 1 issue of
Neuron.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/cp-tt082505.php
Protein found to inhibit conversion to long-term memory
In a study using genetically engineered mice, researchers have
found that mice without a protein called GCN2 acquire new
information that doesn’t fade as easily as it does in normal mice.
After weak training on the Morris water maze, their spatial memory
was enhanced, but it was impaired after more intense training. The
researchers concluded that GCN2 may prevent new information from
being stored in long-term memory, suggesting the conversion of new
information into long-term memory requires both the activation of
molecules that facilitate memory storage, and the silencing of
proteins such as GCN2 that inhibit memory storage.
The study was published in the August 25 issue of
Nature.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-08/uom-mrp082905.php
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