News reports of research into memory March 2006
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March 2006
Repeated test-taking better for retention than repeated studying
A study indicates that testing can be a powerful means for
improving learning, not just assessing it. The study compared
students who studied a prose passage for about five minutes and then
took either one or three immediate free-recall tests, receiving no
feedback on the accuracy of answers, with students who received no
tests, but were allowed another five minutes to restudy the passage
each time their counterparts were involved in a testing session.
While the study-only group performed better on the test after the
last session, they performed worse when tested 2 days later, and
dramatically worse after one week. Note that the study-only group
had read the passage about 14 times in total, while the repeated
testing group had read the passage only 3.4 times in its
one-and-only study session. It also appears that students who rely
on repeated study alone often come away with a false sense of
confidence about their mastery of the material.
Published in the March issue of Psychological
Science.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/wuis-rtb030606.php
Walking in older people is related to cognitive skills
A study of 186 adults aged 70 and older tested gait speed with
and without interference (walking while reciting alternate letters
of the alphabet). Walking speed was predictable from performance on
cognitive tests of executive control and memory, particularly when
the participant was required to recite at the same time. The
findings suggest that in old age, walking involves higher-order
executive-control processes, suggesting that cognitive tests could
help doctors assess risk for falls. Conversely, slow gait could
alert them to check for cognitive impairment.
The findings appeared in the March issue of
Neuropsychology.
Full reference
Full text available at
http://www.apa.org/releases/neu202-holtzer.pdf.)
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/apa-opw032306.php
Confidence in memory performance helps older adults remember
A study involving 335 adults aged 21 to 83 found that control
beliefs were related to memory performance on a word list recall
task for middle-aged and older adults, but not for younger adults.
This was partly because middle-aged and older adults who
perceived greater control over cognitive functioning were
more likely to use strategies to help their memory. In other words,
the more you believe there are things you can do to remember
information, the more likely you are to make an effort to remember.
The study was published in the Journals of
Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/bu-cim030706.php
Depressed older adults more likely to become cognitively impaired
A study involving 2,220 participants in the Cardiovascular Health
Study, a longitudinal prospective study of adults 65 and older, has
found that 19.7% of subjects with moderate to high depression
developed mild cognitive impairment within six years, compared to
10% of subjects with no depressive symptoms and 13.3% of subjects
with low depressive symptoms. There was no correlation between
depression and vascular disease, although it has been hypothesized
that vascular disease might lead to both depression and cognitive
impairment by causing inadequate blood flow to different brain
structures.
The study appeared in the March issue of
Archives of General Psychiatry.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoc--doa030206.php
Learning and working memory
A 3-year research project on Working Memory and Cognition has
reached its conclusion. The association between effective language
learning and good short-term memory is, it seems, not a causal
relationship. It is not that a good short-term memory is a
prerequisite for long-term learning; it is that both short-term and
long-term memory tasks tap the same ability to create
representations of sufficient quality to support the maintenance of
several of them at once.
Another finding is that metaphoric language often puts greater
stress on working memory and so is harder to process than literal
language.
Another study looked at differences between the abilities of
musicians and persons who did not have music as an active hobby to
remember series of notes presented in succession on a computer
screen. The results show how expertise makes it possible to
apparently bypass working memory limits, even when the memory items
cannot be grouped into simple categories.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoh-nrd031306.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060320084440.htm
Chronic tinnitus and cognition
Individuals with chronic, moderate tinnitus do more poorly on
demanding working memory and attention tests than those without
tinnitus. However, on less complex tasks, no significant differences
were found, suggesting that tinnitus has no effect on tasks that
involve more involuntary, automatic responses. The study adds to the
growing body of research demonstrating an association between
tinnitus and reduced cognitive function.
The study appeared in the February issue of the
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/ra-cta030906.php
Smoking interferes with brain's recovery from alcoholism
In another study indicating smoking worsens the effect of
alcoholism on the brain, smoking was found to apparently interfere
with the brain's ability to recover from the effects of chronic
alcohol abuse.
The study appeared in the March issue of
Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/uoc--siw031506.php
Memory and speed of thinking get worse over time with marijuana use
A study of 20 long-term marijuana users, 20 shorter-term users
and 24 control subjects who had used marijuana at least once in
their lives but not more than 20 times and not in the past two
years, found that the longer people used marijuana, the more
deterioration they had in verbal fluency, verbal memory, attention,
and psychomotor speed. For example, in a test where
participants needed to remember a list of words that had been read
to them earlier, the non-users remembered an average of 12 out of 15
words, the shorter-term users remembered an average of nine words
and the long-term users remembered an average of seven words.
The study was published in the March 14 issue of
Neurology.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/aaon-mso030706.php
Scientists find brain function most important to math ability
A finding that an area of the brain widely thought to be involved
in processing number information generally, in fact has two very
separate functions, may be the key to diagnosing dyscalculia. One
function is responsible for counting 'how many' things are present
and the other is responsible for knowing 'how much'. The brain
activity specific to estimating numbers of things is thought to be
the brain network that underlies arithmetic and may be abnormal in
dyscalculics.
The paper was published on March 21 in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/ucl-sfb030606.php
Nothing special about face recognition
A new study adds to a growing body of evidence that there is
nothing special about face recognition. The researchers have found
experimental support for their model of how a brain circuit for face
recognition could work. The model shows how face recognition can
occur simply from selective processing of shapes of facial features.
Moreover, the model equally well accounted for the recognition of
cars.
The study appeared in the April 6 issue of
Neuron.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/cp-eht033106.php
Performing even easy tasks impairs driving
In yet another demonstration that driving is impaired when doing
anything else, a simulator study has found that students following a
lead car and instructed to brake as soon as they saw the
illumination of the lead car's brake lights, responded slower when
required to respond to a concurrent easy task, where a stimulus -
either a light flash in the lead car's rear window or an auditory
tone - was randomly presented once or twice and participants had to
indicate the stimulus' frequency. The finding suggests that even
using a hands-free device doesn’t make it okay to talk on a cell
phone while driving.
The study appeared in the March issue of
Psychological Science.
Full reference
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2006/pr060303.cfm
Scent of fear impacts cognitive performance
A study involving 75 female students found that those who were
exposed to chemicals from fear-induced sweat performed more
accurately on word-association tasks than did women exposed to
chemicals from other types of sweat or no sweat at all. When
processing meaningfully related word pairs, the participants exposed
to the fear chemicals were significantly more accurate than those in
either the neutral sweat or the control (no-sweat) condition. When
processing word pairs that were ambiguous in threat content, such as
one neutral word paired with a threatening word or a pair of neutral
words, subjects in the fear condition were significantly slower in
responding than those in the neutral sweat condition.
The study was published online ahead of print on March 9 in
Chemical Senses.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/ru-sof033106.php
Asleep or awake we retain memory
We’ve learned that skill memory is reinforced during sleep, but
now new imaging technology reveals that this kind of reinforcement
occurs while we’re awake too — even while we’re learning something
new.
The study was published in PLoS Biology.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-03/plos-aoa032206.php
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/03/060329085308.htm
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