45 research outputs found
The Attentional Boost Effect in Older Adults: Examining the Vulnerable Boost Hypothesis
No full textIntroduction: The Attentional Boost Effect (ABE) occurs whenever participants recognize stimuli paired earlier with to-be-responded targets better than stimuli earlier paired with to-be-ignored distractors or presented on their own (baseline). Previous studies showed that the ABE does not occur in older adults when the encoding time is too short (500 ms/word) or when encoding is incidental, likely due to aging-related reductions in cognitive resources or limitations of processing speed. Method: In the present study, younger and older adults encoded words presented for 1000 ms under intentional instructions. In addition, to determine the potential impact of the retention interval, the recognition task was performed after a delay of 2 minutes (Experiment 1) or 20 minutes (Experiment 2). Results: Under these conditions, older adults showed a significant ABE and the size of the effect was comparable to that achieved by younger adults. The magnitude of the ABE was vulnerable to the passage of time because the recognition advantage of target-paired words decreased sharply from 2 to 20 minutes. Conclusions: Taken together, our data demonstrate that younger and older adults may have comparable ABE effects under specific conditions and are similarly sensitive to interference
Episodic encoding is more than the sum of its parts: An fMRI investigation of multifeatural contextual encoding
No full textEpisodic memories are characterized by their contextual richness, yet little is known about how the various features comprising an episode are brought together in memory. Here we employed fMRI and a multidimensional source memory procedure to investigate processes supporting the mnemonic binding of item and contextual information. Volunteers were scanned while encoding items for which the contextual features (color and location) varied independently, allowing activity elicited at the time of study to be segregated according to whether both, one, or neither feature was successfully retrieved on a later memory test. Activity uniquely associated with successful encoding of both features was identified in the intra-parietal sulcus, a region strongly implicated in the support of attentionally mediated perceptual binding. The findings suggest that the encoding of disparate features of an episode into a common memory representation requires that the features be conjoined in a common perceptual representation when the episode is initially experienced
Oktibbeha County High School Class of 1952
No full textThis black and white composite photo of the Oktibbeha County High School graduating class of 1952 includes the following individuals from left to right: E. Randle, V. L. Reives, S. L. Perry (president), E. Madison, E. Wah (assistant secretary), W. B. Robinson, M. D. Williams, D. I. Jones (vice-president), J. P. Collier, E. L. Parker, T. Stewart, E. Minor, L. D. Prull, E. N. Kennard, J. Robinson, E. R. Roby, C. M. Jordan, R. L Hogan (secretary), M. E. Gandy, R. Jordan, B. L. Tate, J. Bardwell, L. H. Harris, M. L. Love, V. Howell, E. M. Furler, J. M. Grayer, L. Harrison, B. Sudduth, O. M. Zuber, G. L. Sharp, D. Reese, F. M. Perkins, L. Barnett, F. P. Beford. The photo shows signs of fading and water damage.https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/mss-henderson-oktibbeha-county-schools-photos/1006/thumbnail.jp
Distinct patterns of neural activity during memory formation of nonwords versus words
No full textResearch into the neural underpinnings of memory formation has focused on the encoding of familiar verbal information. Here, we address how the brain supports the encoding of novel information that does not have meaning. Electrical brain activity was recorded from the scalps of healthy young adults while they performed an incidental encoding task (syllable judgments) on separate series of words and "nonwords" (nonsense letter strings that are orthographically legal and pronounceable). Memory for the items was then probed with a recognition memory test. For words as well as nonwords, event-related potentials differed depending on whether an item would subsequently be remembered or forgotten. However, the polarity and timing of the effect varied across item type. For words, subsequently remembered items showed the Usually observed positive-going, frontally distributed modulation from around 600 msec after word onset. For nonwords, by contrast, a negative-going, spatially widespread modulation predicted encoding success from 1000 rnsec onward. Nonwords also showed a modulation shortly after item onset. These findings imply that the brain supports the encoding of familiar and unfamiliar letter strings in qualitatively different ways, including the engagement of distinct neural activity at different points in time. The processing of semantic attributes plays an important role in the encoding of words and the associated positive frontal modulation
Does Retirement Affect Cognitive Functioning?
No full textThis paper analyzes the effect of retirement on cognitive functioning using two large scale surveys. On the one hand the HRS, a longitudinal survey among individuals aged 50+ living in the United States, allows us to control for individual heterogeneity and endogeneity of the retirement decision by using the eligibility age for Social Security as an instrument. On the other hand, a comparable international European survey, SHARE, allows us to identify the causal effect of retirement on cognitive functioning by using the cross-country differences in the age-pattern of retirement. The results highlight in both cases a significant negative, and quantitatively comparable, effect of retirement on cognitive functioning. Our results suggest that promoting labor force participation of older workers is not only desirable to insure the viability of retirement schemes, but it could also delay cognitive decline, and thus the occurrence of associated impairments at older age.labour economics ;
Effects of Divided Attention at Retrieval on Conceptual Implicit Memory
No full textThis study investigated whether conceptual implicit memory is sensitive to process-specific interference at the time of retrieval. Participants performed the implicit memory test of category exemplar generation (Experiments 1 and 3), or the matched explicit memory test of category-cued recall (Experiment 2), both of which are conceptually-driven memory tasks, under one of two divided attention (DA) conditions in which participants simultaneously performed a distracting task. The distracting task was either syllable judgments (dissimilar processes), or semantic judgments (similar processes) on unrelated words. Compared to full attention (FA) in which no distracting task was performed, DA had no effect on category exemplar generation priming overall, but reduced category-cued recall similarly regardless of distractor task. Analyses of distractor task performance also revealed differences between implicit and explicit memory retrieval. The evidence suggests that, whereas explicit memory retrieval requires attentional resources and is disrupted by semantic and phonological distracting tasks, conceptual implicit memory is automatic and unaffected even when distractor and memory tasks involve similar processes
Age-related associative deficits are absent with nonwords
No full textWords and nonwords were used as stimuli to assess item and associative recognition memory performance in young and older adults. Participants were presented with pairs of items and then tested on both item memory (old/new items) and associative memory (intact/recombined pairs). For words, older participants performed worse than young participants on item and associative tests but to a greater extent on the latter. In contrast, for nonwords, older participants performed equally worse than young participants on item and associative tests. This is the first study to demonstrate that a manipulation of stimulus novelty can alter age-related associative deficits
