“He Was the One With the Gun!” Associative Memory for White and Black Faces Seen With Weapons

Much research has found that implicit associations between Black male faces and aggression afect dispositional judgments and decision-making, but there have been few investigations into downstream efects on explicit episodic memory. The current experiment tested whether such implicit associations interact with explicit recognition memory using an associative memory paradigm in younger and older adults. Participants studied image pairs featuring faces (of Black or White males) alongside handheld objects (uncategorized, kitchenware, or weapons) and later were tested on their recognition memory for faces, objects, and face/object pairings. Younger adults were further divided into full and divided attention encoding groups. All participants then took the race faces implicit association test. Memory for image pairs was poorer than memory for individual face or object images, particularly among older adults, extending the empirical support for the age-related associative memory deficit hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin in J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cognit 26:1170–1187, 2000) to associations between racial faces and objects. Our primary hypothesis— that older adults’ associative memory deficit would be reduced under Black/weapon pairings due to their being schematically related stimuli—was not confirmed. Younger adults and especially older ones, who were predominantly White, exhibited an own-race recognition bias. In addition, older adults showed more negative implicit bias toward Black faces. Importantly, mixed linear analyses revealed that negative implicit associations for Black faces predicted increased explicit associative memory false alarm rates among older adults. Such a pattern may have implications for the criminal justice system, particularly when weighting eyewitness testimony from older adult

Cognitive load and maintenance rehearsal

In recent years there has been a good deal of debate about the role of rote, repetitive rehearsal (called Type I or maintenance rehearsal) on the establishment of memory traces that outlast the rehearsal process itself. One advance in the technology used to study this problem is the operational definition of maintenance rehearsal proposed by Glenberg and Adams (1978, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 455-463). These authors argued that maintenance rehearsal should be defined as the continuous maintenance of information in memory using minimal cognitive capacity. Here this definition was adopted and extended in a paradigm in which the mental resources devoted to maintenance rehearsal could be systematically varied. The experiment revealed that there is, indeed, an effect of maintenance rehearsal on long-term recognition performance and that this effect depends on the mental resources devoted to the rehearsal process.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/24749/1/0000171.pd

Assessing automaticity

We propose two principles that should be followed in the study of automaticity for cognitive processes. Both follow from the general rule that experimental research should be guided by a model of the task in question, frequently a process model. The first is that the concept of automaticity is best applied to component processes of complex behaviors rather than to behaviors as a whole. The second is that the criteria chosen for the identification of automaticity should be motivated by the processes in question. Examples are discussed of research programs that are relevant to each principle.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/25469/1/0000009.pd

Recognition of the stimulus suffix

Recall of the final items in a spoken list is hindered by the presentation of a to-be-ignored item. The magnitude of this interference (the stimulus suffix effect) is reduced if the suffix is perceptually distinct from the other list items. Several experiments examine this effect of perceptual distinctiveness. The experiments involve later recognition of stimulus suffixes from lists presented for serial recall. Suffixes which differ from the list items tend to be recognized at least as well as list-similar suffixes. This supports the view that reduction of the suffix effect can be traced to decreased interitem interference in memory rather than to attentional selection.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26029/1/0000102.pd

The proportion of working memory items recoverable from long-term memory remains fixed despite adult aging.

We explored whether long-term memory (LTM) retrieval is constrained by working memory (WM) limitations, in 80 younger and 80 older adults. Participants performed a WM task with images of unique everyday items, presented at varying set sizes. Subsequently, we tested participants’ LTM for items from the WM task and examined the ratio of LTM/WM retention. While older adults’ WM and LTM were generally poorer than that of younger adults, their LTM deficit was no greater than what was predicted from their WM performance. The ability to encode WM information into LTM appeared immune to age-related cognitive decline

A lifespan study of the confidence-accuracy relation in working memory and episodic long-term memory

The relation between an individual’s memory accuracy and reported confidence in their memories can indicate self-awareness of memory strengths and weaknesses. We provide a lifespan perspective on this confidence-accuracy relation, based on two previously published experiments with 320 participants, including children aged 6 to 13, young adults aged 18 to 27, and older adults aged 65 to 77, across tests of working memory (WM) and long-term memory (LTM). Participants studied visual items in arrays of varying set sizes and completed item recognition tests featuring six-point confidence ratings either immediately after studying each array (WM tests) or following a long period of study events (LTM tests). Confidence-accuracy characteristic analyses showed that accuracy improved with increasing confidence for all age groups and in both WM and LTM tests. These findings reflect a universal ability across the lifespan to use awareness of the strengths and limitations of one’s memories to adjust reported confidence. Despite this age invariance in the confidence-accuracy relation, however, young children were more prone to high-confidence memory errors than other groups in tests of WM, whereas older adults were more susceptible to high-confidence false alarms in tests of LTM. Thus, although participants of all ages can assess when their memories are weaker or stronger, individuals with generally weaker memories are less adept at this confidence-accuracy calibration. Findings also speak to potential different sources of high-confidence memory errors for young children and older adults, relative to young adults

What affects the magnitude of age-related dual-task costs in working memory? The role of stimulus domain and access to semantic representations

International audienceAlthough there is evidence that the effect of including a concurrent processing demand onthe storage of information in working memory is disproportionately larger for older thanyounger adults, not all studies show this age-related impairment, and the critical factorsresponsible for any such impairment remain elusive. Here we assess whether domain overlapbetween storage and processing activities, and access to semantic representations, areimportant determinants of performance in a sample of younger and older adults (N = 119).We developed four versions of a processing task by manipulating the type of stimuli involved(either verbal or non-verbal) and the decision that participants had to make about the stimulipresented on the screen. Participants either had to perform a spatial judgment, in decidingwhether the verbal or non-verbal item was presented above or below the centre of the screen,or a semantic judgment, in deciding whether the stimulus refers to something living or notliving. The memory task was serial-ordered recall of visually presented letters. The studyrevealed a large increase in age-related memory differences when concurrent processing wasrequired. These differences were smaller when storage and processing activities both usedverbal materials. Dual-task effects on processing were also disproportionate for older adults.Age differences in processing performance appeared larger for tasks requiring spatialdecisions rather than semantic decisions. We discuss these findings in relation to threecompeting frameworks of working memory and the extant literature on cognitive ageing

Exploring the influence of temporal factors on age differences in working memory dual task costs

International audienceWorking memory is defined by many as the system that allows us to simultaneously store information over brief time periods while engaging in other information processing activities. In a previous study (Rhodes, Jaroslawska et al. (2019) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148, 1204-1227.) we found that retention of serially presented letters was disrupted by the introduction of an arithmetic processing task during a 10 second delay period. Importantly, the magnitude of this dual task disruption increased with age from 18 to 81. The demands of each task were adjusted prior to dual task so that age differences did not reflect baseline differences in single task performance. Motivated by these findings, theories of working memory, and additional analyses of processing reaction times from this previous experiment, we report two experiments, using the same tasks and adjustment procedure, attempting to modulate the magnitude of age differences in dual task effects via manipulations focused on time for encoding to-be-remembered material. Providing a delay prior to processing activities, to facilitate switching between the two tasks, did not modulate age differences. Neither did separating the to-be-remembered material temporally, to allow for the creation of more distinct representations. These findings provide two replications of our initial finding and suggest that age differences in working memory dual tasking are not due to limitations in the speed of encoding

How do scientific views change?:Notes from an extended adversarial collaboration

International audienceThere are few examples of an extended adversarial collaboration, in which investigators committed to different theoretical views collaborate to test opposing predictions. Whereas previous adversarial collaborations have produced single research articles, here, we share our experience in programmatic, extended adversarial collaboration involving three laboratories in different countries with different theoretical views regarding working memory, the limited information retained in mind, serving ongoing thought and action. We have focused on short-term memory retention of items (letters) during a distracting task (arithmetic), and effects of aging on these tasks. Over several years, we have conducted and published joint research with preregistered predictions, methods, and analysis plans, with replication of each study across two laboratories concurrently. We argue that, although an adversarial collaboration will not usually induce senior researchers to abandon favored theoretical views and adopt opposing views, it will necessitate varieties of their views that are more similar to one another, in that they must account for a growing, common corpus of evidence. This approach promotes understanding of others’ views and presents to the field research findings accepted as valid by researchers with opposing interpretations. We illustrate this process with our own research experiences and make recommendations applicable to diverse scientific areas