13 research outputs found
Benefit of wakeful resting on gist and peripheral memory retrieval in healthy younger and older adults
Long-term memory for spatial frequency:A non-replication
Reports on stability of spatial frequency in short-term memory span have confirmed low-level perceptual memory mechanism in early visual processing. However, some studies have also claimed evidence for high-fidelity perceptual long-term storage of spatial frequency. We report an attempted replication of Magnussen et al. (Psychol Sci 14:74–76, 2003) where participants were asked to discriminate the spatial frequency of a reference grating from a test stimulus after intervals of 5 s or 24 h. Group thresholds after 24 h were significantly higher than after 5 s, therefore failing to support long-term storage of spatial frequency
Screening for anxiety, depression and suicidality by epilepsy specialists in adult services in Scotland
OBJECTIVE: Clinical guidelines recommend screening people with epilepsy (PWE) regularly for mental distress, but it is unclear how guidelines are implemented. We surveyed epilepsy specialists in adult Scottish services to determine approaches used to screen for anxiety, depression, and suicidality; the perceived difficulty of screening; factors associated with intention to screen; and treatment decisions made following positive screens.METHODS: An anonymous email-based questionnaire survey of epilepsy nurses and epilepsy neurology specialists (n = 38) was conducted.RESULTS: Two in every three specialists used a systematic screening approach; a third did not. Clinical interview was employed more often than standardized questionnaire. Clinicians reported positive attitudes towards screening but found screening difficult to implement. Intention to screen was associated with favorable attitude, perceived control, and social norm. Pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions were proposed equally often for those screening positive for anxiety or depression.CONCLUSION: Routine screening for mental distress is carried out in Scottish epilepsy treatment settings but is not universal. Attention should be paid to clinician factors associated with screening, such as intention to screen and resulting treatment decisions. These factors are potentially modifiable, offering a means of closing the gap between guideline recommendations and clinical practice.</p
Questionnaire-based screening for mental distress in epilepsy: outline and feasibility of an outpatient screening and intervention pathway
Food-induced Emotional Resonance Improves Emotion Recognition
The effect of food substances on emotional states has been widely investigated, showing, for example, that eating chocolate is able to reduce negative mood. Here, for the first time, we have shown that the consumption of specific food substances is not only able to induce particular emotional states, but more importantly, to facilitate recognition of corresponding emotional facial expressions in others. Participants were asked to perform an emotion recognition task before and after eating either a piece of chocolate or a small amount of fish sauce – which we expected to induce happiness or disgust, respectively. Our results showed that being in a specific emotional state improves recognition of the corresponding emotional facial expression. Indeed, eating chocolate improved recognition of happy faces, while disgusted expressions were more readily recognized after eating fish sauce. In line with the embodied account of emotion understanding, we suggest that people are better at inferring the emotional state of others when their own emotional state resonates with the observed one
Understanding long-term forgetting in the healthy and clinical population: evidence from different research paradigms and methods
Memory and forgetting are closely related, yet cognitive research has neglected the topic of
long-term forgetting, leaving several questions unanswered. From a theoretical point of view,
understanding the dynamics of normal forgetting would clarify whether forgetting depends on how
much information is initially encoded, on the passage of time or on the type of material tested. From
a clinical point of view, knowing how people normally forget information would inform our
understanding on pathological forgetting in people with neurological conditions, and would aid the
development of reliable clinical assessments.
This PhD thesis sought to expand our current knowledge on long-term forgetting through
various stimulus material and research paradigms, which were:
1. Behavioural paradigms of Prose recall memory to assess how qualitatively distinct episodic
details (gist and peripheral) are forgotten and how repeated retrieval and initial degree of post-encoding performance affect their retention (Experiment 1, 2 and 3; Chapter 2). Previous
research (Sekeres et al., 2016) demonstrated that forgetting of peripheral details occurs at a
faster rate, as compared to memory for gist up to a week. In my experiments, I assessed
forgetting of episodic details up to a month by adapting the research design from Slamecka
and McElree (1983), who observed parallel forgetting with verbal material up to 5-days. I
found that peripheral details were forgotten at a faster rate than gist events when memory was
tested after a month, whilst forgetting was countered by repeated testing. With shorter
intervals (Experiment 5 and Experiment 6; Chapter 4) I could not observe this differential
effect, independently of age that did not modulate the observed effects (Experiment 4; Chapter
3)
2. Neuropsychological research methods to assess whether people in early stages of Alzheimer’s
Disease present with Accelerated Long-term Forgetting or not. Some researchers argued that
faster forgetting occurs in early Alzheimer’s Disease (Weston et al., 2018), while others did
not (Stamate et al., 2020). Experiment 7 (Chapter 5) employed the same prose recall paradigm
of previous experiments on a group of people with amnesia (Mild Cognitive Impairment due
to Alzheimer’s Disease) and a group of age-matched healthy controls. In this experiment,
people with amnesia presented with impaired encoding and faster forgetting of gist events of
a story, while memory for peripheral information pervasively remained at floor. I reconciled
previous discordant literature by concluding that people with Alzheimer’s Disease show Fast
Forgetting when the material to be recalled grossly benefits from repeated testing.
3. Psychophysical methods to investigate perceptual memory and forgetting of sinusoidal
gratings up to 24-hr. Experiment 8 (Chapter 6) attempted to replicate a study from Magnussen
et al. (2003), who claimed the existence of a high-fidelity perceptual long-term storage of
spatial frequency. I failed to replicate these findings, so the existence of a long-term perceptual
memory for spatial frequency could not be demonstrated and it would not represent a
promising ground for further investigations in healthy aging and people with amnesia.
4. Working memory research methods to study long-term learning and forgetting of feature
bindings (colours-shapes combinations). The aim of Experiment 9 (Chapter 7) was to assess
whether learning took place after repeated verbal recall by assessing memory retention for a
visual array at time intervals of 1-day or 1-week or 1-month, and by also considering the role
of awareness of repetition on long-term learning and forgetting of feature binding. I
demonstrated that long-term learning and retention of feature bindings is enhanced by
repeated recall of the visual array, and this is faster in participants who became aware of
repetition. Learning of feature binding remained stable up to a day, and I also found evidence
of residual learning after a month, even among those participants who did not learn after
repeated array presentations. I therefore concluded that long-term learning and retention of
feature binding is supported by two different cognitive mechanisms: visual short-term
memory and episodic long-term memory