The relative value of environmental context reinstatement in free recall

[EN]The effect of environmental context on episodic memory was examined in two free recall experiments with groups of old and young subjects. All subjects studied a list of unrelated words and were subsequently tested in the same room or in a different room. The results of Experiment 1 showed an advantage of being tested in the same context for the old subjects, but no effects of the context manipulation for the young subjects. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and additionally showed that old subjects (but not young subjects) benefited from instructions to mentally reinstate the learning context. The results of both experiments are discussed in terms of the relative value of contextual cues for subjects in each of the two age groups.Junta de Castilla y LeónMinisterio de Educación y Cultur

Teoría literaria en vivo: herramientas audiovisuales para su estudio hoy

Memoria ID-139. Ayudas de la Universidad de Salamanca para la innovación docente, curso 2019-2020

Active (El Saladillo, Murcia) and fossil (Azuaje, Gran Canaria) travertines: similar facies in different geological settings

Comunicación presentada en el IX Congreso Geológico de España, Huelva, 12-14 septiembre 2016.[ES] En este trabajo se compara un travertino de un sistema activo (El Saladillo, Murcia) con uno fósil (Azuaje, Las Palmas) posiblemente Holoceno. Los dos presentan facies y mineralogías similares. En ambos el mineral dominante en las zonas cercanas a las surgencias es el aragonito (agregados esferulíticos) que disminuye distalmente, a favor de la calcita (morfologías trigonales). Las facies características son: shrubs, burbujas calcificadas, costras laminares, granos con cubiertas y micríticas con diatomeas. En conjunto ambos depósitos corresponden a un sistema de pozas y cascadas. El fuerte desequilibrio químico que caracteriza la zona de surgencia y su tendencia a equilibrarse aguas abajo son los responsables de la mineralogía, las facies, y de la variación de ambas a lo largo del sistema.[EN] An active travertine (El Saladillo, Murcia) and a fossil travertine (Azuaje, Las Palmas) have been compared in the present work. Both travertines show similar facies and mineralogy despite their formed under different geological settings (sedimentary and volcanic respectively). Aragonite, usually as spherulitic crystal aggregates, is the dominant mineral phase close to the spring. Aragonite content diminishes distally to spring, whereas trigonal calcite crystals become to be the dominant mineral phase. Characteristic facies found in both deposits are: shrubs, coated bubbles, laminated crusts, coated grains, and micrite deposits containing abundant diatoms. These deposits correspond to spring-fed pool-cascade systems. Strong chemical disequilibrium close to spring and downflow trend to chemical equilibrium control facies, mineralogy, and their variations along the system.Trabajo financiado por los proyectos CGL2014-54818- P (MINECO) y CGL-2011-27826-CO2-02 (MICINN).Peer reviewe

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 4,640 verbs in Spanish

[EN]Many studies have shown that how words are processed in a variety of language-related tasks is affected by their age of acquisition (AoA). Most AoA norms have been collected for nouns, a fact that limits the extent to which verb stimuli can be adequately manipulated and controlled in empirical studies. With the aim of increasing the number of verbs with AoA values in Spanish, 900 college students were recruited to provide subjective estimates for a total of 4,640 infinitive and reflexive forms. An AoA score for each verb was obtained by averaging the responses of the participants, and these norms were included, together with additional quantitative information (standard deviations, ranges, and z scores), in a database that can be downloaded with this article as supplemental materials

Oral frequency norms for 67,979 Spanish words

Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article (doi:10.3758/s13428-011-0062-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.[EN]Frequency of occurrence is an important attribute of lexical units, and one that is widely used in psycholog ical research and theorization. Although printed frequency norms have long been available for Spanish, and subtitle based norms have more recently been published, oral frequency norms have not been systematically compiled for a representative set of words. In this study, a corpus of over three million units, representing present-day use of the language in Spain, was used to derive a frequency count of spoken words. The corpus consisted of 913 separate documents that contained transcriptions of oral recordings obtained in a wide variety of situations, mostly radio and television programs. The resulting database, containing absolute and relative frequency values for 67,979 orally produced words, is presented. Validity analyses showed significant correlations of oral frequency with other frequency measures and suggest that oral frequency can predict some types of lexical processing with the same or higher levels of precision, when contrasted with text- or subtitle-based frequencies. In conclusion, we discuss ways in which these oral frequency norms can be put to use

The role of verb tense and verb aspect in the foregrounding of information during reading

[EN]In three experiments, we explored the role of verb tense and verb aspect in subjects' construction of mental models while reading. In the first and second experiments, subjectsread paragraphs in which verb tense was manipulated to assign current and past attributes (job descriptions) to a main charac ter. The results showed that on-line accessibility was faster for current attributes. The results of the third experiment showed that verb aspect manipulations regarding character actions affect the speed at which the characters are available for recognition.Universidad de SalamancaUniversidad de La Lagun

Contexto ambiental y memoria: Ausencia de efectos en condiciones de procesamiento optimizado del entorno

[ES]Los efectos del contexto ambiental en la memoria han resultado ser poco fiables en un buen número de estudios previos. Con la intención de clarificar este problema, se llevaron a cabo dos experimentos. El primer experimento sometió a comprobación la hipótesis de que el efecto del contexto dependía del grado en que se procesaba el entorno en el que tenía lugar el aprendizaje. Los resultados no mostraron ninguna ventaja en la condición de contexto igual, incluso cuando se indujo a los sujetos a procesar de manera más completa el contexto de aprendizaje. El segundo experimento sometió a comprobación la hipótesis de que la representación del contexto tiene más posibilidades de servir de ayuda si se instruye a los sujetos para que usen indicios de recuperación contextuales en el momento del recuerdo. De nuevo, los resultados pusieron de manifiesto que no existía ninguna ventaja asociada al contexto igual, incluso en aquellos sujetos que hacían la prueba re recuerdo en la habitación de aprendizaje y con instrucciones explícitas de uso del contexto como indicio de recuperación. Se señalan algunas implicaciones para futuras investigaciones

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 7,039 Spanish words

[EN]Subjective estimations of age of acquisition (AoA) for a large pool of Spanish words were collected from college students in Spain. The average score for each word (based on 50 individual responses, on a scale from 1 to 11) was taken as an AoA indicator, and normative values for a total of 7,039 single words are provided as supplemental materials. Beyond its in trinsic value as a standalone corpus, the largest of its kind for Spanish, the value of the database is enhanced by the fact that it contains most of the words that are currently included in other normative studies, allowing for a more complete characteriza tion of the lexical stimuli that are usually employed in studies with Spanish-speaking participants. The norms are available for downloading as supplemental materials with this article

Absence of environmental context effects on recall under directed forgetting conditions

[ES]Los estudios sobre los efectos del contexto ambiental en memoria han aportado, hasta el momento, un patrón de resultados inconsistentes. Con la intención de clarificar este problema, se llevaron a cabo 4 experimentos utilizando el paradigma de olvido di rigido con el método de la palabra. En todos los estudios se sometió a comprobación la hipótesis de que el recuerdo de aquellas palabras marcadas con la instrucción de olvidar se vería más afectado por manipulaciones del contexto ambiental. Además, se manipu laron las instrucciones de recuerdo, el intervalo de retención y el intervalo desde la pre sentación de la palabra a la aparición de la instrucción aprender/olvidar. En ninguno de los 4 experimentos se encontraron diferencias significativas relacionadas con la mani pulación del contexto ambiental. Los resultados se discuten en función del paradigma del olvido dirigido y se señalan posibles vías de continuación. [EN] Studies of the effects of environmental context on memory have so far shown a pattern of inconsistent results. In the 4 experiments reported here, directed forgetting ma nipulations were used to test the possibility that words assigned to a forgetting condition at the time of study were more likely to be affected by contextual manipulations at the time of test. However, no significant differences related to context were found in any of the experiments, despite changes in recall instructions, retention intervals and delay bet ween words and signals to learn or forget. The results are discussed in relation to the di rected forgetting paradigm and possible ways of continuing research are outlined

Efectos del procesamiento inicial del contexto sobre la memoria a largo plazo

[ES]Se estudiaron los efectos del contexto ambiental sobre la memoria en tres experimentos en los que se manipuló el contexto cambiando las habitaciones entre estudio y prueba de memoria, haciendo que los sujetos estudiaran una lista de palabras en una habitación y que la recordaran más tarde en el mismo contexto ambiental o en otro diferente. Además, la mitad de los sujetos recibieron instrucciones de dedicar atención extra a la habitación de estudio antes de aprender las palabras, y la mitad recibieron instrucciones estándar, que no les inducían explí citamente a procesar la habitación. La manipulación contextual no afectó a los niveles de recuerdo cuando el intervalo de retención era corto (10 minutos en el Experimento 1), pero mostró efectos fiables con intervalos de retención más largos (1 semana en el Experimento 2, y 1 mes en el Experimento 3). En estos dos experimentos, las instrucciones estándar de codificación produjeron los efectos habituales, con un menor recuerdo en la condición de contexto diferente. Sin embargo, las condiciones de codificación extra facilitaron el recuerdo incluso cuando el contexto era diferente durante la recuperación. Estos hallazgos se comentan en relación con desarrollos teóricos actuales. [EN]The effects of environmental context on the recall of information were studied in three experiments in which context was manipulated by changing rooms between study and test, with subjects learning a list of words in one room and later recalling it in the same environmental context or in a different one. Additionally, half of the subjects were instructed to pay extra attention to the study room at the time of learning the words, and half received standard instructions that did not explicitly focus their attention on room-processing. Context manipulation did not affect memory performance when the retention interval was short (10 minutes in Experiment 1), but showed reliable effects with longer retention intervals (1 week in Experiment 2, and 1 month in Experiment 3). In these two experiments, standard encoding instructions led to the usual context effects, with lower recall in the different-context condition. However, extra encoding conditions facilitated recall even when the context was different at retrieval. These findings are discussed in relation to recent theoretical developments.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovació