Anosognosia and self-correction of naming errors in aphasia

Background: There has been comparatively little research into anosognosia for aphasia (a lack of awareness of acquired language deficits). Direct assessments of metacognitive awareness tend to rely on high levels of verbal competence and are difficult for people with aphasia to complete. Therefore indirect measures of awareness have been considered, notably the person’s self-correction of his or her naming errors. Different mechanisms for self-correction based in comprehension or production skills have been proposed. In addition, in other areas of cognition, the relationships between direct and indirect measures and underlying forms of awareness have not been clearly established. Aims: The aims of this study were: a) to investigate the relationship between a direct and an indirect measure of awareness of aphasia, b) to examine the role of executive functioning in performance on both assessment types, and c) to examine the relationship between these measures and underlying language comprehension and production skills. Methods & Procedures: Forty-eight people with aphasia participated, drawn from rehabilitation hospital caseloads. Participants were assessed on a language battery, a non-verbal test of executive function, a direct measure of awareness (ratings of difficulties), and had self-correction behaviour examined in a 40-item naming test. Outcomes & Results: There was a trend relationship between performance on the direct and indirect measures. Both related to overall severity of language impairment, with more severely impaired people being less aware of their difficulties. The two measures, however, dissociated with respect to single-word production and comprehension scores: the direct measure related to production and not comprehension, while the indirect measure related to comprehension and not production. Executive functioning related only to the direct measure of metacognitive awareness. Within production scores, the rate of correction success rather than pre-correction naming rate was associated with metacognitive awareness. Conclusions: This study revealed different underlying bases, in language processes and executive function, for two measures of anosognosia for aphasia. When used to assess awareness of deficits, direct and indirect methods should not be regarded as equivalent

The Innocence Project: Promoting social justice by coding mistaken lineup identification cases.

The Innocence Project has been exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing since 1992. It helps identify aspects of the criminal justice system that contribute to erroneous conviction by looking at six factors: (a) eyewitness misidentification; (b) misapplication of forensic science; (c) false confessions; (d) government misconduct; (e) incentivized informants and (f) inadequate defense. It serves as a digital repository of individual cases of the wrongly convicted. Mistaken identification is the leading cause for erroneous convictions, accounting for about 70% of them. Using the Innocence Project case index to focus on cases involving eyewitness error, we established a system of coding variables to better understand what factors precipitated wrongful convictions, including: Best practice recommendations (lineup instruction/presentation, confidence statement following positive ID & other system variables which are factors that the criminal justice system has control over) Estimator variables (lighting, disguise, weapon focus, and cross-race) which are factors the criminal justice system can only estimate) Legal safeguards designed to prevent erroneous conviction (attorney presence at lineup, cross examination, judges’ instruction) Individual characteristics (intelligence, age of witness/defendant, mental illness, intoxication, & developmental disability) We report data in these areas, relating our findings to the eyewitness literature and theoretical approaches regarding human memory. In addition, we will continuously be in touch with the staff at the Innocence Project regarding our findings that are grounded in memory theory (basis for mistaken IDs). Implications will be discussed as ways to support social justice and reforms and will be significant in helping prevent future injustices. Keywords: Innocence project; wrongful conviction; DNA exonerations; justice

Conjoint Recognition Procedures Reveal Verbatim Processing Enhances Memory for Emotionally Valenced Pictorial Stimuli

Frequently, emotion is associated with enhancements in memory as long as arousal is not too extreme. Negative valence can also lead to increased false memories. Yet less is known about specific memory processes that drive these effects of emotional content on memory performance. The present study uses conjoint recognition analyses to investigate the memory processes associated with memory for negative and positive pictorial stimuli. Participants studied pictures, which had been rated as negative-arousing, positive-arousing, or neutral-non-arousing, before completing a recognition memory test 48 hr later. Contrary to initial expectations based on process-based estimates of emotional words, gist-based processing did not lead to high levels of true memory for negative pictures, nor were negative pictures associated with compellingly real false memories. Instead, negative pictures were recognized more frequently than neutral pictures, and this effect was related to increased verbatim-based identity judgments. However, emotional memory enhancements were not observed for positive pictures. These results indicate that emotional memory enhancements for negative pictures are related to enhanced verbatim processing of emotional material. When false memories did occur for negative pictures, they were because of gist-based similarity judgments as predicted by prior process-based estimates of false memory for negative-arousing words or pictures. Such results are discussed in terms of eyewitness memory and the processes underlying such remembering, because in many criminal and forensically relevant situations, witnesses, who are often victims as well, are asked to recognize the perpetrator or other arousing aspects of an event

Adaptive Memory: Survival Processing and Social Isolation

Social isolation was examined to assess its potential influence on the survival processing effect, which shows that individuals are more likely to remember something when it is processed with regard to their survival. Participants imagined being stranded in the grasslands, going on a space mission, or moving to a foreign land while alone or with a group of friends and rated a list of words for their relevance to the assigned scenario. An incidental memory test showed the typical survival processing effect on recall memory, with a significant interaction showing that the effect occurred in the isolated condition but not in the group condition. A second experiment examined rates of recognition for an isolated and group condition for the grasslands and moving scenarios and found a marginally significant effect of isolation in addition to the typical survival processing effect. Further, in both experiments, the perceived isolation of the isolated and group survival grasslands scenarios was significantly higher than the other conditions. The results are discussed with regard to the self-reference effect and the object-function account of the survival processing effect

Effects of presentation mode on veridical and false memory in individuals with intellectual disability

In the present study the effects of visual, auditory, and audio-visual presentation formats on memory for thematically constructed lists were assessed in individuals with intellectual disability and mental age-matched children. The auditory recognition test included target items, unrelated foils, and two types of semantic lures: critical related foils and related foils. The audio-visual format led to better recognition of old items and lower false-alarm rates for all foil types. Those with intellectual disability had higher false-alarm rates for all foil types and experienced particular difficulty discriminating presented items from those most strongly activated internally during acquisition (i.e., critical foils). Results are consistent with the activation-monitoring framework and fuzzy-trace theory and inform best practices for designing visual supports to maximize performance in educational and work environments. Copyright © 2012 American Association on Allen Press, Inc

Reported serial positions of true and illusory memories in the Deese/Roediger/McDermott paradigm

One of the easiest ways to induce illusory memories in the laboratory is to use the Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) word-list paradigm. Researchers have used this paradigm not only to study people\u27s memories of stimuli that were not actually presented, but also to study the phenomenological qualities of these illusions. In four experiments, the current investigation explored a phenomenological quality of illusory memories that has received almost no attention, specifically, temporality. A serial position task was incorporated into the DRM paradigm to examine temporal attributes of participants\u27 true and false memories. Effects of list strength, presentation order, and types of warnings were examined. Results showed consistent serial position responses for true and false memories. However, only responses for illusory memories were affected by manipulations at study. The current findings thus lend support to encoding-based explanations of false recollections

The elderly eyewitness in court

The majority of research on eyewitness memory has traditionally studied children and young adults. By contrast, this volume is designed to provide an overview of empirical research on the cognitive, social, and health related factors that impact the accuracy of eyewitness testimony given by the elderly