Asymmetry Memory Research Articles

Editorial: Addressing knowledge asymmetries in memory of Dr Sulley Gariba

Editorial: Addressing knowledge asymmetries in memory of Dr Sulley Gariba

Memory Asymmetry Creates Heteroclinic Orbits to Nash Equilibrium in Learning in Zero-Sum Games

Learning in games considers how multiple agents maximize their own rewards through repeated games. Memory, an ability that an agent changes his/her action depending on the history of actions in previous games, is often introduced into learning to explore more clever strategies and discuss the decision-making of real agents like humans. However, such games with memory are hard to analyze because they exhibit complex phenomena like chaotic dynamics or divergence from Nash equilibrium. In particular, how asymmetry in memory capacities between agents affects learning in games is still unclear. In response, this study formulates a gradient ascent algorithm in games with asymmetry memory capacities. To obtain theoretical insights into learning dynamics, we first consider a simple case of zero-sum games. We observe complex behavior, where learning dynamics draw a heteroclinic connection from unstable fixed points to stable ones. Despite this complexity, we analyze learning dynamics and prove local convergence to these stable fixed points, i.e., the Nash equilibria. We identify the mechanism driving this convergence: an agent with a longer memory learns to exploit the other, which in turn endows the other's utility function with strict concavity. We further numerically observe such convergence in various initial strategies, action numbers, and memory lengths. This study reveals a novel phenomenon due to memory asymmetry, providing fundamental strides in learning in games and new insights into computing equilibria.

The Impact of Blended Mindfulness Intervention (BMI) on University Students’ Sustained Attention, Working Memory, Academic Achievement, and Electroencephalogram (EEG) Asymmetry

The Impact of Blended Mindfulness Intervention (BMI) on University Students’ Sustained Attention, Working Memory, Academic Achievement, and Electroencephalogram (EEG) Asymmetry

Children's and adults' memory for the order of events in a museum: A preliminary study about temporal memory and its development using photo-taking and event-related potentials

Remembering personal past events and their order is important. These capacities are essential to episodic and autobiographical memory theories, are needed in the creation of life stories and vital in forensic settings. As important as memory for events and their order are, relatively little is known about their development and the underlying neural processes that support them. Further, there is a paucity of studies that have examined memory and its development for autobiographical, yet controlled, events. The objective of this study was to examine memory for the temporal order of naturalistic “real world” events by directly comparing 7-11-year-olds and adults using both behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) measures. Participants photographed events at a local museum and after a delay, we used their photographs to test their memory for the temporal order of pairs of the events. We experimentally manipulated the temporal distance between the event pairs (whether the two events photographed in the pair had a short or long temporal distance between them). A memory asymmetry manipulation was also included such that at retrieval, photographs were either presented in forward direction (photograph on the top configuration was taken before photograph shown on the bottom) or vice versa. Children and adults showed sensitivity to temporal distance between events based on behavior (in some instances accuracy was higher for long compared to short temporal distance) and ERP (differential neural processing for short and long temporal distance conditions). Only adults showed sensitivity to the memory asymmetry manipulation, and only when the events occurred within a short temporal distance. A larger study is needed to confirm the present “proof of concept” study results. There is strong potential of this photo paradigm approach, combining naturalistic events with ERP, in future developmental studies, and would further our understanding of how memory behavior and the neural processes underlying memory operate in the “real world.”

Sources and goals in memory and language: Fragility and robustness in event representation

Previous research has demonstrated an asymmetry between Sources and Goals in people’s linguistic and non-linguistic encoding of motion events: when describing events such as a fairy going from a tree to a flower, people mention the Goal (“to a flower”) more often than the Source (“from a tree”); similarly, people are better at detecting Goal than Source changes in memory tests. However, all prior work used a single task to probe memory of Sources and Goals and thus left the nature of the fragility of event components open. Here, we probed memory for Sources and Goals using either a Same-different or a Forced-choice task after participants passively viewed (Experiment 1), viewed and described (Experiment 2) or viewed and heard descriptions of (Experiment 3) the same set of motion events. We robustly replicated the linguistic Source-Goal asymmetry. However, across encoding contexts, the memory asymmetry persisted in the Same-different task but disappeared in the Forced-choice task. The Same-different task results did not change even when participants were explicitly asked to attend to Sources (Experiment 4a) and when motion trajectory was removed at test (Experiment 4b), ruling out a purely test-expectation account for the cross-task effect. We conclude that Sources of motion, even when not mentioned in language nor successfully retrieved at memory test, are nevertheless represented as part of a motion event, and their detailed representation can be reinstated at aided retrieval contexts. Our data clarify the nature of event representation and suggest a fine-grained homology between language and event memory.

28 Challenges to Lateralizing Visual Memory Dysfunction in TLE Patients

Objective:Neuropsychological assessment is an essential part of presurgical evaluation for epilepsy patients with refractory temporal lobe epilepsy. Evaluations assist in localizing and lateralizing epileptogenic focal points and identifying possible risks for cognitive decline following surgery. Researchers and clinicians consistently find that verbal memory dysfunction is an accurate indicator of left temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) through verbal measures such as the CVLT-II. Although visual memory structures are assumed to be in the right (nondominant) hemisphere, visual memory assessments have not been reliable in identifying right TLE. It is hypothesized that assessments to test visual memory are confounded by verbal cueing to assist in visual learning. To account for this, researchers have identified that comparing verbal and visual score asymmetries does accurately differentiate left and right TLE patients. This study aimed to determine if verbalvisual asymmetry using the CVLT-II and BVMT-R accurately identifies left and right TLE relative weaknesses potentially associated with epileptogenic regions.Participants and Methods:As part of a pre-surgical neuropsychological evaluation, 37 well-characterized medically refractory TLE patients (18 right TLE; 19 left TLE) were administered the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised to evaluate visuospatial memory and the CVLT-II to evaluate verbal memory. A multivariate analysis of variance was used to compare RTLE and LTLE group performances on BVMT-R delay recall subscales, using T-scores. Then memory asymmetry scores were calculated by converting CVLT-II verbal delay memory scores to T-scores and subtracting BVMT-R delayed recall T-score from the verbal memory T-score. An independent samples t-test was used to compare asymmetry scores between the groups.Results:There were no significant differences between patients with RTLE and LTLE for BVMT-R Delay [F(2,34) = 0.11, p = .895]. There was not a significant difference when accounting for verbal-visual asymmetry (t (35) = 0.422, p = 0.675, d = 12.566) between left (M = -2.42, SD = 13.82) and right side (M = -4.17, SD = 11.09).Conclusions:The BVMT-R did not identify nondominant hemisphere dysfunction in this sample of 18 right TLE patients. Because visual memory performance did not inform lateralization, we investigated the usefulness of memory asymmetry. Inconsistent with our hypothesis, verbal-visual memory asymmetry scores did not differentiate RTLE from LTLE in this sample. These findings add to existing findings that the BVMT-R may not be able to identify visuospatial memory dysfunction in epilepsy. Additionally, these data indicate the inability to assess for visuospatial memory even when accounting for verbal abilities in epilepsy patients. Future research should consider alternate visuospatial measures for the evaluation of epilepsy patients.

A fundamental asymmetry in human memory: Old ≠ not-new and new ≠ not-old.

In recognition memory, anything that is objectively new is necessarily not-old, and anything that is objectively old is necessarily not-new. Therefore, judging whether a test item is new is logically equivalent to judging whether it is old, and conversely. Nevertheless, a series of 10 experiments showed that old? and new? judgments did not produce equivalent recognition accuracy. In Experiments 1-4, wherein subjects made old? or new? judgments about test items, new? judgments yielded more accurate performance for old items than old? judgments did, and old? judgments yielded more accurate performance for new items than new? judgments did. This same violation of logical equivalence was observed in Experiments 5-10, wherein subjects made similar? judgments as well as old? and new? ones. In short, old? and new? judgments displayed consistent Judgment × Item crossovers, rather than equivalence. Response latencies were used to test the hypothesis that Judgment × Item crossovers were due to certain judgment-item combinations provoking more deliberate, thorough retrieval than other combinations. There was no support for that hypothesis, but the data were consistent with an earlier theory, which posits that latency depends on the extent to which judgments or items slant retrieval toward accessing verbatim traces. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral asymmetries in visual short-term memory occur in retinotopic coordinates.

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is an essential store that creates continuous representations from disjointed visual input. However, severe capacity limits exist, reflecting constraints in supporting brain networks. VSTM performance shows spatial biases predicted by asymmetries in the brain based upon the location of the remembered object. Visual representations are retinotopic, or relative to location of the representation on the retina. It therefore stands to reason that memory performance may also show retinotopic biases. Here, eye position was manipulated to tease apart retinotopic coordinates from spatiotopic coordinates, or location relative to the external world.Memory performance was measured while participants performed acolor change-detection task for items presented across the visual field while subjects fixated central or peripheralposition. VSTM biases reflected the location of the stimulus on the retina, regardless of where the stimulusappeared on the screen. Therefore, spatial biases occur in retinotopic coordinates in VSTM and suggest a fundamental link between behavioral VSTM measures and visual representations.

Lateral Bias in Visual Working Memory

The present study aimed to evaluate functional cerebral asymmetries of visual working memory (VWM) in relation to language lateralization. The bilateral change detection paradigm with capital letters as stimuli and the translingual lexical decision task were used to assess VWM and language asymmetry, respectively, in a sample of 99 younger healthy participants (59 women). Participant attention was cued towards right or left visual half-field. For the VWM task, men and women were more accurate and faster when stimuli were presented in the right visual half-field compared to the left visual half-field. As expected, a significant right visual half-field advantage was demonstrated in the lexical decision task in performance accuracy (but not response time). The results also revealed no relationship between lateralization in VWM and lexical decision. VWM performance accuracy decreased significantly with increasing asymmetry. This relationship was significant for women, but not men. Taken together, the present study demonstrates that the lateral bias in visual working memory is independent from language lateralization, and less lateralized individuals perform better than individuals with larger asymmetries in both visual half-field tasks.

МОТИВ ПАМЯТИ И ЕГО ТРАНСФОРМАЦИЯ В ЛИТЕРАТУРЕ СОВЕТСКОЙ И ПОСТСОВЕТСКОЙ ДЕЙСТВИТЕЛЬНОСТИ

Statement of the problem. The predominant appeal of modern writers to the experience of the past leads to a shift in the temporal regime, and the transformation of the discourse of cultural memory has a wide range of author’s strategies. The realization of the motif of memory as evidence or reconstruction is reflected in the structure of texts at the level of chronotope, composition, and genre. The purpose of the study is to analyze the ways of transforming the motif of memory on the example of the works of Soviet and post-Soviet literature: M. Bulgakov “The White Guard”, B. Pasternak “Doctor Zhivago”, and E. Vodolazkin “The Aviator”. Research methods are cultural-historical, comparative-typological, motif, narratological, and structural-semiotic analysis of the text. Research results. The moment of a historical turning point as a central event actualizes the emergence of a cultural and historical chronotope, which at the same time is opposed to the chronotope of the house. At the metaphorical level, the traditional mythologems used in the image of a house, city, nature are in constant interaction with the cultural myth, which is reflected in the literary allusion. The conflict of the asymmetry of memory gives way to the conflict between the “remembering man” and oblivion. Conclusions: The literature of the post-Soviet period is at a sufficient distance to work through the traumatic experience; however, it is forced to reconstruct the past on the basis of the evidence that has already been left – to be a “witness of witnesses”. Overcoming the trauma of memory is the leading theme of modern literature.

Mechanism and Impact of Bipolar Current Voltage Asymmetry in Computational Phase-Change Memory.

Nanoscale resistive memory devices are being explored for neuromorphic and in-memory computing. However, non-ideal device characteristics of read noise and resistance drift pose significant challenges to the achievable computational precision. Here, it is shown that there is an additional non-ideality that can impact computational precision, namely the bias-polarity-dependent current flow. Using phase-change memory (PCM) as a model system, it is shown that this "current-voltage" non-ideality arises both from the material and geometrical properties of the devices. Further, wediscuss the detrimental effects of such bipolar asymmetry on in-memory matrix-vector multiply (MVM) operations and provide a scheme to compensate forit.

The asymmetry of memory and memories in fiction: narratological aspect

The relevance of the article lies in the theoretical generalization of philosophical, aesthetic, and narratological approaches to the explication of the phenomenon of a narrator’s and a character’s individual memory, namely the interaction of memorization, forgetting, and memories as necessary components of an entire cognitive process. The subject of the research is the asymmetry of memory and memories in the homodiegetic narrative. The methodology of analysis is based on the works of A. Assman, Aristotle, M. Bal, Ya. Bystrov, A. Erll, B. Neumann, A. Nünning, W. Randall, and other scholars, postclassical narratologists. Three main approaches to the concept of memory in modern narratology are considered: 1) “memory of literature”; 2) “mimesis of memory”; 3) literature as a mediator of collective memory. The main focus of the article is on the “mimesis of memory”. The purpose of the research is to represent Ruth Ware’s “In a Dark Dark Wood” and Paula Hawkins’s “Into the Water” novels as a narrative explication of the cognitive phenomenon of memory. An analysis of the novels selected as the object of the study suggests that any first-person narrator is unreliable, especially a traumatized one who builds a story on his or her own memories. This is due to the narrator’s subjective assessment of the events described, where there is a significant time distance between the events and the moment of their fixation, and the narrator’s attempt to transform memories, namely to modify events and believe in this new version. Narrative staging of memorization and forgetting is achieved through the subjectivity of the story of homodiegetic narrators, the presence of two or more time planes, different versions of events, analepsis techniques, etc. The discordance of the memories shown by the narrators with real events is the characteristic of the mechanisms of memory and the factor that significantly affects the development of the plot in the novels. The novelty of the study is the application of a cognitive approach to the analysis of homodiegetic mnemonic narrative. The results of the research have perspectives for further analysis of individual works, which are an artistic presentation of the interaction of memory and memories.

Memory, Agency, and Labour Mobilisation Asymmetries in the Funerary Landscapes of Southeastern Mauritania, West Africa

Memory, Agency, and Labour Mobilisation Asymmetries in the Funerary Landscapes of Southeastern Mauritania, West Africa

Write Asymmetry of Spin-Orbit Torque Memory Induced by in-Plane Magnetic Fields

Write asymmetry, the significantly different write current for high-to-low and low-to-high resistance switching because of natural stochastic behaviors of magnetization, is a fundamental issue in magnetic random-access memory (MRAM). For high-performance spin transfer torque (STT) MRAM, it can be eliminated by precisely controlling atomically thin magnetic multilayers or by introducing compensation techniques in circuit-level designs, while for spin-orbit torque (SOT) MRAM, it has not been addressed. Here we systematically investigated the write asymmetry of SOT-MRAM as a function of applied magnetic fields (H) and demonstrated that the write currents are intrinsically asymmetric due to different SOT efficiencies for high-to-low and low-to-high switching. Furthermore, we found that the SOT efficiency is very sensitive to the tilt angle between H and write current, which can be tuned through H to achieve symmetric SOT switching. These results provide an additional guideline for designing SOT devices and suggest that the write asymmetry can be eliminated by adjusting the introduced effective magnetic fields within a field-free SOT-MRAM architecture.

Intraindividual relative deficits in visual memory to lateralize seizure onset in temporal lobe epilepsy

It is well established that presurgical neuropsychological assessment can assist in lateralizing and localizing focal epileptogenic regions. However, unlike verbal memory impairment, which is a robust and reliable finding in patients with left temporal lobe epilepsy (LTLE), nonverbal memory deficits are less consistently found among patients with right TLE (RTLE). This study aimed to determine whether memory assessment for spatial location in addition to visual content would differentiate patients with RTLE and LTLE. We compared performances between patients with 25 RTLE and 37 patients with LTLE on the Wechsler Advanced Clinical Solutions-Faces (ACS-F) subscales (Faces I, Faces II, Content, and Spatial), verbal–visual memory asymmetry scores, and intelligence quotient (IQ)–visual memory difference scores. Results revealed no significant differences between patients with RTLE and LTLE for any ACS-F memory score. By contrast, groups demonstrated significant differences in memory asymmetry scores (p = .007) and IQ difference scores (p = .006). Thus, visual memory scores in isolation failed to differentiate groups with RTLE and LTLE; however, within-patient differences between visual memory and other cognitive abilities successfully differentiated the groups. These results highlight the importance of using an intraindividual model of neuropsychological assessment to identify relative weaknesses potentially associated with the epileptogenic region.

Ukrainian ‘Working through the Past’ in the Context of the Polish–Ukrainian Dialogue on Volhynia-43. Asymmetry of Memory

The modern Polish–Ukrainian dialogue is the second interstate dialogue of the twentieth century, in the development of which the historical and political discourses have played an important role. The so-called Volhynia discourse poses the most serious challenge in this dialogue, while at the same time being its main component. The article claims the Volhynia discourse plays a major role in bringing about the asymmetry of historical memory between the two states. The events of Volhynia-43 have remained in Polish historical memory as an act of genocide perpetrated in 1941–1943 by Ukrainian nationalists, mainly from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), on over 100,000 Poles and citizens of the Polish state inhabiting Galicia and Eastern Małopolska, including Volhynia. These territories, considered by the Ukrainian nationalist party OUN as indigenously Ukrainian, were to be included in the future independent Ukrainian state. The Ukrainian historiography, apart from sparse exceptions, avoids the term ‘massacre’ and ‘genocide’ in reference to the events in Volhynia, defining them as a conflict or a Polish–Ukrainian war with a comparable number of casualties on both sides. The article, analysing speeches and announcements by political leaders of Poland and Ukraine, focuses on explaining the causes and effects of this shift in accentuation in the Ukrainian discourse on Volhynia, and, broadly, in Ukraine working through its past.

Asymmetric memory for harming versus being harmed.

Most people have been both the victim and the perpetrator of a moral transgression at some point in their lives; this article asks whether one set of moral experiences is easier to remember than the other, and why. In Study 1, we documented this basic asymmetry, finding that individuals recalled more instances in which they were the victim of a moral transgression than instances in which they were the perpetrator. In Study 2, we found that this asymmetry in memory arises because experiences of being the victim are perceived more negatively than experiences of being the perpetrator. In Studies 3 and 4, we demonstrated the critical role of intent in this asymmetry, finding that victim memories emphasize perpetrator intent to a greater degree than do perpetrator memories (Study 3), and that the memory asymmetry disappeared when individuals recalled unintentional moral violations (Study 4). Finally, in Study 5, we ruled out a potential alternative mechanism for these effects-that of self-protective motivation on the part of perpetrators. We found that the threat associated with the moral violation moderated victim (but not perpetrator) memories, a finding that is inconsistent with a motivational account for perpetrator memories. This research demonstrates that perceived agency shapes emotional experience and autobiographical memory and speaks to the importance of studying morality as it occurs in everyday contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Asymmetries in phonetic memory across voices and contexts

Listeners store highly detailed phonetic representations in memory. These representations are tied to talkers, whereby changing the talker negatively influences performance. This talk focuses on two related issues: (1) memory is not perfectly reliable and (2) the encoding of a single utterance across various voices and contexts is likely to vary. In this talk, I present the result from three experiments that highlight asymmetries that arise when we look the memory for spoken words in the continuous recognition paradigm when talker is a between-subject variable, when talker is a within subject variable, and when talker is a within-subject variable in a divided attention condition. I show that memory for spoken words depends on talker voice, presenting talker voices together increases the differences found across talkers. These differences are larger again, under divided attention conditions. The phonetic memory for a single word depends on the talker, the social information processed about the talker by the listener, and stereotypes cued by the voices. This work focuses on the memory of words spoken by different talkers and is important in a broader context: Reports of linguistic experiences depend on linguistic memory, and here, we show that memory is both predictably unreliable and easily malleable.

The first, the least and the last: Spatial asymmetries in memory and their relation to script trajectory.

Serial positioning biases are well documented and generally take a U-shaped form, with better memory for first (primacy) and last items (recency). Here, we test the hypothesis that the relative strength of primacy and recency depends on script direction. When presented with large arrays of images, people are expected to first direct attention to the side where they usually start reading (in our case, left among Italian, and right among Arabic speakers) and to then scan the remaining images along the habitual text trajectory. Besides supporting the predicted scanning direction with an eye-tracker methodology, Study 1a (n = 56 Italians) provides evidence for a spatial memory advantage for images positioned to the left. Study 1b (n = 34 Italians) shows that people are aware of the asymmetric scanning and the memory advantage deriving from it. Study 3 (n = 67 Italian and n = 44 Arabic speakers) shows opposite memory biases in the two samples, with best performance for images on the left among Italian and for images on the right among Arabic speakers. Together these studies contribute to the growing literature showing that scanning habits due to script direction exert a subtle influence on basic cognitive processes.

The production effect and the generation effect improve memory in picture naming

ABSTRACTThe production effect (better memory for words read aloud than words read silently) and the picture superiority effect (better memory for pictures than words) both improve item memory in a picture naming task (Fawcett, J. M., Quinlan, C. K., & Taylor, T. L. (2012). Interplay of the production and picture superiority effects: A signal detection analysis. Memory (Hove, England), 20(7), 655–666. doi:10.1080/09658211.2012.693510). Because picture naming requires coming up with an appropriate label, the generation effect (better memory for generated than read words) may contribute to the latter effect. In two forced-choice memory experiments, we tested the role of generation in a picture naming task on later recognition memory. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures silently or aloud with the correct name or an unreadable label superimposed. We observed a generation effect, a production effect, and an interaction between the two. In Experiment 2, unreliable labels were included to ensure full picture processing in all conditions. In this experiment, we observed a production and a generation effect but no interaction, implying the effects are dissociable. This research demonstrates the separable roles of generation and production in picture naming and their impact on memory. As such, it informs the link between memory and language production and has implications for memory asymmetries between language production and comprehension.