Free Recall Of Pictures Research Articles

Differential effects of age of acquisition and frequency on memory: evidence from free recall of pictures and words in Turkish

The advantage of processing early over late acquired items in lexical and semantic tasks across a number of languages is well documented. Interestingly contradictory evidence has been reported in r...

Characteristics of Associative Memory Deficits in Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

Amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) patients show impairment in both item and associative memory. The current study administered the widely used associative and item memory tests from the Clinical Memory Scale to investigate whether aMCI patients are more impaired in associative memory than item memory. In addition, we aimed to analyze an associative memory test (the paired-associate learning test) in order to investigate in detail the nature of associative memory impairment in aMCI patients. Twenty-five individuals with aMCI and 28 healthy controls took part in the study. Two associative memory tests (paired-associate learning test and associative recall), two item memory tests (free recall of pictures and recognition of meaningless figures), and a set of neurocognitive tests were administered to the participants. aMCI patients performed significantly worse than healthy older adults in both associative memory tests, even when controlling for impairment in the item memory tests. In addition, ROC curve analysis indicated that discriminative power was higher in associative than in item memory tests. Further, the results of the paired-associate learning test indicated that, compared to normal older adults, aMCI patients showed more deficits in remembering the easy word pairs, relative to the difficult word pairs. Our results confirm that aMCI patients demonstrate greater deficits in associative memory than in item memory. In addition to the impairment in creating memory links between items, aMCI patients may have deficits in using the semantic information presented by the items. The associative memory tests showed higher discriminative power than item memory tests in the identification of aMCI patients. Including associative memory testing in future neurocognitive assessment protocols could be helpful to improve the hit rate of aMCI detection.

Emotion suppression reduces hippocampal activity during successful memory encoding

People suppressing their emotions while facing an emotional event typically remember it less well. However, the neural mechanisms underlying the impairing effect of emotion suppression on successful memory encoding are not well understood. Because successful memory encoding relies on the hippocampus and the amygdala, we hypothesized that memory impairments due to emotion suppression are associated with down-regulated activity in these brain areas. 59 healthy females were instructed either to simply watch the pictures or to down-regulate their emotions by using a response-focused emotion suppression strategy. Brain activity was recorded using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and free recall of pictures was tested afterwards. As expected, suppressing one's emotions resulted in impaired recall of the pictures. On the neural level, the memory impairments were associated with reduced activity in the right hippocampus during successful encoding. No significant effects were observed in the amygdala. In addition, functional connectivity between the hippocampus and the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex was strongly reduced during emotion suppression, and these reductions predicted free-recall performance. Our results indicate that emotion suppression interferes with memory encoding on the hippocampal level, possibly by decoupling hippocampal and prefrontal encoding processes, suggesting that response-focused emotion suppression might be an adaptive strategy for impairing hippocampal memory formation in highly arousing situations.

Memory Enhancement from Two Weeks’ Exposure to North American Ginseng Extract HT1001 in Young and Middle Aged Healthy Adults

In vivo, in vitro, and animal learning studies have reported neuroactive effects of Rb1 and Rg1 ginsenosides that may be relevant to human learning and memory. The objective of this study was to assess potential learning and memory benefits of HT1001, a standardized proprietary North American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) extract contain- ing Rb1, Rg1 and other important ginsenosides, in healthy volunteers. Neuropsychological assessments were conducted using the Clinical Memory Scale (CMS), which has two parallel forms for baseline and post-treatment assessments. A young adult sample (YAS, n = 10) and a middle aged sample (MAS, n = 10) completed the CMS at baseline and again af- ter 14 days' exposure to 200mg HT1001 daily. The CMS Memory Quotient (MQ) showed significant main effects of time, with higher CMS-MQ on the second assessment compared to the first, and of age group, with the YAS performing better than the MAS. There was no interaction between time and age group. Secondary analyses indicated benefits for both groups on free recall of word lists, cued recall of word pairs, and recognition of figures, and benefits in the YAS but not the MAS on free recall of pictures. Taken together, the results suggest that memory, as measured with the CMS-MQ, was significantly improved with open-label HT1001. While practise effects cannot be completely ruled out, the results presented here are exciting and timely given our increasingly ageing population, and provide preliminary support for a prospective placebo-controlled examination of HT1001 on learning and memory.

The spacing effect in intentional and incidental free recall by children and adults: Limits on the automaticity hypothesis

Preschoolers, elementary school children, and college students exhibited a spacing effect in the free recall of pictures when learning was intentional. When learning was incidental and a shallow processing task requiring little semantic processing was used during list presentation, young adults still exhibited a spacing effect, but children consistently failed to do so. Children, however, did manifest a spacing effect in incidental learning when an elaborate semantic processing task was used. These results limit the hypothesis that the spacing effect in free recall occurs automatically and constrain theoretical accounts of why the spacing between repetitions affects recall performance.

Age differences in explicit and implicit memory for pictures.

In the present study, the authors examined age effects in memory for nonverbal material. A picture fragment completion task was used to test explicit and implicit memory in a younger and an older group. Explicit memory was indexed by free recall of pictures, whereas implicit memory was indexed by perceptual learning (priming). Both free recall and perceptual learning performance were found to be impaired in the older group. A measure of executive functioning was found to be predictive of both explicit and implicit memory.

Rates of forgetting in organic amnesia following temporal lobe, diencephalic, or frontal lobe lesions.

Forgetting rates were examined in patients with diencephalic, temporal lobe, or frontal lesions. No significant differences were found in short-term forgetting of verbal and nonverbal material; in recognition memory for pictures, words, or designs over delays between 1 min and 20 or 30 min; or on a measure of explicit cued recall for words, calculated in terms of the process dissociation procedure. Significantly faster forgetting was found in the diencephalic and the temporal lobe groups in the free recall of pictures of objects, although there was no difference between these 2 groups. It is concluded that the major deficit in amnesic patients' memory processes is in the initial acquisition of information but that there is a subtler deficit in retention over specific delays, detectable only on measures of free recall.

Memory performance in adults with Down syndrome

The memory ability of individuals with Down syndrome was compared to individuals matched on age and IQ and individuals matched on age. Three memory tasks with three different encoding manipulations were employed across populations: facial recognition with and without a semantic orienting task, free recall of pictures and words, and cued recall of separate or interacting pictures. Differences in performance across tasks and across encoding manipulations were found. The results indicated that for individuals with Down syndrome, memory was improved primarily by practice and interactive stimuli. Implications for training are drawn.

The spacing effect in preschool children’s free recall of pictures and words

In two experiments, preschoolers exhibited a spacing effect in free recall of both pictures and words even though procedures were very similar to those used in previous experiments in which preschoolers had not manifested a spacing effect. With these findings, the weight of the available evidence in the literature strongly supports the conclusion that preschoolers generally exhibit a spacing effect in free recall.

Altering retrieval demands reverses the picture superiority effect.

In Experiment 1 subjects studied a mixed list of pictures and words and then received either a free recall test or a word fragment completion test (e.g.,_yr_mi_forpyramid) on which some fragments corresponded to previously studied items. Free recall of pictures was better than that of words. However, words produced greater priming than did pictures on the fragment completion test, although a small amount of picture priming did occur. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the picture priming was not due to implicit naming of the pictures during study. In Experiment 4 subjects studied words and pictures and received either the word fragment completion test or a picture fragment identification test in which they had to name degraded pictures. Greater priming was obtained with words in word fragment completion, but greater priming was obtained with pictures on the picture identification test. We conclude that (1) the type of retrieval query determines whether pictures or words will exhibit superior retention, and (2)our results conform to the principle of transfer appropriate processing by which performance on transfer or retention tests benefits to the extent that the tests recapitulate operations used during learning.

Picture superiority in free recall: the effects of normal aging and primary degenerative dementia.

A key factor in the decline of memory with age may be a breakdown of communication in the information network involved in memory and cognitive processing. A special case of this communication is assumed to underlie the picture superiority effect in recall. From this hypothesis it follows that the picture superiority effect should lessen with age. In Experiment 1, three groups of adults (young, old normal, and old memory-impaired) were tested in free recall of pictures and word lists. As predicted, the picture superiority effect declined with age. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and showed, moreover, that the picture superiority effect can be reestablished in normal old adults by instructing them to verbalize overtly during item presentation.

Effects of Incidental Cues on Free Recall of Pictures in Mixed and Unmixed Lists

Summary Free recall of 24 drawings differing in incidental cues, was measured in a mixed- and unmixed-list presentation to male and female undergraduates. In unmixed-list presentation (N = 66) no differences were found. In mixed-list presentation (N = 22) drawings provided with contextual cues were better retained than drawings without these cues, or drawings of objects embellished with extra details. The findings were interpreted as providing evidence for richness of incidental cues as a minor factor in recall of picture stimuli.

Marijuana: Effects on free recall and subjective organization of pictures and words

The free recall of pictures and words was compared following the administration of marijuana or placebo in a multitrial free recall task. Since pictures are thought to be registered in both visual and verbal memory stores with this encoding being mediated by some form of mental imagery, it was predicted that marijuana would produce a greater deficit in word recall in comparison to picture recall because the drug has been reported to facilitate imagery. A trend in the opposite direction followed intoxication; picture recall was inferior to word recall in the later stages of acquisition. Although overall recall was inferior under marijuana, no differences were found between the treatment conditions in subjective organization as determined by a variety of clustering measures. Recall performance following marijuana intoxication was positively related to level of recall performance in the placebo condition.

Effects of context variation, intracategory variation, and spacing on the free recall of pictures

Abstract.— Two experiments examined the effects of encoding variability on the free recall of pictures. In Expt. I, drawn objects were presented 3 times in different pictorial contexts (RV) or in the same contexts (RR). In Expt. II, repeated stimuli were 3 different specimens of the same object category (VR) or the same object presented 3 times (RR). Spacing of repetitions was varied from zero to 15, and a mixed‐list design was used. Both RV and VR items tended to be recalled better than and prior to RR items. Recall of RR and of VR items increased with increasing spacing, but recall of RV items showed no spacing effect. In a second recall test, preceded by 4 min of “thinking about” the pictures, the only remaining effect of spacing or of context variation was a low recall of massed RR items. VR items were still recalled better than and prior to RR items. It is suggested that spacing, and variation of the external context of pictures, facilitate retrieval when the time and effort spent on recall is limited, by increasing the numberlvariety of potential recall cues stored together with item information.

Pictures vs Words: Some Discrepant Results

140 fourth grade children and 80 adults were tested for free recall of pictures or the corresponding words. Half the Ss had an immediate recall test, half a 48-hr. delayed test. There was no difference in over-all recall of pictures or words, but correlations and intrusion errors did suggest different processing strategies.