Memory For Serial Order Research Articles

The reliability of Hebb repetition learning and its association with language and reading in adolescents with intellectual disabilities

Hebb repetition learning (HRL) refers to neurodevelopmental processes characterised by repeated stimulus exposure without feedback, which result in changes in behaviour and/or responses, e.g., long-term learning of serial order. Here, we investigate effects of HRL on serial order memory. The present research aimed to assess the reliability of new HRL measures and investigate their relationships with language and reading skills (vocabulary, grammar, word reading) in adolescents with intellectual disability (ID). A comparison group of children of similar mental age with typical development (TD) was also assessed. ID and TD groups were tested on HRL tasks, evaluating test-retest and split-half reliability. The relationship between HRL and language and reading was analysed after accounting for the influence of mental age and verbal short-term memory. The HRL tasks displayed moderate test-retest (and split-half) reliability, HRL tasks with different stimuli (verbal, visual) were related, and we identified issues with one method of HRL scoring. The planned regression analyses failed to show relationships between HRL and language/reading skills in both groups when mental age, a very strong predictor, was included. However, further exploratory regression analyses without mental age revealed HRL's predictive capabilities for vocabulary in the ID group and reading in the TD group, results which need further investigation and replication. HRL displays promise as a moderately reliable metric and exhibits varied and interpretable predictive capabilities for language and reading skills across groups.

Temporal Context in Serial Order of Short-Term Memory

If temporal contexts contribute to serial order in short-term memory is not well understood. Few studies have shown that the temporal context is related to serial order. However, contradicting results from other studies show that there is no relationship between serial recognition and temporal recognition. There is previous research showed that there indeed existed a relationship between temporal recognition and serial recognition. The current study tries to replicate the results from this study through an alternative analysis pipeline to understand the robustness of these results. Using a drift diffusion model, we try to understand the robustness and replicability of the previous research-- Short-term recognition memory for serial order and timing. In results obtained from both the studies, we see that there is no relationship between temporal and serial recognition.

When Does Episodic Memory Contribute to Performance in Tests of Working Memory?

Both the experimental and the psychometric investigation of the WM capacity limit depend critically on the assumption that performance in our tests of WM reflects that capacity limit to a good approximation. Most tasks to measure WM rely on testing memory after a short time during which participants are asked to maintain information in WM. In these tests, episodic long-term memory is likely to also lay down a trace of the memory set. Therefore, participants can draw on two sources of information when memory is tested, making it difficult to separate the contributions of WM and episodic LTM to the performance on immediate-memory tests. Here we use proactive interference to distinguish between these two sources of remembered information, building on the fact that episodic memory is vulnerable to proactive interference, whereas WM is protected against it. We use a release-from-PI paradigm to determine the extent to which commonly used WM tasks reflect contributions from episodic LTM. We focus on memory for serial order of verbal lists, but also include visual and spatial WM tasks. The results of five experiments demonstrate that although some tasks used to investigate WM are heavily contaminated by episodic LTM, other popular paradigms such as serial and probed recall, and the standard version of the continuous color-reproduction task, are not. Measuring proactive interference can help researchers determine the extent to which WM and episodic LTM contribute to performance in immediate-memory tasks.

Verbal and visual serial-order memory in deaf signers and hearing nonsigners: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Previous research suggests Deaf signers may have different short-term and working memory processes compared with hearing nonsigners due to prolonged auditory deprivation. The direction and magnitude of these reported differences, however, are variable and dependent on memory modality (e.g., visual, verbal), stimulus type, and research design. These discrepancies have made consensus difficult to reach which, in turn, slows progress in areas such as education, medical decision-making, and cognitive sciences. The present systematic review and meta-analysis included 35 studies (N = 1,701 participants) that examined verbal (n = 15), visuospatial (n = 10), or both verbal and visuospatial (n = 10) serial-memory tasks comparing nonimplanted, Deaf signers to hearing nonsigners across the life span. Multivariate meta-analyses indicated a significant, negative effect of deafness on verbal short-term memory (forward recall), g = -1.33, SE = 0.17, p < .001, 95% CI [-1.68, -0.98], and working memory (backward recall), g = -0.66, SE = 0.11, p < .001, 95% CI [-0.89, -0.45], but no significant effect of deafness on visuospatial short-term memory, g = -0.055, SE = 0.17, p = 0.75, 95% CI [-0.39, 0.28]. Visuospatial working memory was not analyzed due to limited power. Population estimates for verbal and visuospatial short-term memory were moderated by age wherein studies with adults demonstrated a stronger hearing advantage than studies with children/adolescents. Quality estimates indicated most studies were of fair quality, with only 38% of studies involving Deaf authors. Findings are discussed in the context of both Deaf equity and models of serial memory.

Metamemory judgments have dissociable reactivity effects on item and interitem relational memory.

Making metamemory judgments reactively changes item memory itself. Here we report the first investigation of reactive influences of making judgments of learning (JOLs) on interitem relational memory-specifically, temporal (serial) order memory. Experiment 1 found that making JOLs impaired order reconstruction. Experiment 2 observed minimal reactivity on free recall and negative reactivity on temporal clustering. Experiment 3 demonstrated a positive reactivity effect on recognition memory, and Experiment 4 detected dissociable effects of making JOLs on order reconstruction (negative) and forced-choice recognition (positive) by using the same participants and stimuli. Finally, a meta-analysis was conducted to explore reactivity effects on word list learning and to investigate whether test format moderates these effects. The results show a negative reactivity effect on interitem relational memory (order reconstruction), a modest positive effect on free recall, and a medium-to-large positive effect on recognition. Overall, these findings imply that even though making metacognitive judgments facilitates item-specific processing, it disrupts relational processing, supporting the item-order account of the reactivity effect on word list learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Do developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia share underlying impairments?

ABSTRACT Developmental dyslexia and congenital amusia have common characteristics. Yet, their possible association in some individuals has been addressed only scarcely. Recently, two converging studies reported a sizable comorbidity rate between these two neurodevelopmental disorders (Couvignou et al., Cognitive Neuropsychology 2019; Couvignou & Kolinsky, Neuropsychologia 2021). However, the reason for their association remains unclear. Here, we investigate the hypothesis of shared underlying impairments between dyslexia and amusia. Fifteen dyslexic children with amusia (DYS+A), 15 dyslexic children without amusia (DYS-A), and two groups of 25 typically developing children matched on either chronological age (CA) or reading level (RL) were assessed with a behavioral battery aiming to investigate phonological and pitch processing capacities at auditory memory, perceptual awareness, and attentional levels. Overall, our results suggest that poor auditory serial-order memory increases susceptibility to comorbidity between dyslexia and amusia and may play a role in the development of the comorbid phenotype. In contrast, the impairments observed in the DYS+A children for auditory item memory, perceptual awareness, and attention might be a consequence of their reduced reading experience combined with weaker musical skills. Comparing DYS+A and DYS-A children suggests that the latter are more resourceful and/or have more effective compensatory strategies, or that their phenotype results from a different developmental trajectory. We will discuss the relevance of these findings for delving into the etiology of these two developmental disorders and address their implications for future research and practice.

VERBAL SHORT-TERM IMPAIRMENT IN DYSLEXIA

Verbal short-term memory impairment is one of the most consistently associated deficits observed indevelopmental reading disorders such as dyslexia. The mechanisms involved in the short-term retention ofinformation for serial tasks may be shared across domains of short-term memory, such as verbal and visuospatialshort-term memory. Few studies have addressed the nature of verbal short-term impairment, particularly with regardto the possibility of temporary serial storage of information. A short-term memory serial order impairment appearsto occur for the retention of verbal and visuospatial sequence information. Impairment in the serial ordering of shorttermmemory is not a characteristic of every individual dyslexic subject and is not specific to dyslexia. Futurestudies should determine whether verbal short-term serial order memory impairment is a risk factor that, inassociation with a deficit in phonological processing, may lead to dyslexia or whether verbal short-term serial ordermemory impairment reflects related deficits unrelated to dyslexia. The purpose of this article is to consider theimplications for dyslexia of one aspect of short-term memory, memory for serialization

A-196 The Relationship Between Attention and Order Errors in Serial Order Memory

Abstract Objective: To investigate if attentional control (AC) predicts the amount of order errors made within serial memory tasks. We also investigated the relationship between AC and item memory (IM), and the relationship between IM and order memory (OM). Methods: Data were collected from undergraduate students at the University of South Alabama. Participants completed three attentional conflict tasks (Bivalent shape task, Global local task, and Flanker task) and three serial memory tasks (symmetry span, digit span, and reading span). The final sample of 112 participants completed all memory tasks and at least two conflict tasks. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to form an AC latent variable from response time difference scores (congruent versus incongruent trials), and IM and OM variables were formed from item and order errors in the memory tasks. Structural equation modeling was used to test correlations among latent variables. Results: The latent AC factor failed to converge. We ran three structural equation models using each conflict task as a predictor variable for both IM and OM. The relationship between IM and OM was significant in all three models. The only other significant pathway across all three models was the relationship between the Flanker task and IM (β = .278, SE = .105, p = .001). Conclusions: Overall, performance on the three conflict tasks did not directly predict order errors. Flanker task performance did directly predict item errors, thus indirectly predicting the amount of order errors in those same tasks.

Chaining models of serial recall can produce positional errors

A major argument for positional-coding over associative chaining models of immediate serial recall has been the high probability that an error from a prior list will appear in its correct serial-position, so-called “protrusions.” Here we show that a chaining model can produce protrusions if it includes three characteristics that have been incorporated into published chaining models: (a) a “start-signal” item is associated with all first list-items, (b) memory is not cleared following each list, and (c) the retrieval cue for each item is always the full non-redintegrated retrieved information, regardless of the response. The model covertly recalls all studied lists in parallel (weighted by recency), such that when prior-list items intrude, they predominantly occur at the correct output position. In addition to fitting prior protrusion data, we report two new data sets that question the ubiquity of the simple protrusion-dominance characteristic. These findings show that protrusions cannot falsify an associative basis for serial-order memory and speak to the plausibility of mixture models.

Previously retrieved items contribute to memory for serial order.

It has long been understood that associations can form between items that are paired (Ebbinghaus, 1885), but it is commonly assumed that previously retrieved items are not used when remembering items in serial order. We present a series of experiments that test this assumption, using a serial learning procedure inspired by Ebenholtz (1963). In this procedure, participants practiced recalling ordered lists of letters, and the order of the letters was manipulated. Half of the lists were scrambled such that the serial positions and relative positions of the letters were inconsistent over practice. The other half of the lists were spun (e.g., ABCDEF → FABCDE), making the serial positions inconsistent but preserving the relative positions of the letters over practice. In Experiment 1, participants learned to recall spun lists more accurately than the scrambled lists with practice. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants recalled new lists more accurately when they shared the relative order of previously learned spun lists. In Experiments 4 and 5, the influences of motor and perceptual representations were removed and shown to have little impact on the advantage for spun lists. Experiment 6 extended our findings to the more traditional Hebb (1961) learning procedure. The results of our experiments indicate that the commonly held assumption is incorrect-previously retrieved items can contribute to memory for serial order. Previously retrieved items best serve serial memory when there is ample opportunity to strengthen item-to-item associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Serial memory for landmarks encountered during route navigation

The present study demonstrates similarities between route learning and classical tests of serial order memory. Here, we investigated serial memory for landmarks in a route learning task, in younger and older adults. We analysed data from a route learning task with 12 landmarks. Participants (88 younger and 77 older) learned a route using either a Fixed Learning (3 exposures to the route) or Flexible Learning (repeated exposures until successful navigation was achieved) procedure. Following route learning, participants completed Immediate Free Recall (IFR) and Free Reconstruction of Order (Free RoO) of the landmarks. We show clear acquisition of sequence memory for landmarks for both age groups, with Free RoO producing a bowed serial position curve. IFR produced recency effects but no primacy effects in fixed learning, with recency reduced following flexible learning for both age groups. Younger adults displayed a primacy bias for the first item recalled in both learning conditions, as did the older adults in the flexible learning condition. In contrast, older adults displayed a recency bias in the fixed learning condition. Evidence of contiguity in IFR was present only for younger adults in the flexible learning condition. Findings are broadly consistent with results from typical short-term list learning procedures and support the universality of sequence learning effects, which we demonstrate are generalisable to a navigation context.

Short-Term Memory for Serial Order Moderates Aspects of Language Acquisition in Children With Developmental Language Disorder: Findings From the HelSLI Study.

Previous studies of verbal short-term memory (STM) indicate that STM for serial order may be linked to language development and developmental language disorder (DLD). To clarify whether a domain-general mechanism is impaired in DLD, we studied the relations between age, non-verbal serial STM, and language competence (expressive language, receptive language, and language reasoning). We hypothesized that non-verbal serial STM differences between groups of children with DLD and typically developing (TD) children are linked to their language acquisition differences. Fifty-one children with DLD and sixty-six TD children participated as part of the HelSLI project in this cross-sectional study. The children were 4–6-year-old monolingual native Finnish speakers. They completed several tests of language and cognitive functioning, as well as new game-like tests of visual and auditory non-verbal serial STM. We used regression analyses to examine how serial STM moderates the effect of age on language. A non-verbal composite measure of serial visual and auditory STM moderated cross-sectional development of receptive language in the children with DLD. This moderation was not observed in the TD children. However, we found more rapid cross-sectional development of non-verbal serial STM in the TD children than in the children with DLD. The results suggest that children with DLD may be more likely to have compromised general serial STM processing and that superior non-verbal serial STM may be associated with better language acquisition in children with DLD.

Do serial order short-term memory and long-term learning abilities predict spelling skills in school-age children?

Compared to most human language abilities, the cognitive mechanisms underlying spelling have not been as intensively investigated as reading and therefore remain to this day less well understood. The current study aims to address this shortcoming by investigating the contribution of serial order short-term memory (STM) and long-term learning (LTL) abilities to emerging spelling skills. Indeed, although there are several reasons to assume associations between serial order memory and spelling abilities, this relationship has hardly been investigated empirically. In this study, we hypothesized that serial order STM plays an important role in spelling novel words, for which children are supposed to rely on a sequential nonlexical spelling procedure. Serial order LTL was hypothesized to be involved in the creation of more stable orthographic representations allowing children to spell (regular and irregular) words by using a lexical spelling strategy based on the direct access to orthographic representations stored in long-term memory. To assess these hypotheses, we conducted a longitudinal study in which we tested a sample of 116 French-speaking children at first grade and two years later at third grade of primary school. At first grade, we administered tasks that were specifically designed to maximize STM and LTL abilities for serial order information. At third grade, we assessed spelling abilities using irregular word, regular word, and pseudoword writing-to-dictation tasks. Bayesian regression analyses showed that pseudoword, but also irregular word spelling was best predicted by serial order STM, while regular word spelling was similarly predicted by both serial order STM and LTL.

A Dynamic Method, Analysis, and Model of Short-Term Memory for Serial Order with Clinical Applications

This study examined the robustness of a traditional memory task when moved out of controlled traditional settings. A letter recall task was designed to be self-administered via a smart-device which assessed recall by participants’ writing their responses on the device. This enabled collection of both the letter recalled and the timing of this recall such that the temporal dynamics could be examined. Participants were patients with mental illness (n=71) and healthy volunteers (n=103). Temporal dynamics were examined using a new mechanism that measured memory retrieval time precisely. Data were analyzed for accuracy, time and their relationships. The classic memory phenomena and associated effects were replicated. In terms of temporal dynamics, this is the first demonstration of primacy and recency effects in time domain variables, as well as phonological similarity effects as evident by the inverted U-shaped curves in time. The speed of short-term memory processes affects accuracy, error types and timing. The robustness of these memory effects and new approach to temporal dynamics suggest this framework may be suitable for clinical applications, notably for the long-term monitoring of cognition in patients with mental illness.

The contribution of serial order short-term memory and long-term learning to reading acquisition: A longitudinal study.

There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of reading acquisition, whereas the LTL of serial order serves reading abilities at later stages, when reading starts to rely on more stable, long-term orthographic representations. We followed a sample of 116 French-speaking children from first (Time 1 [T1]) grade of primary school through second (Time 2 [T2]) and third (Time 3 [T3]) grade. Their serial order STM and LTL abilities as well as their reading abilities were assessed. Overall, we observed that early reading abilities were only predicted by serial order STM performance, while more advanced reading abilities were predicted by both serial order STM and LTL performance. These results point toward a predictive role of serial order memory performance in reading acquisition and suggest that serial order STM and LTL support reading at different stages of acquisition. We further discuss our findings in the light of advancing knowledge about the relationship between memory and reading. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Eye-Tracking Reveals Absent Repetition Learning Across the Autism Spectrum: Evidence From a Passive Viewing Task.

In the domain of memory, autism is characterized by difficulties in explicitly remembering the specific order of stimuli, whereas implicit serial order memory appears to be preserved. This pattern is of considerable interest because serial order memory is known to play a critical role in children's language development. Currently, however, few paradigms exist that can effectively probe serial order memory across heterogeneous groups of children, including those who are minimally verbal. We present two experiments, involving 39 adults (20 ASD; 19 TD) and 130 children (86 ASD; 44 TD), that address this issue using an eye-tracking paradigm, which simply required participants to "watch out for a bunny" that appeared in repeating sequences of screen locations. The adults in Experiment 1 all had normative IQs, whereas Experiment 2 included children with and without substantial language and intellectual difficulties. In both experiments gaze latencies and anticipatory fixations to the bunny indicated reliable repetition learning effects in the TD but not the ASD groups. Importantly, we were able to acquire reliable data from around half of the children with significant language impairments in Experiment 2, indicating that the paradigm can shed light on important learning processes in this underrepresented group. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of memory in ASD as well as for the utility of eye-tracking technology to probe repetition learning effects in autism. Autism Res 2020, 13: 1929-1946. © 2020 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC. LAY SUMMARY: Remembering the specific order of stimuli plays an important role in language development and is thought to be a source of difficulty for autistic individuals. Research in this area, however, rarely includes autistic participants who are minimally verbal. Here we develop an eye-tracking paradigm that demonstrates serial order learning difficulties across the autism spectrum. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of the role of memory difficulties in the varied language profiles across the autism spectrum.

The influence of rhythm on short-term memory for serial order.

In the field of verbal short-term memory (STM), numerous theoretical models have been proposed to explain how serial order information is processed and represented. Evidence suggests that serial order is represented through associations between items and a varying contextual signal coding the position of each item in a sequence, but the nature of this contextual signal is still a matter of debate (i.e., event-based vs. time-based varying signal). According to event-based models of serial order, the contextual signal coding serial order is not sensitive to temporal manipulations, as it is the case in irregularly timed sequences. Up to now, the study of the temporal factors influencing serial order STM has been limited to temporal grouping and temporal isolation effects. The goal of the present study is to specify in more detail the role played by temporal factors in serial order STM tasks. To accomplish this, we compared recall performance and error patterns for sequences presenting items at a regular or an irregular and unpredictable timing in three experiments. The results showed that irregular timing does not affect serial recall nor the pattern of errors. These data clearly favour the view that serial order in verbal STM is represented with event-based rather than time-based codes.

Changes in Error Patterns during N-back Training Indicate Reliance on Subvocal Rehearsal

Contemporary cognitive training literature suggests that training on an adaptive task produces improvements only in the trained task or near transfer effects. No study has yet systematically explained the mechanism behind improved performance on the N-back. In this study, we first investigated how improvements in an N-back task using eight pairs of phonologically similar words as stimuli occurred by examining error distributions of the task over training sessions. Nineteen participants (non-native English speakers) trained for 20 sessions over 5 weeks. We observed a reduction in false alarms to non-target words and fewer missed target words. Though the absolute number of phonological-based errors reduced as training progressed, the proportion of this error type did not decrease over time suggesting participants increasingly relied on subvocal rehearsal in completing the N-back. In the second experiment, we evaluated if improvements developed during N-back training transferred to tasks that relied on serial order memory using simple span tasks (letter span with phonologically distinct letters, letter span with phonologically similar letters, digit span forward, and digit span backward). Twenty-nine participants trained on the N-back and 16 trained on the Operation Span (OSPAN) for 15 sessions over 4 weeks. Neither group of participants showed improvements on any of the simple span tasks. In the third experiment, 20 participants (16 native English speakers) trained on the N-back for 15 sessions over 4 weeks also showed increasing reliance on subvocal rehearsal as they progressed through training. Self-report strategy use did not predict improvements on the N-back.

The Role of Hand Movement in Spatial SerialOrderMemory.

Research on serial order memory has traditionally used tasks where participants passively view the items. A few studies that included hand movement showed that such movement interfered with serial order memory. In the present study of three experiments, we investigated whether and how hand movements improved spatial serial order memory. Experiment 1 showed that manual tracing (i.e., hand movements that traced the presentation of stimuli on the modified eCorsi block tapping task) improved the performance of backward recall as compared to no manual tracing (the control condition). Experiment 2 showed that the facilitation effect resulted from voluntary hand movements and could not be achieved via passive viewing of another person's manual tracing. Experiment 3 showed that it was the temporal, not the spatial, signal within manual tracing that facilitated spatial serial memory.

Dynamic relationships between phonological memory and reading: A five year longitudinal study from age 4 to 9.

We reconcile competing theories of the role of phonological memory in reading development, by uncovering their dynamic relationship during the first 5years of school. Phonological memory, reading and phoneme awareness were assessed in 780 phonics-educated children at age 4, 5, 6 and 9. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that phonological memory loaded onto two factors: verbal short-term memory (verbal STM; phonological tasks that loaded primarily on serial order memory) and nonword repetition. Using longitudinal structural equation models, we found that verbal STM directly predicted early word-level reading from age 4 to 6, reflecting the importance of serial-order memory for letter-by-letter decoding. In contrast, reading had no reciprocal influence on the development of verbal STM. The relationship between nonword repetition and reading was bidirectional across the 5years of study: nonword repetition and reading predicted each other both directly and indirectly (via phoneme awareness). Indirect effects from nonword repetition (and verbal STM) to reading support the view that phonological memory stimulates phonemically detailed representations through repeated encoding of complex verbal stimuli. Similarly, the indirect influence of reading on nonword repetition suggests that improved reading ability promotes the phoneme-level specificity of phonological representations. Finally, the direct influence from reading to nonword repetition suggests that better readers use orthographic cues to help them remember and repeat new words accurately. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70LZfTR0BjE.