Sex differences in elaborative strategies: a developmental analysis

Everyday memory deficits in very mild Alzheimer's disease

Memory complaints of patients sometimes are not verified via standard cognitive testing. Acquisition of information in everyday life requires memorization in complex three-dimensional environments. The authors mimicked this with a photorealistic virtual environment (VE). Memory for verbal material and spatial scenery was tested in healthy controls (HC) and patients with mild Alzheimer's disease (AD); mini-mental state evaluation (MMSE) 25.7 ± 1.8 (mean ± standard deviation). The number of memorized items increased to 90% in both classical list learning and for items memorized in VE in HC. In contrast, only 40% of items were recalled in list learning and 20% in VE in AD patients. Unlike the gender difference favoring female HC on list learning, performance was alike for both genders in VE. We conclude that verbal learning abilities in healthy elderly subjects are alike in standard settings and under virtual reality conditions. In AD patients memory deficits that are relevant to everyday life yet not detectable with list learning are unmasked in virtual reality. In future, this may aid objective appraisal of interventions with regard to their everyday relevance.

The Relationship between Senior South African Individual Scale — Revised (SSAIS-R) Subtests and Reading Ability

In this paper we discuss the results of a study that identified the relationships between different cognitive functions, as measured by selected subtests of the Senior South African Individual Scale — Revised (SSAIS-R) and the Neale Analysis of Reading Ability — Revised (Neale). The SSAIS-R subtests included Vocabulary, Similarities, Story Memory, and Coding. The Neale assesses three different components of reading, namely, rate, accuracy, and comprehension. The sample consisted of 32 Grade 2 boys attending an English-medium, private school in Gauteng and a matched group of girls attending the sister school. Moderate, significant correlations were found between the Vocabulary and Similarities subtests and components of the Neale for both girls and boys. The Story Memory subtest was correlated with components of the Neale for the girls sample only, while no significant relationship was found between the Coding subtest and any aspects of reading for either gender group. The boys scored significantly higher than the girls on the Vocabulary and Similarities subtests, as well as on the reading comprehension component of the Neale, while the girls scored significantly higher on the non-verbal Coding subtest. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Gender differences in memory processing: Evidence from event-related potentials to faces

This study investigated gender differences on memory processing using event-related potentials (ERPs). Behavioral data and ERPs were recorded in 16 males and 10 females during a recognition memory task for faces. The behavioral data results showed that females performed better than males. Gender differences on ERPs were evidenced over anterior locations and involve the modulation of two spatially and temporally distinct components. These results are in general accordance with the view that males and females differ in the cognitive strategies they use to process information. Specifically, they could differ in their abilities to maintain information over interference and in the processing of the intrinsic contextual attributes of items, respectively, associated with the modulation of two anterior components. These interpretations lend support to the view that processing in females entails more detailed elaboration of information content than in males. Processing in males is more likely driven by schemas or overall information theme.

Strategy utilization deficiencies in children: when, where, and why

By the early 1980s, a clear picture of the role of strategies in memory development was emerging. Strategies generally help recall and thus are a main contributor to memory development. Young children have a production deficiency that is overcome during the grade school years. By the early 1990s, the process appeared to be a good deal more complex. Although spontaneously produced strategies often help recall, they do not inevitably do so, especially among novice strategy producers--even when their strategy production appears proficient. In the 1980s and 1990s, a main theme of research on children's strategies of memory has been that children begin to use strategies earlier than previously thought. Researchers have identified rudimentary strategies of even 2- and 3-yr-olds. Our research suggests that we also need to take a careful look at the other end of the spectrum. A strategy may continue to develop well beyond the point at which an apparently full-blown strategy is produced. Producing a relevant strategy does not mark the end of strategy development. Rather, it marks the beginning of the development of a proficient, low-effort strategy that enhances recall. Even after a child spontaneously produces the strategy fully and consistently, the strategy gradually becomes less effortful to access and to execute and is integrated with other mnemonic strategies and activities. As a result, the strategy is increasingly likely to facilitate recall. Researchers need to conduct a fine-grained analysis of the actual implementation of a strategy--how the strategy of interest dovetails with a set of strategic, metamemorial, information-processing, and motor-control processes. The utilization deficiency phenomenon may challenge current conceptions of how and why skills develop. Why do children spontaneously use and continue to use a skill that helps them little or not at all? The usual assumption has been that children acquire and perfect skills because they have some benefit for them. This benefit is still true in the long run, but not the short run. The utilization deficiency, Bjorklund and Green's (1992) account of young children's overoptimism, and Siegler's (e.g., McGilly & Siegler, 1989) observation that children sometimes reject, at least temporarily, a strategy that helps them, describe behaviors that do not fit easily into current models of children as rational problem solvers. We need a different conceptualization of the course of strategy development and perhaps skill development more generally.

Development differences in associative memory: strategy use, mental effort, and knowledge access interactions

The deployment of memory strategies is resource demanding and more so for younger children than for older children and adults. The associative memory studies reviewed show that accessibility to relevant event knowledge is directly related to the resource demands of using an elaboration strategy. The greater efficiency of strategy use by older children and adults permits the use of available mental resources to support additional task-relevant processing of to-be-learned items. This additional processing might include alternate or more durable encodings of pair relationships, creation of retrieval opportunities (strategies), and effective strategy monitoring. The additional processing enabled by the freeing of information-processing resources is hypothesized to be responsible for the developmental increase in the efficacy of elaboration and other associative strategies. Knowledge access also affects the nature of the relational strategy selected and the recall benefits observed. Although increases in "elaboration" were hypothesized to account for developmental differences in associative memory, the evidence clearly shows that other associative strategies are also involved. Although these other associative strategies involve elaboration in a nontechnical sense, the observed dissociations between them and the elaboration strategy argue for maintaining the distinction. Moreover, further analysis is needed to understand the interactions between strategy selection and knowledge access. In this regard, the initial strategy deployed by a learner is dependent on his or her knowledge about the relative effectiveness of various relational associations and interactions with knowledge access. For example, a younger subject might forgo "elaboration" if the items are "captured" by an "other associative" relationship activated during strategy deployment (particularly if the initial search for an elaboration is very effortful). In contrast, an older subject might persevere at retrieving a relevant event because of his or her knowledge about the benefits of encoding "direct" interactions for pair members. The learner's subsequent strategy selection, either for additional processing or encoding of new pairs, is undoubtedly more complex because of increases in the learner's knowledge about the relationships between strategy use, knowledge access, and resource demands. In conclusion, research examined in this chapter verified relationships between strategy use, mental effort, and knowledge access. Moreover, interactions between strategy use and knowledge access were exposed. These relationships are presumed to underlie developmental differences in the efficacy of memory strategies.