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Yin H, Zhou Y, Li Z. Contradictory findings in the study of emotional false memory: a review on the inadvisability of controlling valence and arousal. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1380742. [PMID: 38863666 PMCID: PMC11165708 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1380742] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/02/2024] [Accepted: 05/09/2024] [Indexed: 06/13/2024] Open
Abstract
Emotional false memories are the erroneous recollection of events accompanied by an emotional experience. In high-risk domains like psychotherapy and the legal system, emotional false memories are of particular importance. Despite the systematic research conducted on emotional false memories in recent years, findings remain contradictory. Some studies have suggested that negative emotion reduces false memories, while others have suggested that negative emotion increases false memories. Research has mainly employed words and pictures as experimental stimuli, and studies using both types of memory stimuli are reviewed here. From this examination, it emerged that the main reasons for contradictory findings are as follows: (1) different materials have varying effects on inducing false memories, with pictures demonstrating a memory advantage compared to words; (2) recall and recognition tests have been used interchangeably, leading to different false-memory effects depending on the memory test employed; and (3) different studies have adopted different levels of control over valence and arousal when manipulating emotional variables. Future studies should distinguish between the use of different memory materials, examine specific differences in recall and recognition tests, and measure the impact of specific emotions on false memory beyond the dimensions of valence and arousal.
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Affiliation(s)
- Haochen Yin
- Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China
| | - Yizhou Zhou
- Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China
| | - Zuoshan Li
- Key Laboratory of Applied Psychology, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China
- School of Teacher Education, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China
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Abadie M, Rousselle M. Short-Term Phantom Recollection in 8–10-Year-Olds and Young Adults. J Intell 2023; 11:jintelligence11040067. [PMID: 37103252 PMCID: PMC10141472 DOI: 10.3390/jintelligence11040067] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2022] [Revised: 03/21/2023] [Accepted: 03/28/2023] [Indexed: 04/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Illusory conscious experience of the “presentation” of unstudied material, called phantom recollection, occurs at high levels in long-term episodic memory tests and underlies some forms of false memory. We report an experiment examining, for the first time, the presence of phantom recollection in a short-term working memory (WM) task in 8- to 10-year-old children and young adults. Participants studied lists of eight semantically related words and had to recognize them among unpresented distractors semantically related and unrelated to the studied words after a retention interval of a few seconds. Regardless of whether the retention interval was filled with a concurrent task that interfered with WM maintenance, the false recognition rate for related distractors was very high in both age groups, although it was higher in young adults (47%) than children (42%) and rivaled the rate of target acceptance. The conjoint recognition model of fuzzy-trace theory was used to examine memory representations underlying recognition responses. In young adults, phantom recollection underpinned half of the false memories. By contrast, in children, phantom recollection accounted for only 16% of them. These findings suggest that an increase in phantom recollection use may underlie the developmental increase in short-term false memory.
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Wolfe CR, Dandignac M, Wang C, Lowe SR. Gist Inference Scores Predict Cloze Comprehension "In Your Own Words" for Native, Not ESL Readers. HEALTH COMMUNICATION 2022; 37:1757-1764. [PMID: 33947301 DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2021.1920690] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/12/2023]
Abstract
Three patient education texts from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) were subjected to a Coh-Metrix analysis, then further analyzed to obtain Gist Inference Scores (GIS), a new measure of the likelihood that readers will make appropriate inferences about a text's bottom-line meaning. In the GIS formula, the Coh-Metrix psycholinguistic variables referential cohesion, deep cohesion, and latent semantic analysis (LSA) verb overlap increase GIS because cohesive texts that describe related actions are likely to induce gist representations. The Coh-Metrix variables word concreteness, imagability for content words, and hypernymy for nouns and verbs are negatively weighted because they tend to promote verbatim mental representations. NCI texts were modified for a cloze procedure with every tenth word replaced by a blank starting with the second sentence. Participants in two studies received all three cloze-modified texts. Fuzzy-Trace Theory suggests that people are more likely to comprehend high GIS texts "in their own words," and thus fill-the-blanks with multiple words that differ from those omitted by the cloze procedure expressing comparable meaning. In Study One, non-native English speakers appropriately filled blanks with different words at the same rate for all three texts of low-, medium-, and high-GIS. In Study Two, replicating previous findings, for high GIS texts, native English speakers filled blanks appropriately with words other than those removed significantly more often than for medium- or low-GIS texts. High GIS texts apparently afford readers more semantic and lexical flexibility, but non-native English speakers may be ill-equipped to capitalize on this characteristic of high GIS texts.
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Palamarchuk IS, Vaillancourt T. Integrative Brain Dynamics in Childhood Bullying Victimization: Cognitive and Emotional Convergence Associated With Stress Psychopathology. Front Integr Neurosci 2022; 16:782154. [PMID: 35573445 PMCID: PMC9097078 DOI: 10.3389/fnint.2022.782154] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/23/2021] [Accepted: 03/15/2022] [Indexed: 12/14/2022] Open
Abstract
Bullying victimization is a form of psychological stress that is associated with poor outcomes in the areas of mental health and learning. Although the emotional maladjustment and memory impairment following interpersonal stress are well documented, the mechanisms of complex cerebral dysfunctions have neither been outlined nor studied in depth in the context of childhood bullying victimization. As a contribution to the cross-disciplinary field of developmental psychology and neuroscience, we review the neuropathophysiology of early life stress, as well as general psychological stress to synthesize the data and clarify the versatile dynamics within neuronal networks linked to bullying victimization. The stress-induced neuropsychological cascade and associated cerebral networks with a focus on cognitive and emotional convergence are described. The main findings are that stress-evoked neuroendocrine reactivity relates to neuromodulation and limbic dysregulation that hinder emotion processing and executive functioning such as semantic cognition, cognitive flexibility, and learning. Developmental aspects and interacting neural mechanisms linked to distressed cognitive and emotional processing are pinpointed and potential theory-of-mind nuances in targets of bullying are presented. The results show that childhood stress psychopathology is associated with a complex interplay where the major role belongs to, but is not limited to, the amygdala, fusiform gyrus, insula, striatum, and prefrontal cortex. This interplay contributes to the sensitivity toward facial expressions, poor cognitive reasoning, and distress that affect behavioral modulation and emotion regulation. We integrate the data on major brain dynamics in stress neuroactivity that can be associated with childhood psychopathology to help inform future studies that are focused on the treatment and prevention of psychiatric disorders and learning problems in bullied children and adolescents.
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Gualtieri S, Finn AS. The Sweet Spot: When Children’s Developing Abilities, Brains, and Knowledge Make Them Better Learners Than Adults. PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE 2022; 17:1322-1338. [PMID: 35404724 PMCID: PMC9442275 DOI: 10.1177/17456916211045971] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/01/2023]
Abstract
Cognitive development is marked by age-related improvements across a number of domains, as young children perform worse than their older counterparts on most tasks. However, there are cases in which young children, and even infants, outperform older children and adults. So when, and why, does being young sometimes confer an advantage? This article provides a comprehensive examination of the peculiar cases in which younger children perform better. First, we outline the specific instances in which younger is better across domains, including mastering language, using probabilistic information, detecting causal relations, remembering certain information, and even solving problems. We then examine how children’s reduced cognitive abilities, ongoing brain development, more limited prior knowledge, and heightened tendency to explore benefits their learning, reasoning, perception, and memory from a mechanistic perspective. We hold that considering all of these factors together is essential for understanding the ways in which children’s learning is unique and that science has much to learn from a careful consideration of childhood.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Amy S. Finn
- Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
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Reyna VF, Broniatowski DA, Edelson SM. Viruses, Vaccines, and COVID-19: Explaining and Improving Risky Decision-making. JOURNAL OF APPLIED RESEARCH IN MEMORY AND COGNITION 2021; 10:491-509. [PMID: 34926135 PMCID: PMC8668030 DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2021.08.004] [Citation(s) in RCA: 25] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/25/2021] [Revised: 08/15/2021] [Accepted: 08/20/2021] [Indexed: 12/24/2022]
Abstract
Risky decision-making lies at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic and will determine future viral outbreaks. Therefore, a critical evaluation of major explanations of such decision-making is of acute practical importance. We review the underlying mechanisms and predictions offered by expectancy-value and dual-process theories. We then highlight how fuzzy-trace theory builds on these approaches and provides further insight into how knowledge, emotions, values, and metacognitive inhibition influence risky decision-making through its unique mental representational architecture (i.e., parallel verbatim and gist representations of information). We discuss how social values relate to decision-making according to fuzzy-trace theory, including how categorical gist representations cue core values. Although gist often supports health-promoting behaviors such as vaccination, social distancing, and mask-wearing, why this is not always the case as with status-quo gist is explained, and suggestions are offered for how to overcome the "battle for the gist" as it plays out in social media.
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Affiliation(s)
- Valerie F Reyna
- Human Neuroscience Institute, Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, Cornell University, USA
| | - David A Broniatowski
- Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics, George Washington University, USA
| | - Sarah M Edelson
- Human Neuroscience Institute, Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, Cornell University, USA
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McGuire KL. Methods of Exploring Related-Meaning-Based False Memories. JOURNAL OF COGNITION AND DEVELOPMENT 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/15248372.2021.1976782] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/20/2022]
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Dandignac M, Wolfe CR. Gist Inference Scores predict gist memory for authentic patient education cancer texts. PATIENT EDUCATION AND COUNSELING 2020; 103:1562-1567. [PMID: 32098741 DOI: 10.1016/j.pec.2020.02.027] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/07/2019] [Revised: 02/11/2020] [Accepted: 02/17/2020] [Indexed: 06/10/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Develop a tool to evaluate and improve written medical communication to patients. Determine how effectively Gist Inference Scores (GIS) predict comprehension of patient education texts independently of health literacy. Explicate the text characteristics and psychological mechanism underlying GIS. METHODS For study 1, a nationally representative sample of older women (N = 61) completed a fill-in-the-blank comprehension task on authentic National Cancer Institute (NCI) texts of varying GIS levels. In study 2, participants (N = 198) read NCI texts (high or low GIS) then recalled what they read. RESULTS Study 1 showed that a higher percentage of different words yielding semantically similar sentence meaning were used to correctly fill-the-blanks on high GIS texts and there was no significant interaction with health literacy. In study 2, a greater proportion of decision-relevant information was recalled for high GIS texts. CONCLUSIONS GIS predicts the likelihood that readers will form gist representations of medical texts on free recall and fill-in-the-blank tasks. High GIS texts allow for more semantic flexibility to mentally represent the same meaning, and more strongly emphasizes gist rather than verbatim representations. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS GIS provides medical communicators with an automated and user-friendly method to evaluate medical texts for their ability to convey the bottom-line meaning.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mitchell Dandignac
- Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH 45056, United States.
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Wolfe CR, Dandignac M, Sullivan R, Moleski T, Reyna VF. Automatic Evaluation of Cancer Treatment Texts for Gist Inferences and Comprehension. Med Decis Making 2019; 39:939-949. [DOI: 10.1177/0272989x19874316] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/15/2022]
Abstract
Background. It is difficult to write about cancer for laypeople such that everyone understands. One common approach to readability is the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (FKGL). However, FKGL has been shown to be less effective than emerging discourse technologies in predicting readability. Objective. Guided by fuzzy-trace theory, we used the discourse technology Coh-Metrix to create a Gist Inference Score (GIS) and applied it to texts from the National Cancer Institute website written for patients and health care providers. We tested the prediction that patient cancer texts with higher GIS scores are likely to be better understood than others. Design. In study 1, all 244 cancer texts were systematically subjected to an automated Coh-Metrix analysis. In study 2, 9 of those patient texts (3 each at high, medium, and low GIS) were systematically converted to fill-the-blanks (Cloze) tests in which readers had to supply the missing words. Participants (162) received 3 texts, 1 at each GIS level. Measures. GIS was measured as the mean of 7 Coh-Metrix variables, and comprehension was measured through a Cloze procedure. Results. Although texts for patients scored lower on FKGL than those for providers, they also scored lower on GIS, suggesting difficulties for readers. In study 2, participants scored higher on the Cloze task for high GIS texts than for low- or medium-GIS texts. High-GIS texts seemed to better lend themselves to correct responses using different words. Limitations. GIS is limited to text and cannot assess inferences made from images. The systematic Cloze procedure worked well in aggregate but does not make fine-grained distinctions. Conclusions. GIS appears to be a useful, theoretically motivated supplement to FKGL for use in research and clinical practice.
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Affiliation(s)
| | | | | | - Tatum Moleski
- Department of Psychology, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA
| | - Valerie F. Reyna
- Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
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A theoretically motivated method for automatically evaluating texts for gist inferences. Behav Res Methods 2019; 51:2419-2437. [DOI: 10.3758/s13428-019-01284-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
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Cuevas K, Sheya A. Ontogenesis of learning and memory: Biopsychosocial and dynamical systems perspectives. Dev Psychobiol 2018; 61:402-415. [PMID: 30575962 DOI: 10.1002/dev.21817] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2018] [Revised: 10/12/2018] [Accepted: 10/31/2018] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Abstract
In this article, we review recent empirical and theoretical work on infant memory development, highlighting future directions for the field. We consider the state of the field since Carolyn Rovee-Collier's call for developmental scientists to "shift the focus from what to why," emphasizing the function of infant behavior and the value of integrating fractionized, highly specialized subfields. We discuss functional approaches of early learning and memory, including ecological models of memory development and relevant empirical work in human and non-human organisms. Ontogenetic changes in learning and memory occur in developing biological systems, which are embedded in broader socio-cultural contexts with shifting ecological demands that are in part determined by the infants themselves. We incorporate biopsychosocial and dynamical systems perspectives as we analyze the state of the field's integration of multiple areas of specialization to provide more holistic understanding of the contributing factors and underlying mechanisms of the development of memory.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kimberly Cuevas
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Waterbury, Connecticut
| | - Adam Sheya
- Department of Psychological Sciences, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut
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