Peabody College of Education and Human Development
http://hdl.handle.net/1803/719
2024-03-25T13:07:35ZExamining the episodic context account: does retrieval practice enhance memory for context?
http://hdl.handle.net/1803/16252
Examining the episodic context account: does retrieval practice enhance memory for context?
Hong, Min Kyung; Polyn, Sean M.; Fazio, Lisa K.
Retrieval practice, such as filling in blanks or taking quizzes, is firmly established as an effective study strategy. However, the underlying mechanism of how retrieval practice benefits memory is still unclear. One current theory, the episodic context account, proposes that retrieval enhances memory by reinstating a prior learning context. This retrieved context is then strengthened and updated to include context at the time of recall, which later serves as an effective retrieval cue. However, few studies have directly tested this hypothesis. We did so by examining participants' memory for the initial study context. Across three experiments, participants encoded cue-target pairs presented in different colors and either restudied or practiced retrieving the targets. If retrieval practice benefits memory by reinstating the prior episodic context, participants who successfully retrieved the items during practice should have enhanced memory for context details (i.e. font color) compared to participants who restudied the pairs. Contrary to this prediction, memory for font colors did not differ between the restudy condition and the retrieval practice condition. Even when font color was actively attended to and integrated with the to-be-remembered items, retrieval practice did not increase memory for this aspect of context. Our results suggest that the context reinstated during retrieval practice is limited in nature. Aspects of the context that are not essential to retrieval of the item are not strengthened by retrieval practice.
2019-12-18T00:00:00ZHow 15-month-old infants process morphologically complex forms in an agglutinative language?
http://hdl.handle.net/1803/16144
How 15-month-old infants process morphologically complex forms in an agglutinative language?
Ladanyi, Eniko; Kovacs, Agnes M.; Gervain, Judit
While phonological development is well-studied in infants, we know less about morphological development. Previous studies suggest that infants around one year of age can process words analytically (i.e., they can decompose complex forms to a word stem and its affixes) in morphologically simpler languages such as English and French. The current study explored whether 15-month-old infants learning Hungarian, a morphologically complex, agglutinative language with vowel harmony, are able to decompose words into a word stem and a suffix. Potential differences between analytical processing of complex forms with back versus front vowels were also studied. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that Hungarian infants process morphologically complex words analytically when they contain a frequent suffix. Analytic processing is present both in the case of complex forms with back and front vowels according to the results of Experiment 2. In light of the results, we argue for the potential relevance of the early development of analytic processing for language development.
2020-03-01T00:00:00ZInvestigating the visual number form area: a replication study
http://hdl.handle.net/1803/15994
Investigating the visual number form area: a replication study
Merkley, Rebecca; Conrad, Benjamin; Price, Gavin; Ansari, Daniel
The influential triple-code model of number representation proposed that there are three distinct brain regions for three different numerical representations: verbal words, visual digits and abstract magnitudes. It was hypothesized that the region for visual digits, known as the number form area, would be in ventral occipitotemporal cortex (vOTC), near other visual category-specific regions, such as the visual word form area. However, neuroimaging investigations searching for a region that responds in a category-specific manner to the visual presentation of number symbols have yielded inconsistent results. Price & Ansari (Price, Ansari 2011 Neuroimage 57, 1205-1211) investigated whether any regions activated more in response to passively viewing digits in contrast with letters and visually similar nonsense symbols and identified a region in the left angular gyrus. By contrast, Grotheer et al. (Grotheer, Herrmann, Kovacs 2016 J. Neurosci. 36, 88-97) found bilateral regions in vOTC which were more activated in response to digits than other stimuli categories while performing a one-back task. In the current study, we aimed to replicate the findings reported in Grotheer et al. with Price & Ansari's passive viewing task as this is the most stringent test of bottom-up, sensory-driven, category-specific perception. Moreover, we used the contrasts reported in both papers in order to test whether the discrepancy in findings could be attributed to the difference in analysis.
2019-10-01T00:00:00ZThe performance of overachieving males on certain measures of efficiency and divergence : a study in personality integration
http://hdl.handle.net/1803/15620
The performance of overachieving males on certain measures of efficiency and divergence : a study in personality integration
Wright, Logan
1964-01-01T00:00:00Z