This study explored external and internal factors and their effect on childrens memory of a naturalistic, potentially stressful event, namely, a dental procedure. Specifically, question format (yes/no questions versus multiple choice questions) and temporal delay (short delay versus long delay) were the external factors examined, while anxiety, temperament, distress level, working memory and previous experience were the internal factors examined. Children (N=68) aged 4-12 years and their parents participated. Prior to the procedure, children provided ratings of their current anxiety on an anxiety rating scale. Following the procedure, children provided pain ratings and were given 24 forced choice questions regarding the dental event. Parents responded to questions regarding their childs previous dental experiences and temperament via a questionnaire. The findings suggest that: (a) multiple-choice questions are more problematic than yes/no questions, (b) that younger children are more suggestible than older children, especially when asked no and absent feature questions; (c) children who report more pain and anxiety, and whose parents describe them as less sociable, evidence higher rates of suggestibility; and (d) after a two month delay, on average, children accurately recalled their pain for the dental event, however, higher trait anxiety scores were associated with higher recollection of experienced pain. The findings are discussed with respect to implications for interviewing children and for management of pain in clinical settings.

This study explored external and internal factors and their effect on childrens memory of a naturalistic, potentially stressful event, namely, a dental procedure. Specifically, question format (yes/no questions versus multiple choice questions) and temporal delay (short delay versus long delay) were the external factors examined, while anxiety, temperament, distress level, working memory and previous experience were the internal factors examined. Children (N=68) aged 4-12 years and their parents participated. Prior to the procedure, children provided ratings of their current anxiety on an anxiety rating scale. Following the procedure, children provided pain ratings and were given 24 forced choice questions regarding the dental event. Parents responded to questions regarding their childs previous dental experiences and temperament via a questionnaire. The findings suggest that: (a) multiple-choice questions are more problematic than yes/no questions, (b) that younger children are more suggestible than older children, especially when asked no and absent feature questions; (c) children who report more pain and anxiety, and whose parents describe them as less sociable, evidence higher rates of suggestibility; and (d) after a two month delay, on average, children accurately recalled their pain for the dental event, however, higher trait anxiety scores were associated with higher recollection of experienced pain. The findings are discussed with respect to implications for interviewing children and for management of pain in clinical settings.

The goal of this thesis is ultimately to answer the two questions raised and left unresolved in Plato’s Protagoras: What is virtue? Is virtue teachable? Following the dramatic order of Plato’s dialogues as outlined by Catherine Zuckert, I intend to show that the Meno returns to the issues raised and left unresolved in the Protagoras, but now with the idea of recollection. My intention is to look at how the idea of recollection, developed and associated with eros in the intervening dialogues, can help explain the nature of virtue and its teachability. I believe that we can come to answer both questions, “What is virtue?” and “Is virtue teachable?” posed in the Protagoras and the Meno by drawing on the ideas of anamnesis and eros as they appear in the Meno, Phaedrus, and Symposium.

The distinctiveness effect refers to the empirical finding of superior memory for items that stand out from the environment relative to common stimuli. Two variants of distinctiveness paradigms (isolation effect and orthographic distinctiveness) were examined under intentional learning instructions. The isolation effect was also examined using incidental learning instructions. Both groups exhibited distinctiveness effects; further, these effects were accompanied by increases in recollection and familiarity with intentional learning only. This finding is surprising as older adults normatively show declines in recollection with advancing age. Under incidental instructions, none of the groups demonstrated distinctiveness effects, and estimates of recollection and familiarity were identical for distinct and non-distinct items. There was no evidence for heightened objective source memory for distinct items, across the three experiments. These results contribute to a growing literature that older adults can benefit from the presence of distinct information; however, not with incidental learning instructions. Furthermore, the current experiments suggest that in distinctiveness paradigms, older adults are able to display estimates of recollection that are commensurate with young adults. This outcome may arise because distinctiveness paradigms support relational processing, which in turn can improve item-specific processing and boost recollection judgments.

This thesis examines how the context in which an item is studied affects the phenomenological experience of the rememberer. Previous research has extensively studied how the match between study and test context affect subsequent memory performance; however, little work has attempted to examine how visual context information provided at study affects later recollection when that context information is not re-presented at retrieval. In particular, the quality of the memory retrieved may be enhanced when highly meaningful visual context information is provided at study. In each of seven experiments in the current thesis, participants studied words presented with context information high or low in meaningful content, and on a later recognition memory test made a Remember, Know, or New response to the words presented alone. Experiment 1 showed that participants had better overall memory, specifically recollection, for words studied with pictures of intact as opposed to scrambled faces. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated and recollection was shown to be higher for words studied with versus without pictures of faces. Experiment 3 showed that participants had higher memory performance, and recollection in particular, for words studied with upright compared to inverted faces. In Experiment 4, participants showed equivalent memory for words studied with novel or familiar faces. These results suggest that recollection benefits when visual context information high in meaningful content accompanies study words, and that this benefit is not related to the novelty of the context. To further test the claim that participants engage in elaborative processes at study to bind item and context information, improving subsequent recollection, the subsequent set of experiments examined how normal, healthy aging affects participants’ ability to use context information provided at study to benefit subsequent recollection. Older adults have been shown to experience deficits both in memory for context and in recollection, suggesting that they might fail to use context effectively to increase recollection, in contrast to younger adults. Experiment 5 found that younger, but not older, adults showed higher recollection for words studied with faces as compared to rectangles. To determine the type of cognitive processing required to obtain recollection benefits, and to examine whether instruction could alleviate age-related deficits, in Experiment 6, the type of processing engaged during the encoding of context-word pairs was manipulated. Younger and older adults studied words presented with a picture of a face under a surface feature or binding feature instruction condition. Both age groups showed higher recollection in the binding than surface instruction condition. Results suggest that older adults do not spontaneously engage in the processes required to boost recollection when visual context information is provided at study, although instructional manipulation during encoding lessens this deficit. This is in line with the Associative Deficit Hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), suggesting that older adults’ recollection deficit involves a specific difficulty in binding item and context information. The final experiment used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates of recollection, specifically testing the hypothesis that sensory-specific reactivation of context information occurs during item recollection. In Experiment 7, brain activation for Remember responses given to words studied with and without meaningful context information was compared. Behaviourally, 8 of the 14 participants showed a higher proportion of Remember responses to words studied with faces than scrambled faces, and 6 did not. Whole brain analysis showed that, for only those participants who showed higher memory performance for words studied with faces, activation in the fusiform gyrus and hippocampus was higher, and a region-of-interest analysis showed increased activation in the functionally-defined FFA (identified in a localizer task), for Remember responses given to words studied with faces compared to scrambled faces. A regression analysis additionally showed that activation in the fusiform gyrus increased as the relative recollection benefit for words studied with meaningful (face) compared to non-meaningful (scrambled face) context information increased across participants. Results suggest that encoding context can influence the pattern of recollection responses on a recognition task and that sensory-specific reactivation is related to behavioural performance. The findings of these experiments suggest that participants can use context information high in meaningful content at study to improve subsequent recollection and I suggest that this involves the use of elaborative processes at encoding that integrates item and meaningful contexts. Such recollection benefits can also be observed in older adults when they are provided experimental instructions to bind item and context at encoding. In addition, the brain regions used to process context information are reactivated at retrieval and, importantly, that this neural pattern determines whether a boost in recollection, from the encoding manipulation, is observed. Participants can thus use context information provided at study to boost subsequent recollection, and I suggest that this involves cognitive processes that bind item and context information at encoding and the reactivation of sensory-specific brain regions at retrieval.

We examined the neural and cognitive processes engaged during auditory verbal recognition performance under full attention (FA) and divided attention (DA) conditions in younger and older adults. Recognition was disrupted by a word (DA-word), but not digit-based (DA-digit) distracting task, performed concurrently with retrieval. In Study 1, a multivariate functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis technique, Partial Least Squares (PLS) was used to identify distributed patterns of brain activity most related to the different conditions and behaviours. We found that similar retrieval networks were recruited during the FA and DA-digit, but not DA-word, condition in both age groups, mirroring behavioural performance. There was, however, an age-related change in the brain regions that predicted successful memory performance. In addition, we found that a neural network relating to hippocampal activity predicted memory success during the FA and DA-digit, but not DA-word, condition in younger, but not older, adults. In study 2, we used a Remember-Know paradigm to examine how manipulations of DA affect recollective and familiarity-based retrieval processes. Younger and older adults showed an increase in false Remember responses during both DA conditions and decreased accuracy in Know responses only during the word-based DA condition. In addition, aging was associated with decreased accuracy in Remember, but not Know, responses, in both DA conditions. In a follow-up experiment, we showed that these results cannot be accounted for by differences in difficulty level of the chosen distracting tasks. Results suggest that recollective processes rely on attentional resources during retrieval. Together these studies show that declines in available attentional resources, common with advancing age, affect both the neural networks used during retrieval, and the qualitative nature of the memories that are retrieved. Results also suggest that familiarity processes rely on the reactivation of content-specific representations, mediated by a neural network relating to hippocampal activity in younger, but not older, adults.

This thesis examines how the context in which an item is studied affects the phenomenological experience of the rememberer. Previous research has extensively studied how the match between study and test context affect subsequent memory performance; however, little work has attempted to examine how visual context information provided at study affects later recollection when that context information is not re-presented at retrieval. In particular, the quality of the memory retrieved may be enhanced when highly meaningful visual context information is provided at study. In each of seven experiments in the current thesis, participants studied words presented with context information high or low in meaningful content, and on a later recognition memory test made a Remember, Know, or New response to the words presented alone. Experiment 1 showed that participants had better overall memory, specifically recollection, for words studied with pictures of intact as opposed to scrambled faces. In Experiment 2, these results were replicated and recollection was shown to be higher for words studied with versus without pictures of faces. Experiment 3 showed that participants had higher memory performance, and recollection in particular, for words studied with upright compared to inverted faces. In Experiment 4, participants showed equivalent memory for words studied with novel or familiar faces. These results suggest that recollection benefits when visual context information high in meaningful content accompanies study words, and that this benefit is not related to the novelty of the context. To further test the claim that participants engage in elaborative processes at study to bind item and context information, improving subsequent recollection, the subsequent set of experiments examined how normal, healthy aging affects participants’ ability to use context information provided at study to benefit subsequent recollection. Older adults have been shown to experience deficits both in memory for context and in recollection, suggesting that they might fail to use context effectively to increase recollection, in contrast to younger adults. Experiment 5 found that younger, but not older, adults showed higher recollection for words studied with faces as compared to rectangles. To determine the type of cognitive processing required to obtain recollection benefits, and to examine whether instruction could alleviate age-related deficits, in Experiment 6, the type of processing engaged during the encoding of context-word pairs was manipulated. Younger and older adults studied words presented with a picture of a face under a surface feature or binding feature instruction condition. Both age groups showed higher recollection in the binding than surface instruction condition. Results suggest that older adults do not spontaneously engage in the processes required to boost recollection when visual context information is provided at study, although instructional manipulation during encoding lessens this deficit. This is in line with the Associative Deficit Hypothesis (Naveh-Benjamin, 2000), suggesting that older adults’ recollection deficit involves a specific difficulty in binding item and context information. The final experiment used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates of recollection, specifically testing the hypothesis that sensory-specific reactivation of context information occurs during item recollection. In Experiment 7, brain activation for Remember responses given to words studied with and without meaningful context information was compared. Behaviourally, 8 of the 14 participants showed a higher proportion of Remember responses to words studied with faces than scrambled faces, and 6 did not. Whole brain analysis showed that, for only those participants who showed higher memory performance for words studied with faces, activation in the fusiform gyrus and hippocampus was higher, and a region-of-interest analysis showed increased activation in the functionally-defined FFA (identified in a localizer task), for Remember responses given to words studied with faces compared to scrambled faces. A regression analysis additionally showed that activation in the fusiform gyrus increased as the relative recollection benefit for words studied with meaningful (face) compared to non-meaningful (scrambled face) context information increased across participants. Results suggest that encoding context can influence the pattern of recollection responses on a recognition task and that sensory-specific reactivation is related to behavioural performance. The findings of these experiments suggest that participants can use context information high in meaningful content at study to improve subsequent recollection and I suggest that this involves the use of elaborative processes at encoding that integrates item and meaningful contexts. Such recollection benefits can also be observed in older adults when they are provided experimental instructions to bind item and context at encoding. In addition, the brain regions used to process context information are reactivated at retrieval and, importantly, that this neural pattern determines whether a boost in recollection, from the encoding manipulation, is observed. Participants can thus use context information provided at study to boost subsequent recollection, and I suggest that this involves cognitive processes that bind item and context information at encoding and the reactivation of sensory-specific brain regions at retrieval.

The purpose of the present study is to signify the explanatory value of the Meno on the coherence as well as the disparateness of the Plato&rsquo / s early and middle dialogues. Indeed, the Meno exposes the transition on the content and form of these dialogues. The first part of the dialogue resembles the Socrates&rsquo / way of investigation, the so-called Elenchus, whereas Plato presents his own philosophical project in the second part of the dialogue. Three fundamental elements of Plato&rsquo / s middle dialogues explicitly arise for the very first time in the Meno, namely / the recollection, the hypothetical method and reasoning out the explanation. Therefore, the connexion of the early and middle dialogues can be understood better if the structure of the Meno is analyzed properly. In other words, the Meno is the keystone dialogue which enables the readers of Plato to sense the development in Socratic-Platonic philosophy.

Ten male and 10 female participants were presented with six narrative paragraphs and six 10 word lists. Three of the paragraphs were emotional and three were neutral. Each of the paragraphs contained 20 information units and each word list included five neutral and five emotional words. Immediately following paragraph or word list presentation, the participants were asked to recall the stimuli. The mean percent of emotional units (i.e. units of information recalled from emotional paragraphs) recalled was significantly greater than the mean percent of neutral units recalled. Similarly, the mean percent emotional words recalled from word lists was significantly greater than the mean percent neutral words recalled from word lists. Percent recall was significantly greater for words than for paragraphs for both emotional and neutral stimuli. Results supported the hypothesis that emotional saliency increases verbal recall. / text

No description available.