Long-term declarative memory depends on pattern separation, which reduces the degree of overlap between similar representations, to maintain memory specificity, and on pattern completion, which occurs when a degraded cue is used to retrieve a previously stored memory. Previous studies aimed at evaluating the underlying neuronal substrates of these computational processes have used a mnemonic discrimination paradigm and fMRI to focus on the hippocampus, to the exclusion of cortical processing. We aim to investigate the influences extra-hippocampal processes have on pattern separation in the following two studies. Study 1. Computational models of pattern completion suggest it occurs cortically and results in generalized memories whereas pattern separation occurs in the hippocampus and results in memory specificity. It is unknown how the incongruity of these two neuronal processes is resolved. Many studies evaluating the neuronal correlates of pattern separation have used fMRI to evaluate activity in the hippocampus. The sluggish time resolution of fMRI and the restricted spatial focus leave room for considerable differences between pattern completion and pattern separation to go undetected. Here, we use encephalography (EEG) and an event-related potential (ERP) analysis to examine neuronal activity during pattern separation and pattern completion to investigate whether or not cortical processing is employed to resolve the discrepancy between these two neuronal processes. We largely did not observe differences between the ERPs associated with pattern separation and pattern completion. Failure to identify neuronal differences could result from the bulk of neuronal processing differentiating between the two processes occurring deeper in the brain than can be measured by ERPs. Study 2. Extrinsic rewards contingent on memory performance can boost memory and learning. However, the effects of extrinsic rewards on memory specificity, particularly in regards to the process of pattern separation, are not well understood. In this behavioral study, we evaluate how extrinsic rewards affect behavioral performance in a task that taxes pattern separation. Our data show that rewards given for participation at the time of encoding boost mnemonic discrimination between target-lure pairs while rewards given for memory performance at the time of retrieval do not. We hypothesize this is because pattern separation is an encoding dependent process. This boost in discriminability is only seen when the rewarded stimuli are blocked together in separate blocks from the non-rewarded stimuli. When the rewarded and non-rewarded stimuli are interspersed within blocks, discriminability does not significantly differ between the rewarded and non-rewarded trials. Overall, performance was better when rewards were contingent on performance than when rewards independent of performance, although this difference is eliminated when attention during encoding is controlled.

Evaluation capacity development (ECD) has been acknowledged as a system of processes to help organizations achieve sustainable evaluation practice. Examining the existing evaluation capacity of an organization before starting an ECD process is necessary and will increase the possibilities of success, determined by the establishment or strengthening of an evaluation system into the organization. In response to this need, this study involved the designing of the Organizational Readiness for Evaluation Capacity Development (ORECD) checklist and its initial validation, using a mixed method research design. The study was conducted in four phases, including: (a) the design of the ORECD checklist based on a review of the literature; (b) a review of the ORECD checklist by five experts to obtain face and content validity evidences, with emphasis on relevance and clarity of the items and how well the items fit the corresponding component; (c) a pretesting about the appropriateness of the wording of the items and format of the ORECD checklist by a sample of doctoral graduate students with formal training in evaluation and professional evaluators; and (d) a field study with 32 nonprofit organizations to determine the utility and benefits of using the ORECD checklist and potential improvements to the instrument. This phase generated information about the psychometric properties as well as consequential validity evidence. Findings indicated that the ORECD checklist has great potential to determine the readiness of an organization to develop evaluation capacity, as demonstrated by the feedback received from various groups of participants, establishing face, content, and consequential validity. Results from the psychometric analysis showed correlations that, for the most part, suggested that the components are measuring aspects of the same construct. In addition, the alpha for most of the components supported the reliability of the ORECD checklist. The two components with alphas close to but below .70 required modifications in order to improve their reliability. Also, it was necessary to modify or reword some of the items. Ongoing efforts should provide information about how the changes made to the ORECD checklist are working and additional validity evidences as the one that can be obtained through factor analysis. This will allow the exploration of the underlying structure of the ORECD checklist and its components. It is expected that the ORECD checklist can be a contribution to the body of literature about ECD helping to address organizational readiness in order to support and sustain the development of evaluation capacity within organizations.

<p>Abstract</p><p>The purpose of the study was to examine if manual signs used as support to spoken and written language can be a god mnemonic for learning of word-pictures. I performed my study as an experiment in which I made a Memory game with word-pictures. I played the game with the children twice. The first time, we played without manual signs and the second time I used sign as a support. I observed the children and noted the words they learned to read with and without the support of manual signs. The result showed that most of the children remembered the word-pictures better if I also used manual signs. The conclusion I made was that manual signs can be a support in early reading development. It does not suit all children so you have to be sensitive to the different strategies used by the children.</p>

Die Bedeutung kognitiver Entwicklungskapazität (Plastizität) und ihrer altersabhängigen Grenzen für Theorien kognitiven Alters wird thematisiert. Für kognitive Basisprozesse wird erwartet, daß die durch Training umgesetzte Entwicklungskapazität älterer Menschen zwar ausreicht, die Ausgangsleistung junger Erwachsener zu übertreffen, daß aber aufgrund altersbedingter Grenzen der Entwicklungskapazität nur sehr wenige ältere Erwachsene das Leistungsniveau trainierter junger Erwachsener erreichen werden. Am Beispiel eines Gedächtnistrainingsprogrammes zur Erhöhung der Merkfähigkeit für Wortlisten werden zwei Forschungsstrategien vorgestellt: (a) das Training von sehr leistungsfähigen älteren Erwachsenen und (b) Längsschnitt-Einzelfall-Studien. Die experimentellen Befunde bestätigten die theoretischen Erwartungen. Zwar waren die Leistungen der besten älteren Erwachsenen etwa doppelt so hoch wie die untrainierter junger Erwachsener, aber die durch das Training aufgedeckten Altersverluste konnten auch in bis zu 75 weiteren Übungsstunden nicht behoben werden. / The relevance of developmental reserve capacity (plasticity) and associated age-related limits for theories of cognitive aging is discussed. For basic cognitive mechanisms, older adults' developmental reserve capacity is expected to be sufficient to surpass young adults' baseline performance. Aging-related limits of this reserve, however, will allow only very few older adults to achieve levels of performance characteristic of trained young adults. Two research strategies (designed to engineer a mnemonic skill for serial recall of words) are described: (a) training of positively selected, mentally very fit older adults and (b) longitudinal single case studies. Experimental results were in agreement with the theoretical expectations. The best older adults scored about twice as high as untrained young adults but even with up to 75 additional experimental sessions the age difference generated by the cognitive intervention was not overcome.

Abstract The purpose of the study was to examine if manual signs used as support to spoken and written language can be a god mnemonic for learning of word-pictures. I performed my study as an experiment in which I made a Memory game with word-pictures. I played the game with the children twice. The first time, we played without manual signs and the second time I used sign as a support. I observed the children and noted the words they learned to read with and without the support of manual signs. The result showed that most of the children remembered the word-pictures better if I also used manual signs. The conclusion I made was that manual signs can be a support in early reading development. It does not suit all children so you have to be sensitive to the different strategies used by the children.

xii, 78 p. : ill. (some col.) / Working memory (WM) enables the storage of information in a state that can be rapidly accessed and updated. This system is a core component of higher cognitive function - individual differences in WM ability are strongly predictive of general intelligence (IQ) and scholastic achievement (e.g., SAT scores), and WM ability is compromised in many psychiatric (e.g., schizophrenia) and neurological (e.g., Parkinson's) disorders. Thus, there is a strong motivation to understand the basic properties of this system. Recent studies suggest that WM ability is determined by two independent factors: the number of items an individual can store and the precision with which representations can be maintained. Significant progress has been made in developing neural measures that are sensitive to the number of items stored in WM. For example, electrophysiological and neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that activity in posterior parietal cortex is directly modulated by the number of items stored in WM and reaches a plateau at the same set size where individual memory capacity is exceeded. However, comparably little is known regarding the neural mechanisms that enable the storage of high-fidelity information in WM. This dissertation describes two experiments that evaluate so-called sensory-recruitment models of WM, where the storage of highfidelity information in WM is mediated by sustained activity in sensory cortices that encode memoranda. In Chapter II, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and multivoxel pattern analysis were used to demonstrate that sustained patterns of activiation observed in striate cortex discriminate specific feature attribute(s) (e.g., orientation) that an observer is holding in WM. In Chapter III, I show that these patterns of activation can be observed in regions of visual cortex that are not retinotopically mapped to the spatial location of a remembered stimulus and suggest that this spatially global recruitment of visual cortex enhances memory precision by facilitating robust population coding of the stored information. Together, these results provide strong support for so-called sensory recruitment models of WM, where the storage of fine visual details is mediated by sustained activity in sensory cortices that encode information. This dissertation includes previously published and co-authored material. / Committee in charge: Edward Awh, Chairperson and Advisor; Edward Vogel, Member; Nash Unsworth, Member; Terry Takahashi, Outside Member

Crossing the Cartography of Exile explores ideas of territoriality, hybrid identity and transculturation. The thesis and exhibition is the result of two years of Practice-Led Research, which is the performative research methodology, carried in the La Chapelle Woodshop of the 100 Laurier Avenue East Building of the Department of Visual Arts. The building was the former Juniorat du Sacré-Coeur of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate built in 1893-94. The Woodshop is the former chapel of the seminary therefore has references to a place of prayer and worship and for my praxis became a place to re-enact the ancient trade of Joseph the Carpenter. The La Chapelle Shipyard inside the woodshop as mnemonic site became a performative site-specific platform specialized in creating small-scale sculptures with recycled and repourposed shipping pallets and a place in which to connect memory with the ancient trade of a shipwright or shipbuilder. Small-scale sculpture then became a symbolic marker for the intimacy of a personal and free territory made of repurposed shipping pallets. Therefore, by working with recycled changeable materials I fashioned a poetic visual language to enchant the wound of exile.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether and to what extent free association following exposure to written material would affect the memory of that material, and whether the effect upon memory would vary with age of the subject. A test of learning (immediate retention) resulted in a significant difference in performance between young and old women--the older learning less. Free association was not found to be significant as a mnemonic aid to either age group, and was compared with characteristics of other more common mnemonics. Suggestions for additional research are discussed.

Syftet med denna självobservationsstudie är att undersöka hur olika förutbestämda övningsdesigner, baserade på auditivt, visuellt och imaginärt förhållningssätt, används för att lära in text utantill i musikaliska sammanhang. Studien är baserad på ett designteoretiskt perspektiv med fokus på hur semiotiska resurser används i lärandet. Under sex veckor övade jag en timme varje dag. Varje övningspass dokumenterades i loggboken och cirka 15 minuter av varje övningspass spelades in. I resultatet visas hur jag använder övningsdesignerna både enskilt och kombinerat och hur de genomförs med noter, piano och en krympande text som resurser. Slutligen diskuteras resultatet i relation till tidigare forskning / The purpose of this self-observation study is to investigate how various predetermined practice designs, based on auditory, visual and imaginary approaches, are used to learn text by heart in musical contexts. The study is based on a design-theoretical perspective focusing on how semiotic resources are used for learning. For six weeks, I practiced an hour every day. Each practice session was documented in a logbook and about 15 minutes was were video recorded. Finally, I discuss the result in relation to previous research

Two experiments are presented in this dissertation to investigate the effect a schema may have on mnemonic discrimination. We developed stimuli composed of a foreground item on a background that was either schematically congruent or incongruent. For the encoding phase of both experiments, these stimuli were presented to 98 participants, who were tasked with determining the congruency of each foreground-background pair. Next, the two experiments diverged for the retrieval phase, where participants were presented with either the same object as before (Target) or one that was similar (Lure). Forty-six participants in Experiment 1 saw stimuli with the same background as initially presented during the retrieval phase. For Experiment 2, fifty-two participants saw the foreground item presented only on a white background. Behavioral, eye tracking, and whole-brain, high-resolution fMRI data were acquired for both experiments and both phases of the task. We found memory discriminability (d-prime) scores were larger for incongruent stimuli when target-lure pairs were less similar and only when the background was present during retrieval. Critically, we found evidence of recognition in the hippocampal subregions as opposed to lure detection. These findings support the notion of a congruency benefit due to the "generate-and-recognize" model and an incongruency benefit due to increased initial attention.