The purpose of this research was to investigate a methodological problem in the area of retroactive interference. Retroactive interference was defined as a decrement in retention resulting from an activity, usually a learning activity, interpolated between an original learning activity and a later measure of retention. Specifically, the problem was whether retroactive interference would occur, and in what amounts, when non-learning activities of increasing intensity were interpolated between the original learning material and a later measure of retention. Intensity was defined in terms of rate of manipulation and degree of complexity of a motor task. Certain relevant studies were discussed in terms of experimental variables that have been shown-to be functionally related to retroactive interference. One theoretical system, the perseveration theory, was considered briefly in connection with the intensity factor. Following the traditional retroaction paradigm, the general procedure was as follows: there were seven groups of subjects, an experimental group and six control groups. The original learning for all subjects consisted of a paired-associate list composed of nonsense syllables as stimuli and meaningful verbal materials as responses: the interpolated activities included a paired-associate list, a rest interval, a color-naming activity, and four systematic variations of a motor task along an intensity continuum. Retention was measured in terms of the number of correct anticipations made by the subject on the first relearning trial (recall), and in terms of the number of trials required by the subject to reach the criterion on the original learning material (relearning). The amount and the direction of retroaction that occurred in each case was measured. Both the amount and the direction of retroaction differed significantly among the various groups. The bearing of these results upon the perseveration theory, and particularly upon the expectation which follows from it that retroactive interference varies with the intensity of the interpolated activity, was discussed. It was concluded that comparisons between retroaction experiments should be made with extreme caution if the equivalence of the interpolated activities has not been empirically established.. / Arts, Faculty of / Philosophy, Department of / Graduate

Cognitive factors have been identified as critical variables in the origin and maintenance of interpersonal dysfunction associated with high social anxiety. Although evidence of a memory deficit accompanying general anxiety states is abundant, studies of memory accompanying social anxiety have failed to demonstrate a deficit. Previous studies of memory deficit in social anxiety have measured only retention of evaluative feedback, the present study investigated memory more typical of interpersonal encounters, the recall of information about others. Forty-eight high socially anxious males and forty-eight low anxious males were asked to listen to a tape recording of self-disclosures either during an interaction with the self-discloser or in private. Following an interim task, each subject was then asked to recall the information from the tape either in the presence of the female self-discloser or in private. This design allowed for social anxiety provoking manipulation at encoding to be completely crossed with social anxiety manipulation at retrieval. Multiple measures of memory were taken and analyzed with a multivariate procedure. It was hypothesized that a situational deficit would occur for the high socially anxious subjects when they were encoding the other-referent information in a social context. Additionally, it was hypothesized that high socially anxious subjects would recall more affective as opposed to neutral information, and more negative items than positive or neutral. The results confirmed that memory is disturbed for high socially anxious subjects when in a social context, and specifically the disturbance occurs at the encoding phase. Results regarding the recall of affective material were contrary to prediction and suggest that high socially anxious subjects selectively process less affective material than do low socially anxious subjects. The results are supportive of a cognitive perspective arguing that dysfunctional interpersonal experiences may stem from impoverished, incomplete, and barren schema that guide the social behavior. The presence of a recall deficit along with intact recognition memory suggests that information about others is attended to but not processed 'deeply' or elaborately enough to be available on a free recall basis. The identification of memory deficit as a component of social anxiety provides a variety of new intervention possibilities including social memory enhancement programs, interventions aimed at unearthing poorly encoded memories, and strategies focused on attention to affective messages. / Education, Faculty of / Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education (ECPS), Department of / Graduate

No description available.

No description available.

The present study investigated the influence of encoding context on the types of recognition errors that adults and nine-year-olds commit . Encoding context was varied through the use of different orienting questions. In general, it was found that both nine-year-olds and adults were influenced by encoding context. Nine-year-olds, however, committed more contextually related false recognition errors only when they both answered orienting questions and generated related words, while adults were influenced by context only after answering orienting questions. When adults were asked to generate words in addition to answering questions, the encoding context effect disappeared. Two hypotheses were proposed to explain these results. The first suggested that children failed to process stimuli as elaborately as adults, and were thus less likely to incorrectly recognize more contextually related foils, unless they were explicitly required to generate related words (often foils) . The second hypothesis suggested that the retrieval strategies of adults and children differed. Children probably picked words on the test based on familiarity, and unless they generated foils, the context effect would not be expected to appear. Adults, however, may have employed more sophisticated test-taking strategies. After iv simply answering orienting questions, they may have selected some foils based on the context of remembered orienting questions. However, after generating related words, some subjects may have avoided choosing those words (usually foils) on the recognition memory test, resulting in the disappearance of the context effect

An emerging theory of short-term memory, called fuzzy trace theory (FTT), postulates a link between memory and reasoning ability that might explain the relationship of performances on memory span tasks to other measures of intelligence. Two key assumptions regarding the encoding and retrieval of information in short-term memory (STM) are central to FTT. First, stored memory traces are assumed to vary along a continuum of verbatim detail to gist. Second, retrieval from STM is assumed to vary along a continuum of simple to reconstructive readout. The three experiments reported in this dissertation were designed to examine these two assumptions regarding encoding and retrieval by examining subjects' performances on memory span tasks. Memory span was the measure of choice for this series of experiments because span tasks have long been considered a pure measures of memory. Recall of items (item memory) and ordering of items for serial recall (order memory) were factored and treated as independent memory processes. The findings in the three experiments indicated that item memory relied more on simple readout of verbatim detail, while order memory relied on reconstruction from gist. More development was observed for order memory, indicating that age changes in memory span performance may be caused by development of gist extraction and reconstructive processes. It was suggested that children's ability to order items is the component of serial recall that explains the link between memory span performance and other measures of intelligence.

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No description available.

The eight experiments reported in this thesis are designed to investigate the idea that in verbal short-term memory (STM) material decays over time and this decay is prevented by rehearsal. It follows that the capacity of STM when measured in words should be inversely proportional to the time taken to rehearse the words. Consequently, subjects should be able to recall more short duration words than long duration words. In contrast to this hypothesis is the idea that the capacity of STM is a fixed number of chunks, where chunks are a structural characteristic of the material. The first four experiments are designed so that these alternative hypotheses produce conflicting predictions and, in all cases, the hypotheses derived from decay theory are supported. It is shown that serial recall performance is very well predicted by the time taken to say the words and that the relationship between word duration and recall is of the type predicted by decay theory. The second set of experiments are based on the assumption that both STM and long-term memory (LTM) contribute to performance in serial recall tasks. The purpose of the experiments is to determine whether it is the STM or LTM component that is sensitive to word duration. It is predicted, in line with a decay theory of forgetting in STM, that the STM component is sensitive to word duration. The experiments are designed to produce sizable contributions from both stores in order to test this hypothesis. The results support the hypothesis in showing that variables known to affect STM, such as acoustic similarity, interact with word duration, while variables known to affect LTM, such as repeated presentations of the same list, show no such interaction. The results are interpreted in terms of decay theory and the different versions of this theory that have been proposed are considered. It is concluded that while no version of the theory is completely adequate, there is no evidence that invalidates the central assumptions, viz. that in STM items are forgotten by decay and that one of the functions of rehearsal is to prevent this decay.

The purpose of this study was to test two hypotheses concerning reminiscence in old age. Reminiscence has been found to be an adaptive mechanism relating to freedom from clinical depression and to a reduced discrepancy between present and past self-concepts in the face of an experimental social threat (Mc Mahon and Rhudick, 1964; Lewis, 1971). Disengagement theory (Cumming and Henry, 1961) proposes that reminiscence is adaptive because it is a defense mechanism which protects the individual from decreasing physical capacities and lack of reinforcement from society.