Alaitz Aizpurua

Aging and Flexible Remembering: Contributions of Conceptual Span, Fluid Intelligence, and Frontal Functioning

Aging attenuates the capacity to adaptively and flexibly use episodic memory at different levels of specificity. Older and younger adults were tested on a picture recognition task that required them to make episodic memory decisions at an item-specific (verbatim) versus category-based (gist-based) level on randomly intermixed trials. Specificity modulation was assessed using a measure of the likelihood that participants retrieved verbatim information in order to reject test items that were categorically related to studied items under item-specific recognition instructions (recollection rejection). We found that this measure positively correlated with conceptual span (an index of short-term semantic memory) and with level of fluid intelligence in older and younger adults. However, when we simultaneously considered each of four possible contributors (age, conceptual span, fluid intelligence, and frontal function), the only significant predictor of recollection rejection was the composite fluid intelligence measure (assessed by the Culture Fair Intelligence Test [Cattell & Cattell, 1960] and the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale--Revised Block Design subtest [Wechsler, 1981]). These findings suggest that interventions that facilitate adaptive specificity modulation in episodic memory may enhance the flexibility of thinking, and vice versa, in both older and younger adults.

Memory for Actions of an Event: Older and Younger Adults Compared

ABSTRACT Previous studies have shown increased false memory effects in older compared to younger adults. To investigate this phenomenon in event memory, in the present study, the authors presented younger and older adults with a robbery. A distinction was made between verbal and visual actions of the event, and recognition and subjective experience of retrieval (remember/know/guess judgments) were analyzed. Although there were no differences in hits, older adults accepted more false information as true and, consequently, showed less accurate recognition than younger adults. Moreover, older adults were more likely than younger adults to accompany these errors with remember judgments. Young adults accepted fewer false verbal actions than visual ones and awarded fewer remember judgments to their false alarms for verbal than for visual actions. Older adults, however, did not show this effect of type of information. These results suggest that aging is a relevant factor in memory for real-life eyewitness situations.

Conceptual and perceptual encoding instructions differently affect event recall

Abstract When recalling an event, people usually retrieve the main facts and a reduced proportion of specific details. The objective of this experiment was to study the effects of conceptually and perceptually driven encoding in the recall of conceptual and perceptual information of an event. The materials selected for the experiment were two movie trailers. To enhance the encoding instructions, after watching the first trailer participants answered conceptual or perceptual questions about the event, while a control group answered general knowledge questions. After watching the second trailer, all of the participants completed a closed-ended recall task consisting of conceptual and perceptual items. Conceptual information was better recalled than perceptual details and participants made more perceptual than conceptual commission errors. Conceptually driven processing enhanced the recall of conceptual information, while perceptually driven processing not only did not improve the recall of descriptive details, but also damaged the standard conceptual/perceptual recall relationship.

Learning strategies: differences according to year of study in undergraduate psychology students and Master’s students / Estrategias de aprendizaje: diferencias por curso académico en estudiantes universitarios de psicología y máster

Abstract The strategies used by students are an important element of the teaching/learning process. The CEVEAPEU Questionnaire was administered to 310 students to analyse the use of 25 learning strategies in undergraduate psychology students and students of a Master’s in Education, and to explore any differences according to their year of study. Greater use of strategies was reported in the advanced years in comparison with the initial years, with the exception of strategies related to social skills and the transfer of knowledge, which were particularly notable in the third year in comparison with other years. Furthermore, no changes were noted between students of the first year and the second year, or between those of the third year and the fourth year. These findings indicate that the strategic profile of university students varies according to the academic year they are following and that, in general, it is better in the middle and advanced stages. This aspect should therefore be taken into account in order to improve the quality of teaching/learning processes in higher education.

Incidental memory of younger and older adults for objects encountered in a real world context

Effects of context on the perception of, and incidental memory for, real-world objects have predominantly been investigated in younger individuals, under conditions involving a single static viewpoint. We examined the effects of prior object context and object familiarity on both older and younger adults’ incidental memory for real objects encountered while they traversed a conference room. Recognition memory for context-typical and context-atypical objects was compared with a third group of unfamiliar objects that were not readily named and that had no strongly associated context. Both older and younger adults demonstrated a typicality effect, showing significantly lower 2-alternative-forced-choice recognition of context-typical than context-atypical objects; for these objects, the recognition of older adults either significantly exceeded, or numerically surpassed, that of younger adults. Testing-awareness elevated recognition but did not interact with age or with object type. Older adults showed significantly higher recognition for context-atypical objects than for unfamiliar objects that had no prior strongly associated context. The observation of a typicality effect in both age groups is consistent with preserved semantic schemata processing in aging. The incidental recognition advantage of older over younger adults for the context-typical and context-atypical objects may reflect aging-related differences in goal-related processing, with older adults under comparatively more novel circumstances being more likely to direct their attention to the external environment, or age-related differences in top-down effortful distraction regulation, with older individuals’ attention more readily captured by salient objects in the environment. Older adults’ reduced recognition of unfamiliar objects compared to context-atypical objects may reflect possible age differences in contextually driven expectancy violations. The latter finding underscores the theoretical and methodological value of including a third type of objects–that are comparatively neutral with respect to their contextual associations–to help differentiate between contextual integration effects (for schema-consistent objects) and expectancy violations (for schema-inconsistent objects).

Advertencias explícitas y falsas memorias para un suceso en adultos jóvenes y mayors

Resumen En esta investigación se analiza el efecto de las advertencias explícitas en el reconocimiento de las acciones verbales y visuales de un atraco en adultos jóvenes y mayores. El objetivo es comprobar si advertir antes de la prueba de reconocimiento sobre el fenómeno de las falsas memorias puede reducir o evitar los errores. Se valoraron los aciertos, las falsas alarmas, la exactitudy el criterio de respuesta, así como los juicios Recordar/Saber/Adivinar para los aciertos y las falsas alarmas. Los mayores aceptaron una mayor proporción de acciones falsas y fueron menos exactos que los jóvenes. Las advertencias produjeron una menor proporción de falsas alarmas para las acciones verbales en los jóvenes, sin afectar a las acciones visuales. Además, los participantes con advertencias acompañaron su reconocimiento correcto con juicios recordar en mayor medida que los participantes sin advertencias, pero no hubo diferencias entre los grupos en los juicios que acompañaron al reconocimiento falso. Por tanto, las falsas memorias para el suceso fueron resistentes a las advertencias explícitas.

Different bias mechanisms in recall and recognition of conceptual and perceptual information of an event

Abstract The aim of this research was to study the memory and response bias for conceptual and perceptual information in the recall and recognition of an event. The participants watched a movie trailer video and their memory of verbal and visual actions and details was evaluated using specific recall questions or a true/false recognition task. The participants recalled and recognized actions better than details, and visual information better than verbal information. Memory biases affected recall and recognition differently. The participants showed a high tendency to accept false verbal actions consistent with the gist of the event as true in the recognition task, while in the recall task the participants were more likely to answer incorrectly questions involving visual perceptual details. These results reflect the different mechanisms which are involved in the processing and cognitive management of conceptual and perceptual information of an event.

Age-Based Positivity Effects in Imagining and Recalling Future Positive and Negative Autobiographical Events

Thoughts about the future reflect personal goals, and projections into the future enrich our emotional life. Researchers have taken an interest in determining whether the tendency to remember more positive than negative emotional events observed when recalling past events also appears when remembering imagined future events. The objective of this study was to examine the age-based positivity effect of recall for future positive and negative autobiographical events in young and older adults. Representative future events were first established to develop the cues used to prompt personal future events. In the production task, the participants were presented with eight positive and eight negative random future events of young or older adults as a model and the corresponding cues to generate their own positive and negative future autobiographical events. In the recall task, the participants recovered as many experiences as they could of the model and the positive and negative events produced by themselves. The participants correctly recalled more positive than negative events and committed more errors for negative than positive events, showing a clear tendency in both young and older adults to recall future imagined events as positive. Regarding age, the young adults recalled more events than the older participants whilst the older participants in particular showed better recall of their own imagined future events than the model’s events, and committed more errors when recalling the model’s events than their own imagined events. Regarding the positivity effect in incorrect recall, more than half of the errors were valence changes, most of these being from negative to positive events, and these valence changes were more pronounced in the older than in the younger adults. In general, there were fewer differences between young and older adults in the recall of positive events in comparison with negative events. Our findings suggest that people are well disposed toward recalling positive imagined future events and preserve a positive emotional state, suppressing negative memories.