Doriane Gras

Is Memory for Routes Enhanced by an Environment's Richness in Visual Landmarks?

Abstract: We tested the hypothesis that a routes memorability is dependent on the frequency with which people are exposed to visual landmarks. Undergraduates learned either a route through an urban area lacking visually salient features, or a route in a neighborhood with many shops and urban objects. They were then asked to recall the learned route in the form of route directions and sketch maps. The results showed higher recall performance for the richer environment. When presented with photographs depicting scenes along the route, participants exposed to the richer environment had higher recognition scores and shorter response times than the others. The data confirm the functional role of landmarks in route memory and wayfinding.

Presentation modality effect on false memories in younger and older adults: The use of an inference paradigm

Classically, false memories are studied using the DRM paradigm (Deese, 1959; Roediger & McDermott, 1995), involving use of words lists. The words of each list are linked to a critical word not presented. Participants create a false memory in recognising and/or recalling this critical word. In most cases older adults have more false memories than younger adults in this paradigm. To use less strategy-dependent material, we compared predictive inferences activated during text reading in young and healthy older participants. For example, in the sentence “The fragile porcelain vase was thrown against the wall” the predictive inference was that the vase is broken. After reading or hearing the texts, the participants had false memories in recalling and/or recognising the predictive inferences. Older adults had more false recognitions than younger adults when they read or heard the text. However, the difference did not reach significance with the cued recalled task. It is concluded that, in more ecological situations such as text reading, abilities in older adults can be preserved.

Apprentissage d'itinéraires virtuels : quel codage verbal en mémoire de travail

Two experiments were run to complete our understanding of the role of verbal and visuospatial encoding in the construction of a spatial model from visual input. In experiment 1 a dual task paradigm was applied to young adults who learned a route in a virtual environment and then performed a series of nonverbal tasks to assess spatial knowledge. Results indicated that landmark knowledge as asserted by the visual recognition of landmarks was not impaired by any of the concurrent task. Route knowledge, assessed by recognition of directions, was impaired both by a tapping task and a concurrent articulation task. Interestingly, the pattern was modulated when no landmarks were available to perform the direction task. A second experiment was designed to explore the role of verbal coding on the construction of landmark and route knowledge. A lexical-decision task was used as a verbal-semantic dual task, and a tone decision task as a nonsemantic auditory task. Results show that these new concurrent tasks impaired differently landmark knowledge and route knowledge. Results can be interpreted as showing that the coding of route knowledge could be grounded on both a coding of the sequence of events and on a semantic coding of information. These findings also point on some limits of Baddeleys working memory model.

Alfred Binet et le laboratoire de Psychologie de la Sorbonne

Resume Cet article est destine a presenter l’histoire du laboratoire de psychologie de la Sorbonne fonde par le physiologiste Henry Beaunis (1830-1921) et a evaluer l’apport d’Alfred Binet (1857-1911) au rayonnement de cette structure de recherche. La reconstitution de cette histoire grâce a des documents peu connus ou inedits nous a amenee a reflechir sur l’heritage laisse par Binet dont le laboratoire a ete confie apres sa mort a Henri Pieron (1881-1964) puis a Paul Fraisse (1911-1996). L’article se termine en posant la question de l’heritage du laboratoire de psychologie de la Sorbonne dirige par Binet.