Lori E. James

Meeting Mr. Farmer versus meeting a farmer: specific effects of aging on learning proper names.

Previous research testing age-related learning and memory problems specific to proper names has yielded mixed results. In the present experiments, young and older participants saw faces of previously unknown people identified by name and occupation. On subsequent presentations of each picture, participants attempted to recall the pictured persons name and occupation. Young and older adults made more name errors (the occupation was recalled but not the correct name) than occupation errors (the name was recalled but not the correct occupation), and older adults made relatively more name but not occupation errors than young adults. This specific age-related deficit in proper-name learning is explained within an interactive-activation model of memory and language that has been extensively applied to cognitive aging and proper-name retrieval.

Recognition Memory Measures Yield Disproportionate Effects of Aging on Learning Face-Name Associations

No previous research has tested whether the specific age-related deficit in learning face-name associations that has been identified using recall tasks also occurs for recognition memory measures. Young and older participants saw pictures of unfamiliar people with a name and an occupation for each person, and were tested on a matching (in Experiment 1) or multiple-choice (in Experiment 2) recognition memory test. For both recognition measures, the pattern of effects was the same as that obtained using a recall measure: More face-occupation associations were remembered than face-name associations, young adults remembered more associated information than older adults overall, and older adults had disproportionately poorer memory for face-name associations. Findings implicate age-related difficulty in forming and retrieving the association between the face and the name as the primary cause of obtained deficits in previous name learning studies.

My Disaster Recovery: a pilot randomized controlled trial of an Internet intervention

Abstract This pilot study tested the efficacy of the My Disaster Recovery (MDR) website to decrease negative affect and increase coping self-efficacy. Fifty-six survivors of Hurricane Ike were recruited from a larger study being conducted at the University of Texas Medical Branch at the first anniversary of the storm. Restricted randomization was used to assign participants to the MDR website, an information-only website, or a usual care condition. Group×time interactions indicated that MDR reduced participant worry more than the other conditions. A similar trend was also identified for depression. Both websites were accessed a small to moderate amount and participants reported mixed satisfaction for both websites. Although the effect sizes for worry and depression were in the moderate to large range, small sample size and timing of the intervention qualify the findings. These preliminary findings encourage further evaluation of MDR with a larger, demographically diverse sample and indicate that the MDR website might be helpful in reducing worry and depression.

Aging, Retrograde Amnesia, and the Binding Problem for Phonology and Orthography: A Longitudinal Study of “Hippocampal Amnesic” H.M.

This study develops and tests a theory of aging and long-term retrograde amnesia (RA) that extends to word retrieval, including the seemingly simple retrieval task of reading isolated words. Under the theory, transmission deficits due to aging, nonrecent use of connections, and infrequent use of connections over the lifespan cause mild and reversible RA in normals but severe and irreversible RA in amnesics who cannot readily form new connections to replace nonfunctioning ones. Consistent with this theory, “hippocampal amnesic” H.M. exhibited little or no retrieval deficit relative to memory-normal controls in reading short, moderately high frequency words at ages 60 or 71 but exhibited accelerated age-linked declines for low frequency words that were unrelated to cerebellar function, working memory capacity, practice effects, speed-accuracy trade-off, and sensory or attentional deficits.

Amnesic H.M.'s performance on the language competence test: Parallel deficits in memory and sentence production

To test conflicting hypotheses regarding amnesic H.M.s language abilities, this study examined H.M.s sentence production on the Language Competence Test (Wiig & Secord, 1988). The task for H.M. and 8 education-, age-, and IQ-matched controls was to describe pictures using a single grammatical sentence containing prespecified target words. The results indicated selective deficits in H.M.s picture descriptions: H.M. produced fewer single grammatical sentences, included fewer target words, and described the pictures less completely and accurately than did the controls. However, H.M.s deficits diminished with repeated processing of unfamiliar stimuli and disappeared for familiar stimuli—effects that help explain why other researchers have concluded that H.M.s language production is intact. Besides resolving the conflicting hypotheses, present results replicated other well-controlled sentence production results and indicated that H.M.s language and memory exhibit parallel deficits and sparing. Present results comport in detail with binding theory but pose problems for current systems theories of H.M.s condition.

Amnesic H.M. Exhibits Parallel Deficits and Sparing in Language and Memory: Systems versus Binding Theory Accounts.

This study examines sentence-level language abilities of amnesic H.M. to test competing theoretical conceptions of relations between language and memory. We present 11 new sources of experimental evidence indicating deficits in H.Ms comprehension and production of non-cliché sentences. Contrary to recent claims that H.M.s comprehension is unimpaired at grammatical levels, H.M. performed 2–6 standard deviations worse than controls matched for age, IQ and education in seven tasks: detecting grammatical errors, repairing sentences identified as containing an error, answering questions about who did what to whom in sentences, multiple-choice recognition of possible versus impossible interpretations of sentences containing ambiguities and figurative speech, discrimination between grammatical versus ungrammatical sentences, and describing the meanings of ambiguous sentences, phrases, and words. However, H.M.s deficits were selective, e.g., sparing comprehension of familiar but not unfamiliar phrases. Parallels between H.M.s selective deficits in language, memory and other aspects of cognition, e.g., reading and visual cognition are discussed. These parallels were predicted under binding theory but did not have a parsimonious explanation in systems theories that postulate non-overlapping units and processes for language versus memory.

H.M., Word Knowledge, and Aging: upport for a New Theory of Long-Term Retrograde Amnesia

This study develops a new theory of long-term retrograde amnesia that encompasses episodic and semantic memory, including word knowledge. Under the theory, retrograde amnesia in both normal individuals and hippocampal amnesics reflects transmission deficits caused by aging, nonrecent use of connections, and infrequent use of connections over the life span. However, transmission deficits cause severe and irreversible retrograde amnesia only in amnesics who (unlike normal persons) cannot readily form new connections to replace nonfunctioning ones. The results of this study are consistent with this theory: For low-frequency but not high-frequency words, a famous “hippocampal amnesic” (H.M.) at age 71 performed worse than memory-normal control participants in a lexical decision experiment and a meaning-definition task (e.g., What does squander mean?). Also as predicted, H.M.s lexical decision performance declined dramatically between ages 57 and 71 for low-frequency words, but was age-invariant for high-frequency words.

New Age-Linked Asymmetries: Aging and the Processing of Familiar Versus Novel Language on the Input Versus Output Side

This research demonstrates 3 new age-linked asymmetries between identifying versus retrieving phonological information. Young and older adults read aloud familiar isolated words (e.g., mind) and novel pseudowords (e.g., mond) in a production task and identified lexical status for identical stimuli in a comprehension task. Young adults made fewer errors than older adults in production but not comprehension (an age-related input-output asymmetry), and they produced pseudowords but not words with fewer errors than older adults (a lexical-status asymmetry). The lexical-status asymmetry also occurred for response onset times but not for output durations (an onset-output asymmetry). All 3 asymmetries were predicted under the transmission deficit hypothesis (D. G. MacKay & D. M. Burke, 1990) but contradict theories such as general slowing that cannot explain why aging affects some types of information processing more than others.

Meeting Mr Davis vs Mr Davin: Effects of name frequency on learning proper names in young and older adults

Two theoretical frameworks relevant to proper name learning in ageing make competing predictions about the effects of name frequency. Under an inhibition model, common (high-frequency; HF) proper names will be harder to learn and remember than rare (low-frequency; LF) names, whereas under a transmission deficit model, HF names will have the advantage. Young adults (ages 18–31) and two groups of healthy older adults (ages 60–74 and 75–89) learned HF (e.g., Davis) and LF (e.g., Davin) surnames in association with new faces. Young adults recalled more names than older or oldest adults, and participants of all ages recalled more HF than LF names. There was no interaction between age and name frequency: The difference favouring HF names was similar in magnitude across age groups. All evidence runs contrary to the inhibitory models prediction that interference makes learning HF names difficult.

Visual cognition in amnesic H.M.: Selective deficits on the What's-Wrong-Here and Hidden-Figure tasks

Two experiments compared the visual cognition performance of amnesic H.M. and memory-normal controls matched for age, background, intelligence, and education. In Experiment 1 H.M. exhibited deficits relative to the controls in detecting “erroneous objects” in complex visual scenes—for example, a bird flying inside a fishbowl. In Experiment 2 H.M. exhibited deficits relative to the controls in standard Hidden-Figure tasks when detecting unfamiliar targets but not when detecting familiar targets—for example, circles, squares, and right-angle triangles. H.M.’s visual cognition deficits were not due to his well-known problems in explicit learning and recall, inability to comprehend or remember the instructions, general slowness, motoric difficulties, low motivation, low IQ relative to the controls, or working-memory limitations. Parallels between H.M.’s selective deficits in visual cognition, language, and memory are discussed. These parallels contradict the standard “systems theory” account of H.M.’s condition but comport with the hypothesis that H.M. has difficulty representing unfamiliar but not familiar information in visual cognition, language, and memory. Implications of our results are discussed for binding theory and the ongoing debate over what counts as “memory” versus “not-memory.”