Background: Individuals with Down syndrome generally show a floor effect on Wechsler Scales that is manifested by flat profiles and with many or all of the weighted scores on the subtests equal to 1. Method: The main aim of the present paper is to use the statistical Hessl method and the extended statistical method of Orsini, Pezzuti and Hulbert…

Training "Aplysia" with inedible food for a period that is too brief to produce long-term memory becomes effective in producing memory when training is paired with a nitric oxide (NO) donor. Lip stimulation for the same period of time paired with an NO donor is ineffective. Using qPCR, we examined molecular correlates of brief training…

The brain has a high demand for energy, of which creatine (Cr) is an important regulator. Studies document neurocognitive benefits of oral Cr in mammals, yet little is known regarding their physiological basis. This study investigated the effects of Cr supplementation (3%, w/w) on hippocampal function in male C57BL/6 mice, including spatial…

Reward-prediction errors track the extent to which rewards deviate from expectations, and aid in learning. How do such errors in prediction interact with memory for the rewarding episode? Existing findings point to both cooperative and competitive interactions between learning and memory mechanisms. Here, we investigated whether learning about…

We have shown previously that male rats develop a conditioned ejaculatory preference (CEP) for females scented with a neutral odor like almond or lemon that is paired with the male's post-ejaculatory reward state during their first and subsequent early sexual experiences. However, preexposing males to the neutral odor alone prior to its pairing…

In contrast to a large body of work concerning the effects of physiological stress reactivity on children's socioemotional functioning, far less attention has been devoted to understanding the effects of such reactivity on cognitive, including mnemonic, functioning. How well children learn and remember information under stress has implications for…

Prolonged use of methamphetamine (meth) has been associated with episodic memory deficits in humans, and preclinical rat models of meth self-administration indicate the memory deficits are a consequence of meth use. Others have suggested that the meth-induced memory deficits may promote a cyclical pattern of drug use, abstinence, and relapse,…

Society can be obsessed with the concept of intelligence, according to the author. Parents want to know if their children are smart. Schools try to detect the intelligence of children so that they can separate them into "gifted and talented" programs on one end of the spectrum and remedial programs on the other. Employers want to know if…

Learning and forgetting curves are not only integral issues for courses in introductory psychology, they are also of high practical relevance to students when it comes to the formation of realistic goals and expectations on learning outcomes. A paper-and-pencil-study investigated how well students of psychology (N = 82) have internalized the…

We investigated whether witnessing social exclusion influenced memory recall in preschool children. A sample of 81 children (M[subscript age] = 5 years, 4 months) first watched priming videos either depicting social exclusion or not. Subsequently, they participated in two memory tasks, one testing recall of numbers and the other testing recall of…

Attention allocation determines the information that is encoded into memory. Can participants learn to optimally allocate attention based on what types of information are most likely to change? The current study examined whether participants could incidentally learn that changes to either high spatial frequency (HSF) or low spatial frequency (LSF)…

Recommender systems provide users with content they might be interested in. Conventionally, recommender systems are evaluated mostly by using prediction accuracy metrics only. But, the ultimate goal of a recommender system is to increase user satisfaction. Therefore, evaluations that measure user satisfaction should also be performed before…

Technology can improve the educational experience of college students but also serves as a distraction both for students and those around them. This study applied marginal value theorem to the problem of cell phone use in the college classroom. 144 college students were placed in a simulated classroom and their technology use was observed and the…

In everyday life and in education, we continuously build and structure our knowledge. Successful knowledge construction is suggested to happen through reactivation of previously learned information during new learning. This reactivation is presumed to lead to integration of old and new memories and strengthen long-term retention. Additionally,…

Sleep is thought to play an important role in memory consolidation. Here we tested whether sleep alters the subjective value associated with objects located in spatial clusters that were navigated to in a large-scale virtual town. We found that sleep enhances a generalization of the value of high-value objects to the value of locally clustered…