There is growing evidence for the impact of arts engagement on later life cognition. However, confounding by socioeconomic factors may have led to an overestimation of this association. We analyzed data from 4,344 older adults in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. We measured participatory (e.g. painting, making music, crafts) and receptive (e.g.…

Automatic essay scoring (AES) is an essential educational application in natural language processing. This automated process will alleviate the burden by increasing the reliability and consistency of the assessment. With the advances in text embedding libraries and neural network models, AES systems achieved good results in terms of accuracy.…

Our main objective was to analyze the role of imageability in relation to the age of acquisition (AoA) of nouns and verbs in Spanish-speaking children with Down syndrome (DS) and their peers with typical development (TD). The AoA of nouns and verbs was determined using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs adapted to the profile of children with DS. The AoA…

Long-term memory knowledge is considered to impact short-term maintenance of item information in working memory, as opposed to short-term maintenance of serial order information. Evidence supporting an impact of semantic knowledge on serial order maintenance remains weak. In the present study, we demonstrate that semantic knowledge can impact the…

Fear-motivated avoidance extinction memory is prone to hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)-dependent reconsolidation upon recall. Here, we show that extinction memory recall activates mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) in dorsal CA1, and that post-recall inhibition of this kinase hinders avoidance extinction memory persistence…

Remembering is not a static process: When retrieved, a memory can be destabilized and become prone to modifications. This phenomenon has been demonstrated in a number of brain regions, but the neuronal mechanisms that rule memory destabilization and its boundary conditions remain elusive. Using two distinct computational models that combine…

Purpose: Morse code as a form of communication became widely used for telegraphy, radio and maritime communication, and military operations, and remains popular with ham radio operators. Some skilled users of Morse code are able to comprehend a full sentence as they listen to it, while others must first transcribe the sentence into its written…

The paper presents the memory conformity effect phenomenon, which assumes that information about the same event that a witness acquires from another witness (misinformation) is incorporated into the first witness' memory of the event (original information). The study has two goals: (1) to verify the existence of people with the memory conformity…

Encoding variability refers to the situation in which repeated items are processed in different ways on each presentation. Superior memory performance resulting from encoding variability is sometimes argued to underlie important phenomena in human memory such as the spacing effect. However, the memory benefits of encoding variability are often…

Human cognition exhibits a striking degree of variability: Sometimes we rapidly forge new associations whereas at other times new information simply does not stick. Correlations between neural activity during encoding and subsequent retrieval performance have implicated such "subsequent memory effects" (SMEs) as important for…

Key areas of the episodic memory (EM) network demonstrate changing structure and volume during adolescence. EM is multifaceted and yet studies of EM thus far have largely examined single components, used different methods and have unsurprisingly yielded inconsistent results. The Treasure Hunt task is a single paradigm that allows parallel…

Meditative mindfulness practices, promoting sustained attention and reducing mind-wandering, have been associated with improvements in cognitive abilities and memory. The present study explored whether a non-meditative practice could be successfully applied in a forensic application; specifically, whether mindfulness instructions can be embedded…

We examined the effects of acute alcohol on eyewitness memory for a simulated armed robbery under laboratory conditions. Alcohol and placebo participants viewed a slide series showing a target male taking a laptop from a helpdesk assistant, either on loan or at gunpoint. Following a brief retention period, participants responded to…

We reconcile competing theories of the role of phonological memory in reading development, by uncovering their dynamic relationship during the first 5 years of school. Phonological memory, reading and phoneme awareness were assessed in 780 phonics-educated children at age 4, 5, 6 and 9. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that phonological…

Concept maps are a popular learning activity that have successfully demonstrated student learning outcomes. Research suggests that concept mapping has a positive effect on recognition, recall, and transfer. Likewise, researchers in cognitive psychology have shown the value of referencing oneself with a concept. Known as the self-reference effect,…