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Description
An emerging literature on the relation between memory and importance has shown that people are able to selectively remember information that is more, relative to less important. Researchers in this field have operationalized importance by assigning value to the different information that participants are asked to study and remember. In the present investigation I developed two experiments, using a slightly altered value-directed-remembering (VDR) paradigm, to investigate whether and how value modifies the dynamics of memory organization and search. Moreover, I asked participants to perform a surprise final free recall task in order to examine the effects of value in the recall dynamics of final free recall. In Experiment 1, I compared the recall dynamics of delayed and final free recall between a control and a value condition, in the latter of which numbers appeared next to words, in random order, denoting the value of remembering each word during recall. In Experiment 2, I manipulated the order of presentation of the values by adding an ascending and a descending condition where values were presented in either an ascending or a descending order, respectively. Overall, my results indicated that value affected several measures of delayed and final free recall, without, in most cases, taking away the serial position effects on those same measures.
ContributorsStefanidi, Aikaterini (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
In this study, the oppositional processes theory was proposed to suggest that reliance on semantic and episodic memory systems hinder originality during idea generation for divergent thinking tasks that are generally used to assess creative potential. In order to investigate the proposed oppositional processes theory, three experiments that manipulated the memory accessibility in participants during the alternative uses tasks were conducted. Experiment 1 directly instructed participants to either generate usages based on memory or not from memory; Experiment 2 provided participants with object cues that were either very common or very rare in daily life (i.e., bottle vs. canteen); Experiment 3 replicated the same manipulation from Experiment 2 with much longer generation time (10 minutes in Experiment 2 vs. 30 minutes in Experiment 3). The oppositional processes theory predicted that participants who had less access to direct and unaltered usages (i.e., told to not use memory, were given rare cues, or were outputting items later in the generation period) during the task would be more creative. Results generally supported the predictions in Experiments 1 and 2 where participants from conditions which limited their access to memory generated more novel usages that were considered more creative by independent coders. Such effects were less prominent in Experiment 3 with extended generation time but the trends remained the same.
ContributorsXu, Dongchen (Author) / Brewer, Gene (Thesis advisor) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Homa, Donald (Committee member) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
Dual language use is thought to afford certain cognitive advantages to bilingual children and may function as an additional resource to help low-income Mexican-American children achieve academically. Emotion regulation and executive functioning (e.g., inhibition) have been found to be particularly important in studies investigating pathways to early academic achievement. Understanding how we can capitalize on children’s bilingual abilities to strengthen their executive functioning and emotion regulation, or to offset problems in these domains, may be important to promote better educational outcomes and inform policy. Thus, the current study investigated the relation between emerging bilingualism, inhibition, emotion regulation, and academic achievement across early childhood in sample of 322 low-income, Mexican-American children. Data were collected in a laboratory space at child ages 36-, 54-, and 72-months. Bilingualism was indexed as the interaction of Spanish and English vocabulary, and a mediated moderation model was examined. Results provided further evidence that inhibition positively predicts academic achievement during early childhood. Greater Spanish language vocabulary indirectly predicted academic achievement while controlling for English language vocabulary, suggesting that children from immigrant families may benefit from maintaining their Spanish language abilities as they begin to immerse themselves in an English-speaking classroom. Advancing our understanding of the development of self-regulatory abilities within bilingual, immigrant populations could have significant implications for educational policy.
ContributorsWinstone, Laura K (Author) / Crnic, Keith (Thesis advisor) / Gonzales, Nancy (Committee member) / Benitez, Viridiana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Statistical word learning (SWL) has been proposed and tested as a powerful mechanism for word learning under referential ambiguity. Learners are adept at resolving word-referent ambiguity by calculating the co-occurrences between words and referents across ambiguous scenes. Despite the generalizability of such capacity, it is less clear which underlying factors may play a role in SWL, such as learners’ language experience and individual differences of working memory. The current study therefore asked two questions: 1) How do learners of different language experience (monolinguals and bilinguals) approach SWL of different mapping types–when each referent has one name (1:1 mapping) or two names (2:1 mapping)? and 2) How do working memory capacities (spatial and phonological) play a role in SWL by mapping type? In this pre-registered study (OSF: https://osf.io/mte8s/), 69 English monolinguals and 88 bilinguals completed two SWL tasks (1:1 and 2:1 mapping), a symmetry span task indexing spatial working memory, and a listening span task indexing phonological working memory. Results showed no differences between monolinguals and bilinguals in SWL of both mapping types. However, spatial and phonological working memory positively predicted SWL regardless of language experience, but only in 1:1 mapping. The findings show a dissociation of working memory’s role in SWL of different mapping types. The study proposes a novel insight into a theoretical debate underlying statistical learning mechanisms: learners may adopt more explicit processes (i.e. hypothesis-testing) during 1:1 mapping but implicit processes (i.e. associative learning) during 2:1 mapping. Future studies can locate memory-related brain areas during SWL to test out the proposal.
ContributorsLi, Ye (Author) / Benitez, Viridiana (Thesis advisor) / Goldinger, Stephen (Committee member) / Brewer, Gene (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022