Production Improves Visual and Auditory Text Memory in Younger and Older Adults

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> The production effect refers to memory benefits for materials that were produced (e.g., read aloud) relative to not produced (e.g., read silently) at study. Previous works have found a production benefit for younger and older adults studying written words and for young adults studying written text. The present study aimed to extend these findings by examining the effect of production on text memory in younger and older adults, in the visual, and in the auditory modalities. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> A group of young adults (<i>n</i> = 30) and a group of older adults (<i>n</i> = 30) learned informational texts, presented either visually or aurally. In each text, half of the sentences were learned by production (reading aloud or writing) and half by no production (reading silently or listening), followed by fill-in-the-blank tests. <b><i>Results:</i></b> An overall memory performance was found to be similar for both groups, with an advantage for the auditory modality. For both groups, more test items were filled in correctly when the relevant information appeared in the produced than in nonproduced sentences, showing the learners’ ability to use distinctiveness information. The production effects were larger for older than younger adults, in both modalities. <b><i>Discussion:</i></b> Since older adults are increasingly engage in learning, it is important to develop high-quality structured learning programs for this population. The current results demonstrate the preserved ability of older adults to successfully memorize texts and may guide planning of such programs. Specifically, since learning via the auditory modality yields superior performance for learners across age-groups, it may be recommended for text learning. Because older adults showed larger benefits from active production of the study material, it may be used to better remember educationally relevant material.

The Effect of Background Noise on a “Studying for an Exam” Task in an Open-Plan Study Environment: A Laboratory Study

Students can be disturbed by background noise while working in an open-plan study environment. To improve the acoustic quality of open-plan study environments a study was done on the influence of different sound scenarios on students working on a typical student task, “studying for an exam”. Three sound scenarios and a quiet reference sound scenario were developed, based on the sound environment of a real open-plan study environment, with a varying number of talkers in the background and different reverberation times of the study environment. Seventy students worked on a set of tasks simulating a “studying for an exam” task while being exposed to the sound scenarios. This task comprises a reading comprehension task with text memory by delayed answering questions about the text, with additional tasks being performed in the gap between studying the text and retrieving. These additional tasks are a mental arithmetic task and a logical reasoning task. Performance, self-estimated performance and disturbance of students were measured. No significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on performance of students working on the reading comprehension task with text memory and the mental arithmetic task. However, a significant effect of sound was found on performance of students working on the logical reasoning task. Furthermore, a significant effect of the sound scenarios was found on self-estimated performance and perceived disturbance for all tasks from which the reading comprehension task with text memory was the most disturbed task. It is argued that the absence of a detrimental sound effect on the performance of students working on a reading comprehension task with text memory is a result of focusing due to task engagement and task difficulty, both aspects working as a “shield against distraction”.

THE PHENOMENA OF CULTURAL MEMORY AND TIME IN THE COMPOSITION "UNDER THE FIR TREE: REFLECTIONS IN THE BOSOM OF DESERTED NATURE" BY GHEVOND ALISHAN

In the context of cultural memory and its transfer, the essay of Ghevond Alishan "Under the fir tree. Reflections in the bosom of a deserted nature" can be interpreted on the basis of considering the text as a cultural memory extended in time. In the space o time, Alishan creates his vision (image) of memory. Alishan connects cultural memory with the present, which is an endless cosmic time. Meantime, he notes the ontological precondition of memory, since it is its carrier. In that present, the time, which encompasses and accumulates the space-time dimensions of the past and future, is revealed. In this particular essay (of Ghevond Alishan), memory as a phenomenon is also considered in the context of intertextual and post-structuralism theories. Such interpenetration of memory plays a very constructive role in terms of further research on the time-text-memory triad. Therefore, the proposition that cultural memory is a non-passive creative reserve turns the information obtained from this into a "working" material for the modern researchers.

Syntactics, Cognition and Compositional Semantics

The object of the article is word semantics and its realization in the immediate context. The goal and the innovative component of the study is the analysis of the problem in the light of cognitive linguistics. We proceed from the assumption that the lexical meaning of a word contains a component responsible for its entry into the text. This component involves searching for lexical partners of the word in the syntagmatic chain. The semes participating in this process are actualized - they must get into the bright field of con-sciousness. The classical manifestation of this connection is the soalled semantic agreement ( собака лает ‘a dog barks’, бурый медведь ‘a brown bear’, волосы дыбом ‘hair (stands) on end’, etc.). We use examples from Russian literature to demonstrate that when a non-typical (non-standard) word combination is formed, the concepts get intersected (mixed). The examples, such as самопишущий костюм ‘a self-writing suit’ or жаркая робость ‘hot timidity’, expand a person’s cognitive horizons making the individual accustomed to a different (virtual) reality. The background and guarantor of this combinatorial process is the so-called “common sense” based on the native speaker’s previous experience. The result of the study is the presentation of five special situations manifesting the relationship between the word and its text partners: polysemantic words, phraseological units, introduced (embedded) meanings, additional connotations and a surprise effect. The author provides examples of the pressure (influence) of text memory on the speaker when selecting a necessary word and considers the idea of the predicative nature of the compatibility of lexemes. The article justifies the emergence of compositional semantics as a special direction in modern linguistics and demonstrates some of its results (based on the Russian language).

Distinct individual differences in default mode network connectivity relate to off-task thought and text memory during reading

Often, as we read, we find ourselves thinking about something other than the text; this tendency to mind-wander is linked to poor comprehension and reduced subsequent memory for texts. Contemporary accounts argue that periods of off-task thought are related to the tendency for attention to be decoupled from external input. We used fMRI to understand the neural processes that underpin this phenomenon. First, we found that individuals with poorer text-based memory tend to show reduced recruitment of left middle temporal gyrus in response to orthographic input, within a region located at the intersection of default mode, dorsal attention and frontoparietal networks. Voxels within these networks were taken as seeds in a subsequent resting-state study. The default mode network region (i) had greater connectivity with medial prefrontal cortex, falling within the same network, for individuals with better text-based memory, and (ii) was more decoupled from medial visual regions in participants who mind-wandered more frequently. These findings suggest that stronger intrinsic connectivity within the default mode network is linked to better text processing, while reductions in default mode network coupling to the visual system may underpin individual variation in the tendency for our attention to become disengaged from what we are reading.

A low spatial complexity algorithm to generate combinations with the strong minimal change property

This work introduces an algorithm that generates all combinations of size [Formula: see text] ([Formula: see text]) of the set [Formula: see text] satisfying the strong minimal change property (SMCP) and requires [Formula: see text] memory space. The algorithm was implemented both iteratively and recursively; the iterative version has the advantage of processing the current combination in only one place of the algorithm, and the recursive version has the advantage of performing few operations to generate the next combination. The recursive version is similar to the algorithm of Eades and McKay because both algorithms have two functions that recursively call each other to generate the combinations; however, in the algorithm of Eades and McKay the depth of the recursion is [Formula: see text], while in our algorithm is [Formula: see text]. Performance comparison against three algorithms having the SMCP show that the recursive version of our algorithm performs better than the other algorithms when [Formula: see text] is large.

Speaking Qurʼan

The Speaking Qur’an is Timur R. Yuskaev's first book and emerges from his dissertation work at UNC. Yuskaev’s approach to Islamic studies focuses on lived religion in the American context, at the intersection of hermeneutics of sacred text, memory, and linguistic studies.

Speaking Qurʼan

The Speaking Qur’an is Timur R. Yuskaev's first book and emerges from his dissertation work at UNC. Yuskaev’s approach to Islamic studies focuses on lived religion in the American context, at the intersection of hermeneutics of sacred text, memory, and linguistic studies.

A Bayesian Account of Memory for Text

The study of memory for texts has had an long tradition of research in psychology. According to most general accounts, the recognition or recall of items in a text is based on querying a memory representation that is built up on the basis of background knowledge. The objective of this paper is to describe and thoroughly test a Bayesian model of these general accounts. In particular, we present a model that describes how we use our background knowledge to form memories in terms of Bayesian inference of statistical patterns in the text, followed by posterior predictive inference of the words that are typical of those inferred patterns. This provides us with precise predictions about which words will be remembered, whether veridically or erroneously, from any given text. We tested these predictions using behavioural data from a memory experiment using a large sample of randomly chosen texts from a representative corpus of British English. The results show that the probability of remembering any given word in the text, whether falsely or veridically, is well predicted by the Bayesian model. Moreover, compared to nontrivial alternative models of text memory, by every measure used in the analyses, the predictions of the Bayesian model were superior, often overwhelmingly so. We conclude that these results provide strong evidence in favour of the Bayesian account of text memory that we have presented in this paper.