Time-dependent emotional memory transformation: divergent pathways of item memory and contextual dependency

Emotional memory can persist strikingly long, but it is believed that not all its elements are protected against the fading effects of time. So far, studies of emotional episodic memory have mostly investigated retention up to 24h post-encoding, and revealed that central emotional features (items) are usually strengthened, while contextual binding of the event is reduced. However, even though it is known for neutral memories that central versus contextual elements evolve differently with longer passage of time, the time-dependent evolution of emotional memories remains unclear. Hypothetically, compared to neutral memories, emotional item memory becomes increasingly stronger, accompanied by accelerated decay of – already fragile – links with their original encoding contexts, resulting in progressive reductions in contextual dependency. Here, we tested these predictions in a large-scale study. Participants encoded emotional and neutral episodes, and were assessed 30 minutes (N = 40), one day (N = 40), one week (N = 39), or two weeks (N = 39) later on item memory, contextual dependency, and subjective quality of memory. The results show that, with the passage of time, emotional memories were indeed characterized by increasingly stronger item memory and weaker contextual dependency. Interestingly, analyses of the subjective quality of memories revealed that stronger memory for emotional items with time was expressed in familiarity, whereas increasingly smaller contextual dependency for emotional episodes was reflected in recollection. Together, these findings uncover the time-dependent transformation of emotional episodic memories, thereby shedding light on the ways healthy and maladaptive human memories may develop.

Latviešu mācībvalodas un mazākumtautību izglītības iestāžu vidusskolēnu latviešu valodas kompetence: salīdzinošais pētījums

The topicality of the research is related to the State policy of education to strengthen the role of the Latvian language as a national language by enabling the integration of society and intercultural dialogue. The aim of the study is to analyse the level of language competence of Grade 12 students of Latvian language of instruction in comparison with minority schools. The results of the empirical research are obtained from 468 texts written by students with the Latvian language of instruction and minority secondary education institutions in different regions of Latvia. The texts used are systematised in the balanced corpus of modern Latvian language. The research was conducted within the framework of the National Research Programme “Latvian Language” (No VPP-IZM-2018/2-0002). An analysis of essays’ content, sentences, contextual binding of their sets, language style, orthography, and punctuation has been carried out. Data from the study shows no significant difference between the skills of Latvian language of instruction and minority secondary education institutions’ students to form text according to the topic. Approximately 57% of respondents follow the proportions among different parts of the text, the binding of sentences to create the text as a whole, the principle of completion of the text; 29% of respondents use language features exactly according to language style. The most common language errors in the self-created texts of students from both types of schools are punctuation errors, the spelling of short and long vowels and consonants in words, words written together and separately, and the spelling of foreign names. Students from minority secondary schools make simpler sentence syntactic structures and by 9% fewer punctuation errors. Still, they have 32% more errors in spelling words and the use of words in sentences. In the didactic of the Latvian language, we have to think more about learning of language based on discourse, in which the text has a social context at first, only then a linguistic form. We have to develop a sense of language for students, improve a methodology for learning linguistics terminology, cooperation between teachers of all subjects, and the attitude of each teacher to their own language and speech in the learning and teaching process.

SEMANTIC AND CONTEXTUAL KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION USING INTER - LINGUA FOR AUTOMATED ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURED C++ PROGRAM

The process of automatic evaluation of a structured C++ program has the first and foremost requirement of specifying the developed structural C++ program in a standard, generalized and unified format. This generalized and standard representation of the program needs to incorporate the specification in terms of semantics as per the language features used and also the contextual binding in regards of the program definition as perceived and desired by the subject expert. Hence an inter - lingua which can represent the semantic and contextual knowledge of the developed structured C++ program will be the first and foremost requirement towards the process of automated assessment and grading of a structured C++ program.The work presented here is published for patent at Patent Office Branch, Mumbai, India with the reference number E-12/215/2021/MUM and application number 202121000796.

Contextual priming of word meanings is stabilized over sleep

Evidence is growing for the involvement of consolidation processes in the learning and retention of language, largely based on instances of new linguistic components (e.g., new words). Here, we assessed whether consolidation effects extend to the semantic processing of highly familiar words. The experiments were based on the word-meaning priming paradigm in which a homophone is encountered in a context that biases interpretation towards the subordinate meaning. The homophone is subsequently used in a word-association test to determine whether the priming encounter facilitates the retrieval of the primed meaning. In Experiment 1 (N = 74), we tested the resilience of priming over periods of 2 and 12 hours that were spent awake or asleep, and found that sleep periods were associated with stronger subsequent priming effects. In Experiment 2 (N = 55) we tested whether the sleep benefit could be explained in terms of a lack of retroactive interference by testing participants 24 hours after priming. Participants who had the priming encounter in the evening showed stronger priming effects after 24 hours than participants primed in the morning, suggesting that sleep makes priming resistant to interference during the following day awake. The results suggest that consolidation effects can be found even for highly familiar linguistic materials. We interpret these findings in terms of a contextual binding account in which all language perception provides a learning opportunity, with sleep and consolidation contributing to the updating of our expectations, ready for the next day.