Stephen van Vlack

Sookmyung Women`s University

Graduate School of TESOL

Human Learning and Cognition

Spring 2006

Week 13 Answers - Terry, Chapter 12 & Lieberman, Chapters 3

1. What are some factors that affect memory development in children? And what's the relationship between aging and memory? (T12)

Studies have shown that environment can have an effect on intellectual development which is certainly tied in with memory (in particular with encoding and retrieval due to heavier connections). In the early stages of development a richer environment allows a child to create more associations and build larger more complete systems earlier which enhances memory, but memory is not all environmental. There are two sides to the development of memory. As is shown by the ability of children to recognize certain smells or sounds or sensations right after birth or even before birth. Memory is certainly biological determined. Thus, encoding seems to occur even before birth. At the same time however, memory is based on environment in that memory is based on knowledge. This is exemplified by the fact that the memories of pre-linguistic children seems to operate differently from those who have acquired language. Pre-linguistic children have memories which are fundamentally based on sensory and movement relations and not on semantic codes or systems. The more the child learns, the particularly the onset of language allows different kinds of memories to be used. The onset of new skills allows for better encoding and retrieval.

Certainly, as mentioned above, knowledge also plays an important role in memory. The more you know the more you can encode and remember. Thus short-term retention increases with age up to a certain point in parallel with knowledge as more knowledge allows the person to come up with more strategies for encoding. It could also be said that a certain amount of knowledge is necessary to get the attention system to work more efficiently and attention would also play an important role in encoding. Thus, whether someone turns out to be a good learner in life or have a good memory depends on balance of environmental and genetic factors.

In relation to aging it is often observed that memory seems to diminish with age. It is, however, hard to determine which part of memory is in fact diminishing and why. A decline in encoding due to lack of motivation or a diminishing attention span would be taken a global diminishing of memory even if the ability to recall was unaffected. It is a cloudy issue with no clear answers as cultural norms and expectations as well as general health issues seem to affect what is perceived as memory. What is clear is that a decline in memory does not seem to be biologically encoded.

2. What is Intellectual Deficits and how do men and women differ in their memory abilities? (T12)

Principle of learning have been used in training retarded individuals, as illustrated by applications of behavior modification, and memory principles have been used to aid educating the retarded. Retarded and nonretarded individuals typically classically condition at about the same rate. Metal retardation due to Down's Syndrome, a genetic abnormality, impairs conditioning to a similar extent as does aging. Down's Syndrome infants are also have poor spatial learning. Other research has investigated the roles of working-memory capacity, memory strategies such as rehearsal, and metamemory in the retarded. A deficit in memory strategies can contribute to the poor memory performance of retarded individuals. Training in rehearsal increases recall, but there is little tendency to generalize beyond the immediately given task. Cognitive-skills training does not eliminate the difference between the retarded and age-matched control participants. A learning disability is an impairment of a specific cognitive ability, whereas other abilities are at or near normal. The learning disabled may have both verbal and nonverbal working-memory deficits, which does not correlate with the type of disability. The learning disabled have difficulty encoding information into memory; they are less likely to rehearse or to use organization or elaboration to facilitate encoding if they do rehearse.

The history of psychology is replete with examples of mnemonists, people with exceptional memories. Luria's subject S employed strategies such as imagery, and mnemonics such as a method of using spatial locations. His sensory experience was cross-modal, cutting across sensory modalities, a property called synesthesia. Other mnemonists use verbal elaboration. Nonsense syllables or unfamiliar words are mentally translated into meaningful items. Savants, individuals having an exceptional ability but who are otherwise retarded, may excel in memory within a specific content area or domain, but do not have superior general memory ability.

Do men and women differ in their memory abilities? Even if performance does differ by gender, this does not necessarily indicate that this is due to inherent biological differences between the sexes. Gender differences have been shown to occur when there are differences in knowledge or experience, interest levels, self-handicapping, or gender expectancies or stereotypes about how one should perform. There, so far, has been little evidence to support biological differences in memory for gender.

3. What's the relationship between personality and learning, and how do cultures affect learning? (T12)

We cannot simply say which personality trait is better for learning in general, but at least we may figure out which personality trait is better in certain type of tasks. Major personality factors to be considered in learning are whether one is extroverted or introverted, and whether one is rather anxious or not. These traits affect both learning and remembering.

The difference between being extroverted and introverted seems to be whether one is sociable or not, however, this is not the issue. Rather, it's a matter of arousal, impulsiveness, and susceptibility to rewards and punishment. Firstly, often higher arousal facilitates learning. Introverts have a higher level of central nervous system arousal than do extroverts. So they learn better with tasks in which arousal benefits learning. On the contrary, extroverts have lower arousal so they have a greater desire for stimulating experiences. So they tend to do better with thrill seeking tasks. Although higher arousal often facilitates learning, too much arousal can be detrimental especially for introverts. In a study about memory in serial learning, when given no distraction, introverts do better, but with a distraction presented, extroverts do better with memory. Secondly, how impulsive a person also influences his/her memory performance. Impulsive people who are often considered extroverts produce more by guessing, however, less impulsive ones make limited production by waiting until they feel certain. Lastly, Extroverts are more sensitive to rewards, which may help learn better. They try to maximize rewards by guessing. However, introverts are not as sensitive to rewards as extroverts. Rather, they are more sensitive to punishment. They try to minimize punishment, which may affect their learning when it is anticipated outcome.

Anxiety, which causes physical reactions, emotional feelings and cognitive symptoms at the same time, can affect memory. First, it increases the level of arousal. Especially when a high level of anxiety is combined with a difficult task, it impairs new learning or retrieval. Second, anxiety reduces the capacity of working memory available for processing. Anxiety-causing worry or cognitive tasks distract working memory, thus making it difficult to maintain accurate performance. Third, anxiety biases how events are perceived and interpreted and remembered. In this sense, it influences our attention.

Not only is our learning affected by our personality, but also by what culture we are nurtured in. Universally, memory tends to get better with age. Through cross-cultural studies, however, schooling is found to help us learn and memorize better with learning strategies such as organizing, clustering and categorizing. Also, depending on what is more useful for survival in one culture, certain form of memory tends to excel over others, and therefore affect learning.

4. What is the neurological view of the lexicon? (Lie3)

Sentence processing is lexically driven and takes into account probabilistic, semantic and syntactic knowledge coded in the lexicon.

Verbal memory with a difficult task: increasing rCBT values in Broca`s area, premotor cortex, supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate gyrus: speech motor control: the neural substrate implicated in verbal working memory clearly is not localized in Broca`s region.

Neural system that carries out sentence comprehension is dynamic, recruiting additional resources as task demand increase. The neural bases of human language are not localized in a specific part of the brain. The brain`s dictionary appears to be instantiated by means of a distributed network.

Lexicon (concept coded by words), real world knowledge with sound patterns, & life experiences : Semantic bootstrapping occurs when children proceed form understand something in the world to mapping it onto linguistic structure (world-to-language mapping).

When children use syntactic bootstrapping, they rely on the syntactic structure of language to get to the meaning (language -to-world mapping).

5. What is cortical plasticity? (Lie3)

Recent data suggest that plasticity can account for the preservation of language in adult humans after the destruction of cortical areas normally involved in processing language. Cortical reorganization in response to life`s experiences has been demonstrated in fMRI imaging studies. The data of the fMRI study of the human primary motor cortex are consistent with phenotypic reorganization of neuronal circuits as an individual learners to perform new motor tasks.

             In a comprehensive review of neural plasticity and the issue of innateness, knowledge of language or other domains is not innately coded in the brain. The predispositions may derive from the information that is transmitted to particular regions of the cortex through sub-cortical pathways. Our current knowledge of the mechanisms of molecular genetics indicates that a distributed representation could not be innate; there is insufficient genetic material to code a distributed representation of the Universal Grammar. Given our current knowledge concerning neural plasticity and phenotypic organization of the details of neural circuitry, it is most unlikely a detailed Chomskian Universal Grammar is instantiated in the human brain.

6. What is verbal working memory and how does it work? (Lie3)

*Verbal working memory: allows human to comprehend the meaning of a sentence, taking into account the syntactic, semantic information coded in words as well as pragmatic factors- dynamic distributed network. Verbal working memory involves both an executive component and the covert rehearsal of verbal information (a form of silent speech).

Verbal working memory is supported by the neural substrate: distributed system- Wernicke`s area, Broca`s area, other cortical areas, and sub-cortical structures.

Verbal working memory is dynamic, enlisting additional resources in response to task difficulty.

Frontal lobes of the human neo-cortex: abstract reasoning and planning

A close link between the neural substrate involve in speech motor control and the comprehension of syntax.

Verbal working memory capacity: limits both verbal recall and on-line syntax processing. The nature of working memory limitation: The capacity limitation in working memory reflects a trade-off between two competing factors: the accessibility and widespread influence of PFC representations- necessary to implement its biasing function as a mechanism of control-and the need to constrain the extent of activation through out the PMC, to avoid runaway activity and promote focused and coherent processing. Working memory, attention, and consciousness are clearly related in important ways. The underlying constraints that give rise to attention as resulting from the influence of competition between representations, implementing by inhibitory inter-neurons throughout the cortex (and possibly also by sub-cortical mechanism in the thalamus and basal ganglia).

7. What are the role of grammaticality judgements in working memory? (Lie3)

Grammaticality judgments

Constriction grammar: Constructions, like items in the lexicon, are structures that combine syntactic, semantic, and even phonological information. Grammar refers to the set of relationship that structure language.

The study of syntax aims to uncover the principles governing such grammatical structures as word order.

Syntactic principles also regulate the movement of phrases:

 Implicit knowledge of syntax

Ex) The girl who is on the swing is happy

       Is the girl who is on the swing happy?

     Is the girl who on the swing is happy?

Neurological intact controls: grammatical judgments can be induced ? (dual task procedure) listening to short sentences while they simultaneously performed a secondary task.

* Grammatical judgment errors increase as the working memory is overloaded.

*Grammatical judgment derives from the same process by which we comprehend language.

Neural bases of competence or knowledge of syntax are related to processing or production mechanism.

8. How can verbal working memory and distributed system be related? (Lie3)

Verbal working memory capacity: limits both verbal recall and on-line syntax processing.

The nature of working memory limitation: The capacity limitation in working memory reflects a trade-off between two competing factors: the accessibility and widespread influence of PFC representations- necessary to implement its biasing function as a mechanism of control-and the need to constrain the extent of activation through out the PMC, to avoid runaway activity and promote focused and coherent processing. Working memory, attention, and consciousness are clearly related in important ways. The underlying constraints that give rise to attention as resulting from the influence of competition between representations, implementing by inhibitory inter-neurons throughout the cortex (and possibly also by sub-cortical mechanism in the thalamus and basal ganglia).

*Verbal working memory: allows human to comprehend the meaning of a sentence, taking into account the syntactic, semantic information coded in words as well as pragmatic factors- dynamic distributed network.