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Personality Pathology And Cognitive Aging: The Role Of Interpersonal Stress, Patrick Joseph Cruitt

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Research on the relationship between normal-range personality and cognitive aging has demonstrated consistent, but modest, effects. The current investigation seeks to increase our understanding of unhealthy cognitive aging by examining the maladaptive extremes of personality. Borderline and avoidant personality disorder (PD), but not obsessive-compulsive PD, were hypothesized to show prospective associations with cognitive aging. Interpersonal stress was expected to mediate these relationships. The current investigation tested these hypotheses in two longitudinal studies of older adulthood: the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center cohort (ADRC, N = 434, Mage = 69.95, 56% women) and the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network study (SPAN, …

Dedicated Interneuronal Microcircuits Regulated By Behavioral State, Moises William Arriaga

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The hippocampus is a critical brain structure for learning and memory. Neuronal inhibition within the hippocampus, performed by a wide variety of inhibitory interneuron subtypes, is required to organize and regulate the cell activity and circuit operations which underly memory formation. Despite the importance of inhibitory interneurons to the function of the hippocampus, detailed descriptions of the role of interneurons in the regulation of network activity have been limited by difficulties associated with identifying and recording from these cells using traditional electrophysiology techniques, especially in awake, behaving animals. To better investigate the function of hippocampal interneurons in awake, behaving animals, …

The Counter-Discourses Of Fictional And Autofictional Contemporary German Refugee Narratives: The Slow Violence Of Postponement, Bethany Morgan

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Whereas the public discourses surrounding refugees encompass notions of legitimacy and proving the need for asylum, potential for an individual to enact violence on the host community or country as well as integration and standards for measuring individual integration, the discourse and language used by the refugee figures themselves focuses on issues of self-representation, loss and various wrongs done to themselves. These fictional and autofictional texts position the refugee figure in light of their identity, their loss(es) and the ways they have endured wrongdoing to their physical persons either through violence and imprisonment or through overly rigorous or disorganized bureaucratic …

Sex Differences In The Role Of Cornichon Homolog-3 On Spatial Memory And Synaptic Plasticity, Hannah Elizabeth Frye

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cornichon homolog-3 (CNIH3) is an AMPA receptor (AMPAR) auxiliary protein highly expressed in the dorsal hippocampus (dHPC), a region where AMPARs are critical for spatial memory and synaptic plasticity. A 2016 genome-wide association study (GWAS) by Nelson et al. identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the gene CNIH3 to be associated with reduced individual risk for the development of opioid use disorder (OUD) in individuals with prior opioid exposure. We previously demonstrated a key role for AMPARs in the dHPC in opioid-associated learning and memory, therefore we hypothesized that CNIH3 in the dHPC may mediate learning and memory processes through …

Affective Misattribution Following Memory Decisions Does Not Transfer To Interleaved Items, David Grybinas

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The outcomes of memory search appear to have affective consequences. For instance, during recognition memory tests, concluding that a retrieval probe is from a prior study period (‘old’) leads to higher pleasantness ratings for the probe than concluding it is novel (‘new”). Grybinas, Kantner, and Dobbins (2019) explained this and related findings via a Confirmation of Search (COS) hypothesis that assumes that the affective consequences of successful versus failed episodic retrieval are misattributed to probes used to elicit memory search. While these affective misattributions clearly occur for the memory probes themselves (within-item misattribution), social psychological research has previously shown that …

Accuracy Matters For The Benefits Of Sleep After Retrieval Practice, Steven Dessenberger

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Previous research suggests that while sleep and retrieval practice can each improve memory on their own, their benefits cannot be combined to produce an additive effect unless feedback is given during the initial test. These previous findings would seem to support a retrieval-as-consolidation of the testing effect, which states that the benefits of retrieval are the result of memory consolidation, a process that normally occurs during the sleep cycle. The present study sought to determine whether the retrieval-as-consolidation account held true when initial test accuracy was considered as a factor. Using foreign language word pairs, we examined the combined effects …

Isolating Item And Subject Contributions To The Subsequent Memory Effect, Jihyun Cha

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The subsequent memory effect (SME) refers to the greater brain activation during encoding of subsequently recognized items compared to subsequently forgotten items. Previous literature regarding SME has been primarily focused on identifying the role of specific regions during encoding or factors that potentially modulate the phenomenon. The current dissertation examines the degree to which this phenomenon can be explained by item selection effects; that is, the tendency of some items to be inherently more memorable than others. To estimate the potential contribution of items to SME, I provided participants a fixed set of items during encoding, which allowed me to …

Individual Differences In Verbal And Visuospatial Learning Efficiency, Thomas Spaventa

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There is a great deal of variability in how quickly people learn and how long they remember information. Zerr and colleagues (2018) found a robust and stable relationship between an individual’s rate of learning and the durability of their memory, with faster learners tending to retain more after a delay. The relationship between the rapidity and longevity of learning was characterized as learning efficiency. The present study extends these findings by testing whether learning efficiency generalizes across divergent verbal and visuospatial tasks. An ancillary aim was to assess learning efficiency using a continuous measure that can capture fine-grained individual differences …

The Consequences Of Processing Of Goal-Irrelevant Information During The Stroop Task In Younger And Older Adults, Jessica Nicosia

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent evidence from memory paradigms indicates that older adults can sometimes benefit more from processing goal-irrelevant information than younger adults, however these studies have often failed to simultaneously provide evidence of age-related control deficits. In the present experiments, participants initially studied a list of words. They then received a color-naming Stroop task where neutral words were either previously studied or new words. Across three experiments, participants were given different types of memory tests to examine the lingering effects of the neutral words during color-naming in younger and older adults. The results from all three experiments (including an attempted replication study) …

The Domain-Generality And Durability Of Efficient Learning, Christopher Zerr

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

People differ in how quickly they learn information and how long they remember it, and a common finding in the literature is that a quicker rate of learning coincides with better retention for the learned material. Zerr and colleagues (2017) termed the relation between learning rate and retention as learning efficiency, with more efficient learning representing both a faster acquisition rate and better memory performance after a delay. Zerr et al. also demonstrated in separate experiments that how efficiently someone learns is stable across a range of days and years. The current thesis includes two experiments addressing additional questions …

The Impact Of Delay On Retrieval Success In The Parietal Memory Network, Nathan Anderson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recent work has identified a Parietal Memory Network (PMN), which exhibits regular patterns of activation during memory encoding and retrieval. Among these characteristic patterns, this network displays a strong “retrieval success” effect, showing greater activation for correctlyremembered studied items (hits) compared to correctly-rejected novel items (CRs). To date, most relevant studies have used short retention intervals. Here, we ask if the retrieval success effect seen in the PMN would remain consistent over a delay. Twenty participants underwent fMRI while encoding and recognizing scenes. Greater activity for hits than for correctly-rejected lures within PMN regions was observed after a short delay …

The Effects Of Repeated Lineups And Delay On Eyewitness Identification, Wenbo Lin

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Prior eyewitness research has examined the effects of repeated identification procedures and delays on eyewitness identification, but these studies have either confounded these two factors or studied them in isolation. Experiment 1 attempted to disentangle these factors through systematic manipulations of the number of repeated lineups and the length of delay between the original event and the first lineup. Experiment 2 examined whether the length of delay between two lineups (Lineups 1 and 2) affects the subsequent lineup identification decisions. We found that people were more inclined to choose when a lineup was repeated. A longer delay between the crime …

Perceiving Oldness In Parietal Cortex: Fmri Characterization Of A Parietal Memory Network, Adrian Gilmore

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The manner in which the human brain recognizes certain stimuli as novel or familiar is a matter of ongoing investigation. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to improve our understanding of how this may be accomplished. More specifically, work contained herein focuses on a recently described "parietal memory network" (PMN; Gilmore et al., 2015) that shows opposite patterns of activity when perceiving novel or familiar stimuli: deactivating in response to novelty, and activating in response to familiarity. Critically, our understanding of this network is based on explicit memory tasks, in which subjects are deliberately instructed to learn or remember …

How Do Voters Remember Flip-Flopping? Memorial And Social Consequences Of Change Recollection, Adam Lewis Putnam

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents 3 experiments that explore how people notice and remember a politician’s change in position. Subjects read position statements made by politicians at two different debates; sometimes the politicians were consistent across debates, sometimes they changed positions, and sometimes they only addressed an issue at Debate 2. Subjects recalled the positions from Debate 2 and reported whether they thought the politician had changed positions on that issue. The results showed that changing positions made it more difficult for people to remember a politician’s most recent position; however, recollecting that a change occurred eliminated that memory deficit. Experiment 1 …

Mechanisms Underlying Memory Deficits Following West Nile Virus Neuroinvasive Disease, Michael John Vasek

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neurocognitive sequelae are observed in >50% of patients who survive neuroinvasive infections with encephalitic arboviruses, such as the mosquito-borne West Nile virus (WNV). Early diagnosis and high survival rates from WNV neuroinvasive disease (WNND) (>90%) have thus led cumulatively to approximately ten thousand patients living with neurocognitive impairments, with 1-3000 cases accruing yearly, yet underlying mechanisms responsible for these deficits have not been investigated.

Within the last 15 years, studies have begun uncover many pathways which are utilized both by the developing CNS as well as the immune system, including the use of cytokines in the regulation of progenitor …

Variable Semantic Input And Novel First-Language Vocabulary Learning, Nichole Runge

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Vocabulary learning involves mapping a word form to a semantic meaning. An individual asked to learn the Spanish word for “apple,” for example, must map a new word form (manzana) onto the appropriate semantic representation. Previous studies have found that acoustic variability of word forms can improve second language vocabulary acquisition (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007). The current experiments investigated whether variable semantic input could have a similar beneficial effect on first language vocabulary learning. Participants learned low-frequency English vocabulary words and their definitions. Half of the words were shown with the same verbatim definition …

Inspiring The Nation: French Music About Jeanne D'Arc In The 1930s And 1940s, Elizabeth Dister

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation, a cultural history of interwar and wartime France, investigates the wealth of music dedicated to Jeanne d'Arc during the tumultuous 1930s and 1940s. Jeanne d'Arc's status as an ambivalent symbol of French nationalism allows a novel appraisal of both the music of this period and its larger historical issues: the formation of French national identities, how music is used to convey contradictory political ideologies, and how music participates in both collaboration and resistance during periods of unrest. Relying on extensive archival research, this project investigates an unusually varied cross-section of musical activity in France during the 1930s and …

The German Jewish Post-Holocaust Novel: Narrative And A Literary Language For Loss, Corey Lee Twitchell

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates how a constellation of German Jewish post-Holocaust novels confronts the paradox of recovering and recuperating lost stories of Holocaust victims. I analyze how works by Edgar Hilsenrath, Jurek Becker, and Fred Wander reveal a preoccupation with the innumerable stories and testimonies of the individuals who did not survive the Nazi Judeocide to contribute to the archive of experience. These novels gesture toward an epistemological alternative to this loss: they consider possibilities for recovering the unarchivable. These German Jewish authors employ a particular cluster of varied narrative strategies: the dialogic, linguistic and cultural elements of Eastern European Jewish …

Stories In Mind – The Relationship Between The Narratological Categories Of Order And Time And The Reader’S Cognitive Structures As Exemplified In Büchner’S Play Woyzeck, Marc Breetzke

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

When Can We Trust Our Memories? Quantitative And Qualitative Indicators Of Recognition Accuracy, Kurt Andrew Desoto

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I present a quartet of experiments that studied confidence ratings and remember/know/guess judgments as indicators of recognition accuracy. The goal of these experiments was to examine the validity of these quantitative and qualitative measures of metacognitive monitoring and to interpret them using the continuous dual-process model of signal detection (Wixted & Mickes, 2010).

In Experiment 1, subjects heard or read items belonging to categorized lists and took an old/new recognition test over studied and new items while making remember/know/guess judgments after each recognition decision. Consistent with prior literature, remember judgments were more likely to be accurate than …

The Enhancing Effect Of Retrieval On Subsequent Encoding: Understanding Test-Potentiated Learning, Kathleen Marie Arnold

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Retrieval practice directly enhances later memory of tested material, a robust effect known as the testing effect (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006b). Numerous experiments have provided support for this effect. However, another important effect of retrieval practice has received far less attention. Retrieval practice can also indirectly enhance learning by potentiating subsequent encoding of tested material, an effect known as test-potentiated learning (Izawa, 1966). Although introduced over four decades ago, little is known about how and when tests enhance subsequent encoding, information that has both practical and theoretical importance. The aim of this dissertation was to enhance understanding of test-potentiated learning …