Memory systems constantly confront the challenge of capturing both the shared features that connect experiences together and the unique features that distinguish them. Across two experiments, we leveraged a color memory distortion paradigm to investigate how we handle this representational tension when learning new information. Over a thirty-minute period, participants learned shared and unique features of categories of novel objects, where each feature was assigned a particular color.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChildren sometimes learn distracting information better than adults do, perhaps because of the development of selective attention. To understand this potential link, we ask how the learning of children (aged 7-9 years) and the learning of adults differ when information is the directed focus of attention versus when it is not. Participants viewed drawings of common objects and were told to attend to the drawings (Experiment 1: 42 children, 35 adults) or indicate when shapes (overlaid on the drawings) repeated (Experiment 2: 53 children, 60 adults).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMemory reactivation during sleep is thought to facilitate memory consolidation. Most sleep reactivation research has examined how reactivation of specific facts, objects, and associations benefits their overall retention. However, our memories are not unitary, and not all features of a memory persist in tandem over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInferring relationships that go beyond our direct experience is essential for understanding our environment. This capacity requires either building representations that directly reflect structure across experiences as we encounter them or deriving the indirect relationships across experiences as the need arises. Building structure directly into overlapping representations allows for powerful learning and generalization in neural network models, but building these so-called requires inputs to be encountered in interleaved order.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExtracting shared structure across our experiences allows us to generalize our knowledge to novel contexts. How do different brain states influence this ability to generalize? Using a novel category learning paradigm, we assess the effect of both sleep and time of day on generalization that depends on the flexible integration of recent information. Counter to our expectations, we found no evidence that this form of generalization is better after a night of sleep relative to a day awake.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPoor indoor air quality indicated by elevated indoor CO concentrations has been linked with impaired cognitive function, yet current findings of the cognitive impact of CO are inconsistent. This review summarizes the results from 37 experimental studies that conducted objective cognitive tests with manipulated CO concentrations, either through adding pure CO or adjusting ventilation rates (the latter also affects other indoor pollutants). Studies with varied designs suggested that both approaches can affect multiple cognitive functions.
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