Learning & Memory

Objectives: Explore the psychometric properties of a sleep quality index to be used with the elderly population.
Methods: 99 elderly (mean age, M=78.65; SD= 6.92; range=60-95) under social responses in institutions from Coimbra Council were assessed through a sleep questionnaire, composed of a sleep quality index and questions assessing sleep correlates. The sleep index is composed by seven items assessing sleep latency, difficulty in falling asleep, number of night awakenings, waking up spontaneously too early, subjective perception that waking up too early constitutes a problem for the person and two items that evaluate general subjective sleep quality and sleep depth.
Results: KMO = .830; Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity ≤.001. A principal components analysis and the scree plot inspection revealed a one-factor solution, explaining 48.8% of the total variance. Very good internal consistency (Cronbach alpha coefficient; α=.812).
Conclusion: This sleep quality index presents good psychometric properties. Since, in terms of assessment, it is important not to overload the elderly population, this very short instrument constitutes a good option to assess sleep quality.

Practicing retrieval of recently studied information enhances the likelihood of the learner retrieving that information in the future. We examined whether short-answer and multiple-choice classroom quizzing could enhance retention of information on classroom exams taken for a grade. In seventh-grade science and high school history classes, students took intermittent quizzes (short-answer or multiple-choice, both with correct-answer feedback) on some information, whereas other information was not initially quizzed but received equivalent coverage in all other classroom activities. On the unit exams and on an end-of-semester exam, students performed better for information that had been quizzed than that not quizzed. An unanticipated and key finding is that the format of the quiz (multiple-choice or short-answer) did not need to match the format of the criterial test (e.g., unit exam) for this benefit to emerge. Further, intermittent quizzing cannot be attributed to intermittent reexpo...

Delusions are fixed ‘false beliefs’ and, although a hallmark feature of schizophrenia, no previous study has examined if delusions might be related to ‘false memories’. We used the classic Deese–Roediger–McDermott (DRM) paradigm to compare false memory production in schizophrenia patients who were currently experiencing delusions (ED), patients not experiencing delusions (ND) and healthy control participants. The ED group recalled twice as many false-positive memories (i.e., memory for words not previously seen) as both the controls and crucially, the ND group. Both patient groups also recognised fewer correct words than the healthy controls and both showed greater confidence in their false memories; however, on the recognition task, the ED group made more false-negative (i.e. rejecting previously seen words) high confidence responses than the ND group.

It has recently been found that during recognition memory tests participants’ pupils dilate more when they view old items compared to novel items. This thesis sought to replicate this novel ‘‘Pupil Old/New Effect’’ (PONE) and to determine its relationship to implicit and explicit mnemonic processes, the veracity of participants’ responses, and the analogous Event-Related Potential (ERP) old/new effect. Across 9 experiments, pupil-size was measured with a video-based eye-tracker during a variety of recognition tasks, and, in the case of Experiment 8, with concurrent Electroencephalography (EEG).

The main findings of this thesis are that:
- the PONE occurs in a standard explicit test of recognition memory but not in “implicit” tests of either perceptual fluency or artificial grammar learning;
- the PONE is present even when participants are asked to give false behavioural answers in a malingering task, or are asked not to respond at all;
- the PONE is present when attention is divided both at learning and during recognition;
- the PONE is accompanied by a posterior ERP old/new effect;
- the PONE does not occur when participants are asked to read previously encountered words without making a recognition decision;
- the PONE does not occur if participants preload an “old/new” response;
- the PONE is not enhanced by repetition during learning.

These findings are discussed in the context of current models of recognition memory and other psychophysiological indices of mnemonic processes. It is argued that together these findings suggest that the increase in pupil-size which occurs when participants encounter previously studied items is not under conscious control and may reflect primarily recollective processes associated with recognition memory.

Fear, which can be expressed innately or after conditioning, is triggered when a danger or a stimulus predicting immediate danger is perceived. Its role is to prepare the body to face this danger. However, dysfunction in fear processing can lead to psychiatric disorders in which fear outweighs the danger or possibility of harm. Although recognized as highly debilitating, pathological fear remains insufficiently treated, indicating the importance of research on fear processing. The neurobiological basis of normal and pathological fear reactions is reviewed in this article. Innate and learned fear mechanisms, particularly those involving the amygdala, are considered. These fear mechanisms are also distinguished in specific phobias, which can indeed be nonexperiential (implicating innate, learning-independent mechanisms) or experiential (implicating learning-dependent mechanisms). Poor habituation and poor extinction are presented as dysfunctional mechanisms contributing to persistence...

Practicing retrieval of recently-studied information enhances the likelihood of the learner retrieving that information in the future. We examined whether short-answer and multiple-choice classroom quizzing could enhance retention of information on classroom exams taken for a grade. In 7th grade science and high school history classes, students took intermittent quizzes (short-answer or multiple-choice, both with correct-answer feedback) on some information, whereas other information was not initially quizzed but received equivalent coverage in all other classroom activities. On the unit exams and on an end-of-semester exam, students performed better for information that had been quizzed than that not quizzed. An unanticipated and key finding is that the format of the quiz (multiple-choice or short-answer) did not need to match the format of the criterial test (e.g., unit exam) for this benefit to emerge. Further, intermittent quizzing cannot be attributed to intermittent re-exposure to the target facts: A restudy condition produced less enhancement of later test performance than did quizzing with feedback. Frequent classroom quizzing with feedback improves student learning and retention, and multiple choice quizzing is as effective as short answer quizzing for this purpose.

En la arqueología de la región patagónica se han desarrollado distintas investigaciones
que focalizaron, entre otras cosas, en las estrategias de movilidad y los flujos de
información entre grupos cazadores recolectores. Estos temas fueron estudiados desde
diferentes líneas de evidencia - artefactos líticos (ver por ej. Gómez Otero y Stern 2005);
consumo de animales (ver por ejemplo Fernández 2006); análisis de restos óseos humanos
(ver por ejemplo Goñi y Barrientos 2004); análisis de restos vegetales (ver por ej.
Pérez de Micou et al. 1992); etc.
Nos proponemos en este capítulo presentar las fuentes orales como una posible
línea de evidencia para el análisis arqueológico. “…La información oral, al funcionar
como documento primario, se torna una de las fuentes más importantes, (...) también
puede sugerir nuevas líneas de investigación al arqueólogo…” (Orser 2000:39).
En este sentido, introduciremos aquí el uso de las fuentes orales como una herramienta
metodológica para abordar problemáticas arqueológicas. En particular, nos referiremos
al tema de las rutas indígenas, por un lado, y a la transmisión del conocimiento,
por el otro.
Somos conscientes de que la información que obtendremos tiene una escala de
tiempo acotada en comparación con los tiempos arqueológicos, no obstante la misma
será utilizada para dar cuenta de la dinámica de la población, su organización, costumbres,
alimentación, organización familiar (Funes 2006), en los aspectos que poseen escasa
o nula visibilidad material y que pueden, por lo tanto, perderse de vista desde un
enfoque únicamente arqueológico. De esta forma “las fuentes orales (...) contribuyen
a equilibrar la balanza entre el tiempo largo y corto, entre las estructuras y quienes les
dan vida...” (Vilanova en Barela et al. 2004).

Highly superior autobiographical memory (HSAM) is a recently identified ability that has been difficult to explain with existing memory science. The present study measured HSAM participants’ and age/gender matched controls’ on a number of behavioural measures to test three main hypotheses: imaginative absorption, emotional arousal, and sleep. HSAM participants were significantly higher than controls on the dispositions absorption and fantasy proneness. These two dispositions also were associated with a measure of HSAM ability within the hyperthymesia participants. The emotional-arousal hypothesis yielded only weak support. The sleep hypothesis was not supported in terms of quantity, but sleep quality may be a small factor worthy of further research. Other individual differences are also documented using a predominantly exploratory analysis. Speculative pathways describing how the tendencies to absorb and fantasise could lead to enhanced autobiographical memory are discussed.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

The material we have developed for use with groups of students from a number of different ethnic backgrounds consists of commands—action series—which students learn to respond to physically and to produce orally to evoke physical response by others, providing them with meaningful live language practice.

Test-enhanced learning refers to the finding that practice tests during study increase the likelihood that information will be recalled at a later time.  This view contrasts with the traditional idea that tests merely measure prior learning without changing it. To the contrary, a wealth of research has shown that tests are potent learning events (for recent reviews see Rawson & Dunlosky, 2011; Roediger & Butler, 2011).  Compared to simply rereading a given piece of information (or doing nothing at all), actively retrieving information from memory improves the likelihood that the information will be recalled at a later time.  The benefits of practice tests have been documented hundreds of times and the benefits of tests may last up to nine months after information has been initially learned (see Dunlosky, Rawson, Marsh, Nathan, & Willingham, 2013).  Practice tests have been shown to improve long-term retention across the lifespan, from children (e.g., for a review see Agarwal, Bain, & Chamberlain, 2013) to older adults (e.g., Logan & Balota, 2008) and have been documented using a wide range of materials and experimental designs, from word lists and foreign language word pairs to expository texts and maps (e.g., for a review see Roediger & Karpicke, 2006a). 

Test-enhanced learning has been referred to by a number of different terms over the years; testing effects, retrieval practice effects, retrieval-enhanced learning, low stakes quizzes, and practice tests, to name a few. Research has shown that the benefits of practice tests are not dependent upon the type of test implemented (e.g., multiple choice, short answer, essay questions)-(e.g., Foos & Fisher, 1988; Kang, McDermott, & Roediger, 2007; McDaniel, Roediger, & McDermott, 2007; McDermott, Agarwal, D’Antonio, Roediger, & McDaniel, in press).  The important point here is that any type of practice testing enhances long-term retention.

Practice tests can be used both in the classroom by instructors and during self-regulated study by students.  In the classroom the procedure can be as simple as frequently asking students questions, requiring all students to respond in some way (discussed further below) and providing them with feedback (i.e., the correct answer). For students, it can be as simple as using flashcards to study information or trying to recall information they have recently read or been lectured on. Many textbooks already incorporate practice testing into learning by asking questions at the end of chapters.  However, students may not use these end-of-chapter questions optimally without help from the teacher (e.g., Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). In particular, students need to practice retrieval several more times after they think they know the issue at hand well (Karpicke, 2009).

The idea of additional testing in education often suffers a bad reputation, but this is due largely to issues surrounding the use of standardized tests that have little to do with our recommendation of retrieval-enhanced learning. In the current chapter, we advocate that retrieval practice via testing should be incorporated into the classroom and into students’ self-regulated learning as frequently as possible.  Below we describe specific examples of how testing has been experimentally evaluated both in the laboratory and in actual classroom settings, and we offer suggestions for how instructors and students may easily incorporate testing into classroom and self-regulated learning situations.

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

Study of self-knowledge and self-love as underlying aspects of personality in order to develop a thomistic theory of personality. Nevertheless this document is just a brief explanation of knowledge, love, personality and hapiness relashionship aspects.

Estudio del conocimiento y del amor de sí mismo como aspectos subyacentes de la personalidad en orden al posterior desarrollo de una teoría tomista de la personalidad. Este trabajo, sin embargo, se limita a exponer la relación existente entre conocimiento, amor, personalidad y felicidad.

"Cette monographie – la première du genre – est une réflexion sur les miniatures hippiatriques grecques, où se demander pour quel usage et comment le lecteur médiéval les « lisait », conduit nécessairement à essayer d’expliciter les rapports complexes qu'entretiennent l'illustration et le texte.
Après une présentation générale de la littérature hippiatrique, l’auteur élucide des questions liées à la composition du Corpus hippiatricorum graecorum. L’intérêt est principalement porté sur les différentes recensions d’un de ses abrégés, l’Épitomé, et sur sa place par rapport au Corpus hippiatricorum. Ainsi est-on amené à mieux discerner l'histoire de ce traité et celle des deux seuls manuscrits illustrés.
Vient ensuite un chapitre consacré à l'étude minutieuse de ces deux témoins, le Leidensus Vossianus graecus Q. 50 et le Parisinus graecus 2244. Paléographie et codicologie s'en mêlent, qui révisent bien des opinions reçues sur l'origine des manuscrits.
Un re-examen des miniatures des deux témoins est alors possible. Par-delà analyses stylistique et iconographique, trop souvent attachées à la quête absolue de l'archétype, l'auteur analyse les rapports texte/image pour établir, en définitive, le modus operandi des imagiers et déterminer les fonctions concrètes pour lesquelles les figures ont été pensées et conçues. De ce regard synchronique découle naturellement une étude sur la façon dont le lecteur médiéval utilisait les images. Les conclusions pratiques se voient donc confrontées aux théories antiques et médiévales sur le rôle de l'image et celui des mots. Ainsi l'image hippiatrique ne saurait être seulement une simple illustration du texte : elle appartient à l'œuvre tout autant.
L’ouvrage s’adresse aux antiquisants et aux médiévistes, historiens de l’art et de la médecine vétérinaire antique et moderne ainsi qu’aux philologues et à quiconque s’intéresse à l’histoire de l’illustration scientifique et des relations entre l’homme et l’animal."

The aim of this article is to present a succinct review and evaluation of the main areas of contention in the false memory debate and, from this basis, to suggest ways in which the best from both sides can be utilized. We examine the potential pitfalls of therapy in terms of the fallibility and suggestibility of autobiographical memory and therapists and therapeutic techniques as the architects of false memories. We then evaluate the case for false memory formation examining if some researchers hold misconceived views of psychotherapy, if experimental studies lack ecological validity, and the effect of trauma on memory. Finally, we explore how the potential pitfalls of therapy can be avoided in practice, reflecting on the usefulness of British Psychological Society guidelines, how clinicians can implement research findings, and how research on the false memory debate can be improved. We conclude that the way forward is researcher–clinician collaboration in the development of ecologically valid research paradigms.

Introducción. Las quejas subjetivas de memoria constituyen uno de los motivos de consulta más frecuentes a los servicios sanitarios, aunque apenas existen instrumentos validados en castellano para valorar su magnitud. Así como los cuestionarios de quejas de memoria habitualmente incluyen ítems referentes a aspectos atencionales y ejecutivos, se formulan hipótesis acerca de su relación con otros procesos dependientes de la integridad de la corteza prefrontal. Objetivo. Se trata de estudiar las propiedades psicométricas de un instrumento basado en el cuestionario de fallos de memoria de la vida cotidiana –Memory Failures Everyday (MFE)–, proporcionando una baremación sobre una amplia muestra de población española. Como objetivo secundario, se pretenden analizar las relaciones existentes entre la aparición de las quejas, la sintomatología de origen prefrontal y el estrés percibido. Sujetos y métodos. Se administran el MFE-30 (una modificación del MFE), el cuestionario disejecutivo y la escala de estrés percibido a una muestra de adultos jóvenes de población general no clínica (n = 900). Resultados. Los análisis muestran que el MFE-30 es un cuestionario unifactorial que valora un único constructo llamado ‘quejas cognitivas’. Además, se observa un intenso patrón de correlaciones entre dichas quejas, la sintomatología de origen prefrontal y el estrés percibido. Conclusiones. Los baremos aportados muestran que el MFE-30 es un instrumento útil en la práctica clínica. Los resultados encontrados están en consonancia con estudios anteriores, sugiriendo que existe una estrecha relación entre la aparición de quejas cognitivas, la presencia de sintomatología prefrontal y el estrés percibido.

Palabras clave. Atención. Corteza prefrontal. Cribado. DEX. Funciones ejecutivas. Lóbulos frontales. Memoria. Metamemoria. MFE. Neuropsicología. Quejas de memoria. Síndrome disejecutivo.

Introduction. Although subjective memory complaints are one of the most common causes behind visits to health services, there are hardly any validated instruments in Spanish for evaluating their magnitude. Since memory complaint questionnaires usually include items referring to attentional and executive aspects, it has been hypothesised that they may well be related with other processes that depend on the integrity of the prefrontal cortex. Aim. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of an instrument based on the Memory Failures in Everyday (MFE) questionnaire, thus providing a valuation over a broad sample of the Spanish population. A second aim of the study was to analyse the relations that exist between the appearance of the complaints, the symptoms of a prefrontal origin and perceived stress. Subjects and methods. The MFE-30 (a modified version of the MFE), the dysexecutive questionnaire and the perceived stress scale were administered to a sample of young adults from a non-clinical general population (n = 900). Results. The analyses show that the MFE-30 is a single-factor questionnaire that evaluates a single construct called ‘cognitive complaints’. Moreover, an intense pattern of correlations among these complaints, the symptoms of a prefrontal origin and perceived stress is observed. Conclusions. The resulting scores show that the MFE-30 is a useful instrument in clinical practice. Findings are in line with those from previous studies, thus suggesting that there is a close relation among the appearance of cognitive complaints, the presence of prefrontal symptoms and perceived stress.

Key words. Attention. DEX. Dysexecutive syndrome. Executive functions. Frontal cortex. Frontal lobes. Memory complaints. Memory. Metamemory. MFE. Neuropsychology. Screening.

Resumen:
Introducción. El presente estudio analiza si una tarea de fluidez verbal escrita es útil para discriminar el deterioro cognitivo leve (DCL) frente al envejecimiento normal con quejas subjetivas de memoria (EN). Método. Se reclutaron 140 participantes con un juicio clínico de EN (n=64) o DCL (n=76) diagnosticado ad hoc a los que se les administró una tarea de fluidez verbal fonológica y semántica escrita. Resultados. El análisis descrip-tivo muestra una composición homogénea de los grupos en función de la edad, sexo y años de escolaridad. Se observa cómo, tanto la puntuación en cada criterio de evocación particular, como los sumatorios de los tres criterios fonológicos (FAS) y semánticos (SEMÁNTICA) son superiores en el grupo con EN que en el grupo con DCL (F=1.899, p<.005, para FAS y F=24.200, p<.001, para SEMÁNTICA). El trabajo analiza también las correlaciones con diferentes pruebas clásicas de cribado. Discusión. Los resultados muestran la utilidad de la fluidez verbal escrita en el cribado del DCL. Esta modalidad ofrece frente a la modalidad oral, además, la ventaja añadida de su posible aplicación grupal. Se han observado las diferencias ya conocidas entre los criterios de evocación fonológica y semántica, con-cluyendo que los segundos aportan más información para el cribado de pacientes con DCL.
Palabras clave:
Neuropsicología; fluidez verbal; fluidez fonológica; fluidez semántica; envejecimiento; quejas de memoria; deterioro cognitivo leve; datos normativos.

Abstract:
Introduction. The present study analyzes whether a written verbal fluency task is suitable to differentiate between Mild Cognitive Impair-ment (MCI) and Normal Aging with subjective memory complaints (NA). Method. 140 subjects with a clinical judgement of NA (n=64) and MCI (n=76), diagnosed ad hoc, were administered both a verbal phonological fluency task and a verbal semantic fluency task. Results. The descriptive analysis of the data shows a homogeneous distribution of both groups taking into account age, gender and education. The group with NA scores significantly higher than the group with MCI on every indivicual criterion of evocation and also on both the summation of the three phonological criteria (FAS) and the summation of the three semantic criteria (SEMAN-TIC), being F=1.899, p<.005, for FAS and F=24.200, p<.001, for SE-MANTIC. The study also analyzes the correlations of the written verbal tasks with several classical screening tests. Discussion. The results support the suitability of the written verbal fluency tasks on the screening of MCI. Further, this assessment procedure offers, too, the benefit of its possibility of administration to a group of people. Differences between the phono-logical evocation criteria and the semantic evocation criteria were con-firmed in this study, concluding that the latter are more reliable at the screening of people with MCI than the former.
Key words:
Neuropsychology; verbal fluency; phonological fluency; se-mantic fluency; aging; memory complaints; mild cognitive impairment; normative data.

F.C. Bartlett and L.S.Vygotsky were two seminal figures in the psychological study of remembering. Both emphasized the role of meaning and imagination in this process. Bartlett did this by showing the systematic and holistic changes that ensue when cultural material is repeatedly reproduced outside of the group to which it belongs. Vygotsky, on the other hand, attended to the ways in which we construct meaningful ―signs‖ as artificial memory aids to solve memory problems that go beyond our natural capacities. These two approaches are brought together to show how we utilize various cultural resources as tools to imaginatively overcome difficulties in remembering, and in so doing elaborate new meanings. The synthesis is exemplified with an example from research conducted in conversational remembering.

This paper crosses the borders of human geography to bring back two related bodies of work from experimental psychology that investigate, in an unusual and refreshingly precise way, long-standing human geographical concerns with tem-porality, place and subject formations, meaning-making and well-being. It is argued that the traffic of ideas and empirical findings between human geography and experimental psychology can be mutually profitable if, and only to the extent that, it encompasses a sustained epistemological, methodological and political critique of the disciplinary practices that have yielded those ideas and findings.

A strategy for adaptive control and energetic optimization of aerobic fermentors was implemented, with both air flow and agitation speed as manipulated variables. This strategy is separable in its components: control, optimization, estimation. We optimized parameter’s estimation (from the usual KLa correlation) using sinusoidal excitation of air flow and agitation speed. We have implemented parameter’s estimation trough recursive least squares algorithm with forgetting factor. We carried separate essays on control, optimization and estimation algorithms. We carried our essays using an original computational simulation environment, with noise and delay generating facilities for data sampling and filtering.

Our results show the convergence and robustness of the estimation algorithm used, improved with use of both forgetting factor and KLa dead-band facilities. Control algorithm used in our work compares favorably with PID using the integrated area criteria for deviation between oxygen molarity and critical molarity (set point). Optimization algorithm clearly reduces energetic consumption, respecting critical molarity. Integration of control, optimization and adaptive algorithms was implemented, but future work is needed for stability. Methods were defined and implemented for stability improvement. We have implemented data acquisition and computer manipulation of air flow and agitation speed for actual fermentors.

People constantly talk about past experiences. Burgeoning psychologi- cal research has examined the role of communication in remembering by placing rememberers in conversational settings. In reviewing this work, we first discuss the benefits of collaborative remembering (trans- active memory and collaborative facilitation) and its costs (collaborative inhibition, information sampling biases, and audience tuning). We next examine how conversational remembering affects subsequent memory. Here, we address influences on listeners’ memory through social conta- gion, resistance to such influences, and then retrieval/reexposure effects on either speaker or listener, with a focus on retrieval-induced forget- ting. Extending the perspective beyond single interactions, we consider work that has explored how the above effects can spread across networks of several individuals. We also explore how a speaker’s motive to form a shared reality with listeners can moderate conversational effects on memory. Finally, we discuss how these various conversational effects may promote the formation of collective memories.

Augustine’s discussion of our memoria of the liberal arts in Confessions X poses a series of challenging questions which are best tackled in the broader context of his ideas on teaching, learning, understanding and the acquisition of knowledge. The contents of the liberal arts are stored in our memory (a non-physical and non-spatial receptacle often metaphorically depicted through spatial imagery) by themselves, and not through images (like the objects of sense-perception) or ‘notions’ (like the affections of the soul). When we learn the disciplinae liberales, actually we do not absorb new information from our teachers, but we are triggered by their words to retrieve from the most remote ‘caves’ of our memory contents already present in a latent form since birth (I address the question of what exactly these contents might be). In the Confessions, unlike in earlier writings, Augustine cautiously eschews expressions which might suggest full-blown Platonic recollection of things known in previous lives and subsequently forgotten, and thus presuppose the pre-existence and reincarnation of the soul (not even the claim that cogitare is, literally, ‘re-collecting’ involves recalling forgotten knowledge). I argue that for Augustine recollection and divine illumination (as presented, e.g., in the De magistro and the De Trinitate) are not two rival and incompatible theories, but two different and yet consistent sets of metaphors meant to illustrate the same family of ideas and intuitions (sometimes underdetermined in their details); I also explain why the illumination metaphor ultimately appears more appropriate.

Using a dual neurocognitive systems framework, Piaget’s ideas are elaborated to allow for executive processes and post formal thinking. Developing imagination, emotional expression, and creativity through the ‘arts’ should not be seen as educational luxuries that are to be argued for in terms of philosophical ideals, rather, they should be seen as important for mental health, and essential aspects of nurturing the psyche in accordance with its evolving biological nature.

Resumen:
El presente trabajo trata de estudiar si el aprendizaje procedimental de una tarea de categorización semántica puede verse infl uido por el tipo de categoría al que pertenezcan los estímulos empleados (biológicos o no biológicos). Por otro lado, se pretende describir si existe un efecto de la modalidad de presentación de los estímulos en dicha tarea. Se administró una tarea de categorización semántica (4 series de 40 estímulos) a 256 participantes (128 clasificaban dibujos y 128 palabras). Las categorías biológicas se responden con más rapidez que las categorías no biológicas, aunque no existen diferencias signifi cativas en la interacción del tipo de categoría y la modalidad de presentación de los estímulos. Los tiempos de reacción van disminuyendo progresivamente con la práctica. Sin embargo, las diferencias iniciales desaparecen cuando los sujetos han entrenado. Se discute acerca de cómo los modelos actuales dan cuenta de los hallazgos de esta investigación. Se sugiere, además, que existe una tendencia atencional en los individuos a favor de los elementos biológicos que se atenúa cuando los estímulos presumiblemente menos relevantes para la supervivencia emergen como relevantes en función de lo que se demanda en la tarea.

The present work attempts to determine whether procedural learning of a semantic categorisation task is infl uenced by the type of semantic category of the stimuli (biological and nonbiological elements). It is also an attempt to determine the effect of the stimulus presentation modality on the categorisation task. A semantic categorisation task (4 series of 40 stimuli) was administered to 256 participants (128 classifying pictures, and 128 classifying words). Biological categories were responded to faster than non-biological ones although there were no signifi cant differences between the interaction of the category type and the stimulus presentation modality. Reaction times progressively decreased with practice. However, the initial differences dissapeared when subjects were trained. The way that current models account for these investigation fi ndings is discussed. In addition, it is suggested that there is an attentional bias in favor of biological elements, which disappears when presumably less relevant elements become more relevant as a function of the task characteristics.