Dr Kata Pauly-Takacs

Episodic retrieval is characterized by the subjective experience of remembering. This experience enables the co-ordination of memory retrieval processes and can be acted on metacognitively. In successful retrieval, the feeling of remembering may be accompanied by recall of important contextual information. On the other hand, when people fail (or struggle) to retrieve information, other feelings, thoughts, and information may come to mind. In this review, we examine the subjective and metacognitive basis of episodic memory function from a neurodevelopmental perspective, looking at recollection paradigms (such as source memory, and the report of recollective experience) and metacognitive paradigms such as the feeling of knowing). We start by considering healthy development, and provide a brief review of the development of episodic memory, with a particular focus on the ability of children to report first-person experiences of remembering. We then consider neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) such as amnesia acquired in infancy, autism, Williams syndrome, Down syndrome, or 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. This review shows that different episodic processes develop at different rates, and that across a broad set of different NDDs there are various types of episodic memory impairment, each with possibly a different character. This literature is in agreement with the idea that episodic memory is a multifaceted process.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the impact of memory accessibility on episodic future thinking. DESIGN: Single-case study of neurological patient HCM and an age-matched comparison group of neurologically Healthy Controls. METHODS: We administered a full battery of tests assessing general intelligence, memory, and executive functioning. To assess autobiographical memory, the Autobiographical Memory Interview (Kopelman, Wilson, & Baddeley, 1990. The Autobiographical Memory Interview. Bury St. Edmunds, UK: Thames Valley Test Company) was administered. The Past Episodic and Future Episodic sections of Dalla Barba's Confabulation Battery (Dalla Barba, 1993, Cogn. Neuropsychol., 1, 1) and a specifically tailored Mental Time Travel Questionnaire were administered to assess future thinking in HCM and age-matched controls. RESULTS: HCM presented with a deficit in forming new memories (anterograde amnesia) and recalling events from before the onset of neurological impairment (retrograde amnesia). HCM's autobiographical memory impairments are characterized by a paucity of memories from Recent Life. In comparison with controls, two features of his future thoughts are apparent: Reduced episodic future thinking and outdated content of his episodic future thoughts. CONCLUSIONS: This article suggests neuropsychologists should look beyond popular conceptualizations of the past-future relation in amnesia via focussing on reduced future thinking. Investigating both the quantity and quality of future thoughts produced by amnesic patients may lead to developments in understanding the complex nature of future thinking disorders resulting from memory impairments. PRACTITIONER POINTS: We highlight the clinical importance of examining the content of future thoughts in amnesic patients, rather than only its quantitative reduction. We propose an explanation of how quantitative and qualitative aspects of future thinking could be affected by amnesia. This could provide a useful approach to understand clinical cases of impaired prospection. LIMITATIONS: Systematic group investigations are required to fully examine our hypothesis. Although the current study utilized typical future thinking measures, these may be limited and we highlight the need to develop clinically relevant measures of prospection.

This paper presents the performance of a young amnesic person (CJ) in the DRM task. CJ was found to be sensitive to the DRM manipulation at a level comparable to controls in recognition and at a level higher than controls in free recall. Detailed analyses of recall intrusions lent further support to the finding that CJ is able to extract gist on the basis of semantic associations. Results are discussed with reference to relevant theory as well as the potential role of an impaired and immature cognitive system in adopting a semantic gist strategy in the absence of episodic memory.

Recollection has been described as both a recognition memory judgment requiring cognitive control and the ability to retrieve contextual information about a prior occurrence. At the core of this article is the question whether or not these two subcomponents of recollection are dissociable in amnesia. In three experiments, we explored the influence of exclusion task instructions on performance in a single case (CJ), with the view to understand the relative contributions of control and source memory to recognition memory decisions. First, contrasting findings were obtained between tasks requiring strategic control or source reports. Second, even though CJ displayed some residual source memory relative to the ability to strategically control this information, his source memory capacity was time-limited. Our findings resonate with the novel proposal that recollection draws heavily upon working memory resources, and provide an example of how amnesic patients might utilize residual working memory capacity to solve episodic memory tasks.

Objectives The aim of this experiment was to examine the influence of pre-experimental semantic relationships on verbal learning in a case of childhood-acquired amnesia (CJ). More specifically, we were motivated to test whether CJ was sensitive to, or perhaps more sensitive to task characteristics that are known to induce a robust false memory effect in healthy people. Methods Twelve 12-item semantically associated word lists, adapted from previously published materials, were used. In accordance with a standard DRM paradigm, the words presented in each list converged in meaning on a critical non-presented word. CJ and 10 healthy age-mached controls studied the lists before their free recall was tested, which followed immediately after each list. Participants’ recognition memory for the words was also tested. Results The findings demonstrated that CJ recalled significantly fewer studied words compared to controls; the inverse pattern was observed for the non-presented critical words such that CJ recalled a much higher proportion of critical words than did controls. This pattern was present in the context of normal primacy and recency effects shown by CJ. As for recognition memory, CJ’s performance was comparable to that of controls.

Aphantasia is defined as the reduced capacity to form mental images voluntarily. Previous research provided mixed evidence regarding the effect this individual variation may have on other areas of cognition and different aspects of memory. This study investigated how a reduction in mental imagery affects verbal memory with a specific focus on false memory generation by comparing the performance of aphantasic and non-aphantasic control participants in the Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm. Correlational analyses revealed that higher visual imagery ability was weakly associated with better free recall performance but also more extra-list recall intrusions. However, contrary to expectations, the experimental findings demonstrated no differential effect of aphantasia on veridical or false memory in either free recall or recognition suggesting that aphantasia does not protect against verbal false memory generation. Future work should consider the effect of aphantasia on false memory generation using visual variants of the DRM task.

People with epilepsy often report experiencing memory problems though these are not always detectable using standard neuropsychological measures. One form of difficulty that may be relatively prevalent in epilepsy is termed accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF), typically described as relatively greater loss of memory over days or weeks following initial encoding. The current study used remote assessment to examine memory and forgetting over one week in a broad community sample of people with epilepsy and healthy control participants, using two recently developed tests, one verbal (the Crimes test) and one visual (the Four Doors test). These were administered as part of a short battery of cognitive measures, run remotely with participants over Zoom. Across this community-derived sample, people with epilepsy reported more memory complaints and demonstrated significantly faster forgetting on both the verbal and visual tests. This difference was not attributable to level of initial learning performance and was not detectable through delayed recall on a standard existing test. Our results suggests that ALF may be more common than suspected in people with epilepsy, leading to a potentially important source of memory problems that are currently undetected by standard memory tests.

SA is a 54-year-old maths teacher who presented with partial retrograde memory loss and everyday recognition memory failures following limbic encephalitis. Standard neuropsychological assessment failed to capture significant memory impairments despite subjective complaints. We were motivated to explore the subjective experiences associated with memory in experimental paradigms. In order to measure episodic memory, a source memory task and the inclusion/exclusion tasks were administered to SA and controls. Subjective judgements of recollection and familiarity were also collected for all endorsed items in order to ascertain the association or dissociation between objective and subjective estimates of episodic memory. The particular pattern of SA’s performance is discussed with reference to potentially separable components of episodic memory as a result of brain injury.

Survivors of childhood brain tumors often acquire complex cognitive difficulties including impairments in attention, processing speed, and different aspects of memory function. These impairments can affect their learning in the real world and in the classroom. However, the efficacy of memory rehabilitation techniques post treatment has not yet been assessed in these patients. We present the case of a 15-year-old boy, C.J., who acquired a profound episodic memory impairment due to a metastatic germ cell tumor and subsequent treatment. The focus of this study was the application of an errorless learning technique to a verbal learning task. We were interested to test whether C.J. would benefit from errorless learning as compared to errorful learning. Results of an experiment and a follow-up study indicated that C.J.'s learning was more efficient under errorless conditions, although access to the information from long-term memory remained cue dependent. Implications for learning with or without the support of episodic memory are discussed, and future directions for memory rehabilitation of brain tumor survivors are outlined.

Human memory is a dynamic system that makes accessible certain memories of events based on a hierarchy of information, arguably driven by personal significance. Not all events are remembered, but those that are tend to be more psychologically relevant. In contrast, lifelogging is the process of automatically recording aspects of one's life in digital form without loss of information. In this article we share our experiences in designing computer-based solutions to assist people review their visual lifelogs and address this contrast. The technical basis for our work is automatically segmenting visual lifelogs into events, allowing event similarity and event importance to be computed, ideas that are motivated by cognitive science considerations of how human memory works and can be assisted. Our work has been based on visual lifelogs gathered by dozens of people, some of them with collections spanning multiple years. In this review article we summarize a series of studies that have led to the development of a browser that is based on human memory systems and discuss the inherent tension in storing large amounts of data but making the most relevant material the most accessible.

We present the case of a 13-year-old boy, CJ, with profound episodic memory difficulties following the diagnosis of a metastatic intracranial germ cell tumour and subsequent treatment with radiotherapy and chemotherapy. At the core of this study is the first application of SenseCam to a child with severe memory impairment. CJ was taken for a walk while he was wearing SenseCam. This included visiting four different locations. We manipulated the number of locations he could review on SenseCam "films" and then tested recognition memory (forced choice) for both reviewed and non-reviewed locations. We also collected his justifications for the choices he made. Our results indicate that repeated viewings of SenseCam images support the formation of personal semantic memories. Overall our results suggest that the use of SenseCam in memory rehabilitation extends beyond supporting episodic memory and recollection, and supports the feasibility of its use with children who have marked memory difficulties.

It is conceivable that people engage vicariously not only about the past but the future as well. Vicarious future thoughts are future events that are mentally simulated and represented through listening to other people’s future thoughts. In this study four different event types were sampled across two dimensions (personal vs. vicarious and past vs. future) and participants rated each event on their phenomenological characteristics and their functions. Our findings suggest that a) vicarious future events are maintained by relatively strong representations and b) our ability to retain such events may serve the social function of feeling closer to others.

It has been suggested that autobiographical memory is responsible for maintaining self and identity; something difficult to test in healthy populations. In brain damage, the relationship between memory and self is clearer: research has shown that despite deficits in episodic memory, people still have intact identities, based on conceptual knowledge. In a case of amnesia, we show that there is in fact a reduction in access to the more dynamic, psychological concepts, such as personality traits. Other forms of identity are maintained. This further defines the separable roles of episodic and semantic memory in the maintenance of self.

This case report presents new semantic learning and long-term retention data collected over a 5-year period from an amnesic adolescent boy, CJ. Compared to his younger sister, a novel abbreviation-learning task captured CJ's slower semantic acquisition across three weekly training sessions. By contrast, his rate of forgetting between sessions was comparable to that of the control's and was slower over long delays of up to 5 years but recalled information without any reliable report of the original learning context.

Subjective self-reports of difficulties with memory are relatively common in people with epilepsy, though these do not always align with performance on objective memory tasks. The current study gathered qualitative and quantitative subjective reports of memory function in a group of people with epilepsy who were recruited via the charity Epilepsy Action, along with controls. Participants also carried out one of two recently developed experimental tasks (Crimes or Four Doors) that provide objective measures of long-term memory and forgetting, along with an additional verbal learning and recall task, each of which assess retention over a one-week period. Relative to controls, people with epilepsy reported memory problems across all the subjective measures, while also showing more objective forgetting on Crimes and Four Doors. When combining the epilepsy and control samples, subjective forgetting and memory satisfaction correlated with objective delayed recall and forgetting. Within the epilepsy sample, delayed recall correlated with subjectively experienced forgetting. These findings provide new evidence for subjective and objective memory difficulties in epilepsy and indicate the need for development of appropriate tools to detect atypical forgetting in this population.

This chapter examines the role of declarative memory in creative cognition. Investigations of the contribution of semantic memory in creativity span several decades, whereas exploration into the role of episodic memory is fairly recent. In this review, we outline the existing evidence on the influence of semantic and episodic memory-relevant processes in creative idea generation. The available evidence confirms the contributory role of knowledge organization and retrieval processes in creative ideation. In addition, the evidence suggests that a constructive episodic memory system may allow for the recombination of previous experiences to support idea generativity. Limitations associated with the evidence to date, along with further directions to explore the role of declarative memory in creative cognition, are also discussed.

Evidence suggesting that episodic specificity induction improves divergent thinking performance in younger and older adults has been taken as indicative of the role of declarative memory processes in creativity. A series of studies were carried out to verify the specificity of such findings by investigating the effects of several novel episodic and semantic memory induction procedures on a widely employed measure of divergent creative thinking (the Alternate Uses Task), in comparison to a control induction and a no-induction baseline in both younger and older adults. There was no clear evidence for a specific role played by the induction of episodic or semantic memory processes in facilitating creative thinking across the three experiments, and the effects of the induction procedures (episodic, semantic and control) on divergent thinking were not comparable across age groups. On the other hand, higher levels of creativity were generally associated with older adults (60-80 years). In Experiments 2 and 3, older adults generated a greater number of responses (fluency), more unique responses (average originality, peak originality, creativity ratings) and more varied responses (flexibility) than younger adults (18-30 years). The findings are discussed in relation to the specificity of declarative memory operations and their impact on creative thinking, especially within the context of healthy ageing.

Metamemory refers to our ability to introspect about our own memory processes. It is often noted that the ability to monitor one’s own memory is crucial to effective learning. Yet, there is considerable discrepancy between laboratory findings and those obtained in applied contexts (i.e. education). For the first time, metamemory monitoring was measured in the lab and in a real-world learning situation within the same study using a judgements of learning (JOLs) paradigm. Undergraduate students (N > 100) made predictions about their memory performance in semantic and episodic JOL tasks in the lab, and also predicted their exam performance at various points of the semester. We tested the empirical question whether metamemory accuracy in the lab would be related to metamemory accuracy in the real world, and also identified the best predictors of exam performance. Findings are discussed with reference to theories of metacognitive monitoring.