Browsing by Subject "memory"

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Ali Preston
(The Texas Scientist, 2019) The Texas Scientist
AMS :: ATX September 2011 Blog Archive
(2011-09) Department of American Studies
AMS :: ATX is a blog dedicated to representing the many activities and interests of the department of American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Together with the department’s Twitter feed, this blog exists to serve the AMS and Austin communities by acting as a hub for up-to-date information on events and opportunities at UT and beyond. This archive includes the following blog posts: 12 Twitterers American Studies Folks Should Follow (September 1, 2011); Faculty Research: Radical Children's Literature Now! (September 7, 2011); 5 Questions with Department Chair Steven Hoelscher (September 8, 2011); 5 Maps for the Visually Inclined (September 14, 2011); Watch This: Bodega Down Bronx (September 16, 2011); AMS Events this Week (September 20, 2011); 5 Questions wiht Dr. Randy Lewis (September 21, 2011); Grad Research: War Documentaries and [Un]realism (September 27, 2011).
A Case for Holding On
(2021) Khan, Roshan
Collective memory: history, memory, and community
(2020-05) Aldis, Abigail V.
Memory, defined as a representation of the past, is at the core of what it is to be human. Memory of the self defines a person’s identity, because when we remember, we remember ourselves. Memory ranges from holding information in our brain for a few seconds to storing information for an entire lifetime, from memory of the immediate past to childhood memories to memory of events only experienced through second-hand storytelling. Memory is an individual phenomenon, but it is inherently collaborative. People do not physically share memories; memories are held in the minds of individuals. However, memories are shared, reinforced, altered, and forgotten largely through conversational interactions. Shared memories define what it means to be a community. Through conversation and societal structures, memories become collective in communities. Thus far, collective memory has largely been studied in a fragmented way, which I argue is detrimental to the field and to real-world applications. There have been two main approaches to collective memory: one is the psychological approach, and the other is the sociological approach. These approaches both have important components but leave other essential components out of the discussion. I argue that the best approach to studying collective memory and other collective phenomena is the social-interactionist approach, which starts with relevant cognitive phenomena, looks at how those cognitive phenomena are modified in social settings, and studies how the phenomena propagate across large social networks. I argue for an extension of this approach to include societal context variables such as educational standards and norms within communities because those factors also have large influence on the collective memory of a community. This thesis first gives a review of relevant cognitive processes, then moves to a discussion of the study of collective memory. I use a case study to demonstrate a modified, qualitative version of the social-interactionist approach to collective memory, then conclude with a discussion of the possibilities for real-world solutions using this method.
Do Violent Video Games Impair the Effectiveness of In-Game Advertisements? The Impact of Gaming Environment on Brand Recall, Brand Attitude, and Purchase Intention
(2011-07) Yoo, Seung-Chul; Pena, Jorge; Yoo, Seung-Chul; Pena, Jorge
The present study examined whether a violent video game impairs the effectiveness of in-game advertisements compared to a nonviolent video game. Participants recalled and evaluated in-game ads after navigating identical violent or nonviolent game scenarios. Participants' brand recall, recognition, and attitudes were comparatively lower after navigating the violent video game. Also, females in the violent game condition reported lower brand attitudes in comparison to males in the violent game condition, thus suggesting that the effects of gaming environment interacts with participants' gender. The findings supported the predictions of the limited capacity model of attention and cognitive priming effects. The results also extend previous studies on how violent media impair advertising effectiveness and provide practical implications for researchers and practitioners.
The Dos and Don’ts of a Good Memorial
(2023-09-24) Kwiatkowski, Amara
Effects of Social Media Photography on Memory
(2019-05) Berry, Blake; Colgin, Laura
As social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat become more pervasive, we see more people sharing photos of experiences and updating friends on life events through digital platforms. Despite this increased presence of social media in our lives, little research has been published on the effects that social media photography can have on people. A particular area of concern is how this photography affects our minds. With this project, I explore how social media photography, posting, and reviewing of photos affect memory. I synthesize the results of many peer-reviewed articles published since 2005 that study the effects of social media photography on memory, and I suggest some best practices for people to use when engaging with social media in order to avoid hampering memory. Based on this literature review, I propose future work in the field that may help us better understand the complex and wide-ranging effects of social media—and images in particular—on our memories. Results have shown that specific processes seen in social media photography have interesting effects on memory. One of these processes is cognitive offloading, which occurs when a person does not have to store information in their own memory because it is reliably stored somewhere else, such as in a photograph. Distraction also plays a large role in affecting memory, as one’s emotions, circumstances, and method of photography can all distract from the present experience. New findings show that point-of-view changes memory as we are adopting a third-person perspective in memories due to social media photography instead of the traditional first-person view because of our obsession with self-presentation. The complicated interactions between these processes and their effects reveal that some social media practices can improve memory of events, while many others are detrimental to memory formation.
The Effects of Video Game Experience and Family Environment on Spatial Memory Development
(2020-05) Majmundar, Lajja; Preston, Alison; Roome, Hannah
How children navigate their world, and what environmental cues they use to build a map of their environment has been extensively studied behaviorally. But, with advances in technology, experimental designs have shifted from real environments to virtual environments. This generates an experimental experience that mimics everyday navigation but is easier to control for any confounding variables. To this extent, it has sparked the question of how video game experience influences individual differences in spatial map formation. The present study addresses how video game exposure impacts spatial memory across 6- 12-year-olds and adults. Indices of spatial memory were determined by behavioral measures taken from an object location task (path efficiency, distance error, angular error). Video game experience was collected through a questionnaire that generated scores for active gameplay, virtual layout exposure, and passive watching. An additional factor considered was the effect of family structure on video game experience. This included the amount of family disposable income, parental educational level, and perceived family dynamic. Participants showed a developmental increase in spatial memory accuracy across the age range tested, and participants with greater video game experience demonstrated better spatial memory. However, this was significantly mediated by an interaction with age, whereby only children showed a link between video game experience and spatial memory. While parental education was a significant predictor of video game experience, parental education and perceived family function were not. Additionally, all three measures were non-significant predictors of task performance directly. This study shows that while video game experience is a significant predictor of object location task performance in children, whether social familial factors if any, mediate this relationship are yet to be fully understood.
Electrophysiological characterisation of spatial memory cells in the anterior thalamic nuclei
(2012) Tran, Thao (Emma)
The Papez circuit appears to play a crucial role in the formation of episodic memory. In particular, the interconnections between the hippocampus and the anterior thalamus seem to be vital for an animal’s ability to orientate itself to and navigate through its environment. This is further supported by electrophysiological studies in freely moving rats, which have discovered neurons that encode for location (place cells) in the hippocampus and directional heading (head direction cells) in the anterodorsal and anteroventral nuclei of the thalamus. Due to the relative inaccessibility of the anteromedial nucleus of the thalamus, its electrophysiological properties are not well-characterised, and its role in spatial processing still remains elusive. In this study, we were able to successfully record from a population of head direction (20%) and theta rhythmic neurons (15%) in the anteromedial thalamic nucleus, suggesting that this structure plays an important role in the temporal–diencephalic pathways that regulate spatial processing.
Examining the role of Dif B in the learning and memory of Drosophila melanogaster using a simplified aversive phototaxis suppression assay
(2023) Gedamu, Hanna; Atkinson, Nigel
Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, is a great model for investigating learning and memory. As such, they are used to model human disorders involving neurological deficits, including Alzheimer’s disease and Fragile-X syndrome (1). This is made possible by the existence of various analog proteins and processes between Drosophila and humans. For example, the Toll-like receptor (TLR) pathway is a signaling pathway involved in human innate immunity and was initially discovered in D. melanogaster as the Toll pathway, hence the nomenclature. One of the actors downstream of the Toll signaling pathway of the fly is a nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB) called Dorsal-like-immunity factor (Dif). Dif mRNA undergoes differential splicing to produce two protein isoforms, DifA and DifB. Between these two splice isoforms, the absence of the DifB variant has been seen to dramatically alter various fly behaviors and is thus the focus of this paper. Neurological deficits like those presumably caused by DifB mutations can be assayed using an existing experiment that allows researchers to leverage an organism’s natural affinity for light. It involves aversive phototaxic suppression and has been found to be effective with D. melanogaster. The version of the assay used in this paper has been modified from previously published methods to be a more efficient and accessible way to test learning. In general, the assay utilizes operant conditioning to train flies before they are tested for memory. By using an aversive chemical stimulus, flies can be trained to exhibit a photophobic response and avoid light, which is contrary to their natural behavior of being attracted to light. Flies that are mutant for different genes can be scored on their ability to learn and recall the punishment to help identify genes or proteins that are involved in learning processes. To explore this and test the efficacy of the newly developed methods, flies mutant for DifB expression were tested for learning and memory deficits using the modified procedure. It was ultimately found that the data trended as hypothesized and will likely be ideal with the collection of more data. With recent studies suggesting that NF-κBs play a role in adult mammalian memory and brain plasticity (2), the expectancy is that the revealed importance of NF-κBs in the learning and memory of arguably the most foundational model organism will support human learning and memory disorder research, especially upon discovery of a Dif or DifB mammalian analog.
High resolution fMRI reveals distinct forms of associative novelty in the medial temporal lobe
(2012) Manthuruthil, Christine; Preston, Alison
Both Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s Disease involve alterations to the structure of the medial temporal lobe (MTL). Varying patterns of neuronal connectivity, however, suggest that not only does the MTL support learning and memory, but that its subregions play distinct roles in these processes as well. The exact nature of these contributions remains an area of active investigation. Examinations of associative novelty may offer an important tool for characterizing the processes carried out by different subregions. Associative novelty can be further broken down into associative novelty per se, which are simply novel stimulus configurations, and associative mismatch novelty, which are novel stimulus configurations that violate existing expectations. In this study, we used high resolution fMRI to characterize different associative novelty signals across the MTL; specifically, we were interested in whether there was a dissociation of associative novelty signal types between MTL subregions, or instead, a functional specialization for associative novelty signal types distributed across these subregions. Establishing subregional function could help elucidate the spectrum of cognitive deficits manifest in both Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s patients.
A House in the Homeland: Armenian Pilgrimages to Places of Ancestral Memory
(2022-03-28) Bertram, Carel
An investigation of memory specificity and generalization in young children and adults
(2020) Hipskind, Elizabeth; Preston, Alison
Optimal behavior in familiar and novel contexts depends on retrieval and consideration of past experiences. In adults, hippocampus supports retrieval of prior memories based on partially overlapping cues (Mack & Preston, 2016). Given that the hippocampus develops through childhood and adolescence (Keresztes et al., 2017), in the present research we investigated developmental differences in flexible memory retrieval during new experiences. Four-year-olds (N=15) and adults (N=20) learned a series of common object-novel shape associations. Following learning, participants were cued with a shape and tasked with retrieving the target object associate. On half of the trials, participants were cued with an identical shape from learning. On the remaining trials, participants were cued with a similar but non-identical shape morph, enabling examination of whether participants can flexibly generalize across similar but non-identical experiences to retrieve related memories. Accuracy and response times were measured for adults, and accuracy was measured for children. Both adults and children demonstrated reliable retrieval when cued with similar yet non-identical shapes. Whereas adults showed slower and less accurate retrieval for the non-identical versus identical cues, children showed no differences in retrieval as a function of cue similarity. These findings have important implications for our understanding of how mnemonic specificity and generalization interact across development. In particular, our findings suggest that mnemonic generalization in early childhood is a consequence of less detailed memory representation. Conversely, the more mature form of generalization evidenced in adulthood is accomplished through dual processing of the commonalities and specific differences between similar yet non-identical experiences.
Lecturing in Kherson: A One-Year Reflection on Maps, Occupations, and Russia's War against Ukraine
(2023-03-15) Seegel, Steven
Lessons from the Grave
(2022-09-02) Erwin, Brittany
The Merchant, the Marriage, and the Treaty Port: Reassessing Oura Kel
(2023-02-17) Dahl, Jessa
Parents Accidentally Substitute Similar Sounding Sibling Names More Often then Dissimilar Names
(PLOS One, 2013-12-31) Griffin, Zenzi M.; Wangerman, Thomas - Georgia Institute of Technology
When parents select similar sounding names for their children, do they set themselves up for more speech errors in the future? Questionnaire data from 334 respondents suggest that they do. Respondents whose names shared initial or final sounds with a sibling’s reported that their parents accidentally called them by the sibling’s name more often than those without such name overlap. Having a sibling of the same gender, similar appearance, or similar age was also associated with more frequent name substitutions. Almost all other name substitutions by parents involved other family members and over 5% of respondents reported a parent substituting the name of a pet, which suggests a strong role for social and situational cues in retrieving personal names for direct address. To the extent that retrieval cues are shared with other people or animals, other names become available and may substitute for the intended name, particularly when names sound similar.
Presentation: Building Memories for Tomorrow: How Our Brains Predict Our Futures
(Environmental Science Institute, 2011-09-23) Environmental Science Institute; Preston, Alison
Reinforcement learning strategies support generalization of learned hierarchical knowledge
(2021) McKee, Connor; Preston, Alison
In our everyday lives, we must learn and utilize context-specific information to inform our decision making. How do we learn what choices to make based on our memories? Prior rodent work has demonstrated that after learning, knowledge becomes organized hierarchically in a context-dependent manner. Here, we quantify the emergence of context-dependent hierarchical knowledge during learning and examine the flexible use of that knowledge to generalize across different scenarios. Participants learned about objects with context-dependent reward values in an X-shaped virtual environment consisting of an elongated, contextually-varying hallway with decision points on either end. First, participants learned the context-dependent object-reward pairings for one set of three objects. Next, they learned the context-dependent object-reward pairings for a new set of three objects. We hypothesized that prior knowledge of the hierarchical structure would generalize to the second set of objects as evidenced by a facilitation in learning rates. Participants gradually learned the context-dependent object-reward pairings during learning. When introduced to the new object set, learning rates did not significantly differ, indicating generalization of the hierarchical reward structure to the new object set. To further quantify how decision making unfolded, we applied three types of reinforcement learning (RL) models to our behavioral data: model-free, model-based (MB), and combination model-based model-free (MBMF). The MB model performed the best at using participants’ past selections to successfully predict future decisions and reward value expectations, indicating that current decisions were guided by prior selections. The MBMF model was best able to represent changes in participant learning across runs, possibly due to the model’s ability to assess different learning strategies. Overall, our results demonstrate that participants learned to flexibly decide which actions were the most adaptive, promoting correct decision-making in a given context. Furthermore, the structure of prior knowledge may support the generalization of learned experience.
Remembering Rio Speedway
(2023-02-21) Helmer, Bill