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Passwords are widely used as a primary method of authentication and access control, making them a critical component in safeguarding digital assets. However, individuals’ password-related behaviors, such as password selection, memorization, and management, significantly impact the security of their accounts. Cognitive abilities, one of which is memory capacity, have also been shown in past research to affect cybersecurity awareness and therefore password behavior, as an extension of this. This thesis aimed to explore how individuals’ short-term memory capacity influenced their password behavior and its implications for cybersecurity. The research methodology used a questionnaire as a quantitative approach towards this issue. The study examined participants’ password creation strategies and their ability to remember different aspects using cued recall. Furthermore, the relationship between password behavior and short-term memory capacity was also explored in terms of four different demographic subgroups, namely gender, age, level of education, and IT competence. The evaluation has been performed using statistical analysis on 315 complete questionnaire responses. The results of this thesis work corroborate most of the previous research on the aforementioned topics, such that females and older age were the strongest predictors of correlation between password behavior and short-term memory capacity. This thesis work can be used as guidance when conducting further research on the effects of various cognitive abilities on cybersecurity awareness.

Passwords are widely used as a primary method of authentication and access control, making them a critical component in safeguarding digital assets. However, individuals’ password-related behaviors, such as password selection, memorization, and management, significantly impact the security of their accounts. Cognitive abilities, one of which is memory capacity, have also been shown in past research to affect cybersecurity awareness and therefore password behavior, as an extension of this. This thesis aimed to explore how individuals’ short-term memory capacity influenced their password behavior and its implications for cybersecurity. The research methodology used a questionnaire as a quantitative approach towards this issue. The study examined participants’ password creation strategies and their ability to remember different aspects using cued recall. Furthermore, the relationship between password behavior and short-term memory capacity was also explored in terms of four different demographic subgroups, namely gender, age, level of education, and IT competence. The evaluation has been performed using statistical analysis on 315 complete questionnaire responses. The results of this thesis work corroborate most of the previous research on the aforementioned topics, such that females and older age were the strongest predictors of correlation between password behavior and short-term memory capacity. This thesis work can be used as guidance when conducting further research on the effects of various cognitive abilities on cybersecurity awareness.

IntroductionThe development of valid methods to diagnose prodromal Alzheimer's disease (AD) in adults with Down syndrome (DS) is one of the many goals of the Alzheimer's Biomarkers Consortium-Down Syndrome (ABC-DS).MethodsThe diagnostic utility of a modified Cued Recall Test (mCRT) was evaluated in 332 adults with DS ranging from 25 to 81 years of age. Total recall was selected a priori, as the primary indicator of performance. Multiple regression and receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) analyses were used to compare diagnostic groups.ResultsPerformance on the mCRT, as indicated by the total recall score, was highly sensitive to differences between diagnostic groups. ROC areas under the curve (AUCs) ranging from 0.843 to 0.955, were observed.DiscussionThe mCRT has strong empirical support for its use in clinical settings, as a valuable tool in studies targeting biomarkers of AD, and as a potential outcome measure in clinical trials targeting AD in this high-risk population.

Associative memory (AM) is conceptualized as the ability to form links between two previously unrelated pieces of information so that the subsequent presentation of one activates the memory of the other. Unlike other types of memory for which standardized assessment tools exist, AM is assessed mostly by ad hoc tasks designed to tackle specific research questions that are not meant to capture AM as a universal cognitive ability. Typically, AM is assessed using paired-associate paradigms with unimodal (e.g., word pairs) or multimodal (e.g., face-word) stimuli sets. In culturally diverse and multilingual societies, the application of these paradigms can lead to an unreliable and biased assessment of memory abilities. To address this issue, we developed an AM paradigm that combines key aspects of AM assessment – associative encoding, associative recognition, and cued recall, as well as implicit AM effect. The stimuli for the task - pictures of common objects and natural scenes - have been selected to minimize language and culture effects. The task has been developed using free software (OpenSesame) and stimuli, in both online and offline mode of administration, thus enabling wide and free use for research purposes across different settings. The large-scale international collaboration is set to adapt the task into 25 languages so far, including Arabic, Bosnian, Czech, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Spanish. Data is collected across 26 countries with a total of 34 samples (150-300 participants each) to assess the psychometric properties of the task and crosslinguistic (in)variance of the memory performance. The collaboration is expected to result in a comprehensive multilingual AM assessment tool, that is freely available for research use.

Our ability to link related events could be supported either byconnecting their representations in memory, or by storing themseparately but integrating their content when later drawinginferences. Here, we adapted classic memory contingencyanalyses to develop and validate an integration index designedto tap stored representations. We conducted three pre-registered experiments adopting this metric. We found positiverecall dependency for associations experienced both within thesame and across different events. Compared to a conventionalinference test, we found that recall dependency was moresensitive to a manipulation of memory integration. Leveragingrecall dependency to investigate individual differencesrevealed that better memory for contextual detail wasassociated with faster inference judgments, consistent withhigh-fidelity representations of related memories—but only forpeople who tended to store memories separately. Ourapproach, thus, provides an important tool to illuminate howrelated events are represented in memory.

Repeated testing during learning often improves later memory, which is often referred to as the testing effect. To clarify its boundary conditions, we examined whether the testing effect was selectively affected by covert (retrieved but not articulated) or overt (retrieved and articulated) response format. In Experiments 1 and 2, we compared immediate (5 min) and delayed (1 week) cued recall for paired associates following study-only, covert, and overt conditions, including two types of overt articulation (typing and writing). A clear testing effect was observed in both experiments, but with no selective effects of response format. In Experiments 3 and 4, we compared covert and overt retrieval under blocked and random list orders. The effect sizes were small in both experiments, but there was a significant effect of response format, with overt retrieval showing better final recall performance than covert retrieval. There were no significant effects of blocked versus random list orders with respect to the testing effect produced. Taken together, these findings suggest that, under specific circumstances, overt retrieval may lead to a greater testing effect than that of covert retrieval, but because of small effect sizes, it appears that the testing effect is mainly the result of retrieval processes and that articulation has fairly little to add to its magnitude in a paired-associates learning paradigm.

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), vascular dementia (VaD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are the most common forms of dementia. It is well known that memory deficits in AD are different from those in VaD and FTD, especially with respect to cued recall. The aim of this clinical study was to compare the memory performance in 15 AD, 10 VaD and 9 FTD patients and 20 normal controls by means of a 24-item Grober-Buschke test [8]. The patients’ groups were comparable in terms of severity of dementia. We considered free and total recall (free plus cued) both in immediate and delayed recall and computed an Index of Sensitivity to Cueing (ISC) [8] for immediate and delayed trials. We assessed whether cued recall predicted the subsequent free recall across our patients’ groups. We found that AD patients recalled fewer items from the beginning and were less sensitive to cueing supporting the hypothesis that memory disorders in AD depend on encoding and storage deficit. In immediate recall VaD and FTD showed a similar memory performance and a stronger sensitivity to cueing than AD, suggesting that memory disorders in these patients are due to a difficulty in spontaneously implementing efficient retrieval strategies. However, we found a lower ISC in the delayed recall compared to the immediate trials in VaD than FTD due to a higher forgetting in VaD.

Butler (2010: Experiment 3) showed that retrieval practice enhanced transfer to a new knowledge domain compared to rereading. The first experiment of the present study was a direct replication of Butler's third experiment. Participants studied text passages and then either reread them three times or went through three cycles of cued recall questions (i.e., retrieval practice) with feedback. As in Butler's (2010) experiment, an advantage of retrieval practice on the final far transfer test emerged after 1 week. Additionally, we observed an advantage of retrieval practice on the final test administered after 5 min. However, these advantages might have been due to participants in the retrieval practice condition receiving focused exposure to the key information (i.e., the feedback) that was needed to answer the final test questions. We therefore conducted a second experiment in which we included the retrieval practice condition and the reread condition from our first experiment, as well as a new reread-plus-statements condition. In the reread-plus-statements condition, participants received focused exposure to the key information after they had reread a text. As in Experiment 1, we found a large effect on far transfer when retrieval practice was compared to rereading. However, this effect was substantially reduced when retrieval practice was compared to the reread-plus-statements condition. Taken together, the results of the present experiments demonstrate that Butler's (2010) testing effect in far transfer is robust. Moreover, focused exposure to key information appears to be a significant facto

Memories compete for retrieval when they are related to a common retrieval cue. Previous research has shown that retrieval of a target memory may lead to subsequent retrievalinduced forgetting (RIF) of currently irrelevant competing memories. In the present study, we investigated the time course of competitive semantic retrieval and examined the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying RIF. We contrasted two theoretical accounts of RIF by examining a critical aspect of this memory phenomenon, namely the extent to which it depends on successful retrieval of the target memory. Participants first studied categoryexemplar word-pairs (e.g. Fruit—Apple). Next, we recorded electrophysiological measures of brain activity while the participants performed a competitive semantic cued-recall task. In this task, the participants were provided with the studied categories but they were instructed to retrieve other unstudied exemplars (e.g. Fruit—Ma__?). We investigated the eventrelated potential (ERP) correlates of retrieval success by comparing ERPs from successful and failed retrieval trials. To isolate the ERP correlates of continuous retrieval attempts from the ERP correlates of retrieval success, we included an impossible retrieval condition, with incompletable word-stem cues (Drinks—Wy__) and compared it with a non-retrieval presentation baseline condition (Occupation—Dentist). The participants’ memory for all the studied exemplars was tested in the final phase of the experiment. Taken together, the behavioural results suggest that RIF is independent of target retrieval. Beyond investigating the mechanisms underlying RIF, the present study also elucidates the temporal dynamics of semantic cued-recall by isolating the ERP correlates of retrieval attempt and retrieval success. The ERP results revealed that retrieval attempt is reflected in a late posterior negativity, possibly indicating construction of candidates for completing the word-stem cue and retrieval monitoring whereas r

The goal of this study was to test whether the accuracy of recall is influenced by the number of sensory modalities through which a concept can be experienced - a new variable closely related to word concreteness. Based on processing advantage of concepts that can be experienced through higher number of senses (fish) over the ones experienced through lower number of senses (moon), we hypothesized that the effect of number of senses will be observed in recall tasks, as well. In the first experiment, we presented pairs of related words to four groups of participants in the paired associate learning paradigm. Half of the participants were engaged in free recall, and half in cued recall. Each task was applied to two lists of stimuli. Within each list, half of the words were abstract, and half were concrete. Abstract words were identical across lists, whereas concrete words differed with respect to the number of modalities: one list consisted of concepts that can be experienced through a great number of senses, and another one contained those of a small number of sensory modalities. In addition to the traditional concreteness effect and that of the task, we observed the hypothesized effect of the number of sense modalities as well. As expected, participants were more accurate in cued recall task, more accurate when recalling concrete words, and more accurate when recalling concrete words with a large number of sensory modalities. The number of modalities effect was observed in the second experiment, where participants were presented with all three groups of words. To our best knowledge, this finding is the first demonstration of the effect of number of sensory modalities on memory processes. Finally, as expected, we observed that the concreteness effect was more pronounced in cued recall task. However, this interaction was not observed in the second experiment. Hence, we suggest further research of this phenomenon.

The goal of this study was to test whether the accuracy of recall is influenced by the number of sensory modalities through which a concept can be experienced - a new variable closely related to word concreteness. Based on processing advantage of concepts that can be experienced through higher number of senses (fish) over the ones experienced through lower number of senses (moon), we hypothesized that the effect of number of senses will be observed in recall tasks, as well. In the first experiment, we presented pairs of related words to four groups of participants in the paired associate learning paradigm. Half of the participants were engaged in free recall, and half in cued recall. Each task was applied to two lists of stimuli. Within each list, half of the words were abstract, and half were concrete. Abstract words were identical across lists, whereas concrete words differed with respect to the number of modalities: one list consisted of concepts that can be experienced through a great number of senses, and another one contained those of a small number of sensory modalities. In addition to the traditional concreteness effect and that of the task, we observed the hypothesized effect of the number of sense modalities as well. As expected, participants were more accurate in cued recall task, more accurate when recalling concrete words, and more accurate when recalling concrete words with a large number of sensory modalities. The number of modalities effect was observed in the second experiment, where participants were presented with all three groups of words. To our best knowledge, this finding is the first demonstration of the effect of number of sensory modalities on memory processes. Finally, as expected, we observed that the concreteness effect was more pronounced in cued recall task. However, this interaction was not observed in the second experiment. Hence, we suggest further research of this phenomenon.

A fundamental function of long-term memory is the ability to retrieve a specific memory when encountering a retrieval cue. The purpose of this dissertation was to further our understanding of such cued recall by investigating the temporal dynamics from the presentation of the retrieval cue until the target memory is recalled. Retrieval cues are often related with several memories. When such a retrieval cue is presented, the associated memories will compete for retrieval and this retrieval competition needs to be handled in order to retrieve the sought after target memory. Study 1 and Study 2 investigated the temporal dynamics of such competitive semantic cued recall. Interestingly, previous research has shown that the ability to retrieve the currently relevant target memory comes with a cost, namely retrieval-induced forgetting of the competing memories. These studies also investigated the role of competitor activation and target retrieval in this forgetting phenomenon. Study 1 investigated the electrophysiological correlates of reactivation of competing currently irrelevant memories and the role of such competitor activation in retrieval-induced forgetting. Competitor activation was related to an FN400 event-related potential (ERP) effect and this effect predicted increased levels of retrieval-induced forgetting, indicating that this forgetting effect is dependent on competitor activation. Study 2 examined processes involved in target retrieval in a similar competitive semantic cued recall task. The main finding in this study was that attempts to retrieve the target memory were related to a late posterior negativity ERP effect. Another important finding was that behavioural and ERP measures of target retrieval were unrelated to retrieval-induced forgetting. Retrieval cues can sometimes elicit involuntary retrieval of unwanted memories. Such memory intrusions are a core symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder. Study 3 investigated the temporal dynamics of such mem

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

__abstract__ You will most likely remember learning lists of foreign vocabulary words (such as French) in high school. Most of my classmates and I did this by reading the entire list of words once and then covering the column with French words with a piece of paper. Reading one Dutch word at a time, I tried to remember the French equivalent and checked whether my answer was correct. If it was, I put a small note next to the word to signify that I did not have to study that word anymore. And if I was wrong, I tried to imprint the right answer and tested myself again on that word in the next cycle. By doing this, the cycles became shorter and shorter until I was convinced that I would remember all the words during the exam. Without knowing it, I was using the effect of testing to my advantage. I then thought testing myself during learning was just a means of assessing which words deserved more attention. However, I now know that the act of retrieving information strengthens memory. This is called the testing effect: information that is tested is remembered better than information that is only restudied. Research into the testing effect often uses cue-target pairs, such as word pairs. The testing effect in learning cue-target pairs is the topic of this dissertation. In sum, the testing effect refers to the result of taking an intervening test (often called retrieval practice) during learning on later performance on a final memory test. In the short term, for example on a final test just a few minutes after learning, the effect of intervening testing is negative: people perform worse on a short term final test after intervening testing than after repeatedly

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

Learning occurs not only when we encode information but also when we test our memory for this information at a later time. In three empirical studies, I investigated the individual and combined effects of interleaved testing (via repeated rounds of study and test practice) and encoding (via motor enactment) during learning on later cued-recall performance for action phrases. Such materials (e.g., “water the flowers”) contain a verb and a noun and approximate everyday memory that typically revolves around past and future actions. Study I demonstrated that both interleaved testing (vs. study only) and enactment (vs. verbal encoding) individually reduced the forgetting rate over a period of 1 week, but these effects were nonadditive. That is, the direct testing effect on the forgetting rate occurred for verbal, but not for enactive encoding; enactment reduced the forgetting rate for the study-only condition, but not for the study–test condition. A possible explanation of these findings is that both study techniques sufficiently elicit verb–noun relational processing that cannot be increased further by combining them. In Studies II and III, I replicated these testing-effect results and investigated whether they varied as a function of recall type (i.e., noun-cued recall of verbs and verb-cued recall of nouns). For verbal encoding (Study II), the direct testing effect was of similar size for both noun- and verb-cued recall. For enactive encoding, the direct testing effect was lacking irrespective of recall type. In addition, interleaved tests enhanced subsequent re-encoding of action phrases, leading to an accelerated learning. This indirect testing effect was increased for the noun-cued recall of verbs—for both verbal and enactive encoding. A possible explanation is that because nouns are semantically more stable, in that the meaning of nouns changes less over time and across different contexts, they are more recognizable. Hence, associated information (e.g., about the, At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 1. Epub ahead of print. Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript.

This paper describes the design and evaluation of AffectCam, a wearable system integrating SenseCam and BodyMedia SenseWear for capturing galvanic skin response as a measure of bodily arousal. AffectCam's algorithms use arousal as a filtering mechanism for selecting the most personally relevant photos captured during people's ordinary daily life, i.e. high arousal photos. We discuss initial findings showing that emotional arousal does improve the quality of memory recall associated with emotionally arousing events. In particular, the high arousal photos support richer recall of episodic memories than low arousal ones, i.e. over 50% improvement. We also consider how various phenomenological characteristics of autobiographical memories such as event, emotions, thoughts, place and time are differently cued by the AffectCam., QC 20140624

It is generally maintained that learning should be a part of the daily routines of many organizations; this is often referred to as lesson learned processes. The purpose of organizational learning is to foster improvements that seek to both reduce incidents and accidents and reduce their consequences when they nevertheless happen. Safety work is widespread among many organizations, e.g. aviation, hospitals, process industry, fire departments and several armed forces. A considerable part of safety work involves accident prevention, and aims to investigate why and how previous accidents and incidents happened, in order to learn how to avoid them, or minimize losses when they do occur. The collection of information after incidents represents one of the first steps in a lessons learned process, and the result is crucial for further work. Unfortunately, incident reports often tend to be unfocused (they represent a very wide area of issues) and, for that reason, cannot be clustered. They also frequently lack by analysts required information. The overall research objective in this thesis was to develop a report structure that enables the individuals who participated in or observed an incident to provide more information that is relevant about that incident. The first research question seeks to identify whether the Swedish Armed Forces face the kinds of problems that have been identified in earlier research on attempts to learn from accidents and incidents. The second and third research questions aim to ascertain whether the scope and quality of collected information in incident reports can be improved and if the number of incident reports can be increased. The results agree with earlier research and show that many of the problems that are common in other organizations (e.g. aviation, hospitals and the process industry) can also be observed and are a reality within the SwAF. In addition, the results showed that both scope and quality of collected information can be influenc

It is generally maintained that learning should be a part of the daily routines of many organizations; this is often referred to as lesson learned processes. The purpose of organizational learning is to foster improvements that seek to both reduce incidents and accidents and reduce their consequences when they nevertheless happen. Safety work is widespread among many organizations, e.g. aviation, hospitals, process industry, fire departments and several armed forces. A considerable part of safety work involves accident prevention, and aims to investigate why and how previous accidents and incidents happened, in order to learn how to avoid them, or minimize losses when they do occur. The collection of information after incidents represents one of the first steps in a lessons learned process, and the result is crucial for further work. Unfortunately, incident reports often tend to be unfocused (they represent a very wide area of issues) and, for that reason, cannot be clustered. They also frequently lack by analysts required information. The overall research objective in this thesis was to develop a report structure that enables the individuals who participated in or observed an incident to provide more information that is relevant about that incident. The first research question seeks to identify whether the Swedish Armed Forces face the kinds of problems that have been identified in earlier research on attempts to learn from accidents and incidents. The second and third research questions aim to ascertain whether the scope and quality of collected information in incident reports can be improved and if the number of incident reports can be increased. The results agree with earlier research and show that many of the problems that are common in other organizations (e.g. aviation, hospitals and the process industry) can also be observed and are a reality within the SwAF. In addition, the results showed that both scope and quality of collected information can be influenc

Memory tests are frequently used to measure the effectiveness of an advertisement. However, as different tests provide different kinds of information it is important to know which type of test is the most appropriate. The main objective of this investigation was to study the effect of different memory tests on the number of brands recalled and the level of interest generated by them. A group of participants wrote down all the brands of any kind of product that they remembered having seen advertised (free recall test) and rated their interest in each brand. Subsequently, the participants were given a list of 27 categories and wrote down the brands they associated with the categories (cued recall test) and also rated their level of interest. The results showed that although the participants generated more brand names with the cued recall test, the brand names mentioned in the free recall test generated greater interest. These results highlight the importance of choosing the correct memory test to measure the effect of publicity., Una de las maneras más frecuentes de medir la efectividad de un anuncio publicitario es mediante el uso de pruebas de memoria. Sin embargo, cada prueba de evaluación aporta un tipo de información diferente por lo que es importante saber cuál es la más conveniente. El objetivo principal de esta investigación ha sido examinar el efecto que tiene el tipo de prueba de memoria tanto en el recuerdo de marcas publicitarias como en el interés subjetivo que estas generan. Un grupo de participantes escribieron marcas de productos que recordaran haber visto anunciados (prueba de recuerdo libre) y valoraron el interés por cada marca. Después recibieron un listado de 27 categorías y escribieron marcas de productos asociadas a ellas (prueba de recuerdo con clave) y también valoraron su interés. Los resultados muestran que con la prueba de recuerdo con clave se generó un mayor número de marcas, pero que las generadas en la tarea de recuerdo libre fueron evaluadas con mayores niveles de interés. Estos resultados muestran la importancia de escoger una tarea de memoria adecuada para medir el efecto de la publicidad.

Cued recall and item recognition are considered the standard episodic memory retrieval tasks. However, only the neural correlates of the latter have been studied in detail with fMRI. Using an event-related fMRI experimental design that permits spoken responses, we tested hypotheses from an auto-associative model of cued recall and item recognition [Chappell, M., & Humphreys, M. S. (1994). An auto-associative neural network for sparse representations: Analysis and application to models of recognition and cued recall. Psychological Review, 101, 103-128]. In brief, the model assumes that cues elicit a network of phonological short term memory (STM) and semantic long term memory (LTM) representations distributed throughout the neocortex as patterns of sparse activations. This information is transferred to the hippocampus which converges upon the item closest to a stored pattern and outputs a response. Word pairs were learned from a study list, with one member of the pair serving as the cue at test. Unstudied words were also intermingled at test in order to provide an analogue of yes/no recognition tasks. Compared to incorrectly rejected studied items (misses) and correctly rejected (CR) unstudied items, correctly recalled items (hits) elicited increased responses in the left hippocampus and neocortical regions including the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC), left mid lateral temporal cortex and inferior parietal cortex, consistent with predictions from the model. This network was very similar to that observed in yes/no recognition studies, supporting proposals that cued recall and item recognition involve common rather than separate mechanisms.

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

Verbal information has predominantly been the to-be-remembered materials in human memory research for more than a century. In recent years some interesting deviations from the established rules of verbal memory have been observed in subjects who have been asked to motorically self-perform (enact) action sentences at the encoding phase of the memory task, instead of only hearing or reading them as in a traditional verbal task (VT). Marked enhancements in recall were also consistently demonstrated in such studies and the effect was named the subject-performed task (SPT) effect. Presently, the body of SPT research is large but little agreement has been reached regarding the mechanism at work in producing the SPT phenomenon. The present thesis addresses two major issues in SPT research. The enhancement of associative information and the significance of the motor component are evaluated. In Study A, the SPT effect was studied in two cued-recall tasks that relied on item-specific association and relational association, respectively. The results showed that SPT encoding interacts with item-specific associative cues at recall to produce a larger SPT effect as compared to free recall. This supports the notion that part of the SPT effect is due to enhanced item-specific association. In Study B, the associative effect in SPT was studied amongst age cohorts comprised of subjects between 40 and 85 years old. Normal age-related decline in episodic memory has elsewhere been suggested to be caused mainly by associative deficits connected with ageing. The results of Study B indicate that the item-specific associative effect in SPT was more age sensitive than recall of VT and the relational associative effect in SPT. In Study C, the question over whether the SPT effect is dependent on motor modality or not was addressed. Self-produced sign language encoding was argued to be qualitatively the same as self-produced oral/verbal encoding, with the motor modality component being the only

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the memory representation of sentence is affected by the syntactic factors of sentence, using subject-object-verb (SOV) sentences and object-subject-verb (OSV) sentences. In Experiment I, either subject nouns or object nouns were provided as retrieval cues for recall of sentences. The results indicated that the object nouns were more effective cues than the subject nouns in OSV sentences while no differences were observed in SOV sentences. In Experiment II, the types of postposition ("wa" and "ga"), in addition to the word order of sentences, were varied, and the relative frequency with which the subject noun and object noun occurred as the free-association response to stimulus word was taken as the measure. The results indicated that the first noun of the sentence was more frequently elicited than the second one in both SOV and OSV sentences. The results of these two experiments were interpreted as showing that the first word of the sentence produced more stronger trace in memory representation than other components of the sentence, and were discussed in terms of activation model of semantic memory.

The purpose of the study is to see whether abstract or concrete words are better recalled in cued recall type and to measure forward and backward displayed factors in cued recall. 9 undergraduates in King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, participated in this study where they were trained to differentiate between abstract and concrete words. A list of 20 Arabic abstract and concrete words was then given to them to be classified into abstract and concrete words based on four factors: concreteness, imageability, meaningfulness and age of acquisition. An observation sheet was provided to the experiment administrator to document the observed recall effects and recalled words. Three methods were used to facilitate this experiment: auditory, visual and writing methods. The sheets were designed to measure both forward and backward recall factors