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Inhibition of return (IOR) is a phenomenon of perceptual attention characterized by delayed shifts in attention toward previously cued target locations. In reflective (internally directed) attention studies, response times (RTs) to cued items are sometimes facilitated, but other times IOR-like effects are observed wherein RTs to probed items are slower when the items had been mentally attended (refreshed) earlier in the trial. Perceptual IOR is known to be modulated by the probability that target and cued locations match. If the same is true for reflective attention, it could account for why sometimes reflective attention can lead to facilitation and other times inhibition. In the current study, four experiments examined the potential facilitative or inhibitory influence of probe predictability in reflective attention. We first replicated the design and IOR like pattern of results originally reported by Johnson et al. (2013). In subsequent experiments, when the proportion of unrefreshed probes was increased, the IOR-like effect increased in magnitude. When the proportion of refreshed probes was increased, the IOR-like effect was eliminated, but there was no evidence for facilitation. Altogether, these results are consistent with perceptual IOR literature implicating underlying inhibitory and facilitative attentional processes that can either interact synergistically or nullify each other. Further work will be needed to fully understand the paradoxical effects of why reflective attention is sometimes inhibitory and other times facilitative, but the current results demonstrate that expectation can play a significant role in the size of the effect.

Previously, we demonstrated that in young adults, briefly thinking of (i.e., refreshing) a just-seen word impairs immediate (100-ms delay) perceptual processing of the word, relative to words seen but not refreshed. We suggested that such reflective-induced inhibition biases attention toward new information. Here, we investigated whether reduced accessibility of refreshed targets dissipates with a longer delay and whether older adults would show a smaller and/or delayed effect compared with young adults. Young adult and older adult participants saw 2 words, followed by a cue to refresh one of these words. After either a 100-ms or 500-ms delay, participants read a word that was the refreshed word (refreshed probe), the nonrefreshed word (nonrefreshed probe), or a new word (novel probe). Young adults were slower to read refreshed probes than nonrefreshed probes at the 100-ms, but not the 500-ms, delay. Conversely, older adults were slower to read refreshed probes than nonrefreshed probes at the 500-ms, but not the 100-ms, delay. The delayed slowing of responses to refreshed probes was primarily observed in older-old adults (75+ years). A delay in suppressing the target of refreshing may disrupt the fluidity with which attention can be shifted to a new target. Importantly, a long-term memory benefit of refreshing was observed for both ages and delays. These results suggest that a full characterization of age-related memory deficits should consider the time course of effects and how specific component cognitive processes affect both working and long-term memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Using the self as a reference point at encoding produces a memory advantage over other types of encoding activities. Even simply co-presenting a target item with self-relevant versus other-relevant information can produce an "incidental" self-memory advantage in the absence of any explicit task demand to evaluate the item's self-relevancy. In the present study, we asked whether an incidental self-memory advantage results from (a) the mere co-presentation of a target item with self-relevant information at encoding or (b) relational processing between a target item and self-relevant information at encoding. During incidental encoding, words were presented in two different colors either above or below a name (the participant's own or another person's). Participants judged either the location of each word in relation to the name ("Is the word above or below the name?") or the color of each word to which the name had no relevance ("Is the word in red or green?"). In a subsequent memory test, we found a self-memory advantage for both items and their associated source features in the location judgment task but not in the color judgment task. Our findings show that a memory advantage for a target item presented with self-relevant versus other-relevant information is more likely when a task agenda places, via relational processing demands, the self-relevant/other-relevant information in the focus of attention along with the target item. Potential processes that mediate this attention-dependent effect are discussed.

Face attractiveness can influence memory for previously seen faces. This effect has been shown to differ for young and older perceivers. Two parallel studies examined the moderation of both the age of the face and the age of the perceiver on the relationship between facial attractiveness and face memory. Study 1 comprised 29 young and 31 older participants; Study 2 comprised 25 young and 24 older participants. In both studies, participants completed an incidental face encoding and a surprise old/new recognition test with young and older faces that varied in face attractiveness. Face attractiveness affected memory for young but not older faces. In addition, young but not older perceivers showed a linear effect of facial attractiveness on memory for young faces, while both young and older perceivers showed a quadratic effect on memory for young faces. These findings extend previous work by demonstrating that the effect of facial attractiveness on face memory is a function of both the age of the perceiver and the age of the face. Factors that could account for such moderations of face and perceiver age on the associations between face attractiveness and face memory are discussed (e.g., age differences in social goals and face similarity/distinctiveness).

A central question for cognitive neuroscience is how feature-combinations that give rise to episodic/source memories are encoded in the brain. Although there is much evidence that the hippocampus (HIP) is involved in feature binding, and some evidence that other brain regions are as well, there is relatively little evidence about the nature of the resulting representations in different brain regions. We used multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) to investigate how feature combinations might be represented, contrasting two possibilities, feature-based versus holistic. Participants viewed stimuli that were composed of three source features - a person (face or body), a scene (indoor or outdoor), and an object (bike or luggage) - which were combined to make eight unique stimulus identities. We reasoned that regions that can classify the eight identities (a multiclass classification) but not the individual features (a binary classification) likely have a holistic representation of each identity. In contrast, regions that can classify the eight identities and can classify each feature are likely to contain feature-based representations of these identities. To further probe the extent of feature-based or holistic classification in each region, we developed and validated a novel approach that directly compares binary and multiclass classification. We found clear evidence for holistic representation in the parahippocampal cortex (PHC), consistent with theories that posit that pattern-separation-like binding mechanisms are not unique to the HIP. Further clarifying the mechanisms of feature binding should benefit from systematic comparisons of multi-feature representations and whether they vary with task, type of stimulus, and/or experience.

A Multiple-Entry, Modular memory (MEM) system is a process oriented approach; the primary descriptive units are cognitive actions. MEM specifies a set of actions that, working together in various combinations, have memorial consequences. The subsystems in MEM perform different functions or solve different problems they also allow more than one type of problem to be worked on more or less simultaneously. MEM offers a more fine-grained division of learning and memory than do the top-down/bottom-up and conceptually-driven/data-driven distinctions and consequently may prove more analytically useful. The language of MEM provides a means of clarifying problems with some alternative general frameworks—such as those proposing distinctions between episodic and semantic memory, between procedural and declarative memory, and between conceptual processing and data-driven processing. The terms top-down or conceptually-driven cover processing ranging across MEM’s perceptual and reflective subsystems. MEM provides a framework for understanding a wide range of mnemonic phenomena.

This study assessed children's preference, giving, and memory to investigate the impact of social information over time. We compared 5- and 6-year-olds' (N = 144) immediate or delayed responses to an individual who does or does not share their toy preference (similar vs. dissimilar) or an individual who treats others kindly or poorly (nice vs. mean). Immediately, children all preferred the similar or nice characters but gave more stickers to the similar character. This strong initial effect of similarity was not evident after 1 week; children's preference, giving, and memory reflected a greater long-term impact of niceness than similarity. These findings highlight the importance of using multiple features and measures to elucidate children's evolving views about others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (SARMAC) was founded in 1994 with a major purpose “to enhance collaboration and co-operation between basic and applied researchers in memory and cognition.” Cognitive neuroscience presents opportunities to help actualize the SARMAC vision. The current translational zeitgeist promoted by the National Institutes of Mental Health can be seen as a call for behavioral cognitive psychologists and researchers in cognitive and clinical neuroscience to collaborate to build cumulative knowledge that will advance understanding and treatment of mental disorders. I describe some examples of connections among cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical neuroscience that are informative from my perspective as a basic researcher in cognitive psychology, and that address (but do not yet answer) some fundamental questions of clinical significance. I also note some challenges of balancing between the goals of understanding and prediction.

Episodic memory is characterized by remembering events as unique combinations of features. Even when some features of events overlap, we are later often able to discriminate among them. Here we ask whether hippocampally mediated reactivation of an earlier event when a similar one occurs supports subsequent memory that two similar but not identical events occurred (mnemonic discrimination). In two experiments, participants viewed objects (Experiment 1) or scenes (Experiment 2) during functional MRI (fMRI). After scanning, participants had to remember whether repeated items had been identical or similar. In Experiment 2, representational similarity between the 1st and 2nd presentation predicted participants' ability to remember that the presentations were different, suggesting that the first item was reactivated while viewing the second. A similar but weaker result was found in Experiment 1 that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Furthermore, both experiments yielded evidence that the hippocampus was involved in reactivation; hippocampal pattern similarity (and, in Experiment 2, hippocampal activity during the 2nd presentation) correlated with pattern similarity in several regions of visual cortex. These results provide the first fMRI evidence that hippocampally mediated reactivation contributes to the later memory that two similar, but different events occurred. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Refreshing is the component cognitive process of directing reflective attention to one of several active mental representations. Previous studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggested that refresh tasks involve a component process of initiating refreshing as well as the top-down modulation of representational regions central to refreshing. However, those studies were limited by fMRI’s low temporal resolution. In the present study, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine the timecourse of refreshing on the scale of milliseconds rather than seconds. Event-related potential (ERP) analyses showed that a typical refresh task does have a distinct electrophysiological response as compared to a control condition, and includes at least two main temporal components: an earlier (~400ms) positive peak reminiscent of a P3 response, and a later (~800ms–1400ms) sustained positivity over several sites reminiscent of the late directing attention positivity (LDAP). Overall, the evoked potentials for refreshing representations from three different visual categories (faces, scenes, words) were similar, but multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) showed that some category information was nonetheless present in the EEG signal. When related to previous fMRI studies, these results are consistent with a two-phase model, with the first phase dominated by frontal control signals involved in initiating refreshing and the second by the top-down modulation of posterior perceptual cortical areas that constitutes refreshing a representation. This study also lays the foundation for future studies of the neural correlates of reflective attention at a finer temporal resolution than is possible using fMRI.

Although children's initial perceptions and judgments about sociomoral situations are being actively explored, little is known about what children remember about them. In four experiments testing over 400 children, we investigated children's memories for small acts of giving and taking. When asked to recall their own giving and taking, children were relatively accurate following a number of delays. In contrast, when asked to recall a child's giving or taking, children exaggerated the child's taking after a 1-day or 1-week delay. Notably, this pattern of misremembering occurred only when children recalled the actions of a child but not an adult. We consider the idea that children spontaneously engage in social comparison, which colors their memories of the social world.

Within a week of the attack of September 11, 2001, a consortium of researchers from across the United States distributed a survey asking about the circumstances in which respondents learned of the attack (their flashbulb memories) and the facts about the attack itself (their event memories). Follow-up surveys were distributed 11, 25, and 119 months after the attack. The study, therefore, examines retention of flashbulb memories and event memories at a substantially longer retention interval than any previous study using a test-retest methodology, allowing for the study of such memories over the long term. There was rapid forgetting of both flashbulb and event memories within the first year, but the forgetting curves leveled off after that, not significantly changing even after a 10-year delay. Despite the initial rapid forgetting, confidence remained high throughout the 10-year period. Five putative factors affecting flashbulb memory consistency and event memory accuracy were examined: (a) attention to media, (b) the amount of discussion, (c) residency, (d) personal loss and/or inconvenience, and (e) emotional intensity. After 10 years, none of these factors predicted flashbulb memory consistency; media attention and ensuing conversation predicted event memory accuracy. Inconsistent flashbulb memories were more likely to be repeated rather than corrected over the 10-year period; inaccurate event memories, however, were more likely to be corrected. The findings suggest that even traumatic memories and those implicated in a community's collective identity may be inconsistent over time and these inconsistencies can persist without the corrective force of external influences.

Reality monitoring processes are necessary for discriminating between internally generated information and information that originated in the outside world. They help us to identify our thoughts, feelings, and imaginations, and to distinguish them from events we may have experienced or have been told about by someone else. Reality monitoring errors range from confusions between real and imagined experiences, that are byproducts of normal cognition, to symptoms of mental illness such as hallucinations. Recent advances support an emerging neurocognitive characterization of reality monitoring that provides insights into its underlying operating principles and neural mechanisms, the differing ways in which impairment may occur in health and disease, and the potential for rehabilitation strategies to be devised that might help those who experience clinically significant reality monitoring disruption.

Decades of research suggest that encoding information with respect to the self improves memory (self-reference effect, SRE) for items (item SRE). The current study focused on how processing information in reference to the self affects source memory for whether an item was self-referentially processed (a source SRE). Participants self-referentially or non-self-referentially encoded words (Experiment 1) or pictures (Experiment 2) that varied in valence (positive, negative, neutral). Relative to non-self-referential processing, self-referential processing enhanced item recognition for all stimulus types (an item SRE), but it only enhanced source memory for positive words (a source SRE). In fact, source memory for negative and neutral pictures was worse for items processed self-referentially than non-self-referentially. Together, the results suggest that item SRE and source SRE (e.g., remembering an item was encoded self-referentially) are not necessarily the same across stimulus types (e.g., words, pictures; positive, negative). While an item SRE may depend on the overall likelihood the item generates any association, the enhancing effects of self-referential processing on source memory for self-referential encoding may depend on how embedded a stimulus becomes in one's self-schema, and that depends, in part, on the stimulus' valence and format. Self-relevance ratings during encoding provide converging evidence for this interpretation.

Achieving a mechanistic explanation of brain function requires understanding causal relationships among regions. A relatively new technique to assess effective connectivity in fMRI data is Dynamic Causal Modeling (DCM). As DCM is more frequently used, it becomes increasingly important to further validate the technique and understand its limitations. With DCM, Bayesian Model Selection (BMS) is used to select the most likely causal model. We conducted simulations to test the degree to which BMS is robust to two types of challenges when applied to DCMs, those inherent to data (Category 1) and those inherent to model space (Category 2). Category 1 challenges tested properties of the data (low signal-to-noise, different response magnitudes and shapes across regions) that could either blur the distinction between models or potentially bias model selection. These challenges are impossible or difficult to measure and control in real data, so investigating their effect upon BMS through simulation is critical. Category 2 challenges tested properties of model space that create subsets of confusable models. Our results suggest that given data that conform to the prior assumptions of DCM, BMS is robust to challenges from Category 1. However, in the face of Category 2 challenges (when a more homogenous model space was tested) the false positive rate rose above an acceptable level. We show that such errors are neither trivial nor easily avoided with existing approaches. However, we argue that it is possible to detect Category 2 challenges, and avoid inappropriate interpretations by conducting simulations prior to applying DCM.AcronymsDCMDynamic Causal ModelingBMSBayesian Model SelectionfMRIfunctional magnetic resonance imagingBOLDblood oxygen level dependentFMCFamily Model ComparisonHRFhemodynamic response functionROIregion of interestSNRsignal to noise ratioR1region 1R2region 2U1input 1

Using functional MRI, we investigated reality monitoring for auditory information. During scanning, healthy young adults heard words in another person’s voice and imagined hearing other words in that same voice. Later, outside the scanner, participants judged words as “heard,” “imagined,” or “new.” An area of left middle frontal gyrus (Brodmann’s area, or BA, 6) was more active at encoding for imagined items subsequently correctly called “imagined” than for items incorrectly called “heard.” An area of left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45, 44) was more active at encoding for items subsequently called “heard” than “imagined,” regardless of the actual source of the item. Scores on an Auditory Hallucination Experience Scale were positively related to activity in superior temporal gyrus (BA 22) for imagined words incorrectly called “heard.” We suggest that activity in these areas reflects cognitive operations information (middle frontal gyrus) and semantic and perceptual detail (inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal gyrus, respectively) used to make reality-monitoring attributions.

The concept of extended self refers to the idea that people incorporate self-relevant others or objects into one’s sense of self. Initial neural support for the notion of extended self was provided by fMRI evidence that medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) showed greater activation while people imagined objects belonging to them compared with someone else (Kim & Johnson, 2012). This study investigated whether self-associated objects (i.e. ‘mine’) subsequently engage MPFC spontaneously when a task does not require explicit self-referential judgments. During fMRI scanning, participants detected ‘oddballs’ (objects with a specific frame color) intermixed with objects participants had previously imagined belonging to them or to someone else and previously unseen non-oddball objects. There was greater activity in MPFC and posterior cingulate cortex for those ‘self-owned’ objects that participants were more successful at imagining owning compared with ‘other-owned’ objects. In addition, change in object preference following the ownership manipulation (a mere ownership effect) was predicted by activity in MPFC. Overall, these results provide neural evidence for the idea that personally relevant external stimuli may be incorporated into one’s sense of self.

Perceptual processing of a target stimulus may be inhibited if its location has just been cued, a phenomenon of spatial attention known as inhibition of return (IOR). In the research reported here, we demonstrated a striking effect, wherein items that have just been the focus of reflective attention (internal attention to an active representation) also are inhibited. Participants saw two items, followed by a cue to think back to (i.e., refresh, or direct reflective attention toward) one item, and then had to identify either the refreshed item, the unrefreshed item, or a novel item. Responses were significantly slower for refreshed items than for unrefreshed items, although refreshed items were better remembered on a later memory test. Control experiments in which we replaced the refresh event with a second presentation of one of the words did not show similar effects. These results suggest that reflective attention can produce an inhibition effect for attended items that may be analogous to IOR effects in perceptual attention.

When children's self-interests are at odds with their moral considerations, what do they do? In the current study of 5- and 6-year-olds (N=160), we asked (a) whether children would select the offering of a do-gooder over a neutral individual at a personal cost, (b) whether they would reject the offering of a wrongdoer over a neutral individual at a personal cost, and (c) whether these two types of decisions involve comparable levels of conflict. In the absence of material considerations, children preferred a nice character to a neutral one, but this preference was easily overcome for material gain; children accepted a larger offering from a neutral source over a smaller offering from a nice source. In contrast, children's aversion to negative characters was largely unaffected by the same material consideration; they rejected a larger offering from a mean source in favor of a smaller offering from a neutral source. In addition, children's response times indicated that deciding whether or not to "sell out" to a wrongdoer for personal gain engenders conflict but that deciding whether to take a lesser gain from a do-gooder does not. These findings indicate that children weigh both their own material interests and others' social behaviors when selecting social partners and, importantly, that an aversion to wrongdoers is a more powerful influence on these choices than an attraction to do-gooders.

Reality monitoring refers to processes involved in distinguishing internally generated information from information presented in the external world, an activity thought to be based, in part, on assessment of activated features such as the amount and type of cognitive operations and perceptual content. Impairment in reality monitoring has been implicated in symptoms of mental illness and associated more widely with the occurrence of anomalous perceptions as well as false memories and beliefs. In the present experiment, the cognitive mechanisms of reality monitoring were probed in healthy individuals using a task that investigated the effects of stimulus modality (auditory vs visual) and the type of action undertaken during encoding (thought vs speech) on subsequent source memory. There was reduced source accuracy for auditory stimuli compared with visual, and when encoding was accompanied by thought as opposed to speech, and a greater rate of externalization than internalization errors that was stable across factors. Interpreted within the source monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993), the results are consistent with the greater prevalence of clinically observed auditory than visual reality discrimination failures. The significance of these findings is discussed in light of theories of hallucinations, delusions and confabulation.

In the present study, we explored how item repetition affects source memory for new item-feature associations (picture-location or picture-color). We presented line drawings varying numbers of times in Phase 1. In Phase 2, each drawing was presented once with a critical new feature. In Phase 3, we tested memory for the new source feature of each item from Phase 2. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated and replicated the negative effects of item repetition on incidental source memory. Prior item repetition also had a negative effect on source memory when different source dimensions were used in Phases 1 and 2 (Experiment 3) and when participants were explicitly instructed to learn source information in Phase 2 (Experiments 4 and 5). Importantly, when the order between Phases 1 and 2 was reversed, such that item repetition occurred after the encoding of critical item-source combinations, item repetition no longer affected source memory (Experiment 6). Overall, our findings did not support predictions based on item predifferentiation, within-dimension source interference, or general interference from multiple traces of an item. Rather, the findings were consistent with the idea that prior item repetition reduces attention to subsequent presentations of the item, decreasing the likelihood that critical item-source associations will be encoded.

Attention and memory are typically studied as separate topics, but they are highly intertwined. Here we discuss the relation between memory and two fundamental types of attention: perceptual and reflective. Memory is the persisting consequence of cognitive activities initiated by and/or focused on external information from the environment (perceptual attention) and initiated by and/or focused on internal mental representations (reflective attention). We consider three key questions for advancing a cognitive neuroscience of attention and memory: To what extent do perception and reflection share representational areas? To what extent are the control processes that select, maintain, and manipulate perceptual and reflective information subserved by common areas and networks? During perception and reflection, to what extent are common areas responsible for binding features together to create complex, episodic memories and for reviving them later? Considering similarities and differences in perceptual and reflective attention helps integrate a broad range of findings and raises important unresolved issues.

We investigated how age of faces and emotion expressed in faces affect young (n = 30) and older (n = 20) adults’ visual inspection while viewing faces and judging their expressions. Overall, expression identification was better for young than older faces, suggesting that interpreting expressions in young faces is easier than in older faces, even for older participants. Moreover, there were age-group differences in misattributions of expressions, in that young participants were more likely to label disgusted faces as angry, whereas older adults were more likely to label angry faces as disgusted. In addition to effects of emotion expressed in faces, age of faces affected visual inspection of faces: Both young and older participants spent more time looking at own-age than other-age faces, with longer looking at own-age faces predicting better own-age expression identification. Thus, cues used in expression identification may shift as a function of emotion and age of faces, in interaction with age of participants.

This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study examined medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity as young and older participants rated an unknown young and older person, and themselves, on personality characteristics. For both young and older participants, there was greater activation in ventral mPFC (anterior cingulate) when they made judgments about own-age than other-age individuals. Additionally, across target age and participant age, there was greater activity in a more anterior region of ventral mPFC (largely medial frontal gyrus, anterior cingulate) when participants rated others than when they rated themselves. We discuss potential interpretations of these findings in the context of previous results suggesting functional specificity of subregions of ventral mPFC.

Constructing a rich and coherent visual experience involves maintaining visual information that is not perceptually available in the current view. Recent studies suggest that briefly thinking about a stimulus (refreshing) can modulate activity in category-specific visual areas. Here, we tested the nature of such perceptually refreshed representations in the parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial cortex (RSC) using fMRI. We asked whether a refreshed representation is specific to a restricted view of a scene, or more view-invariant. Participants saw a panoramic scene and were asked to think back to (refresh) a part of the scene after it disappeared. In some trials, the refresh cue appeared twice on the same side (e.g., refresh left–refresh left), and other trials, the refresh cue appeared on different sides (e.g., refresh left–refresh right). A control condition presented halves of the scene twice on same sides (e.g., perceive left–perceive left) or different sides (e.g., perceive left–perceive right). When scenes were physically repeated, both the PPA and RSC showed greater activation for the different-side repetition than the same-side repetition, suggesting view-specific representations. When participants refreshed scenes, the PPA showed view-specific activity just as in the physical repeat conditions, whereas RSC showed an equal amount of activation for different- and same-side conditions. This finding suggests that in RSC, refreshed representations were not restricted to a specific view of a scene, but extended beyond the target half into the entire scene. Thus, RSC activity associated with refreshing may provide a mechanism for integrating multiple views in the mind.

Self-relevant thought (e.g., rating how characteristic trait adjectives are of self versus others) activates areas of medial cortex including both anterior (medial frontal gyrus and/or anterior cingulate cortex) and posterior (posterior cingulate cortex and/or precuneus) regions (for reviews, see, e.g., Cavanna & Trimble, 2006; Macrae, Moran, Heatherton, Banfield, & Kelley, 2004; Northoff et al., 2006; Ochsner et al., 2005; Vogt & Laureys, 2005). Identifying the functional specificity of subregions of medial cortex in self-relevant thought is the focus of current empirical and theoretical work in social-cognitive neuroscience (e.g., Johnson et al., 2006; Schmitz & Johnson, 2007; Uddin, Iacoboni, Lange, & Keenan, 2007; for reviews and conceptual discussions, see, e.g., Lieberman, 2007; Mitchell, 2008; Northoff et al., 2006; Northoff & Bermpohl, 2004; Olsson & Ochsner, 2008). One approach is to investigate the role(s) of medial cortex when individuals process different motivationally significant personal agendas, such as hopes and aspirations versus duties and obligations (related to a promotion or prevention self-regulatory focus, respectively, Higgins, 1997) (Johnson et al., 2006; Johnson, Nolen-Hoeksema, Mitchell, & Levin, 2008). Such agendas guide our perception, thought, and behavior, and help to define our “self”. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Johnson et al. (2006) compared young adults’ brain activity associated with thinking about each of these agendas versus thinking about non self-relevant control topics (e.g., shape of USA). Both thinking about hopes and aspirations and thinking about duties and obligations were associated with greater activity than the control condition in an anterior medial region (medial frontal gyrus/anterior cingulate cortex) and a posterior medial region (cingulate cortex/precuneus). This was consistent with previous findings of activity in these areas during self-focused thought (for reviews, see, e.g., Cavanna & Trimble, 2006; Macrae et al., 2004; Northoff et al., 2006; Ochsner et al., 2005; Vogt & Laureys, 2005). In addition, there was a double dissociation. In anterior medial cortex, a more dorsal area (anterior cingulate/dorsomedial frontal gyrus) showed greater activity in both self-relevant conditions (which did not differ) than the control condition, and a more ventral portion of anterior cingulate showed relatively greater activity related to thinking about hopes and aspirations than to thinking about duties and obligations. In posterior medial cortex, a more superior/posterior area (posterior cingulate, cuneus, precuneus) showed greater activity in both self-relevant conditions (which did not differ) than the control condition, and a more inferior/anterior area (lingual gyrus, posterior cingulate, parahippocampus) showed relatively greater activity related to thinking about duties and obligations than hopes and aspirations. This dissociation suggests differential involvement of anterior and posterior medial cortex in self-relevant motivational thinking depending on either the content of such thought or the specific component processes called upon to generate, retrieve, or evaluate such information. Johnson et al. (2006) suggested several hypotheses, including that medial frontal cortex is associated with a more inward-directed self-focus, whereas posterior medial cortex is associated with a more outward-directed, social, or contextual focus when thinking about personal agendas (see, Northoff et al., 2006 for a similar distinction). One way to further investigate the relationship of these areas to the processing of motivationally-relevant information is to examine the pattern of brain activity associated with thinking about such agendas in populations that show reliable behavioral differences in motivational focus. Normal aging is associated with significant changes in motivational orientation. For example, there is evidence suggesting that older adults are more “other” or “outward” focused, whereas young adults are more “self” or “inward” focused in their motivational orientations. Older adults express, for instance, strong concerns for the state of the world and the future of family members and subsequent generations (McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1998) and family members make up a substantial part of their social networks (Antonucci, 2001). In addition, compared to young adults, older adults consider a more restricted range of motivational goals as self-relevant, for example, they focus on fewer, more central, goals and life domains than do young adults (Riediger & Freund, 2006; Staudinger, Freund, Linden, & Maas, 1999). Also, whereas young adults’ goals tend to center on growth and acquisition (e.g., of knowledge or physical health), older adults increasingly focus on maintenance and retention of resources and loss prevention (Ebner, Freund, & Baltes, 2006; Heckhausen, 1997; Ogilvie, Rose, & Heppen, 2001). These behavioral findings suggest that we should find age-group differences in activity in anterior and posterior medial cortex when young and older adults think about personal agendas: relatively greater activity in medial prefrontal cortex in young than older adults, related to an inward self-focus and concern for acquisition, and possibly greater activity in posterior medial cortex in older than younger adults, related to an outward-focus and concern for loss prevention. A recent fMRI study (Gutchess, Kensinger, & Schacter, 2007) did not find age-related differences in medial cortex activity when young and older participants were asked to rate the self-relevance of trait adjectives. Nevertheless, given the behavioral evidence for age-group differences in motivational focus, we would expect age-group differences in medial cortex related to differences in the processing engaged by young and older adults when they are asked to think about more motivationally relevant themes. This would support the idea that these areas are not simply “self regions”, but rather are differentially sensitive to certain types of self-focus or the particular content of self-relevant thought. Thus, the goal of the present study was to assess potential age-group differences in medial prefrontal cortex and medial posterior cortex in self-relevant thinking by examining the pattern of activity of young and older adults as they considered the motivationally significant agendas of hopes and aspirations and duties and obligations.

More than 3,000 individuals from 7 U.S. cities reported on their memories of learning of the terrorist attacks of September 11, as well as details about the attack, 1 week, 11 months, and/or 35 months after the assault. Some studies of flashbulb memories examining long-term retention show slowing in the rate of forgetting after a year, whereas others demonstrate accelerated forgetting. This article indicates that (a) the rate of forgetting for flashbulb memories and event memory (memory for details about the event itself) slows after a year, (b) the strong emotional reactions elicited by flashbulb events are remembered poorly, worse than nonemotional features such as where and from whom one learned of the attack, and (c) the content of flashbulb and event memories stabilizes after a year. The results are discussed in terms of community memory practices., James S. McDonnell Foundation, National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (grant R01- MH0066972)

Focusing primarily on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this article reviews evidence regarding the roles of subregions of the medial temporal lobes, prefrontal cortex, posterior representational areas, and parietal cortex in source memory. In addition to evidence from standard episodic memory tasks assessing accuracy for neutral information, the article considers studies assessing the qualitative characteristics of memories, the encoding and remembering of emotional information, and false memories, as well as evidence from populations that show disrupted source memory (older adults, individuals with depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, or schizophrenia). Although there is still substantial work to be done, fMRI is advancing understanding of source memory and highlighting unresolved issues. A continued 2-way interaction between cognitive theory, as illustrated by the source monitoring framework (M. K. Johnson, S. Hashtroudi, & D. S. Lindsay, 1993), and evidence from cognitive neuroimaging studies should clarify conceptualization of cognitive processes (e.g., feature binding, retrieval, monitoring), prior knowledge (e.g., semantics, schemas), and specific features (e.g., perceptual and emotional information) and of how they combine to create true and false memories.

We explored age-related differences in executive function during selection of a target from among active representations. Refreshing (thinking briefly of a just-activated representation) is an executive process that foregrounds a target relative to other active representations. In a behavioral study, participants saw one or three words, then saw a cue to refresh one of the words, saw one word again and read it, or read a new word. Increasing the number of active representations increased response times (RTs) only in the refresh condition for young adults but increased RTs equally in all conditions for older adults, suggesting that they experienced interference from activated irrelevant information during perception and reflection. Consistent with this interpretation, in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study, young adults showed two areas of the left dorsolateral frontal cortex and a medial area of frontal cortex, including anterior cingulate, that were relatively more sensitive to number of active representations during refresh than read trials; for older adults these areas were equally sensitive to number of active items for refresh and read trials. Young and older adults showed activity associated with refreshing on trials requiring selection in left mid-ventral frontal cortex (an area associated with selection from active representations); older adults also showed activity in left anterior ventral frontal cortex (an area associated with controlled semantic activation). Our results support the hypothesis of an age-related decrease in ability to gate out activated but currently irrelevant information, and are consistent with a dissociation of function between eft mid-ventral and left anterior ventral frontal cortex.

We investigated self-regulatory focus (Higgins, 1997, 1998) as one source of variation in encoding of, and memory for, emotional words. Participants wrote about their hopes and aspirations (promotion focus) or duties and obligations (prevention focus). In a subsequent incidental encoding task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants evaluated emotional (positive and negative) and neutral words as either good or bad. A surprise memory test followed, outside the scanner. We observed a dissociation in posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), where activity during the evaluation task was greater when words were focus-consistent (positive for the promotion focus group, negative for the prevention focus group). Similarly, activity in a parahippocampal region was related to subsequent memory, but only for focus-consistent words. Given the role of the PCC in self-referential processing and episodic retrieval, and the parahippocampus in memory-related processing, these data suggest that regulatory focus influences which items are preferentially associated with self-referential information in memory. Such preferential processing may help explain why events are remembered differently by different individuals, which subsequently may influence interpersonal interactions.

In studies of autobiographical memory, women typically remember more emotional information than do men. The present study evaluated whether women recall more emotional information than men when the content of an event is controlled. Participants read a script containing emotional and neutral information, under instructions to prepare advice for the characters addressing either interpersonal issues (emotional focus), concrete plans (neutral focus), or with no particular topic suggested (undirected focus). After writing out advice, on a surprise memory test women recalled more emotional information than men in all focus conditions with no deficit in neutral recall. Women recalled more neutral information than men in the neutral focus condition. A measure of emotional sensitivity mediated the gender difference in emotional recall suggesting that memory for emotional information is not solely a function of gender.

The study of reality monitoring is concerned with the factors and processes that influence the veridicality of memories and knowledge, and the reasonableness of beliefs. In thinking about the mass media and reality monitoring, there are intriguing and challenging issues at multiple levels of analysis. At the individual level, we can ask how the media influence individuals' memories, knowledge and beliefs, and what determines whether individuals are able to identify and mitigate or benefit from the media's effects. At the institutional level, we can ask about the factors that determine the veridicality of the information presented, for example, the institutional procedures and criteria used for assessing and controlling the quality of the products produced. At the inter-institutional level we can consider the role that the media play in monitoring the products and actions of other institutions (e.g. government) and, in turn, how other institutions monitor the media. Interaction across these levels is also important, for example, how does individuals' trust in, or cynicism about, the media's institutional reality monitoring mechanisms affect how individuals process the media and, in turn, how the media engages in intra- and inter-institutional reality monitoring. The media are interesting not only as an important source of individuals' cognitions and emotions, but for the key role the media play in a critical web of social/cultural reality monitoring mechanisms. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.