Browsing by Subject "memory"
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Item Aggressive children's memory for attachment relevant information(Texas A&M University, 2004-09-30) Collie, Claire FutamaseThis study examined a measure of children's memory for information from a story about a hypothetical mother and child, the Story Task, as a potential tool to delineate subtypes of aggressive children based on the pattern of information processing revealed through their Story Task performance. The Story Task scores of 263 second and third grade aggressive children were subjected to a cluster analytic procedure. Although four apparently distinct subgroups emerged from the cluster analysis (negative recall, low recall, defensive processing, and positive projection), validation analyses of these clusters against external variables failed to reveal significant group differences. Potential exaplanations for the failure to find meaningful subgroups of aggressive children and general limitations of the study are discussed.Item Allegories of Modernity, Geographies of Memory(2012-10-19) Jeon, SeenhwaThis dissertation examines how postmodernist narratives of memory in Graham Swift's Waterland, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines retrieve the stories of those who have been lost or forgotten in official history and refigure the temporal and spatial imaginary in intertwining personal stories of crisis with public history through acts of remembering. Questioning the modernist ideology of progress based on the idea of linear sequence of time, the novels not only retrace the heterogeneous and discontinuous layers of stories overlooked or repressed in official accounts of modern history, but also re-examine the contradictory and contested process by which subjects are situated or positioned, and its effects on the production of knowledge. These postmodern historical novels examine history as a discourse and explore its limits. The narrators of the novels are engaged with an autobiographical act of rewriting their lives, but their efforts to reconstitute themselves in unity and continuity are undermined by the disjunctive narrative form of the novels. The layered narrative of memory through which the novels reconstruct modern history is allegorical in the double sense that it exposes the act of signification by decentering the symbol of the transcendental signifier while telling an allegorical story of personal and familial history that mirrors national history in a fragmented way. In Waterland, Tom Crick retells his personal and familial stories intertwined with local and national history as alternative history lessons and challenges the Idea of Progress by revisiting sites of traumatic memory. Midnight's Children constructs counter-stories of Post-Independence India as multiple alternatives to one official version of history and addresses the limits of history in terms of "a border zone of temporality." In The Shadow Lines, the narrator retells his family history as a story of borders through his struggle with gaps in official history and creates a national imaginary with mirror images and events. The postmodernist narrative of memory in these novels turns the time of the now into a time for the "past as to come," a time to detect the unrealized and unfulfilled possibilities of the past, through retellings of the past.Item Blocked and recovered memories of affective, distinctive, and neutral paragraphs(2009-05-15) Corbisier, Barbara LynnHighly affective memories have been thought to be longer lasting and more detailed than other memories, and many experimental results have supported this assertion. The apparent robustness of these memories, however, may result from their high distinctiveness, rather than their emotional content. Two experiments tested free and cued recall for negative affect, distinctive, and neutral paragraphs. Experiment 1 compared neutral and negative affect paragraphs using a blocked and recovered memory technique. Affective paragraphs were remembered significantly better than neutral paragraphs in free recall of paragraph titles, regardless of condition. Details of neutral paragraphs were remembered significantly better than affective paragraphs, regardless of condition. No recovery effect was found. Experiment 2 compared distinctive and neutral paragraphs using the same technique. Free recall of paragraph titles did not differ between paragraph types. Neutral paragraphs were remembered better than distinctive paragraphs in cued recall, regardless of condition. Participants remembered significantly more with cued recall, and significantly more in the forget condition, and distinctive paragraphs were subject to a much greater forgetting effect than neutral paragraphs. It is unclear why a robust forgetting effect, using these stimuli, was not found. Consistent with previous literature, affective stimuli were remembered well, but inconsistently, distinctive stimuli were not. These results provide support for the claim that negative affect memories are more robust than other memories. This may result from their inherent emotional content as opposed to their being distinctive in some way.Item Comparison of motor-based versus visual sensory representations in object recognition tasks(Texas A&M University, 2005-11-01) Misra, NavenduVarious works have demonstrated the usage of action as a critical component in allowing autonomous agents to learn about objects in the environment. The importance of memory becomes evident when these agents try to learn about complex objects. This necessity primarily stems from the fact that simpler agents behave reactively to stimuli in their attempt to learn about the nature of the object. However, complex objects have the property of giving rise to temporally varying sensory data as the agent interacts with the object. Therefore, reactive behavior becomes a hindrance in learning these complex objects, thus, prompting the need for memory. A straightforward approach to memory, visual memory, is where sensory data is directly represented. Another mechanism is skill-based memory or habit formation. In the latter mechanism the sequence of actions performed for a task is retained. The main hypothesis of this thesis is that since action seems to play an important role in simple perceptual understanding it may also serve as a good memory representation. In order to test this hypothesis a series of comparative tests were carried out to determine the merits of each of these representations. It turns out that skill memory performs significantly better at recognition tasks than visual memory. Furthermore, it was demonstrated in a related experiment that action forms a good intermediate representation of the sensory data. This provides support to theories that propose that various sensory modalities can ideally be represented in terms of action. This thesis successfully extends action to the role of understanding of complex objects.Item Forgotten, but Not Gone: Recovering Memories of Emotional Stories(2012-02-14) Handy, Justin DeanLaboratory methods for studying memory blocking and recovery include directed forgetting, retrieval-induced forgetting, and retrieval bias or memory blocking procedures. These methods primarily use word lists. For example, striking, reversible forgetting effects have been reported for both emotional (e.g., expletives) and non-emotional (e.g., tools) categorized lists of words. The present study examined forgetting and recovery of richer, more episodic materials. Participants studied a series of brief narrative passages varying in emotional intensity, such as a vignette involving torture or child abuse (emotional) vs. vignettes about cycling or insects (non-emotional). Free recall of the 1-word titles of the vignettes (e.g., Torture, Cyclist) showed a strong memory blocking effect, and cues from the stories on a subsequent cued recall test reversed the effect. In a second experiment, vignette-related pictures inserted into an incidental picture naming task triggered some recovery of initially forgotten vignettes, as shown on a post-test. Both emotional and non-emotional stories were susceptible to this reversible memory blocking effect.Item Imagining TR: Commemorations and Representations of Theodore Roosevelt in Twentieth-Century America(2014-11-03) Heth, Jennifer DawnBy examining monuments and memorials dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt in the twentieth century, this dissertation exposes the commemorators? conscious and unconscious perceptions of masculinity and American identity visible in commemorative statuary. The monuments? patrons and artists adapted the nation?s collective memory of Roosevelt to suit spatial and temporal variables, including their proposed messages, the monuments? geographic and situational locations, along with their intended audiences. This dissertation illustrates how commemorators employed specific incarnations of Roosevelt?s multifaceted personality, from Rough Rider to hunter-explorer to statesman, to produce permanent, prominent, and didactic symbols through which to broadcast their values and ideals to both their contemporaries and future generations of Americans. These monuments are not mere reflections of the eras that produced them, however; they serve as portals into contemporary Americans? sense of self and their understanding of national themes and politics. These visual elements produce evidence not found in textual representations. Over five chapters, this dissertation explores examples of commemorators? efforts to select a representation of Roosevelt and reveals their use of his image as an example of rugged, vigorous masculinity as well as the embodiment of Americanism. The monuments in this dissertation represent a broad geographical area, from Portland, Oregon, on the west coast to Washington, D.C., and New York City on the east coast, with Minot, North Dakota, and Keystone, South Dakota, centrally located in between. The time frame stretches from immediately following Roosevelt?s death in January 1919 through the dedication of the national memorial on Theodore Roosevelt Island in 1967, with most of the commemorative efforts originating in the mid-1920s. Despite the changing historical contexts of the monuments? dedications, these structures illustrate Roosevelt?s continued relevance and the transposibility of his image across decades and geographic spaces. Finally, although the intended audiences may have been local, regional, or national, these monuments all express issues of national significance. Sources examined include newspaper commentary of proposed and constructed monuments; artists? and architects? personal papers, correspondence, and drawings, along with photographs of design models; as well as the materials of the monuments? patrons, particularly personal and government reports, correspondence, and public statements.Item Modeling of recurrent threshold crossings due to noise with long memory(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) Singh, Abhishek NarayanThis thesis addresses the recurrent threshold crossing behavior of long-time correlated noise. The behavior of long-time correlated noise like f / 1 , 5 . 1 / 1 f , and 2 / 1 f can be associated with the behavior of many phenomena in nature, so it is of interest to study the behavior of this noise. Our method of modeling their recurring behavior relies on setting a particular threshold level for a particular level of noise and observing how frequently the noise crosses the threshold level. We also add a periodic drive to the noise which enables it to cross the threshold level easily when it is at peak, and vice versa. This technique provides a model for the changing seasons that occur during every year. We also compare the recurrence behavior of threshold crossings from our computer simulations with theoretical results from the Rice formula. We have related the recurrence of these threshold crossings with the recurrence of natural disasters. Therefore we are providing a model to predict the recurrence of a natural disaster once that disaster has previously occurred. From our results, we conclude that once a natural disaster has occurred, there is a high probability of its recurrence in a short time, and this probability gradually decreases with time.Item Product Placement: Implicit Memory and Choice for Brands Placed in a Novel(2011-10-21) Manzano, IsabelProduct placement, an advertising trend that places a brand within the context of an information medium, has emerged as an effective means of increasing brand recognition. The practice has not been thoroughly examined in the different media in which it occurs. The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effectiveness of prominent and subtle product placements in books on different forms of memory. The effectiveness of the placements was evaluated by measuring explicit and implicit memory for the placed brands. Additionally, effectiveness was measured with two types of preference judgments: a forced choice scenario and a shopping list scenario. Results from Experiment 1 showed that participants demonstrated implicit memory for brands mentioned in the novel with a word stem completion task and a category exemplar generation task. The centrality of placement only affected performance on these tasks for test-aware participants. Experiment 2 used a forced choice task and showed that consumer preference was unaffected by subtle and prominent placements. Experiment 3 used a shopping list scenario and showed that brand placement affected participants? preferences for previously studied brands regardless of the placement centrality. The experiments also showed that participants had explicit memory for the brands with prominent placements leading to better recall than subtle placements. Taken together, the findings show that the placement of brands in books is a valid means of influencing consumer awareness and behavior toward the brand.Item Regular treadmill exercise prevents sleep deprivation-induced impairment of hippocampal-dependent memory and synaptic plasticity(2012-04-19) Zagaar, Munder; Alkadhi, Karim; Eriksen, Jason; Salim, Samina; Grill, Raymond; Alcantara, AdrianaABSTRACT Study Objectives: Evidence suggests that regular exercise can protect against learning and memory impairment in the presence of insults such as stroke and neurodegeneration. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of regular exercise on hippocampus-dependent learning and memory impairment associated with sleep deprivation. Experimental Design: We investigated the effects of 4 weeks of regular treadmill exercise on learning and memory impairment in 24 hour sleep-deprived rats. Sleep deprivation was accomplished using the columns-in-water model. We tested the effects of exercise and/or sleep deprivation using three approaches: the radial arm water maze (RAWM) task to test spatial learning and memory performance; electrophysiological recording in the Cornu Ammonis (CA1) and dentate gyrus (DG) areas of the hippocampus to measure synaptic plasticity; and western blot analysis to quantify the levels of key signaling molecules that are related to memory and synaptic plasticity. Results: In the RAWM, regular exercise prevented the sleep deprivation-induced impairment of spatial learning, short-term memory, and early-phase long-term potentiation (E-LTP) in both CA1 and DG areas. In correlation, exercise prevented the sleep deprivation-associated decrease in basal levels of phosphorylated and total calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (P/total-CaMKII) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). High frequency stimulation (HFS), which increased the P-CaMKII and BDNF levels in normal animals, did not change these levels in sleep-deprived rats but did increase levels of the phosphatase calcineurin. In contrast, exercise increased BDNF and P-CaMKII levels in exercised/sleep-deprived rats, probably by preventing increases in calcineurin levels, thus maintaining appropriate P-CaMKII levels. Regular exercise also prevented the sleep deprivation-induced impairment of long-term memory and late-phase LTP. In correlation, exercise increased the basal levels of phosphorylated cAMP response element binding protein (P-CREB) and total-CREB as well as P/total- mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK/ERK) in CA1 and DG areas of sleep-deprived rats. Also, exercise allowed multiple HFS to increase the levels of BDNF and P/total-CREB during L-LTP expression in sleep-deprived rats. Conclusions: These findings suggest that sleep deprivation impairs both the CA1 and DG areas whereas exercise prevents this impairment. Regular exercise exerts a protective effect against sleep deprivation-induced impairment probably by inducing BDNF expression, which can positively modulate basal and/or stimulated levels of P-CaMKII, P-CREB, P-MAPK/ERK and calcineurin. As a result, exercise-induced BDNF could contribute to the restoration of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory as well as LTP in both CA1 and DG areas.Item Revising Selected Written Patient Education Materials Through Readability and Concreteness(2011-10-21) Goolsby, Rhonda DeniseThe current state of much research on written patient education materials (WPEM) suggests that they are written in a manner that is too difficult even for educated patients to understand and remember. Much of the research in this area is focused on modification of the readability of WPEM, which has shown to be relatively ineffective. In this study, an attempt was made to determine if a theory-based method in revising WPEM for improved comprehensibility and memorability was effective. The effectiveness of three versions of WPEM regarding breast self-exams (BSEs) was examined; the original version without illustrations obtained from the American Cancer Society website, a version that was written at a lower readability level as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula, and a version with a lower readability level as measured by the Flesch-Kincaid readability formula and the increased use of concrete language as suggested by Dual Coding Theory. The researcher compared the percentage of recall of idea units recalled by 76 participants at two time periods: immediately after reading the randomly assigned version of WPEM and seven days after the initial reading. The WPEM that contained the lower readability level and concrete language was most recalled by participants both at immediate recall and delayed recall. In fact, the delayed recall of the WPEM that contained the lower readability level and concrete language after the seven-day period was almost equivalent to the immediate recall of the participants in the other two groups. A significant main effect was found for the forms of WPEM, F(2, 73) = 27.69, p = .00, n2 p = .43 with an observed power of 1.00. A significant main effect was found for time, F(1, 73) = 161.94, p <.00, n2 p = .69 with an observed power of 1.00. A significant interaction of WPEM and time was found, F(2, 73) = 5.07, p = .01, n2 p = .12 with an observed power of .80. Reported levels of frequency of performing BSEs and levels of confidence in performing BSEs were also analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test in relation to the three WPEM versions over time. Reported frequency was significantly greater after seven days, regardless of form of WPEM (WPEM A, p = .32; WPEM B, p = 1.00; WPEM C, p = .74). Levels of confidence were significantly greater after seven days, regardless of form of WPEM (WPEM A, p = ..02; WPEM B, p = .00; WPEM C, p = .00). Overall results indicate that combining reduced readability and increased concrete language is beneficial. The writing of WPEMs in a way that patients can understand should be supported by a theory, and infusing Dual Coding Theory in the writing of selected WPEMs may be beneficial for patients.Item The Influence of Self-Perceptions of Aging on Older Adults' Cognition and Behavior(2014-07-29) Hughes, Matthew LaneHow old one feels, one?s subjective age, has been shown to predict important psychological and health outcomes. However, few studies have demonstrated a relationship between subjective age and cognitive performance. The first aim of this paper was to determine if subjective age is correlated with cognition. Study 1A investigated whether baseline subjective age was correlated with cognitive performance in several laboratory tests. The results found preliminary evidence that subjective age was correlated with several cognitive measures. Bootstrapping revealed several significant correlations between subjective age and cognitive performance. Study 1B investigated whether this effect could be replicated in an online sample. Preliminary results suggested baseline subjective age was related to cognitive performance. Bootstrapping revealed that subjective age was correlated with several cognitive measures, as well as confidence ratings. Study 1C further demonstrated that baseline subjective age was correlated with cognitive performance using data from a nationwide longitudinal study. The second aim of paper was to determine if manipulating subjective age would also affect cognition. Study 2 manipulated subjective age for a group of participants by giving them a memory test; a control group received a vocabulary test. There was evidence that manipulating subjective age affected some cognitive performance, such that higher subjective age was correlated with lower performance. Furthermore, participants who felt older were less confident in their performance for some unfamiliar tasks. The third aim of this paper was to determine whether subjective age could also be decreased, and if so, would this lead to an improvement for cognitive performance. In Study 3, half of the participants received positive feedback following a memory test, while the other half received no feedback after the test. The results suggest that positive feedback may lead to a lower subjective age, although this did not lead to higher cognitive performance. In conclusion, these studies provided strong evidence that subjective age is correlated with cognitive performance. Furthermore, the results suggest that manipulating subjective age can also affect cognitive performance and subjective confidence. Finally, the results support the theory that subjective age is a malleable variable which can be increased or decreased, depending on contextual factors.Item The Post-Dictatorial Thriller Form(2012-07-16) Powell, Audrey BryantThis dissertation proposes a theoretical examination of the Latin American thriller through the framework of post-dictatorial Chile, with a concluding look at the post civil war Central American context. I define the thriller as a loose narrative structure reminiscent of the basic detective story, but that fuses the conventional investigation formula with more sensational elements such as political violence, institutional corruption and State terrorism. Unlike the classic form, in which crime traditionally occurs in the past, the thriller form engages violence as an event ongoing in the present or always lurking on the narrative horizon. The Chilean post-dictatorial and Central American postwar histories contain these precise thriller elements. Throughout the Chilean military dictatorship (1973-1990), the Central American civil wars (1960s-1990s) and the triumph of global capitalism, political violence emerges in diversified and oftentimes subtle ways, demanding new interpretational paradigms for explaining its manifestation in contemporary society. In Chile, however, despite a history ripe with the narrative elements of the thriller, a consistent thriller novelistic tradition remains underdeveloped. My research reveals that contemporary Chilean ? and by extension, Latin American ? fiction continues to be analyzed under the aegis of melancholy and the tragic legacy of dictatorship or revolutionary insurgency. Therefore, a theoretical examination of the post-dictatorial/postwar thriller answers the need to not only move beyond previously established literary and political paradigms toward a more nuanced engagement with the present, but to envision a form of thinking beyond national tragedy and trauma. This dissertation analyzes samples of the post-dictatorial detective narrative and testimonial account, which constitute the mirroring narrative components of the thriller. The detective texts and testimonial writings analyzed in this project demonstrate how the particular use of the detective story and testimonial account mirror one another at every fundamental level, articulating what I am theorizing as the thriller structure. Using the theoretical approximations of John Beverley, Brett Levinson, Alberto Moreiras, Jon Beasley-Murray, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt and Carlo Galli, this project makes an original inquiry into why the thriller emerges as the most apt narrative framework for exploring the forms of violence in present-day Latin America.Item The Weapons of the "True Warfaring Christian": Right Reason and Free Will in Seventeenth-Century Literature(2010-01-14) Bradley, Nancy R.Milton writes in Areopagitica of the "true warfaring Christian" who can "apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better." Though many reformers saw both human nature and the faculty of reason as depraved after the fall, Milton and other radical writers in the period emphasized the role that reason can and should play in the experience of spiritual warfare. The dissertation therefore begins by considering the theological contexts within which writers of the English Reformation understood evil and human encounters with evil, especially in the form of temptations, but also in the form of disturbing dreams and satanic presences. It then considers some epistemological problems as related to the experience of such conflicts: reason, especially right reason; knowledge, conscience and memory; and free will. Focusing on the texts of John Milton, Aemilia Lanyer, Richard Norwood, and John Bunyan, this study shows that these radical religious writers refuse to conform to the general tendency in Reformation theology to discount the use of reason. Eve's dream in Milton's Paradise Lost reveals the proper use of right reason in spiritual warfare, while the actual temptation scenes in Paradise Lost and Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum point to a fundamental failure of reason in the fall. Norwood's Confessions, Milton's Comus, and Milton's Samson Agonistes portray the triumphs of human reason over evil and temptation, though there remains an awareness of the constraints placed upon reason by their fallen nature such that reason needs the aid of divine grace to function as right reason. Milton's Paradise Regained and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress point to the extraordinary victories gained by Christ and Christian through the use of right reason and memory to direct the will toward the highest goods. These texts offer a counter-voice to those who would dismiss the possibilities of the powers of right reason. Despite the awareness of the inherent limits of fallen reason, these radical reformists generally find reason an indispensable tool in spiritual battles that helps direct their wills to the highest good.Item TOT: the association strength heuristic(Texas A&M University, 2005-11-01) Choi, HyunThree experiments were conducted to examine the effect of association strength on TOT (tip-of-the-tongue states) and recall. Two hundred nineteen undergraduate students studied pictures and names of 24 imaginary animals that were presented on a large computer screen. The strength of association between the cue and target was manipulated by varying the number of times the picture and the name were presented simultaneously, while keeping the number of presentations for each picture or the target constant across conditions. After the study phase, participants were cued by each picture to recall the imaginary animal names. Participants were asked to rate their strength of TOT on a scale ranging 0 to 3 for each item if they could not think of the name at the moment. Participants also made subjective judgments as to how many times they saw the picture and name of the animal co-occur on the same screen at the study phase, and then they performed a recognition test at the end. The results indicated that the frequency and strength of TOTs linearly increased as a function of number of co-occurrences; the correlation between TOT strength and the participants?? subjective estimation of number of co-occurrences was greater than the correlation between TOT strength and the actual number of co-occurrences. This pattern of results was found even when recall increased along with the increase in number of co-occurrences and was more pronounced particularly when recall was reduced either by interference (Experiment 1) or by increased number of critical items (Experiments 2 & 3) and also by a reduced number of co-occurrence conditions and an increased gap between one level to the next (Experiment 3). Results suggest that an increase in association strength concomitantly increases TOT strength especially when the activation of the target is under threshold for recall and that people may use rules of thumb, or heuristic when they report TOTs by estimating the strength of the cue-target association.Item Tubulin in vitro, in vivo and in silico(Texas A&M University, 2005-02-17) Mershin, AndreasTubulin, microtubules and associated proteins were studied theoretically, computationally and experimentally in vitro and in vivo in order to elucidate the possible role these play in cellular information processing and storage. Use of the electric dipole moment of tubulin as the basis for binary switches (biobits) in nanofabricated circuits was explored with surface plasmon resonance, refractometry and dielectric spectroscopy. The effects of burdening the microtubular cytoskeleton of olfactory associative memory neurons with excess microtubule associated protein TAU in Drosophila fruitflies were determined. To investigate whether tubulin may be used as the substrate for quantum computation as a bioqubit, suggestions for experimental detection of quantum coherence and entanglement among tubulin electric dipole moment states were developed.