Strategy training enhances memory performance in single task but not in dual tasking: preliminary results

Research Objectives: This study tests the hypothesis that strategy training improves memory performance in single task. It also investigates whether the effect is observed in dual tasking. Design/Method: A repeated-measures design was employed. Two groups of participants performed a memory task and a secondary auditory discrimination task individually, and a dual-task which combined both. The experimental group (N=7) were then taught strategies such as association/imagery, while the control group (N=6) received no training. Number of words recalled from a word list and reaction time for the auditory discrimination task were recorded pre and post training. Results: Following training the words recalled was significantly increased in the single-task condition but not in the dual-task condition. As expected, there was no significant increase in words recalled in either condition for the control group. Secondary task performance was not significantly affected by strategy training. Conclusions: The use of strategies may contribute to improve memory for simple tasks primarily

When Ears Drive Hands: The Influence of Contact Sound on Reaching to Grasp

Background Most research on the roles of auditory information and its interaction with vision has focused on perceptual performance. Little is known on the effects of sound cues on visually-guided hand movements. Methodology/Principal Findings We recorded the sound produced by the fingers upon contact as participants grasped stimulus objects which were covered with different materials. Then, in a further session the pre-recorded contact sounds were delivered to participants via headphones before or following the initiation of reach-to-grasp movements towards the stimulus objects. Reach-to-grasp movement kinematics were measured under the following conditions: (i) congruent, in which the presented contact sound and the contact sound elicited by the to-be-grasped stimulus corresponded; (ii) incongruent, in which the presented contact sound was different to that generated by the stimulus upon contact; (iii) control, in which a synthetic sound, not associated with a real event, was presented. Facilitation effects were found for congruent trials; interference effects were found for incongruent trials. In a second experiment, the upper and the lower parts of the stimulus were covered with different materials. The presented sound was always congruent with the material covering either the upper or the lower half of the stimulus. Participants consistently placed their fingers on the half of the stimulus that corresponded to the presented contact sound. Conclusions/Significance Altogether these findings offer a substantial contribution to the current debate about the type of object representations elicited by auditory stimuli and on the multisensory nature of the sensorimotor transformations underlying action

The Grasping Side of Odours

Background: Research on multisensory integration during natural tasks such as reach-to-grasp is still in its infancy. Crossmodal links between vision, proprioception and audition have been identified, but how olfaction contributes to plan and control reach-to-grasp movements has not been decisively shown. We used kinematics to explicitly test the influence of olfactory stimuli on reach-to-grasp movements. Methodology/Principal Findings: Subjects were requested to reach towards and grasp a small or a large visual target (i.e., precision grip, involving the opposition of index finger and thumb for a small size target and a power grip, involving the flexion of all digits around the object for a large target) in the absence or in the presence of an odour evoking either a small or a large object that if grasped would require a precision grip and a whole hand grasp, respectively. When the type of grasp evoked by the odour did not coincide with that for the visual target, interference effects were evident on the kinematics of hand shaping and the level of synergies amongst fingers decreased. When the visual target and the object evoked by the odour required the same type of grasp, facilitation emerged and the intrinsic relations amongst individual fingers were maintained. Conclusions/Significance: This study demonstrates that olfactory information contains highly detailed information able to elicit the planning for a reach-to-grasp movement suited to interact with the evoked object. The findings offer a substantia

Pedagogical memory and the space of the postcolonial classroom : reading Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions

This article addresses issues of the mnemonic space of the literature classroom by interrogating a classic text of African women’s writing, Tsitsi Dangaremnga’s Nervous Conditions (1988) for the ways it speaks about education in 1960s and 1970s late-colonial Rhodesia. The article suggests that the novel reviews and critiques a number of memorial strategies that were crucial to the colonial educational system, thereby facilitating a reflexive application of the novel’s concerns to the contexts in which it is often taught, that of today’s postcolonial classrooms. The article seeks to place Dangarembga’s novel in the context of its present moment, contemporary South Africa – that of the present critic’s site of practice, both pedagogical and scholarly, and that of many of this article’s readers. This present moment, in turn, is made up the many sites, successive and simultaneous, in which the novel’s work of memory is being re-activated in the minds of students as readers and writers. Via a dialogue between the textual past and the pedagogical present, one which is often subject to critical amnesia, the article seeks to inaugurate a debate on the nature of pedagogical memory in the space of the postcolonial university or high school literature classroom.http://www.informaworld.com/RSCRhb2013gv201

Attentional bias for positive words and negative facial expressions revealed in an emotional Stroop paradigm using concurrent stimulus and target

Research objectives: Attentional bias to emotional words and faces in trait anxiety was examined in an emotional Stroop paradigm where stimulus and target were concurrent and adjacent. A bias was expected for both negative and positive words and faces, with a greater interference in higher trait anxiety. Design: Repeated-measures were used in a word and face emotional Stroop tasks to examine bias for emotion-laden relative to neutral stimuli. Method: Participants were placed in low (n=20) and high (n=20) trait anxiety groups based on a median split of STAI-T scores. They were shown positive-valenced, negative-valenced and neutral words, and happy, sad and neutral facial expressions. Response times to name the background colour (target) of the words and faces (stimuli) were measured. Results: No difference between the groups was found. Response times were slower for positive words and sad faces. Conclusions: Interference also operates when emotional stimulus and target are presented concurrently in adjacent locations

A cross-modal interference effect in grasping objects

The aim of the present paper was to investigate how the kinematics of a hand reaching toward a visual target would be influenced by haptic and proprioceptive input from an unseen distractor actively graspedin the other, nonreaching hand. The main resultswere that the amplitude of maximum grip aperture was smaller and the time to maximum grip aperture was earlier when the distractor was smaller than the target.The interferenceeffect fromthe distractorwas similar for both hands as they reached. Furthermore, results from a vibrating-distractorcondition for passive tactile input revealedthat the interference effects were evident only when the distractor was actively grasped.We suggest that neural processing of proprioceptive and tactile information relevant to distractor size produced the observed interference effects.We also emphasize the importance of active manipulation of the distractor stimulus in eliciting such interference effects