Memory and automatic processing of valuable information in younger and older adults.

People often engage in the selective remembering of valuable or important information, whether strategic and/or automatic. We examined potential age-related differences in the automatic processing of value during encoding on later remembering by presenting participants with words paired with point values (range: 1-10 twice or 1-20) to remember for a later test. On the first three lists, participants were told that they would receive the points associated with each word if they recalled it on the test (their goal was to maximize their score). On the last three lists, we told participants that all words were worth the same number of points if recalled on the tests, thus making the point value paired with each word meaningless. Results revealed that selective memory may be impaired in older adults using procedures with larger value ranges. Additionally, we demonstrated that the automatic effects of value may have a greater effect on younger adults relative to older adults, but there may be instances where older adults also exhibit these automatic effects. Finally, strategic and automatic processes may not be related within each learner, suggesting that these processes may rely on different cognitive mechanisms. This indicates that these processes could be underpinned by distinct cognitive mechanisms: strategic processes might engage higher-level cognitive operations like imagery, while automatic processes appear to be more perceptually driven.

Goal-directed remembering in older adults.

Compared to younger adults, older adults show a reduced difference in memory between items they are directed to remember and items they are directed to forget. This effect may result from increased processing of goal-irrelevant information in aging. In contrast, healthy older adults are often able to selectively remember valuable information, suggesting preservation of goal-directed encoding in aging. Here, we examined how value may differentially affect directed-forgetting and memory for irrelevant details for younger and older adults in a value-directed remembering task. In Experiment 1, participants studied words paired with a directed-forgetting cue and a point-value they earned for later recognition. Participants' memory was then tested, either after an 8-min or 24-hr retention interval. In Experiment 2 words were presented in two colors and the recognition test assessed whether the participant could retrieve the incidentally-presented point value and the color of each recognized words. In both experiments, older and younger adults displayed a comparable ability to selectively encode valuable items. However, older adults showed a reduced directed-forgetting effect compared to younger adults that was maintained across the 24-hr retention interval. In Experiment 2, older adults showed both intact directed-forgetting and similar incidental detail retrieval compared to younger adults. These findings suggest that older adults maintained selectivity to value, demonstrating that aging does not impact the differential encoding of valuable information. Furthermore, younger and older adults may be similarly goal-directed in terms of item features to encode, but that instructions to forget presented items are less effective in older adults.

Effects of early-life stress on probabilistic reversal learning and response perseverance in young adults.

Early life stress (ELS), including experiences with abuse and neglect, are related to several negative health outcomes in adulthood. One area that has received attention is the increased rate of substance abuse disorder in individuals who had experienced ELS. Given the critical role habitual behavior in the development of substance abuse, ELS may affect the trajectory of neural development such that habitual responding is more dominant than in individuals who did not experience ELS. Here, we examine learning of a probabilistic classification task (the Weather Prediction Task) in healthy young adults who reported significant ELS and those that did not. This task can be learned in a declarative, model-based manner, or in a more habitual, stimulus-response manner. Participants learned to choose the outcome (sun or rain) that was probabilistically associated with each cue combination through reinforcement on each trial. After 100 trials, the probabilities were reversed, and we conceptualized habitual behavior as perseverating responses based on the old probabilities. We also collected information about subjective socio-economic status (sSES), anxiety, depression, and substance use from participants. Using multiple regression, we found that our measure of habitual responding was correlated with reported alcohol use, suggesting that our measure of habit has validity for health behaviors. Furthermore, we found that some forms of early life stress led to greater response perseverance after contingencies were reversed. Overall, the results suggest that childhood adversity may contribute to the development of habit.

Age-Related Differences in Framing Selective Memory in Terms of Gains and Losses.

We examined whether framing younger and older adults learning goals in terms of maximizing gains or minimizing losses impacts their ability to selectively remember high-value information. Specifically, we presented younger and older adults with lists of words paired with point values and participants were either told that they would receive the value associated with each word if they recalled it on a test or that they would lose the points associated with each word if they failed to recall it on the test. We also asked participants to predict the likelihood of recalling each word to determine if younger and older adults were metacognitively aware of any potential framing effects. Results revealed that older adults expected to be more selective when their goals were framed in terms of losses, but younger adults expected to be more selective when their goals were framed in terms of gains. However, this was not the case as both younger and older adults were more selective for high-value information when their goals were framed in terms of maximizing gains compared with minimizing losses. Thus, the framing of learning goals can impact metacognitive decisions and subsequent memory in both younger and older adults.

Establishing a causal role for left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in value-directed memory encoding with high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation.

One critical approach for promoting the efficiency of memory is to adopt selective encoding strategies to prioritize more valuable information. Past neuroimaging studies have shown that value-directed modulation of verbal memory depends heavily on the engagement of left-lateralized semantic processing regions, particularly in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC). In the present study, we used high-definition transcranial direct current stimulation (HD-tDCS) to seek evidence for a causal role of left VLPFC in supporting the memory advantage for high-value items. Three groups of healthy young adult participants were presented with lists of words to remember, with each word accompanied by an arbitrarily assigned point value. During the first session, all participants received sham stimulation as they encoded five lists of 30 words each. Two of these lists were immediately tested with free recall, with feedback given to allow participants to develop metacognitive insight and strategies to maximize their point total. The second session had the exact same structure as the first, but the groups differed in whether they received continued sham stimulation (N = 22) or anodal stimulation of the left VLPFC (N = 21) or right VLPFC (N = 20). Those lists not tested with immediate recall were tested with recognition judgments after a one-day delay. Since no brain stimulation was applied during this Day 2 test, any performance differences can be attributed to the effects of stimulation on Day 1 encoding processes. Anodal stimulation of left VLPFC significantly boosted participants' memory encoding selectivity. In comparison, no such effect was seen in participants who received right VLPFC or sham stimulation. Estimates of recollection- and familiarity-based responding revealed that left VLPFC stimulation specifically amplified the effects of item value on recollection. These results demonstrate a causal role for left VLPFC in the implementation of selective value-directed encoding strategies, putatively by boosting deep semantic processing of high-value words. Our findings also provide further evidence on the hemispheric lateralization of value-directed verbal memory encoding.

Value-directed remembering in first-episode schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: Memory deficits in individuals with schizophrenia are well-established, but less is known about how schizophrenia affects metacognitive processes such as metamemory. We investigated metamemory ability using the value-directed remembering task, which assesses the degree to which participants use value cues to guide their learning of a list of items (i.e., their memory selectivity). METHOD: Participants were patients undergoing treatment following a recent first episode of schizophrenia (n = 20) and demographically comparable healthy controls (n = 18). Participants viewed six lists of 24 words where each word was paired with either a low value (1-3 points) or a high value (10-12 points), and they were instructed to maximize their score on free recall tests given after each list. After the final free recall test, participants completed a recognition test where they gave remember/know judgments. RESULTS: On tests of free recall, patients showed reduced memory selectivity relative to healthy controls. On the recognition test, patients failed to show an effect of value on recognition of nonrecalled words, in contrast to healthy controls, who showed a significant value effect that was characterized by greater "remember" judgments. Patients initially overestimated their memory capacity but were able to adjust their estimates to be more accurate based on task experience. Patients' self-reports of memory selectivity were unrelated to their actual memory selectivity. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with first-episode schizophrenia had substantial impairments on the value-directed remembering task, but areas of preserved metamemory ability were also observed. These findings have potential implications for cognitive training interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Framing effects in value-directed remembering.

Changing how an issue is framed can influence both decision-making and metacognition, but framing a memory task in terms of gains and losses could also impact how learners prioritize information according to its value or importance. We investigated how framing task instructions and feedback in terms of gains and losses influences learners' ability to selectively remember valuable information at the expense of low-value information. Specifically, we presented learners with to-be-remembered words paired with point values and either told participants how many points they scored (the sum of the values of recalled words) or lost (the sum of the values of not-recalled words) on each list, with participants' goal being to maximize their scores or minimize their losses, respectively. Overall, participants were more selective for high-value words when their goals were framed in terms of point gains compared with when their goals were framed in terms of losses, and learners' metacognitive predictions of performance (JOLs) generally mapped onto this trend. Thus, framing in terms of losses for forgetting can reduce memory selectivity, perhaps because even small losses are salient, indicating that framing effects are not limited to decision-making but can influence memory and metacognitive processes as well.

Memory and Reward-Based Learning: A Value-Directed Remembering Perspective.

The ability to prioritize valuable information is critical for the efficient use of memory in daily life. When information is important, we engage more effective encoding mechanisms that can better support retrieval. Here, we describe a dual-mechanism framework of value-directed remembering in which both strategic and automatic processes lead to differential encoding of valuable information. Strategic processes rely on metacognitive awareness of effective deep encoding strategies that allow younger and healthy older adults to selectively remember important information. In contrast, some high-value information may also be encoded automatically in the absence of intention to remember, but this may be more impaired in older age. These different mechanisms are subserved by different neural substrates, with left-hemisphere semantic processing regions active during the strategic encoding of high-value items, and automatic enhancement of encoding of high-value items may be supported by activation of midbrain dopaminergic projections to the hippocampal region.

Interleaved practice benefits implicit sequence learning and transfer.

Compared to blocked practice, interleaved practice of different tasks leads to superior long-term retention despite poorer initial acquisition performance. This phenomenon, the contextual interference effect, is well documented in various domains but it is not yet clear if it persists in the absence of explicit knowledge in terms of fine motor sequence learning. Additionally, while there is some evidence that interleaved practice leads to improved transfer of learning to similar actions, transfer of implicit motor sequence learning has not been explored. The present studies used a serial reaction time task where participants practiced three different eight-item sequences that were either interleaved or blocked on Day 1 (training) and Day 2 (testing). In Experiment 1, the retention of the three training sequences was tested on Day 2 and in Experiment 2, three novel sequences were performed on Day 2 to measure transfer. We assessed whether subjects were aware of the sequences to determine whether the benefit of interleaved practice extends to implicitly learned sequences. Even for participants who reported no awareness of the sequences, interleaving led to a benefit for both retention and transfer compared to participants who practiced blocked sequences. Those who trained with blocked sequences were left unprepared for interleaved sequences at test, while those who trained with interleaved sequences were unaffected by testing condition, revealing that learning resulting from blocked practice may be less flexible and more vulnerable to testing conditions. These results indicate that the benefit of interleaved practice extends to implicit motor sequence learning and transfer.

Effects of Age-Related Stereotype Threat on Metacognition.

Previous work has shown that memory performance in older adults is affected by activation of a stereotype of age-related memory decline. In the present experiment, we examined whether stereotype threat would affect metamemory in older adults; that is, whether under stereotype threat they make poorer judgments about what they could remember. We tested older adults (M Age = 66.18 years) on a task in which participants viewed words paired with point values and "bet" on whether they could later recall each word. If they bet on and recalled a word, they gained those points, but if they bet on and failed to recall a word, they lost those points. Thus, this task required participants to monitor how much they could remember and prioritize high value items. Participants performed this task over six lists of items either under stereotype threat about age-related memory decline or not under stereotype threat. Participants from both groups performed similarly on initial lists, but on later lists, participants under stereotype threat showed impaired performance as indicated by a lower average point score and a lower average gamma coefficient. The results suggest that a modest effect of stereotype threat on recall combined with a modest effect on metacognitive judgments to result in a performance deficit. This pattern of results may reflect an effect of stereotype threat on executive control reducing the ability to strategically use memory.

Early-life stress is associated with a preponderance of habitual responding in a novel instrumental avoidance learning paradigm.

There is substantial evidence linking early-life stress (ELS) to negative health outcomes in adulthood, including addiction. However, the neurocognitive and behavioral mechanisms through which ELS increases these risks remain unclear. To address this gap in knowledge, we developed a novel instrumental learning paradigm to explore the effects of ELS on the balance of habitual versus goal-directed learning. Habits efficiently reproduce repetitive behaviors but are inflexible whenreward contingencies related to those behaviors change. Persisting in performing a response after its outcome has been devalued is the hallmark of habitual behavior in instrumental learning. Participants with a history of higher ELS were significantly more likely to make habitual responses in this instrumental avoidance learning paradigm than individuals with a history of lower ELS. Logistic regression analysis showed that ELS is significantly related to habitual responding over and above the effects of retrospective socioeconomic status, trait and state anxiety, depression and recent levels of stress. Analysis of the differential impacts of the type of ELS suggested that these effects are largely driven by experiences of physical neglect.

Enhanced Avoidance Habits in Relation to History of Early-Life Stress.

The effect of stress on the balance between goal-directed behavior and stimulus-response habits has been demonstrated in a number of studies, but the extent to which stressful events that occur during development affect the balance between these systems later in life is less clear. Here, we examined whether individuals with a history of early-life stress (ELS) show a bias toward avoidance habits on an instrumental learning task as adults. Participants (N = 189 in Experiment 1 and N = 112 in Experiment 2) were undergraduate students at the University of California, Los Angeles. In Experiment 1, we hypothesized that a history of ELS and a longer training phase would be associated with greater avoidance habits. Participants learned to make button-press responses to visual stimuli in order to avoid aversive auditory outcomes. Following a training phase involving extensive practice of the responses, participants were tested for habitual responding using outcome devaluation. After completing the instrumental learning task, participants provided retrospective reports of stressful events they experienced during their first 16 years of life. We did not observe evidence for an effect of the length of training, but we did observe an effect of ELS, with greater stress predicting greater odds of performing the avoidance habit. In Experiment 2, we sought to replicate the effect of ELS observed in Experiment 1, and we also tested whether the presence of distraction during training would increase avoidance habit performance. We replicated the effect of ELS but we did not observe evidence of an effect of distraction. Taken together, these data lend support to the hypothesis that stress occurring during development can have lasting effects on the balance between goal-directed behavior and stimulus-response habits in humans. Enhancement of avoidance habits may help explain the higher levels of negative health outcomes such as heart and liver disease that have been observed in individuals with a history of ELS. Some of the negative health behaviors that contribute to these negative health outcomes, e.g., overeating and substance use, may be performed initially to avoid feelings of distress and then transition to being performed habitually.

White matter integrity in brain structures supporting semantic processing is associated with value-directed remembering in older adults.

White matter microstructure changes substantially in aging. To better understand how the integrity of white matter structures supports the selective learning of rewarding material, 23 healthy older adults were tested on a value-directed remembering task. This task involved successive free recall word lists where items differed in importance, as denoted by value cues preceding each word. White matter structure was measured using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). We found that greater structural integrity (as measured by lower mean diffusivity) in left inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus was associated with greater recall for high-value items, but not low-value items. Older adults with greater structural integrity in a tract involved in semantic processing are thus able to more successfully encode high-value items for subsequent recall. However, unlike prior findings in younger adults, older adults' memory for high value-items was not significantly correlated with the structural integrity of the uncinate fasciculus, nor with the strength of anatomical connectedness between the bilateral nucleus accumbens to ventral tegmental area reward pathway. These structural imaging findings add support to recent functional neuroimaging demonstrations that value-related modulation of memory in older adults depends heavily on brain circuits implicated in controlled processing of semantic knowledge.

Social vs. non-social measures of learning potential for predicting community functioning across phase of illness in schizophrenia.

Studies demonstrate that dynamic assessment (i.e., learning potential) improves the prediction of response to rehabilitation over static measures in individuals with schizophrenia. Learning potential is most commonly assessed using neuropsychological tests under a test-train-test paradigm to examine change in performance. Novel learning potential approaches using social cognitive tasks may have added value, particularly for the prediction of social functioning, but this area is unexplored. The present study is the first to investigate whether patients with schizophrenia demonstrate social cognitive learning potential across phase of illness. This study included 43 participants at clinical high risk (CHR), 63 first-episode, and 36 chronic schizophrenia patients. Assessment of learning potential involved test-train-test versions of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (non-social cognitive learning potential) and the Facial Emotion Identification Test (social cognitive learning potential). Non-social and social cognition pre-training scores (static scores) uniquely predicted concurrent community functioning in patients with schizophrenia, but not in CHR participants. Learning potential showed no incremental explanation of variance beyond static scores. First-episode patients showed larger non-social cognitive learning potential than CHR participants and were similar to chronic patients; chronic patients and CHR participants were similar. Group differences across phase of illness were not observed for social cognitive learning potential. Subsequent research could explore whether non-social and social cognitive learning potential relate differentially to non-social versus social types of training and rehabilitation.

Memory Recall for High Reward Value Items Correlates With Individual Differences in White Matter Pathways Associated With Reward Processing and Fronto-Temporal Communication.

When given a long list of items to remember, people typically prioritize the memorization of the most valuable items. Prior neuroimaging studies have found that cues denoting the presence of high value items can lead to increased activation of the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward circuit, including the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) and ventral tegmental area (VTA), which in turn results in up-regulation of medial temporal lobe encoding processes and better memory for the high value items. Value cues may also trigger the use of elaborative semantic encoding strategies which depend on interactions between frontal and temporal lobe structures. We used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to examine whether individual differences in anatomical connectivity within these circuits are associated with value-induced modulation of memory. DTI data were collected from 19 adults who also participated in an functional magnetic resonanceimaging (fMRI) study involving a value-directed memory task. In this task, subjects encoded words with arbitrarily assigned point values and completed free recall tests after each list, showing improved recall performance for high value items. Motivated by our prior fMRI finding of increased recruitment of left-lateralized semantic network regions during the encoding of high value words (Cohen et al., 2014), we predicted that the robustness of the white matter pathways connecting the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) with the temporal lobe might be a determinant of recall performance for high value items. We found that the mean fractional anisotropy (FA) of each subject's left uncinate fasciculus (UF), a fronto-temporal fiber bundle thought to play a critical role in semantic processing, correlated with the mean number of high value, but not low value, words that subjects recalled. Given prior findings on reward-induced modulation of memory, we also used probabilistic tractography to examine the white matter pathway that links the NAcc to the VTA. We found that the number of fibers projecting from left NAcc to VTA was reliably correlated with subjects' selectivity index, a behavioral measure reflecting the degree to which recall performance was impacted by item value. Together, these findings help to elucidate the neuroanatomical pathways that support verbal memory encoding and its modulation by value.

Contextual interference enhances motor learning through increased resting brain connectivity during memory consolidation.

Increasing contextual interference (CI) during practice benefits learning, making it a desirable difficulty. For example, interleaved practice (IP) of motor sequences is generally more difficult than repetitive practice (RP) during practice but leads to better learning. Here we investigated whether CI in practice modulated resting-state functional connectivity during consolidation. 26 healthy adults (11 men/15 women, age = 23.3 ±â€¯1.3 years) practiced two sets of three sequences in an IP or RP condition over 2 days, followed by a retention test on Day 5 to evaluate learning. On each practice day, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired during practice and also in a resting state immediately after practice. The resting-state fMRI data were processed using independent component analysis (ICA) followed by functional connectivity analysis, showing that IP on Day 1 led to greater resting connectivity than RP between the left premotor cortex and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), bilateral posterior cingulate cortices, and bilateral inferior parietal lobules. Moreover, greater resting connectivity after IP than RP on Day 1, between the left premotor cortex and the hippocampus, amygdala, putamen, and thalamus on the right, and the cerebellum, was associated with better learning following IP. Mediation analysis further showed that the association between enhanced resting premotor-hippocampal connectivity on Day 1 and better retention performance following IP was mediated by greater task-related functional activation during IP on Day 2. Our findings suggest that the benefit of CI to motor learning is likely through enhanced resting premotor connectivity during the early phase of consolidation.

Paradoxical Decision-Making: A Framework for Understanding Cognition in Parkinson's Disease.

People with Parkinson's disease (PD) show impaired decision-making when sensory and memory information must be combined. This recently identified impairment results from an inability to accumulate the proper amount of information needed to make a decision and appears to be independent of dopamine tone and reinforcement learning mechanisms. Although considerable work focuses on PD and decisions involving risk and reward, in this Opinion article we propose that the emerging findings in perceptual decision-making highlight the multisystem nature of PD, and that unraveling the neuronal circuits underlying perceptual decision-making impairment may help in understanding other cognitive impairments in people with PD. We also discuss how a decision-making framework may be extended to gain insights into mechanisms of motor impairments in PD.

The effects of value on context-item associative memory in younger and older adults.

Valuable items are often remembered better than items that are less valuable by both older and younger adults, but older adults typically show deficits in binding. Here, we examine whether value affects the quality of recognition memory and the binding of incidental details to valuable items. In Experiment 1, participants learned English words each associated with a point-value they earned for correct recognition with the goal of maximizing their score. In Experiment 2, value was manipulated by presenting items that were either congruent or incongruent with an imagined state of physiological need (e.g., hunger). In Experiment 1, point-value was associated with enhanced recollection in both age groups. Memory for the color associated with the word was in fact reduced for high-value recollected items compared with low-value recollected items, suggesting value selectively enhances binding of task-relevant details. In Experiment 2, memory for learned images was enhanced by value in both age groups. However, value differentially enhanced binding of an imagined context to the item in younger and older adults, with a strong trend for increased binding in younger adults only. These findings suggest that value enhances episodic encoding in both older and younger adults but that binding of associated details may be reduced for valuable items compared to less valuable items, particularly in older adults. (PsycINFO Database Record

Habit Formation and the Striatum.

Data from experimental animals and human subjects has provided convergent evidence for the key role of the striatum in the formation of stimulus-response habits. Habits can be distinguished from associative memories that support goal-directed actions based on their insensitivity to reward devaluation and contingency degradation. Behavior on many instrumental learning tasks can be supported by both declarative knowledge and habits, and these contributions shift with the amount of training. This shift appears to be accompanied by the involvement of different cortico-striatal loops in controlling behavior. Factors that encourage the shift toward and maintenance of habits include learning under conditions of stress, distraction, and interval or probabilistic schedules of reinforcement.

Episodic Memory for Dynamic Social Interaction Across Phase of Illness in Schizophrenia.

Although a number of studies examined recollection and familiarity memory in schizophrenia, most of studies have focused on nonsocial episodic memory. Little is known about how schizophrenia patients remember social information in everyday life and whether social episodic memory changes over the course of illness. This study aims to examine episodic memory for dynamic social interaction with multimodal social stimuli in schizophrenia across phase of illness. Within each phase of illness, probands and demographically matched controls participated: 51 probands at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis and 36 controls, 80 first-episode schizophrenia patients and 49 controls, and 50 chronic schizophrenia patients and 39 controls. The participants completed the Social Remember-Know Paradigm that assessed overall social episodic memory, social recollection and familiarity memory, and social context memory, in addition to social cognitive measures and measures on community functioning. Probands showed impairment for recollection but not in familiarity memory and this pattern was similar across phase of illness. In contrast, impaired social context memory was observed in the first-episode and chronic schizophrenia samples, but not in CHR samples. Social context memory was associated with community functioning only in the chronic sample. These findings suggest that an impaired recollection could be a vulnerability marker for schizophrenia whereas impaired social context memory could be a disease-related marker. Further, a pattern of impaired recollection with intact familiarity memory for social stimuli suggests that schizophrenia patients may have a different pattern of impaired episodic memory for social vs nonsocial stimuli.