The role of familiarity in episodic memory and metamemory for music.

Participants heard music snippets of varying melodic and instrumental familiarity paired with animal-name titles. They then recalled the target when given either the melody or the title as a cue, or they gave name feeling-of-knowing (FOK) ratings. In general, recall for titles was better than it was for melodies, and recall was enhanced with increasing melodic familiarity of both the cues and the targets. Accuracy of FOK ratings, but not magnitude, also increased with increasing familiarity. Although similar ratings were given after melody and title cues, accuracy was better with title cues. Finally, knowledge of the real titles of the familiar music enhanced recall but had, by and large, no effect on the FOK ratings.

Neuropsychological deficits of a U.S. Army pilot following an anoxic event as a function of cardiac arrest.

Anoxic encephalopathy occurs as a result of cardiac arrest, respiratory distress, or carbon monoxide poisoning. This is a case report on the neuropsychological deficits of anoxia in an otherwise previously healthy 36-year-old male pilot. The patient was taking an over-the-counter supplement that included an herb called Ma Huang on the day of his cardiac arrest. Ma Huang is reported to potentially present an increased risk of cardiac infarctions and central nervous system dysfunctions. Several instances of death have been linked to Ma Huang. The patient produced a neuropsychological profile that evidenced impairments in executive functioning, memory, language, attention, intellectual and academic functioning, as well as motor speed and coordination, all of which are consistent with diffuse brain damage. This case adds to the body of literature documenting the physical and neuropsychological effects of anoxia, as well as the effects of ephedrine-based supplements, such as Ma Huang.

Adapting a memory framework (source monitoring) to the study of closure processes.

The present experiments adapt a memory framework (source monitoring) to the study of closure processes. Closure processes are invoked as explanatory mechanisms underlying the ability to identify objects under conditions of incomplete visual information. If closure processes are activated, filling in missing pieces of visual information, intriguing memory predictions follow. When making source judgments about the way in which visual information was experienced initially (e.g., complete or incomplete in form), a particular kind of memory error should be evident. Incomplete visual information should be remembered as complete in form, and indeed, this error is observed. The present experiments test alternative interpretations for the initial reports of this memory error in the context of a search task modeled after the Where's Waldo? children's books. The effects of several new factors (e.g., familiarity) are reported, and alternative interpretations for the bias to report complete are eliminated. Findings, therefore, have implications for understanding the mechanisms of closure processes, as well as for the source-monitoring framework itself.