Directed forgetting of emotional words.

Emotional material may induce processing limitations affecting memory performance. In the present study, the authors investigated how the emotional content of words influences the degree to which participants can be directed to forget them. In Experiment 1, the authors found that negative-valence words were recalled better when participants were told to forget them than when they were told to remember them. This effect was only obtained when a study-list of negative words was presented after the cue to remember or forget the first list. The effect was correlated with negative mood as assessed by the PANAS. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2, in which the induction of negative arousal by a mild stressor abolished the directed forgetting of words when the following study list was comprised of negative words. These results support the idea that directed forgetting relies on cognitive control processes that may be disrupted by negative emotion.

Individual differences in interhemispheric transfer time (IHTT) as measured by event related potentials.

The present study examined possible gender differences in interhemisperic transfer time (IHTT), as measured by event related potentials (ERPs). Using visual half-field presentations of letter pairs in a match/no-match paradigm, N1 latency was measured for each visual half-field and hemisphere. IHTTs were determined by subtracting the "direct" (i.e., contralateral or non-callosal) pathway N1 latency from the "indirect" (i.e., callosal) pathway N1 latency. Based on studies showing gender differences in corpus callosum size and function, we hypothesized that females would show more symmetric and faster overall transfer times than males. Results showed faster right-to-left IHTT across all participants, but females had more symmetric IHTT and shorter overall IHTT--primarily due to significantly shorter left-to-right times compared to males. Little support was found for the influence of hemisphere (i.e., "direct" pathway) response, or potential lateralization of function, on the length of IHTT in either direction.

Performance discrepancies on the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) in children with traumatic brain injury.

One hundred sixty-seven children with traumatic brain injury (TBI), selected from an 8-year series of consecutive referrals to a Midwestern rehabilitation hospital, completed the California Verbal Learning Test-Children's Version (CVLT-C) and the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) within 1 year after injury. A large proactive interference (PI) effect, defined as performance on the second list that was at least 1.5 standard deviations below that on the 1st one, was statistically significantly more common in this clinical sample (21%) than in the CVLT-C standardization sample (11%). Other performance discrepancies, including retroactive interference, rapid forgetting, and retrieval problems, occurred at approximately the same rate in the clinical and standardization samples. Children with anterior cerebral lesions were about 3 times less likely to have a large PI effect than children without such lesions, but the former group performed worse on the first CVLT-C list. The impact of pediatric TBI on a wide range of CVLT-C quantitative variables was mediated by speed of information processing, as assessed by the WISC-III Processing Speed factor index. It is concluded that failure to release from PI is somewhat common, although certainly not universal, in children with TBI. Unlike with adults, anterior cerebral lesions are not associated selectively with an increased risk for PI after pediatric TBI but rather with a reduced efficiency of allocation of cognitive resources. Deficits in speed of information processing appear to be primarily responsible for the learning deficits on the CVLT-C after pediatric TBI.