In 2 experiments, relatively proficient Chinese–English bilinguals decided whether Chinese words were the correct translations of English words. Critical trials were those on which incorrect translations were related in lexical form or meaning to the correct translation. In Experiment 1, behavioral interference was revealed for both distractor types, but event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed a different time course for the 2 conditions. Semantic distractors elicited effects primarily on the N400 and late positive component (LPC), with a smaller N400 and a smaller LPC over the posterior scalp but a larger LPC over the anterior scalp relative to unrelated controls. In contrast, translation form distractors elicited a larger P200 and a larger LPC than did unrelated controls. To determine whether the translation form effects were enabled by the relatively long, 750-ms stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) between words, a 2nd ERP experiment was conducted using a shorter, 300-ms, SOA. The behavioral results revealed interference for both types of distractors, but the ERPs again revealed different loci for the 2 effects. Taken together, the data suggest that proficient bilinguals activate 1st-language translations of words in the 2nd language after they have accessed the meaning of those words. The implications of this pattern for claims about the nature of cross-language activation when bilinguals read in 1 or both languages are discussed.

An event-based non-focal task was used to evaluate prospective memory (PM), and the relationship between PM, neuropsychological testing data and everyday forgetting. Twenty-four participants with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 24 age and education matched cognitively healthy adults responded to a non-focal PM cue, while completing an ongoing working memory task. Neuropsychological testing data and self- and informant-report of frequency of forgetting were also gathered. Compared to healthy adults, the MCI participants exhibited significantly poorer prospective remembering and ongoing task performance, despite similar self-reported effort directed to the PM task. Both self- and informant-report indicated that the MCI group was experiencing a higher frequency of everyday forgetting than the healthy adult group. Self-report of everyday forgetting was correlated with PM task performance for the healthy adults, but not the MCI participants. For the healthy adults, correlational analyses also showed significant relationships between PM accuracy and tests of memory and executive functioning, suggesting that both spontaneous retrieval processes and effortful, strategic monitoring may be important in supporting prospective remembering for this non-focal PM task. The stronger relationships between PM accuracy and memory and language tests for the MCI group suggests that their poorer event-based prospective remembering might be linked to impaired spontaneous retrieval processes, which are thought to be supported by medial temporal structures.

The Brief Visuospatial Memory Test - Revised (BVMT-R) is a commonly used, commercialized, assessment tool to measure visuospatial learning and memory abilities across research and clinical settings. In this study, we evaluated the influence of processing speed and executive functioning on BVMT-R learning, memory, and percent retention scores. One-hundred and forty-one cognitively healthy older adults completed the BVMT-R along with measures of visuoconstructional abilities (BVMT-R copy), speeded processing (Symbol Digit Modalities Test-oral), and executive function (FAS). After controlling for age and visuoconstructional abilities, hierarchical regression models showed that the processing speed measure was a unique predictor of both BVMT-R learning and memory performances, while the executive function measure was not. The visuoconstructional measure was the only unique predictor of BVMT-R percent retention. The findings suggest that when interpreting the BVMT-R learning and memory scores of patients who exhibit speeded processing deficits, the impact of slowed processing speed on performance should be considered.

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We investigated the extents of automaticity in location and orientation encoding in visual working memory (VWM) by manipulating their task relevance and assessing the amount of resource recruited by their encoding. Across five experiments, participants were surprised with a location report trial (Experiment 1A, 2A, and 3) or an orientation report trial (Experiment 2A and 2B) at a point when only the item's color had been task-relevant. This was followed by control trials to assess the memory quality of color when location or orientation had become task-relevant. We found the surprise trial performance to be significantly worse than the first control trial for both location and orientation, although to a greater extent for orientation for which there was virtually no measurable information from the subjects' reports. This was the case even when encoding was the only incidental memory process before the control trials (Experiment 2A and 2B), and the surprise memory costs cannot be attributed to the unexpectedness inherent to the surprise question (Experiment 3). The control trials revealed a consistent reduction of color memory only in the orientation experiments. These results suggest that although location encoding is more automatic than orientation, neither is encoded in a fully automatic manner. Our results show that incidentally encoded location is only coarse-grained, constraining the spatial precision of space-based indexing systems.

Attribute amnesia (AA) is a phenomenon in which participants have difficulty answering an unexpected question about an attended attribute of the most recent target stimulus. A similar situation can occur in cases of real-life eyewitness identification when the eyewitness did not explicitly try to remember the alleged perpetrator's face despite having attended to it. We found that AA is generalizable to novel faces, such that when participants were unexpectedly asked to identify a face, performance was poor, even though they had just attended to that face seconds ago (N = 40 each in an initial experiment and its replication). This finding shows that unexpected face identification is inaccurate even when the face had just been attended to and suffered minimal decay and interference, implying that AA can explain some cases of failure of eyewitness identification that cannot be attributed to a lack of attention or post-event interference.

Objectives Describe novel methods for ascertaining verbal fluency in a large national sample of adults, examine demographic factors influencing performance, and compare scores to studies using in‐person assessment. Methods/design Participants were from the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) study, a national, population‐based, longitudinal study of stroke in adults aged 45 years and older. Letter and semantic fluency were gathered, using Letter “F” and Animal Naming, via a telephone‐based assessment with computer‐assisted scoring of digital recordings. Results Initial letter and semantic fluency scores were obtained on 18 505 and 18 072 participants, respectively. For both fluency tests, scores were normally distributed. Younger age and more years of education were associated with better performances (p < 0.0001). The mean and standard deviation for matched subgroups, based on age, gender, and education, were quite comparable with scores reported out of samples using an in‐person administration format. Telephone‐based assessment also allowed for a level of quality control not available via in‐person measurement. Conclusions Telephone‐based assessment of verbal fluency and computer‐assisted scoring programs designed for this study facilitated large‐scale data acquisition, storage, and scoring of protocols. The resulting scores have similar characteristics to those obtained by traditional methods. These findings extend validation of cognitive assessment methods, using survey research staff and computer‐assisted technology for test administration.

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