On the uninterpretability of dual-task performance

Howe, Mark L.; Rabinowitz, F. Michael

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(89)90059-3

Cited by 27 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Of late, the basic processes movement has coalesced around such nonstrategic explanatory concepts as limited-capacity processing resources , response-induced output interference Howe & Rabinowitz, 1989), neurophysiological inhibition (Dempster, 1989(Dempster, , 1990, and storage-retrieval dynamics (Brainerd, 1985a). Disintegration/redintegration theory falls squarely within this tradition.…”

Section: What Are the Contributions Of Forgetting Processes And Test-mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…As we have argued elsewhere (e.g., Brainerd, 1985a;Howe & Rabinowitz, 1989, theoretical progress in memory and cognitive development is contingent on formulating competing explanatory constructs with sufficient rigor that their relative merits can be dispassionately assessed in the arena of data. In this way, we avoid depriving ourselves unnecessarily of otherwise useful theoretical constructs.…”

Section: What Are the Contributions Of Forgetting Processes And Test-mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The situation has changed in recent years, and model-based studies of development are becoming increasingly common, especially in memory and cognitive development (see various chapters in Bisanz, Brainerd, & Kail, 1987). This change is due to a growing realization that one cannot disentangle the relative developmental contributions of putatively distinct theoretical processes unless those processes are first implemented in mathematical models that deliver independent measurements of the processes on a common ratio scale (Brainerd, Kingma, & Howe, 1986a;Chechile & Richman, 1982;Howe & Rabinowitz, 1989.…”

Section: Why Model?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The Development of Forgetting and Reminiscence

Brainerd

Reyna²,

Howe³

et al. 1990

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

188

142

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Section: What Are the Contributions Of Forgetting Processes And Test-mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: What Are the Contributions Of Forgetting Processes And Test-mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Why Model?mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Development of Forgetting and Reminiscence

Brainerd

Reyna²,

Howe³

et al. 1990

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

188

142

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“…Dempster (1990) went so far as to elevate sensitivity to such interference to the status of a major explanatory principle in cognitive development. Howe and Rabinowitz (1989) and Reyna and Brainerd (1989b) proposed that the output interference generated on recall tests is of at least two varieties: preresponse scheduling effects and postresponse feedback effects. The first type of interference accumulates before a word is articulated.…”

Section: Output Interferencementioning

confidence: 99%

Fuzzy-trace theory and cognitive triage in memory development.

Brainerd¹,

Reyna²,

Howe³

et al. 1991

Developmental Psychology

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When children and adults retrieve words during unconstrained recall, it is commonly supposed that words will present themselves to consciousness in decreasing order of memory strength, which means that their order of readout should be stronger --~ weaker. In contrast, fuzzy-trace theory proposes a counterintuitive nonmonotonic relationship between order of readout and memory strength. This relationship, which we call cognitive triage, arises from the theory's interpretation of recall as a dynamic system in which the influences of three variables (memory strength, episodic activation, and output interference) must be balanced to maximize recall. Because fuzzy-trace theory anticipates ontogenetic variations in cognitive triage, we studied it developmentally. A series of nine experiments produced several findings that were consistent with the theory's assumptions: Children never recalled stronger words before weaker words, doing the reverse instead; the priority of weaker words over stronger words in output queues was observed in the earliest phases of learning in both younger and older children; as learning progressed and children secured more reliable information about the relative memory strengths of words, a weaker--~ stronger --~ weaker ordering emerged, and it emerged more rapidly in older children; at criterion, when all items were recallable, the weaker ~ stronger --~ weaker ordering was present at all age levels, although it was more pronounced in older children. We show how the theory's assumptions also explain some classic findings about the development of recall, especially subjective organization and serial-position effects.

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“…The operations that access traces and send them on to the motor control systems to produce articulation create different types of off-task noise (Dempster, 1992(Dempster, , 1993Hadley, Healy, & Murdock, 1992;Hasher & Zacks, 1988;Howe & Rabinowitz, 1989). For example, item-specific information that has already been recalled and is therefore irrelevant to subsequent recall may be recoded into memory and compete for subsequent retrieval (Brainerd & Reyna, 1989;Hadley et al, 1992;Reyna & Brainerd, 1989).…”

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confidence: 99%

Invariance of cognitive triage in the development of recall in adulthood

Marche

Howe

Lane

et al. 2009

Memory

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Past research has demonstrated that cognitive triage (weak-strong-weak recall pattern) is a robust effect that optimizes children's recall. The aim of the current research was to determine whether adults' free recall also exhibits triage and whether cognitive triage is less marked with older than younger adults' recall. Younger and older adults memorized 16 unrelated words until all items were recalled perfectly. The triage pattern existed for both of the younger and older adults' recall and there was evidence for age differences in triage. Our results are consistent with claims of greater verbatim forgetting and increased susceptibility to output interference with age in adulthood. Further research is needed to determine whether fuzzy-trace theory adequately explains the aging of triage and what factors play a role in the development of this pattern of recall in adulthood. Keywords: Cognitive triage, Adult memory development, Free recall Invariance of Cognitive Triage in the Development of Recall in AdulthoodIn most examinations of memory development, free-recall is the paradigm of choice, which is not that surprising given that this is the most common method of tapping everyday memory. A number of earlier theories (one-process accounts of recall) such as Marbe's Law (e.g., Marbe, 1901, cited in Brainerd, Reyna, & Howe, 1990 as well as contemporary theories like the association network models (e.g., Anderson & Bower, 1973), the resource hypotheses (e.g., Bjorklund & Muir, 1988), and relative strength models (e.g., Raaijmakers & Shiffrin, 1981;Wixted, Ghadisha, & Vera, 1997), predict that during free recall, stronger items will present themselves to consciousness before weaker items, and therefore, will be reported in that order. However, in studies with children and young adults, Brainerd and his colleagues (for a review, see Brainerd & Reyna, 2001) did not obtain the stronger-weaker sequence of recall but rather found a weaker-stronger-weaker order, which has been labelled the cognitive triage effect because of its similarity to the well-known medical procedure of treating the most difficult cases first.Because the majority of research on cognitive triage has been performed with children, where findings indicate that triage optimizes recall (e.g., Brainerd et al., 1990), it is of great theoretical and practical importance to replicate this effect with young adults and determine whether this effect exists in older adults' recall. The aim of the present study, then, is to extend our understanding of cognitive triage by investigating the relationship between recall order and memory strength during the latter portion of the life span (i.e., from younger to older adulthood) and to determine whether this relationship varies across age. The theoretical foundation for cognitive triage, fuzzy-trace theory (FTT), is reviewed below and is followed by a description of possible developmental differences in triage during adulthood. An experiment, the first of its kind in the literature, is then described, one that ...

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On the uninterpretability of dual-task performance

Cited by 27 publications

References 9 publications

The Development of Forgetting and Reminiscence

The Development of Forgetting and Reminiscence

Fuzzy-trace theory and cognitive triage in memory development.

Invariance of cognitive triage in the development of recall in adulthood

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