Dataset Information

Space and time in episodic memory: Effects of linearity and directionality on memory for spatial location and temporal order in children and adults.

ABSTRACT: Episodic memory is a critical capacity that involves remembering past events along with their spatial and temporal contexts. Relatively little is known about the relations between spatial and temporal information in long-term memory in children or adults. The present research examined the influence of the mental timeline (linear horizontal display extending from the left to right direction for English speakers) on memory for events and their spatial and temporal features in 7-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and young adults (N = 146). During encoding, participants studied triplets of objects, varying on two dimensions of the mental timeline: linearity (whether objects were presented in linear succession or not) and direction (whether objects were presented from left-to-right or right-to-left). After a delay, during retrieval, participants were tested on their memory for individual objects, and either the spatial location or temporal order of the objects. We found that overall accuracy for spatial location was higher than accuracy for temporal order, and there was a parallel developmental trajectory for both these aspects of memory. Across age groups we found that memory for temporal order, but not spatial location, was influenced by linearity and direction (i.e., match to mental timeline). Thus, in both children and adults the spatiotemporal mental timeline supported memory for temporal order, converging with predictions generated within domains of language and thought and enhancing our understanding of how space and time are represented in the mind.

SUBMITTER: Pathman T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6224083 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Space and time in episodic memory: Effects of linearity and directionality on memory for spatial location and temporal order in children and adults.

Pathman Thanujeni T Coughlin Christine C Ghetti Simona S

PloS one 20181108 11

Episodic memory is a critical capacity that involves remembering past events along with their spatial and temporal contexts. Relatively little is known about the relations between spatial and temporal information in long-term memory in children or adults. The present research examined the influence of the mental timeline (linear horizontal display extending from the left to right direction for English speakers) on memory for events and their spatial and temporal features in 7-year-olds, 9-year-o ...[more]

PMID: 30408077

Similar Datasets

Project description:BACKGROUND: Temporal sequence represents the main principle underlying episodic memory. The storage of temporal sequence information is thought to involve hippocampus-dependent memory systems, preserving temporal structure possibly via chaining of sequence elements in heteroassociative networks. Converging evidence indicates that sleep enhances the consolidation of recently acquired representations in the hippocampus-dependent declarative memory system. Yet, it is unknown if this consolidation process comprises strengthening of the temporal sequence structure of the representation as well, or is restricted to sequence elements independent of their temporal order. To address this issue we tested the influence of sleep on the strength of forward and backward associations in word-triplets. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Subjects learned a list of 32 triplets of unrelated words, presented successively (A-B-C) in the center of a screen, and either slept normally or stayed awake in the subsequent night. After two days, retrieval was assessed for the triplets sequentially either in a forward direction (cueing with A and B and asking for B and C, respectively) or in a backward direction (cueing with C and B and asking for B and A, respectively). Memory was better for forward than backward associations (p<0.01). Sleep did not affect backward associations, but enhanced forward associations, specifically for the first (AB) transitions (p<0.01), which were generally more difficult to retrieve than the second transitions. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our data demonstrate that consolidation during sleep strengthens the original temporal sequence structure in memory, presumably as a result of a replay of new representations during sleep in forward direction. Our finding suggests that the temporally directed replay of memory during sleep, apart from strengthening those traces, could be the key mechanism that explains how temporal order is integrated and maintained in the trace of an episodic memory.

Project description:There is a renewed interest in investigating individual variation in hormone levels in relation to fitness metrics, as hormones act as mediators of life-history trade-offs. Hormone concentrations, however, are labile, responding to both internal and external stimuli, so the relationship between hormones and fitness can be non-consistent. One explanation of this inconsistent relationship is that a single hormone sample may not be representative of individual phenotypes in a free-living species. We addressed this issue by repeatedly sampling a free-living population of mountain white-crowned sparrows, Zonotrichia leucophrys oriantha, for baseline and stress-induced corticosterone (cort) and testosterone (T) across different stages of the breeding season. We measured (co)variation using three different methods, taking into account inter- and intra-individual variances, to determine whether hormone levels and the stress response are repeatable. We documented the temporal (over 3 months) and spatial (home-range) variation of individual hormone phenotypes and investigated how these components related to nesting success. At the population level, we found significant repeatability in male stress-induced cort concentrations but no repeatability in male or female baseline cort or male T concentrations. Using a new metric of intra-individual variance focusing on the stress response (profile repeatability), we found a wide range of variance scores, with most individuals showing high variation in their stress response. Similarly, we found a low level of repeatability of the reaction norm intercept and slope for the stress response across different life-history stages. Males with higher concentrations of stress-induced cort had more central home-ranges. Males with higher body condition had larger home-ranges; however, home-range size did not relate to male hormone concentrations or nesting success. We also did not find any significant relationship between variation in hormone levels and nesting success. We recommend that future studies combine both physiological and environmental components to better understand the relationship between hormones and fitness.

Dataset Information

Space and time in episodic memory: Effects of linearity and directionality on memory for spatial location and temporal order in children and adults.

Publications

Space and time in episodic memory: Effects of linearity and directionality on memory for spatial location and temporal order in children and adults.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets