Freud was right: Inhibitory processes in memory

1. Freud was right: Inhibitory processes in memory Chris Moulin c.j.a.moulin@leeds.ac.uk

2. Aims & Objectives • Aim: to describe current studies in inhibition • By the end of this lecture and associated reading you should be able to: • Define what inhibition is • Describe inhibitory processes for a number of key cognitive systems • Describe inhibition in terms of neuroimaging, patient studies, connectionism, and expeimentation

3. Some Reading Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. (1988). Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view. In G. H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol. 22, pp. 193-225). San Diego, CA: Academic Press Shilling VM, Chetwynd A, Rabbitt PMA (2002). Individual inconsistency across measures of inhibition: an investigation of the construct validity of inhibition in older adults. Neuropsychologia, 40: 605-619 8 Wegner, D.M. (1994). Ironic Processes of Mental Control. Psychological Review, 101: 34-52 Burgess, P.W., Shallice, T. (1996). Response suppression, initiation and strategy use following frontal lobe lesions. Neuropsychologia 34: 263-272 Michael C. Anderson, Kevin N. Ochsner, Brice Kuhl, Jeffrey Cooper, Elaine Robertson, Susan W. Gabrieli, Gary H. Glover, John D. E. Gabrieli (2002). Neural Systems Underlying the Suppression of Unwanted Memories Science, 303: 232 - 235. Perfect, T. J., Moulin, C. J. A., Conway, M. A., & Perry, E. (2002). Assessing the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting with implicit-memory tests. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 28, 1111-1119. Moulin, C.J.A. Perfect, T.J., Conway, M.A., North, A.S., Jones, R.W., & James, N. (2002). Retrieval Induced Forgetting in Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 40: 862-867. Anderson, M. C. & Bjork, R. A. (1994). Mechanisms of inhibition in long-term memory: a new taxonomy. In D. Dagenbach & T. H. Carr (Eds.) Inhibitory processes in attention, memory and language (pp. 265-325). San Diego: Academic Press. Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A, & Bjork. E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: Retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 20, 1063-1087. Anderson, M. C. & Spellman, B. A. (1995). On the status of inhibitory mechanisms in cognitition: memory retrieval as a model case. Psychological Review, 102, 68-100.

4. “Freud was right” "Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.”—Freud

5. Freud’s view Inhibition as "the expression of a restriction of an ego-function. A restriction of this kind can itself have very different causes.” Symptoms and Anxiety (1925).

6. Repression Freud is credited with the idea that Memories can be willfully or unintentionally suppressed/forgotten/inhibited This is a protective, healthy mechanism Modern view: Repressed memories are contentious – e.g. childhood abuse

7. Plan • What might inhibition be & why is it necessary? • Thought control • Inhibition of: • Attention • Working memory • Long term memory • Inhibition in context: Cognitive aging

8. What is inhibition? • Inhibition is the suppression of otherwise active concepts or processes. • Over to you: Why’s it necessary?

9. What is inhibition for? To prevent unwanted information being activated • To stop unwanted information entering working memory • Perceptual/Attentional selection • To suppress prepotent responses • A mechanism of forgetting

10. Why inhibition? “… if we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.” • James, 1890 • Retrieval inhibition: the successful inhibition of competitor information – a normal healthy process • Car Parking

11. Eternal Sunshine

12. Varieties of inhibition • Clinical tests of inhibitory function work at many levels…

13. Thought control • Like the white bear task. Wegner (1994). • Sleep • Alcohol • Happiness • Erectile function • PTSD

14. History: Inhibition • Cognitive models of inhibition were driven by the fact that neurones can be inhibitory or excitatory • Inhibition is a frontal function (from lesion studies). Inhibition first considered from a neuropsych. perspective. • Famous case: Phineas Gage

15. Contemporary view • The ability to suppress prepotent responses (Burgess & Shallice, 1996): The whole town came to hear the mayor fart. • The Supervisory attentional system (Shallice) • Imaging work: Nielson, Langenecker, Garavan (2002). Right prefrontal area (and older adults are more bilateral)

16. Retrieval induced forgetting “A striking implication of current memory theory is that the very act of remembering may cause forgetting.” • Anderson, Bjork & Bjork, 1994. • Retrieval induced forgetting paradigm

17. RIF • Retrieval Induced Forgetting • Anderson, Bjork & Bjork, 1994 • Ideal test of automatic inhibition • Inhibition is an automatic product of retrieving a competing item in memory • E.g. • reading about De Clerambault’s Syndrome • couldn’t recall CapgrasSyndrome

18. Study Fruit – Apple Fruit – Orange Tool – Hammer Tool – Saw Metal – Silver Metal - Gold Practice Fruit – A___ Tool – H___ x3 RIF Paradigm Cued Recall Fruit – Apple Fruit – Orange Tool – Hammer Tool – Saw Metal – Silver Metal - Gold Type RP+ RP- RP+ RP- U U

19. Cued Recall • Three kinds of items • RP+ : practiced items from practice stage • RP- : unpracticed items from categories that were practiced. • U : unpracticed items from unpracticed categories

20. Anderson, Bjork & Bjork, 1994

21. Anderson & Spellman’s explanation of RIF • Pattern suppression / feature competition.

22. Pattern suppression model Blood Tomato Straw Crackers berry +8 -2 -2 0

23. The critical nature of cue independence • “… using an independent retrieval cue during the test phase … allowed us to establish that variations in the amount of retrieval induced forgetting … reflected feature level changes to the affected items themselves.”(Anderson, Green and McCulloch, 2000, p.1154).

24. Inhibition in Context Cognitive Aging

25. Hasher & Zacks, 1988 Hasher & Zacks say that cognitive decline in older adults could all be due to an inability to suppress irrelevant information from working memory How come? Working memory as ‘General Capacity’.

26. General Capacity “(1) Cognitive functioning is constrained by resources that are momentarily available and (2) the multiple components assumed to occur in almost every task vary in the resources that each needs for maximal performance…” And research suggests that there may be a general capacity decline in older adults - they just don’t have mental resources to do things Not being able to inhibit is a drain on resources

27. Garden Path Sentences • Memory and Inhibition, e.g. Hartman & Hasher 1991 He posted the letter without a _________ She attended a private _________ cheque viewing ‘cheque’ & ‘viewing’ are targets, ‘stamp and school’ are generated

28. Garden Path II • An implicit memory task used to measure activation of targets and generated words. An implicit task: The boy was disappointed he did not get into her ________ When his meal was finished he asked the waiter for his _________ school cheque

29. Garden Path III • Older adults show increased activation (priming) of both targets and generated words. • Younger adults do not show priming of stamp and school. • Not confounded by memory problems: implicit memory task

30. Older adults summary • Older adults show a variety of inhibitory deficits. • But they’re testing the model: • Some things are good, some are bad. • Can there be any one inhibition module?

31. Some questions for discussion • A global inhibitor? • A variety of inhibitory modules? • When’s it interference, and when’s it inhibition?

32. Summary • You should be able to: • Define inhibition • Describe a number of tasks and experiments that demonstrate inhibitory effects • Explain how studies of inhibiton have illuminated the study of aging • Give a complete overview of the RIF paradigm, and a critique of its shortcomings