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Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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Journal snapshot

Journal scope statement

The Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (JARMAC) publishes the highest-quality applied research in memory and cognition, in the format of empirical reports, review articles, and target papers with invited peer commentary. The goal of this unique journal is to reach psychological scientists and other researchers working in this field and related areas, as well as professionals and practitioners who seek to understand and apply research on memory and cognition. In pursuit of these aims, we encourage submissions of original and rigorous work that examines memory and cognitive processes and mechanisms and that informs policies and practices. We further encourage brevity and crisp, lively prose that appeals to a wide audience. Each paper also includes a general audience summary, clearly describing the paper and its practical implications in language accessible to non-specialists.

Empirical reports should convey significant experimental findings. The combined number of words in the introduction and discussion sections should not exceed 2,200 words for single-study reports and 3,000 words for multiple studies (counting the introduction and discussion for each study). These are upper bounds, and authors are expected to keep the report as succinct as possible. This limit is not set for the entire manuscript because the journal seeks to encourage a detailed description of method and a results section that reports outcomes from all tasks.

Target articles should not exceed 10,000 words. Authors considering a target article should contact the editor prior to submission.

JARMAC is an official journal of Society for Applied Research in Memory & Cognition .

Calls for papers

Call for letters of intent: Autobiographical processing and psychopathology
Call for letters of intent: A special forum of JARMAC: Applied cognitive science around the globe

Editor’s Choice

One article from each issue of Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition will be highlighted as an “ Editor’s Choice ” article. Selection is based on the recommendations of the associate editors, the paper’s potential impact to the field, the distinction of expanding the contributors to, or the focus of, the science, or its discussion of an important future direction for science. Editor’s Choice articles are featured alongside articles from other APA published journals in a bi-weekly newsletter and are temporarily made freely available to newsletter subscribers.

Author and editor spotlights

Explore journal highlights : free article summaries, editor interviews and editorials, journal awards, mentorship opportunities, and more.

Prior to submission, please carefully read and follow the submission guidelines detailed below. Manuscripts that do not conform to the submission guidelines may be returned without review.

Please complete the author formatting checklist before submitting your manuscript.

To submit to the editorial office of Qi Wang, please submit manuscripts electronically through the Manuscript Submission Portal in Microsoft Word format (.doc) or LaTex (.tex) as a zip file with an accompanied Portable Document Format (.pdf) of the manuscript file.

Double space all copy. Prepare manuscripts according to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association using the 7 th edition. Manuscripts may be copyedited for bias-free language (see Chapter 5 of the Publication Manual ). APA Style and Grammar Guidelines for the 7 th edition are available.

Submit Manuscript

Manuscript types

Empirical articles should report significant experimental findings. The combined number of words in the introduction and discussion sections should not exceed 2,200 words for single-study reports and 3,000 words for multiple studies (counting the introduction and discussion of each study). These are upper bounds, and authors are expected to keep the report as succinct as possible. The limit is not set for the entire manuscript because we want to encourage detailed description of method and a results section that reports outcomes from all tasks. The editor may consider exceptions to these limits if special circumstances are justified in the cover letter, but these exceptions will be rare.

Review articles should critically review a topic or topics of importance to the readership of JARMAC , and have no restrictions on length.

Target articles and related peer commentaries are typically invited by the editor. Authors may suggest topics by writing a précis and sending it to the editorial office for consideration. Target articles should not exceed 10,000 words. Authors considering a target article should contact the editor prior to submission.

In Memoriam section An annual In Memoriam section of the journal will celebrate the life and contributions of SARMAC members who have contributed significantly to research in any area of applied cognition and memory. Submissions should be authored by individuals who personally knew or collaborated with the honoree; collaborative contributions are encouraged. Contributions should not exceed 1,000 words and include three to five recommended readings that are selected from the honoree’s contributions. A black-and-white photograph of the honoree may be included. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by scholars familiar with the honoree’s work prior to publication.

Double masked review and the option to bypass

To prepare for (double) masked review (where the names of the authors are withheld from the reviewers and vice versa), authors should make every effort to remove any identifying information from the manuscript and references. All information pertaining to identification, title, institutional affiliation, etc. should be included on the title page, which is submitted separately; only the title of the manuscript should appear on the first page of the manuscript. Alternatively , authors who choose not to have their identities concealed may simply keep the title page as part of the manuscript, submit a blank page as a separate title page, and eschew the other means of removing identifying content. Authors should indicate which option they are choosing in their cover letter.

Authors may submit the names and email addresses of two potential referees. Also indicate whether you believe any potential referees should be excluded. Note that the action editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used or excluded.

Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

Author names and affiliations Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author and check that all names are accurately spelled. Present the authors' affiliations (where the actual work was done, including the country name). Indicate all affiliations with a lower- case superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. If the manuscript is by a single author or if all authors are from the same institution, there is no need to use superscripts.

Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing publication, and post-publication. Provide the email and full postal address of the corresponding author. Ensure that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author.

Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address. Superscript Arabic numerals are used for such footnotes.

Word count. For all articles, please declare the word count of your manuscript (upon first submission as well as resubmission). For empirical articles, please also declare the word count of sections identifiable as introduction and discussion.

Abstract and keywords

A concise and factual abstract is required and must contain 150 words or fewer, presented in paragraph form on a separate page (page 2 of the manuscript). The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, method, principal results, and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, references should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, nonstandard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using US spelling and avoiding general terms, plural terms, and multiple concepts (e.g., ones connected by conjunctions and prepositions). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

General audience summary

On a separate page, between the abstract and the introduction, type a summary of the research that can be understood by generally educated adults with no particular experience with experimental design and statistical analyses. The paragraph should capture the issue under investigation, the method, the most important outcome, and its implication for or application to real-world settings. This summary, limited to 300 words, should be suitable for circulation to popular media. Like the abstract, the general audience summary will ALSO be uploaded as a separate document during submission, but please do not forget to include both in the document or pdf of your submitted manuscript.

Please read the Guidance for translational abstracts and public significance statements page to help you write this text.

Research transparency and openness

Data and materials sharing.

The policy of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition is to publish papers in which data, methods used in the analysis, and materials used to conduct the research are clearly and precisely documented and are maximally available to any researcher for purposes of reproducing the results or replicating the procedure. Recommended repositories include APA’s repository on the Open Science Framework (OSF), or authors can access a full list of other recommended repositories .

Authors must share their data, analytic methods, and research materials and provide a repository link in their manuscript and during the submission process. If the data and materials on which study conclusions are based are unavailable, the authors should note their legal or ethical reasons for not doing so and are expected to abide by APA’s data preservation policies, specified below under “Ethical Principles.”

For example:

All data have been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].
Materials and analysis code for this study are available by emailing the corresponding author.
Materials and analysis code for this study are not available.
The code behind this analysis/simulation has been made publicly available at the [repository name] and can be accessed at [persistent URL or DOI].

Authors must disclose any prior uses of data reported in the manuscript in the author note and in the cover letter, which should include a complete reference list of these articles as well as a description of the extent and nature of any overlap between the present submission and the previous work.

Funding support and conflict of interest

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support for the conduct of the research (e.g., "This research was supported by NIDA grant X") in the author note. If the funding source was involved in any other aspects of the research (e.g., study design, analysis, interpretation, writing), then clearly state the role. If the funding source had no other involvement other than financial support, then simply state that the funding source had no other role other than financial support. Also provide a conflict-of-interest statement disclosing any real or potential conflict(s) of interest, including financial, personal, or other relationships with other organizations or companies that may inappropriately impact or influence the research and interpretation of the findings. If there are no conflicts of interest, this should be clearly stated.

Informed consent and institutional review board approval

Authors must include a statement describing how informed consent was obtained from the participants (or their parents/guardians) and indicate that the study was conducted in compliance with an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB). If approval was not obtained, the authors must provide a detailed statement explaining why it was not needed.

Open science badges

JARMAC articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistration plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis .

Applying for open science badges is optional.

Articles are eligible for open science badges recognizing publicly available data, materials, and/or preregistered plans and analyses. These badges are awarded on a self-disclosure basis.

At submission, authors must confirm that criteria have been fulfilled in a signed badge disclosure form (PDF, 42KB) that must be submitted as supplemental material. If all criteria are met as confirmed by the editor, the form will then be published with the article as supplemental material.

Authors should also note their eligibility for the badge(s) in the cover letter.

For all badges, items must be made available on an open-access repository with a persistent identifier in a format that is time-stamped, immutable, and permanent. For the preregistered badge, this is an institutional registration system.

Data and materials must be made available under an open license allowing others to copy, share, and use the data, with attribution and copyright as applicable. Available badges are:

Manuscript preparation

Submission checklist.

Please complete the author formatting checklist before submitting your manuscript. The list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Authors should review the APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) for quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods . Updated in 2018, the standards offer ways to improve transparency in reporting to ensure that readers have the information necessary to evaluate the quality of the research and to facilitate collaboration and replication.

The new JARS:

recommend the division of hypotheses, analyses, and conclusions into primary, secondary, and exploratory groupings to allow for a full understanding of quantitative analyses presented in a manuscript and to enhance reproducibility;
offer modules for authors reporting on replications, clinical trials, longitudinal studies, and observational studies, as well as the analytic methods of structural equation modeling and Bayesian analysis; and
include guidelines on reporting on of study preregistration (including making protocols public); participant characteristics (including demographic characteristics; inclusion and exclusion criteria) psychometric characteristics of outcome measures and other variables, and planned data diagnostics and analytic strategy.

The guidelines focus on transparency in methods reporting, recommending descriptions of how the researcher’s own perspective affected the study, as well as the contexts in which the research and analysis took place.

Introduction

Describe the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, but avoid a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. Begin the first page with the title of the article, not the word Introduction. Remember that the page count applies to all introductory and discussion sections.

Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published can be reported by citing the original report and describing modifications. Regardless, authors must include enough detail to make the report comprehensible. Authors must also state their method for determining sample size and report all tasks and procedures conducted prior to the last measure to be analyzed. Procedures not directly relevant to the research question can be described briefly, but they should not be omitted.

Report participant age, gender, race/ethnicity, and other relevant demographic information regarding sample characteristics.

Results should be clear and concise. Describe the outcome both in terms of the statistical analyses and in the language of the research. Include exact p values for statistical tests, measures of effect size, and confidence intervals when appropriate. For experimental reports, effects should be accompanied by their corresponding means and standard deviations, either within the text or in a table. Correlational reports should also include these descriptive statistics. Please consult the APA Style recommendations for reporting all statistical outcomes. Take care to report all experimental conditions and dependent variables associated with the research design, although less central outcomes can be described briefly in summary form or footnotes. Report all data exclusions and the method of determining sample size. Sections that are entitled "Results and Discussion" should minimize discussion. Avoid excessive use of tables and figures. Put nonessential material in "Supplementary Material."

This section should begin with a brief summary of the results in the context of the research issue and continue with a more detailed discussion of their meaning. Be sure to describe the implications of your research for both theoretical concerns and real-world situations and applications. Address important limitations in each domain, as well.

Use of inclusive language

Inclusive language acknowledges diversity, conveys respect to all people, is sensitive to differences, and promotes equal opportunities. Content should make no assumptions about the beliefs or commitments of any reader; contain nothing which might imply that one individual is superior to another on the grounds of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health condition; and use inclusive language throughout. Authors should ensure that writing is free from bias, stereotypes, slang, reference to dominant culture and/or cultural assumptions. We advise to seek gender neutrality by using plural nouns ("clinicians, patients/clients") as default/wherever possible to avoid using "he, she," or "he/she." We recommend avoiding the use of descriptors that refer to personal attributes such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation, disability or health condition unless they are relevant and valid. These guidelines are meant as a point of reference to help identify appropriate language but are by no means exhaustive or definitive.

Author contribution statements using CRediT

The APA Publication Manual ( 7th ed. ) , which stipulates that "authorship encompasses…not only persons who do the writing but also those who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study." In the spirit of transparency and openness, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition has adopted the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to describe each author's individual contributions to the work. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to a manuscript.

Submitting authors will be asked to identify the contributions of all authors at initial submission according to the CRediT taxonomy. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the CRediT designations will be published as an author contributions statement in the author note of the final article. All authors should have reviewed and agreed to their individual contribution(s) before submission.

CRediT includes 14 contributor roles, as described below:

Conceptualization : Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data curation : Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
Formal analysis : Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding acquisition : Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation : Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology : Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
Project administration : Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources : Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software : Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision : Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation : Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization : Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing — original draft : Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing — review and editing : Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision: including pre- or post-publication stages.

Authors can claim credit for more than one contributor role, and the same role can be attributed to more than one author.

Math formulae and display equations

We strongly encourage you to use MathType (third-party software) or Equation Editor 3.0 (built into pre-2007 versions of Word) to construct your equations, rather than the equation support that is built into Word 2007 and Word 2010. Equations composed with the built-in Word 2007/Word 2010 equation support are converted to low-resolution graphics when they enter the production process and must be rekeyed by the typesetter, which may introduce errors.

To construct your equations with MathType or Equation Editor 3.0:

Go to the Text section of the Insert tab and select Object.
Select MathType or Equation Editor 3.0 in the drop-down menu.

If an equation has already been produced using Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010 and authors have access to the full version of MathType 6.5 or later, they can convert this equation to MathType by clicking on MathType Insert Equation. Copy the equation from Microsoft Word and paste it into the MathType box. Verify that the equation is correct, click File, and then click Update. The equation has now been inserted into your Word file as a MathType Equation.

Use Equation Editor 3.0 or MathType only for equations or for formulas that cannot be produced as Word text using the Times or Symbol font.

Computer code

Because altering computer code in any way (e.g., indents, line spacing, line breaks, page breaks) during the typesetting process could alter its meaning, we treat computer code differently from the rest of the article in the production process. Supply separate files for computer code.

In online supplemental material

Runnable source code should be included as supplemental material to the article. For more information, visit supplementing your article with online material .

In the text of the article

If authors would like to include code in the text of the published article, submit a separate file with your code exactly as it should appear, using Courier New font with a type size of 8 points. An image will be made of each segment of code in your article that exceeds 40 characters in length. (Shorter snippets of code that appear in text will be typeset in Courier New and run in with the rest of the text.) If an appendix contains a mix of code and explanatory text, please submit a file that contains the entire appendix, with the code keyed in 8-point Courier New.

Use Word's insert table function when you create tables. Using spaces or tabs in your table will create problems when the table is typeset and may result in errors.

Review APA's Journal Manuscript Preparation Guidelines before submitting your article. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end.

Preferred formats for graphics files are TIFF and JPG, and preferred format for vector-based files is EPS. Graphics downloaded or saved from web pages are not acceptable for publication. Multipanel figures (i.e., figures with parts labeled a, b, c, d, etc.) should be assembled into one file. When possible, please place symbol legends below the figure instead of to the side.

All color line art and halftones: 300 DPI
Black and white line tone and gray halftone images: 600 DPI

Line weights

Color (RGB, CMYK) images: 2 pixels
Grayscale images: 4 pixels
Stroke weight: 0.5 points

APA offers authors the option to publish their figures online in color without the costs associated with print publication of color figures.

The same caption will appear on both the online (color) and print (black and white) versions. To ensure that the figure can be understood in both formats, authors should add alternative wording (e.g., “the red (dark gray) bars represent”) as needed.

For authors who prefer their figures to be published in color both in print and online, original color figures can be printed in color at the editor's and publisher's discretion provided the author agrees to pay:

$900 for one figure
An additional $600 for the second figure
An additional $450 for each subsequent figure

Academic writing and English language editing services

Authors who feel that their manuscript may benefit from additional academic writing or language editing support prior to submission are encouraged to seek out such services at their host institutions, engage with colleagues and subject matter experts, and/or consider several vendors that offer discounts to APA authors .

Please note that APA does not endorse or take responsibility for the service providers listed. It is strictly a referral service. Use of such service is not mandatory for publication in an APA journal. Use of one or more of these services does not guarantee selection for peer review, manuscript acceptance, or preference for publication in any APA journal.

Submitting supplemental materials

APA can place supplemental materials online, available via the published article in the APA PsycArticles ® database. Please see supplementing your article with online material for more details.

List references in alphabetical order. Each listed reference should be cited in text, and each text citation should be listed in the references section.

Examples of basic reference formats:

Journal article

McCauley, S. M., & Christiansen, M. H. (2019). Language learning as language use: A cross-linguistic model of child language development. Psychological Review , 126 (1), 1–51. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000126

Authored book

Brown, L. S. (2018). Feminist therapy (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000092-000

Chapter in an edited book

Balsam, K. F., Martell, C. R., Jones. K. P., & Safren, S. A. (2019). Affirmative cognitive behavior therapy with sexual and gender minority people. In G. Y. Iwamasa & P. A. Hays (Eds.), Culturally responsive cognitive behavior therapy: Practice and supervision (2nd ed., pp. 287–314). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000119-012

Data set citation

Alegria, M., Jackson, J. S., Kessler, R. C., & Takeuchi, D. (2016). Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), 2001–2003 [Data set]. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR20240.v8

Software/Code citation

Viechtbauer, W. (2010). Conducting meta-analyses in R with the metafor package. Journal of Statistical Software , 36(3), 1–48. https://www.jstatsoft.org/v36/i03/

Wickham, H. et al., (2019). Welcome to the tidyverse. Journal of Open Source Software, 4 (43), 1686, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.01686

All data, program code, and other methods must be appropriately cited in the text and listed in the references section.

Permissions

Authors of accepted papers must obtain and provide to the editor on final acceptance all necessary permissions to reproduce in print and electronic form any copyrighted work, including test materials (or portions thereof), photographs, and other graphic images (including those used as stimuli in experiments).

On advice of counsel, APA may decline to publish any image whose copyright status is unknown.

Download Permissions Alert Form (PDF, 13KB)

Publication policies

For full details on publication policies, including use of Artificial Intelligence tools, please see APA Publishing Policies .

APA policy prohibits an author from submitting the same manuscript for concurrent consideration by two or more publications.

See also APA Journals ® Internet Posting Guidelines .

APA requires authors to reveal any possible conflict of interest in the conduct and reporting of research (e.g., financial interests in a test or procedure, funding by pharmaceutical companies for drug research).

Download Full Disclosure of Interests Form (PDF, 41KB)

In light of changing patterns of scientific knowledge dissemination, APA requires authors to provide information on prior dissemination of the data and narrative interpretations of the data/research appearing in the manuscript (e.g., if some or all were presented at a conference or meeting, posted on a listserv, shared on a website, including academic social networks like ResearchGate, etc.). This information (2–4 sentences) must be provided as part of the author note.

Visit Open Access with APA Publishing for more information.

Artificial intelligence

When artificial intelligence (AI) is used in the drafting of a manuscript, the use of AI must be disclosed in the methods section and cited. AI cannot be named as an author on a JARMAC article.

When AI is cited in a manuscript, the author must employ the software citation template, which includes specifying in the methods section how, when, and to what extent AI was used. Authors are required to upload the full output of the AI as an appendix or supplemental material.

Visit APA Style for more information about how to cite ChatGPT .

Ethical Principles

It is a violation of APA Ethical Principles to publish "as original data, data that have been previously published" (Standard 8.13).

In addition, APA Ethical Principles specify that "after research results are published, psychologists do not withhold the data on which their conclusions are based from other competent professionals who seek to verify the substantive claims through reanalysis and who intend to use such data only for that purpose, provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and unless legal rights concerning proprietary data preclude their release" (Standard 8.14).

APA expects authors to adhere to these standards. Specifically, APA expects authors to have their data available throughout the editorial review process and for at least 5 years after the date of publication.

Authors are required to state in writing that they have complied with APA ethical standards in the treatment of their sample, human or animal, or to describe the details of treatment.

Download Certification of Compliance With APA Ethical Principles Form (PDF, 26KB)

The APA Ethics Office provides the full Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct electronically on its website in HTML, PDF, and Word format. You may also request a copy by emailing or calling the APA Ethics Office (202-336-5930). You may also read "Ethical Principles," December 1992, American Psychologist , Vol. 47, pp. 1597–1611.

Other information

See APA’s Publishing Policies page for more information on publication policies, including information on author contributorship and responsibilities of authors, author name changes after publication, the use of generative artificial intelligence, funder information and conflict-of-interest disclosures, duplicate publication, data publication and reuse, and preprints.

Visit the Journals Publishing Resource Center for more resources for writing, reviewing, and editing articles for publishing in APA journals.

Qi Wang , PhD Cornell University Department of Human Development, NY, United States

Associate editors

Ullrich Ecker, PhD University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

Lorraine Hope, PhD University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Sean Kang, PhD The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

Kamala London Newton, PhD The University of Toledo, OH, United States

Daniel Reisberg, PhD Reed College, Portland, OR, United States

Karl Szpunar, PhD Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Melanie Takarangi, PhD Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Editorial assistant

Nazike Mert

Peer review coordinator

Efrem Tuquabo

Editorial board members

Magdalena Abel, PhD University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany

Dorthe Berntsen, PhD Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Hartmut Blank, PhD University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Susan Bluck, PhD University of Florida, FL, United States

Andrew Butler, PhD Washington University in St Louis, Saint Louis, MO, United States

Shana Carpenter, PhD Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States

Alin Coman, PhD Princeton University, NJ, United States

Arnaud D'Argembeau, PhD University of Liège, Liège, Wallonia, Belgium

Chad Dodson, PhD University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States

Jacqueline Evans, PhD Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States

Lisa Fazio, PhD Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

Ronald Fisher, PhD Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States

Robyn Fivush, PhD Emory University, Atlanta, GA, United States

Maryanne Garry, PhD University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand

Sami Gülgöz, PhD Koç University, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, İstanbul, Turkey

Celia Harris, PhD Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia

Alice Healy, PhD University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States

Paula Hertel, PhD Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, United States

William Hirst, PhD The New School, New York, New York, United States

Derek Koehler, PhD University of Waterloo, ON, Canada

Stephen Lindsay, PhD University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Jeri Little, PhD California State University East Bay, Hayward, CA, United States

Richard Mayer, PhD University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, United States

Christian Meissner, PhD Iowa State University, Ames, IA, United States

Kathy Pezdek, PhD Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA, United States

David Pillemer, PhD University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States

Elaine Reese, PhD University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Henry Roediger III, PhD Washington University in St Louis, Saint Louis, MO, United States

Andrew Smith, PhD Iowa State University, Ames, IL, United States

Nancy Steblay, PhD Augsburg University, Minneapolis, MN, United States

Uma Tauber, PhD Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, United States

Dorthe Thomsen, PhD Aarhus University, Aahrus, Denmark

Michael Toglia, PhD Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, United States

Sharda Umanath, PhD Claremont McKenna College, CA, United States

Aldert Vrij, PhD University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, United Kingdom

Jennifer Wiley, PhD University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

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Effective January 1, 2022, APA Journals is proud to partner with the Society for Applied Research in Memory & Cognition (SARMAC) to publish the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition . Learn more about the partnership .
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Sleep deprivation induces fragmented memory loss

Affiliations.

1 Department of Psychology, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom.
2 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, 6526 HR Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
3 York Biomedical Research Institute (YBRI), University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, United Kingdom.
PMID: 32179655
PMCID: PMC7079571
DOI: 10.1101/lm.050757.119

Sleep deprivation increases rates of forgetting in episodic memory. Yet, whether an extended lack of sleep alters the qualitative nature of forgetting is unknown. We compared forgetting of episodic memories across intervals of overnight sleep, daytime wakefulness, and overnight sleep deprivation. Item-level forgetting was amplified across daytime wakefulness and overnight sleep deprivation, as compared to sleep. Importantly, however, overnight sleep deprivation led to a further deficit in associative memory that was not observed after daytime wakefulness. These findings suggest that sleep deprivation induces fragmentation among item memories and their associations, altering the qualitative nature of episodic forgetting.

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Published: 05 April 2022

Improvement of episodic memory retention by a memory reactivation intervention across the lifespan: from younger adults to amnesic patients

Rodrigo S. Fernández ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0213-9108 1 , 2 ,
Soledad Picco 1 , 2 ,
Juan Cruz Beron 1 , 2 ,
Luz Bavassi 1 , 2 ,
Jorge Campos 3 ,
Ricardo F. Allegri 3 &
María E. Pedreira 1 , 2

Translational Psychiatry volume 12 , Article number: 144 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Human behaviour
Long-term memory
Psychiatric disorders

Spontaneous reactivation of recently acquired memories is a fundamental mechanism of memory stabilization. Re-exposure to specific learned cues during sleep or awake states, namely targeted memory reactivation, has been shown to improve memory retention at long delays. Manipulation of memory reactivation could have potential clinical value in populations with memory deficits or cognitive decline. However, no previous study investigated a target memory reactivation approach on those populations. Here we tested the hypothesis that a reactivation-based intervention would improve episodic memory performance in healthy adults and amnestic patients. On Day 1, young adults, old adults and amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment patients ( n = 150) learned face-name pairs and 24 h later either received a reactivation intervention or a reactivation control (Day 2). On Day 3, associative and item memory were assessed. A robust Bayesian Generalized Mixed Model was implemented to estimate intervention effects on groups. Groups that underwent the reactivation-based intervention showed improved associative memory retention. Notably, amnestic patients benefited more from the intervention as they also had better item memory retention than controls. These findings support memory reactivation as stabilization and strengthening mechanism irrespectively of age and cognitive status, and provides proof-of-concept evidence that reactivation-based interventions could be implemented in the treatment and rehabilitation of populations with memory deficits.

Memory persistence: from fundamental mechanisms to translational opportunities

Interference between overlapping memories is predicted by neural states during learning

Behavioural reconsolidation interference not observed in a within-subjects design

Introduction.

Normal ageing is associated with cognitive decline and episodic memory impairments related to acquisition and retrieval of previously experienced events [ 1 ]. Such diminution is often more pronounced than expected. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI or Mild Neurocognitive Disorder) is an intermediate state between normal ageing and dementia [ 2 ]. MCI defines a condition of cognitive deficits associated with an objective memory impairment without compromising everyday functioning. In particular, episodic memory impairment is the hallmark of the amnesic MCI subtype (aMCI). The prevalence of MCI among individuals >60 years is ~6.7–25.2% and the progression to neurodegenerative conditions is estimated to be between 5 and 17% [ 2 , 3 ]. Due to ageing population, cognitive decline and dementia are considered global challenges for health and social care systems.

Treatment options aim to improve cognitive functions and prevent or delay progression from MCI to dementia [ 3 , 4 ]. In this sense, current pharmacological and cognitive interventions have limited or modest success [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. In particular, cognitive interventions such as cognitive stimulation or rehabilitation use learning and memory strategies as a part of a multicomponent treatment, where the effectiveness of a technique in isolation is difficult to assess. In line with traditional memory frameworks, several compensatory and instructional techniques are applied to improve memory acquisition and retrieval (i.e., visual imagery, external aids, spaced retrieval, errorless learning, etc.; [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]). However, there is no linear relation between the amount of information acquired and its subsequent behavioral output (retrieval). Memories are not carved in stone. Events surrounding memory acquisition or retrieval change the process of memory stabilization and its properties [ 9 ]. Post-encoding processes gradually stabilize a newly formed representation by the process of memory consolidation [ 10 , 11 ]. Previous studies found that aMCI patients have memory consolidation deficits. Patients with aMCI are thought to have memory impairments when tested at long delays after acquisition and a higher susceptibility to memory interference [ 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 ]. This suggests that information loss after memory consolidation is increased in aMCI patients relative to healthy older adults and that the time interval between memory acquisition and retrieval is critical for memory maintenance.

Evidence from awake and sleep studies indicate that shortly after learning, activity patterns presented during memory acquisition are activated again strongly [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. This spontaneous reactivation of recently acquired representations is thought as the mechanism underlying memory stabilization and maintenance [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Sequential reactivation of hippocampal ensembles along hippocampal-cortical interactions promotes memory stabilization [ 21 , 22 ]. Studies targeting memory reactivation during sleep or focusing on awake reactivation showed that this process could strengthen, weaken, or change memory shortly after memory acquisition [ 23 , 24 ]. Typically, the presentation of cues associated with the to-be-remembered information during slow-wave sleep, improves memory stabilization and retention. Similar findings come from the reconsolidation framework, which implies longer time frames to study memory changes. Briefly, reconsolidation is a memory process by which reactivated long-term memories are transiently destabilize, followed by its re-stabilization to update their strength or content [ 25 , 26 ]. Multiple studies demonstrated that the presentation of specific reminders (reactivation) of information learned one or several days before improves memory precision, retention and protects it against interference [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. However, targeted memory reactivation and stabilization processes in older adults were scarcely studied and with mixed results. In addition, reactivation-based benefits during sleep seem to decline as a result of normal ageing [ 30 ]. For example, using a targeted memory reactivation protocol during sleep in older adults, Cordi and colleagues [ 31 ] found no benefit on vocabulary. In contrast, Johnson et al. [ 32 ] showed that memory reactivation during a nap enhances skill performance. Other studies on episodic memory reconsolidation indicated that memory reactivation strengthens the performance of older adults when tested two or seven days later [ 33 , 34 ]. Similar results were found using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation [ 35 ]. No previous study has examined memory targeted reactivation in populations with memory declines such as aMCI or dementia.

There is a need for improvement in the strategies targeting memory decline and the treatment of aMCI. Considering that older adults and aMCI patients have memory consolidation impairments, it would be beneficial to develop interventions based on the time interval between memory acquisition and retrieval in order to improve episodic memory retention and maintenance.

Thus, this proof-of-concept study tested the hypothesis that a reactivation-based intervention on a stabilized memory would improve episodic memory retention irrespectively of age and cognitive status. For addressing this hypothesis, young adults, healthy older adults, and aMCI patients were trained in face-name pairs (Day 1) and 24 h later received a reactivation intervention or a reactivation control (Day 2). Final memory performance was assessed 24 h later (Day 3). To measure the specific effect of memory reactivation on memory retention, participants were first tested on associative memory (face-name pairs) and then on item memory (faces/names separately).

To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to investigate the potential therapeutic utility of a reactivation-based intervention targeting the time interval between memory acquisition and retrieval in a population with objective memory impairments. In addition, we selected an associative memory task that reflect a common cognitive complaint in the elderly (face-name association [ 36 ]). Finally, this work makes a step forward contributing to develop new treatment strategies and targets.

Methods and materials

Participants.

A total of 150 individuals participated in the study. Sample size was based on a power analysis of our previous memory strengthening studies [ 27 , 28 ] and Monte Carlo simulations using the R package simr targeting the interaction between group and block (minimum effect size of 0.5 with 80% power, with confidence intervals above the 95% level). Young adults ( n = 50) with no history of neuropsychiatric disorders (age M = 24.6, SD = 3.1, 62% females) were recruited via social media and at the University of Buenos Aires campus. Healthy older adults ( n = 50, age M = 73.2, SD = 4.9, 58% females) and aMCI patients ( n = 50, age M = 72.6, SD = 5.3, 50% females) were matched for age and education. Older participants were recruited from the Department of Cognitive Neurology, Neuropsychiatry, and Neuropsychology at Fleni and underwent clinical evaluation, including a neuropsychological test battery (Supplementary Materials S1 ). () which included: Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE), Logical memory test from the Weschler Memory Scale III, Boston Naming Test, Categorical and Phonological Verbal Fluency Test, Digit Span Forward and Backward, Trail Making Test A and B, Rey Auditory Verbal Learning (RAVLT), Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure and the Digit Symbol-Coding subtest of the Weschler Adult Intelligence Scale-IV. Diagnosis was based on consensus by a team of neurologists and neuropsychologists following standard guidelines. Before the experiments, participants signed a written informed consent form approved by the Ethics Committee of Fleni.

As older adults have demonstrated an associative impairment in learning face-name pairs [ 36 ], we paired ten neutral faces with ten names (five males and five females, respectively). Faces from older adults were selected from the FACES database [ 37 ]. Additional ten faces were used during the item memory recognition. Common names from 1930–1955 were drawn from the civil government registry ( https://nombres.datos.gob.ar/ ) in order to ensure name familiarity in older adults. All names had three syllables and started with a different one. Experimental tasks were designed and presented using MATLAB 2016 (Mathworks Inc., Sherborn, MA, USA) with the Psychtoolbox toolkit.

As memory stabilization is thought of as a gradient, recently acquired memories are fragile and susceptible to disruption [ 11 , 25 ]. In contrast, more stabilized memories are more time and interference-resistant. Hence, changes in memory stability and strength would require time to be detected. In consequence, we designed a 3-day study (Fig. 1 ) with a 24 h interval between sessions as follows:

A On day 1, participants ( n = 150) underwent training to learn ten face-name associations. On the first block, the presentation of each face was followed by the presentation of the complete name. Then, for each pair, the face was presented first followed by the presentation of a sound cue, a “speak” legend plus the first syllable of the name. Participants responded aloud the complete name only after the sound cue and “speak” legend presentation. Each response was always followed by feedback on screen. B On day 2, groups received either a reactivation intervention or a reactivation control. In the reactivation intervention, each face was presented with the first name syllable followed by an interruption message. Conversely, in the reactivation control, each face was presented alone. In both cases, participants were not allowed to respond as neither the sound cue nor the “speak” legend appeared. C On day 3, participants performed three testing sessions: (1) associative memory (face-name pairs): each face was presented alone and participants were instructed to respond aloud the complete name; (2) free recall (item memory): subjects were instructed to say aloud, all the names that they could recall; and (3) memory recognition (item memory): participants performed an old/new task in which they were instructed to decide if the presented face was previously learned (old) or not (new).

Day 1 (memory acquisition)

Participants were trained in a face-name association task divided into four blocks. On the first block, the ten face-name pairs were presented sequentially and randomly on the center of the screen for 4 s. On blocks 2–4 (tr1 to tr3), faces were first presented alone for 2 s and then the name´s first syllable appeared on the top of the screen along with a sound cue (1 s) with a “speak” legend which signaled that the participant was allowed to respond. Subjects responded aloud the complete name of the face and always received feedback for 2 s. Feedback consisted of the automatic presentation of the correct answer onscreen in a specific color (green). Participants had 4 s to respond and were instructed that they could respond only after the sound cue with the “speak” legend. All answers were recorded with the computer within the task. The inter-stimulus interval on every trial varied between 2.5 and 4 s and the entire procedure took 15 min. All participants reached the inclusion criteria (≥60% of correct responses on the last block).

Day 2 (memory reactivation)

Younger adults, older adults, and aMCI patients were randomly assigned either to a reactivation intervention or a reactivation control. Participants were instructed to perform the same face-name task again as on Day 1 and to remember that they could only respond when they heard the sound cue and the “speak” legend.

Reactivation intervention

Based on our previous work and sleep studies [ 20 , 27 , 28 , 38 ], we constructed incomplete reminders in order to reactivate the stabilized memory acquired on Day 1. This type of reactivation session was demonstrated to have superior effects on episodic memory retention than other types of reactivation. The reactivation session consisted of the presentation of each face for 2 s followed by the name´s first syllable for 1.5 s and an interruption message (“ Trial interrupted ”). Participants were not allowed to respond as neither the sound cue nor the “speak” legend were presented. Correct answers were not presented either. Two reactivation rounds for each face were used, and on each round the presentation order was randomized. The inter-stimulus interval was identical to Day 1.

Reactivation control

The procedure for the reactivation control was equivalent to the reactivation intervention, with the exception that the name´s first syllable was not presented. This type of intervention is thought to have a minimal effect on memory performance [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. As not every memory reactivation is capable of improveing memory retention, we used this intervention to control the reactivation itself and explore the specificity of the reactivation intervention. Item and inter-item duration were the same as on the reactivation intervention.

Day 3 (memory evaluation)

Our primary interest was to assess memory reactivation effects on associative memory (face-name pairs). However, because associative and item memory may correspond to different ways to retrieve or represent information [ 39 ], we also tested item memory by employing free recall (names alone) and recognition (faces alone) tasks. All participants performed memory evaluation in the same order with a 5 min break: first associative memory, then free recall, and finally memory recognition testing.

Associative memory (face-name pairs)

Memory retention was assessed across four blocks (ts1 to ts4). Each face was presented on screen and participants were instructed to respond aloud the entire name when the sound cue and “speak” legend appeared. Subjects had 4 s to provide an answer. On this day, the first syllable of the names was not presented. However, participants did receive feedback on each trial. The inter-item duration was the same as on Day 1.

Free recall (item memory - names)

Subjects were instructed to recall aloud all the names that they could remember from the experiment for 1 min.

Recognition (item memory - faces)

The ten previously learned faces were presented randomly, along with ten new faces on screen. During the test, faces appeared one at a time, and participants were instructed to make an OLD/NEW judgment aloud. All responses were recorded.

Additional measures

Before finishing, participants were asked face-to-face and aloud: (1) how many individual faces they had seen during the entire face-name task at testing (open question); (2) the number of repetitions of each individual face at testing (open question); (3) overall confidence in their responses at testing considering a 1–10 subjective scale.

Analytic strategy

Data analysis was conducted using R 4.0.5 within the Bayesian framework. Bayesian posterior estimation provides many advantages, such as robust parameter estimation, their uncertainty, and the ability to quantify evidence for or against models [ 40 ]. Mixed-effects logistic regression models were implemented using the brms package on each memory evaluation. Associative memory accuracy (face-name pairs) was modeled as a function of group (young adults, older adults, and aMCI patients), reactivation type (reactivation vs reactivation control) and Block (fixed effects). For item memory, group, and reactivation were used as fixed effects with the inclusion of Stimulus type (old/ new) in memory recognition analysis. In all analyzes, subject-level and item-level (face identity) intercepts were used as random effects, and the reactivation control served as reference. Weakly informative Cauchy priors with location parameters of 0 and scale parameters of 2.5 (for the fixed effects) and ten (for the random effects) were specified. Additionally, we conducted a prior sensitivity analysis to test the influence of priors on the posterior distribution. Overall, priors had a neglectable influence on the reported results (Supplementary Materials S5 ). All models indicated convergence, according to the Gelman–Rubin r̂ statistic ( r̂ < 1.01), and were fitted using four chains with 5000 iterations and 2000 warm-up iterations. For each analysis, we implemented different models that varied in complexity and number of fixed effects to evaluate their importance and their interactions. Model comparison was based on Pareto Smoothed importance sampling Leave-One-Out Cross-Validation (LOO-CV) which computes the difference in Expected Log Pointwise Predictive Density (ELPD Difference). ELPD difference quantifies the predictive accuracy of the best-performing model relative to the others [ 41 ]. Hence, models that underperform the winning model, are expected to have negative ELPD differences. We also calculated the Bayes Factor (BF) using bridge sampling for comparing models that included or not different fixed effects. BF was based on the ratio of evidence comparing one alternative model against the null model (BF 10 ). A BF <1 indicates that both models are equally likely, a BF >3 could be interpreted as moderate evidence, and a BF >10 provides strong evidence in favor of the model [ 42 ]. Tidybayes and emmeans R packages were used to generate samples for each marginal mean and to create contrasts between conditions of interest (main effects and interactions). All analyses used the mean as the posterior point estimate and the 95% Highest Density Interval (HDI) as a measure of uncertainty. The HDI conveys the most probable values in the posterior. Parameter estimates can be thought as statistically meaningful (akin to statistical significance in the frequentist approach) if their HDI excluded zero. Additional measures (number of faces, repetitions, and overall response confidence), were analyzed by means of independent Bayesian ANOVA implemented in JASP with default priors [ 43 ]. Finally, group comparisons between older adults and aMCI patients in demographic variables and the neuropsychological battery, were performed in JASP using Bayesian independent t -test with default priors (Supplementary Materials S1 ).

Associative memory (face-name pairs) acquisition and evaluation

Model comparison showed that the inclusion of block × group (younger adults, older adults and aMCI patients) × reactivation type (reactivation intervention vs reactivation control) interaction had the highest prediction accuracy (ELPD difference) relative to the other less complex models (Fig. 2A ; for models posterior estimates and a full model comparison of LOO-CV see Supplementary Materials S2 ). Similarly, a Bayesian modeling averaging analysis [ 44 ] provided additional support for the interaction inclusion and all the other predictors as well (each BF inclusion > 3000).

A Model comparison: leave-one-out cross-validation indicated that the interaction model had the highest prediction accuracy (ELPD difference). B Estimated fitted means with 95% HDI (Accuracy) across training (tr1–tr3) and testing (ts1–ts4) blocks. Small points show raw accuracy. Groups that received the reactivation intervention showed improved memory retention on Day 3. C – F Posterior marginal means with 95% HDI and contrasts, showed that the reactivation intervention improved memory retention across groups and testing blocks.

As depicted in Fig. 2B , on Day 1 memory accuracy in the face-name training was similar across groups. In the last training block, all participants responded correctly to at least 60% of the names and there were no differences between groups (group × block contrast, aMCI vs young adults (tr3) M diff = −0.89 [−1.90, 0.13], BF = 0.3; aMCI vs older adults (tr3) M diff = 0.13 [−0.64, 0.99], BF = 0.04; older Aadults vs young adults (tr3), M diff = −1.02 [−1.92, 0.09], BF = 0.19) or reactivation Type (reactivation type × block contrast M diff = 0.18 [−0.61, 0.95], BF = 0.04). We observed a considerable reduction in memory performance at testing (Day 3). As expected, younger adults have the highest overall memory retention (Fig. 2C , group main effect BF > 1000, aMCI vs younger adults M diff = −2.23 [−2.62, −1.84], BF > 1000; older adults vs younger adults M diff = −1.21 [−1.61, −0.84], BF > 1000) and older adults performed better than aMCI patients (aMCI vs older adults M diff = −1.01 [−1.38, −0.65], BF = 499.4). Notably, memory accuracy was drastically different across groups depending on the reactivation type (Fig. 2D , reactivation main effect BF > 1000, M dif = −0.71 [−1.01, −0.40], BF = 267.4). From the first testing block (ts1) to the last one (ts4), we found evidence that groups that received the reactivation intervention had a better performance than those which received the reactivation control (Fig. 2E , group × reactivation type interaction main effect BF > 1000, aMCI M diff = −0.95 [−1.46, −0.47], BF = 0.53; older adults = M diff = −0.62 [−1.06, −0.08], BF = 0.283; M diff = −0.59 [−1.15, −0.06], BF = 0.193). A trial by trial analysis provided more evidence of a strengthening effect on episodic memory retention produced by the reactivation intervention (Fig. 2F , group × block × reactivation type interaction main effect BF > 1000, aMCI patients (ts1) M diff = −1.26 [−1.92, −0.63], BF = 103.06; older adults (ts1) M diff = −1.04 [−1.60, −0.45], BF = 4.27; younger adults (ts1) M diff = −0.91 [−1.55, −0.33], BF = 3.13). Interestingly, the reactivation intervention had the strongest effect in aMCI patients on memory retention (27% memory improvement relative to the reactivation control, Cohen’s d = 1.14 [0.53, 1.73]), followed by older adults (20%, Cohen’s d = 0.94 [0.36, 1.4]) and younger adults (11%, Cohen’s d = 0.66 [0.09, 1.23]).

Item memory evaluation

Names free recall.

LOO-CV analysis indicated that the inclusion of both group and reactivation type as predictors improved the prediction accuracy of the models (Fig. 3A ; see full model comparison in Supplementary Materials S3 ). Evidence for an interaction between group and reactivation type was inconclusive (ELPD difference between models with and without interaction term = −2.17, SE = 2.6; BF inclusion = 1.26). Model averaging also supported the inclusion of both main effects (group BF inclusion > 10000 and reactivation type BF inclusion = 6.2). Overall, younger adults recalled more names than older adults (Fig. 3 B and C , M diff = −0.74 [−1.14, −0.35], BF = 9.34) and aMCI patients ( M diff = −1.41 [−1.76, −1.06], BF > 1000). Evidence for a reactivation type effect was modest (Fig. 3D , M diff = −0.35 [−0.63, −0.08], BF = 1.60). Interestingly, contrast analysis revealed that aMCI patients in the reactivation intervention had better Item memory retention than the reactivation control (Fig. 3E , M diff = −0.75 [−1.13, −0.36], BF = 22.10). For young adults and older adults we found no support for any difference between conditions ( M diff = −0.37 [−1.03, 0.15], BF = 0.11 and M diff = 0.12 [−0.39, 0.55], BF = 0.04, respectively).

A Model Comparison: Leave-one-out cross-validation indicated that the interaction model or main effects model had the highest prediction accuracy (ELPD difference). B Estimated fitted means with 95% HDI (Recall) across groups and reactivation type. Small points show raw recall. Groups that received the reactivation intervention showed a slightly better memory retention on Day 3. C – E Posterior marginal means with 95% HDI and contrasts, showed that the reactivation intervention improved item memory only in aMCI patients.

Face recognition

Memory recognition was near ceiling across groups and conditions (between 90% and 99% correct responses). Main effects only and interaction models showed better prediction accuracy than the null model (Fig. 4A ). However, model comparison did not favor any specific model (see full model comparison in Supplementary Materials S4 ; also all BF inclusion < 1). aMCI patients had lower memory recognition than older adults (Fig. 4 B and C , M diff = −2.16 [−3.03, −1.30], BF > 1000) and younger adults ( M diff = −2.44 [−3.45, −1.52], BF > 1000). We found no evidence for a reactivation type effect (Fig. 4D , M diff = −0.27 [−1.13, 0.50], BF = 0.06). Thus, contrast analysis suggested an anecdotal evidence for a reactivation effect in aMCI patients (Fig. 4E , M diff = −0.56 [−1.17, −0.02], BF = 0.6) but any evidence in older adults ( M diff = −0.11 [−1.57, 1.45], BF = 0.07) or younger adults ( M diff = 0.17 [−2.07, 1.52], BF = 0.09).

A Model comparison: leave-one-out cross-validation suggested that the inclusion of group as predictor improved model performance with no clear benefit of the other predictors. B Estimated fitted means with 95% HDI (memory recognition) across groups, reactivation type and stimulus type (old/new). Small points show raw responses. All groups had a robust performance (>90% of correct responses). C – E Posterior marginal means with 95% HDI and contrasts, showed that the reactivation intervention improved memory recognition only in aMCI patients.

The number of perceived faces and their repetitions after testing (Day 3) was similar across groups and conditions (Supplementary Materials S6 ). A Bayesian ANOVA group × reactivation type for perceived faces and number of repetitions performed in JASP , did not support strong evidence for a model with group or reactivation type as predictors (all BF´s model relative to the null model and BF inclusion effect < 3). Conversely, overall participants’ confidence was different based on group and reactivation type. A Bayesian ANOVA favored the main effects and the inclusion of the interaction relative to the null model (group × reactivation type model, BF > 10000 and BF inclusion = 7.81). Independent Bayesian T -test´s revealed that aMCI patients in the reactivation intervention ( M = 9.12 [8.58, 9.65]) had higher levels of response confidence relative to the reactivation control ( M = 8.36 [7.70, 9.01]; BF = 51.91). However, this effect was absent in older adults and younger adults (BF < 1).

The study of memory reactivation and stabilization at long delays in populations with memory deficits is absent. Only recent work examined memory reactivation in older adults with limited evidence [ 31 , 32 , 34 ]. The current findings provide evidence that memory reactivation facilitates episodic memory stabilization and improves memory retention at long delays across the lifespan. More importantly, we showed that a delayed reactivation intervention strengthened memory performance in a population with objective episodic memory deficits (aMCI patients), in both associative and item memory, suggesting that those with the weakest memory ability benefited more from the intervention. Finally, this proof-of-concept study supports the feasibility of memory reactivation-based interventions in clinical settings, such as cognitive stimulation or rehabilitation of memory deficits.

These results are aligned with studies of targeted memory reactivation during sleep and post-encoding awake reactivation, which showed memory reactivation as a stabilization mechanism [ 19 , 24 , 45 , 46 ]. Several results established the memory benefits of quiet rest and sleep shortly after learning, even in amnesic patients [ 15 , 47 ]. Initially acquired memories are thought to be maturated by post-encoding processes during offline or “quiet restful” periods [ 17 , 25 , 48 ]. Hippocampal neurons during slow-wave sleep fire in fast oscillations (sharp-wave ripples) co-occurring with rhythmic thalamocortical activity (spindles). Neuroimaging studies in humans also found evidence of post-encoding reactivation in the similarity of hippocampal activity between encoding and post-encoding patterns [ 17 , 24 ]. Notably, the magnitude of this reactivation predicts subsequent memory [ 24 , 49 ]. Thus, memory reactivation enables the stabilization of recently acquired memories, and in consequence, their maintenance and protection from interference [ 20 , 21 ]. Given the well-known function of the hippocampus in episodic memory formation, memory reactivation, and its atrophy in MCI patients, we assume that the hippocampal formation may be critically recruited during the reactivation intervention in order to promote memory stabilization and strengthening. However, future research should use neuroimaging techniques and target hippocampal-cortical interactions and their contribution in episodic memory strengthening.

Previous work on memory reconsolidation in animals and humans, also demonstrated that re-exposure to learned cues after memory consolidation strengthens memory retention, prevents forgetting, and improves memory persistence [ 27 , 28 , 29 ]. However, not all reminders are equally effective at stabilizing memory or triggering the reconsolidation process. Cues that involve a discrepancy between what is expected and what actually occurs (Prediction Error), are proposed to drive memory reactivation-reconsolidation [ 26 ]. A recent work by Forcato and colleagues [ 38 ] provided evidence that only reminders that included a prediction error (incomplete reminders) stabilized memory in the long term. We believe that our reactivation-based intervention followed similar principles in the “reminder” construction and thus promoted memory strengthening. Besides its critical role in strengthening specific memories, memory reactivation may promote memory integration into cortical circuits [ 24 , 50 ]. Memories are thought to be gradually transformed and stored in interconnected networks by system-level consolidation [ 51 ]. This long-range process allows the extraction of regularities across experiences and its generalization across memories. In this sense, the integration of new memories into previous knowledge increases the efficiency of the memory network. For example, Bavassi et al. [ 52 ] found that memories strengthened by the reactivation-reconsolidation process presented a more interconnected network between brain regions (denser network with increased values of clustering coefficient) relative to retrained memories.

This study has several limitations. It was designed to test changes in episodic memory retention as a product of a specific reactivation intervention. Although the results supported this idea, the evidence provided for its effect is relative rather than absolute. That is, we demonstrate the specificity and efficacy of a reactivation intervention with respect to a reactivation control but in the absence of non-reactivated groups. Non-reactivated groups would have shown a baseline to assess the absolute effects of the reactivation intervention and assessed whereas the reactivation control improved or impaired memory retention. Although, previous studies that have used similar reactivations to the reactivation control, indicate that this procedure does not alter long-term memory retention, as the degree of prediction error would be insufficient with respect to the target reactivation [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 53 , 54 ]. Another limitation of this work resides in the evaluation of item memory. The fact that memory was evaluated after associative memory could have biased the results and generated a ceiling effect. Future studies should contemplate more directed experimental designs to examine how memory reactivation affects item memory retention.

This is the first study to demonstrate a specific improvement in episodic memory retention in a population with objective memory deficit (aMCI) using a reactivation intervention. Moreover, this benefit was found in an associative task which resembles common memory difficulties in the elderly. In the last decade, a large body of studies proposed the therapeutic utility of memory reactivation-reconsolidation to modify dysfunctional memories (i.e., phobias, traumas, etc; [ 55 ]) aimed to develop “technologies of forgetting”. Conversely, here we propose a reactivation intervention to produce enduring changes in memory stability and retention, aiming to develop more efficient “technologies of remembering”. Current cognitive stimulation/rehabilitation treatments for memory deficits emphasize acquisition and retrieval processes in order to strengthen specific and relevant memories such as caregiver names, addresses, or phones [ 8 ]. However, as amnesic patients commonly have consolidation impairments, this information is fragile and rapidly susceptible to disruption [ 12 , 13 , 16 ]. Hence, targeting memory stabilization in the time interval between memory acquisition and later retrieval, could be helpful to improve memory retention and to increase its later probability of retrieval. In this sense, reactivation-based interventions could be easily applied in the context of cognitive stimulation/rehabilitation and contribute to compensate memory deficits in clinical settings.

Data availability

Raw data used in the study can be found here: https://osf.io/r7qbn/ .

Code availability

Code for performing the Bayesian analyses in R can be provided upon request.

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Fernández, R.S., Picco, S., Beron, J.C. et al. Improvement of episodic memory retention by a memory reactivation intervention across the lifespan: from younger adults to amnesic patients. Transl Psychiatry 12 , 144 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41398-022-01915-z

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Long-term memory effects on working memory updating development

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy

Roles Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

Caterina Artuso,
Paola Palladino

Published: May 31, 2019
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697
Reader Comments

Long-term memory (LTM) associations appear as important to cognition as single memory contents. Previous studies on updating development have focused on cognitive processes and components, whereas our investigation examines how contents, associated with different LTM strength (strong or weak), might be differentially updated at different ages. To this end, we manipulated association strength of information given at encoding, in order to focus on updating pre-existing LTM associations; specifically, associations for letters. In particular, we controlled for letters usage frequency at the sub-lexical level. We used a task where we dissociated inhibition online (i.e., RTs for updating and controlling inhibition from the same set) and offline (i.e., RTs for controlling inhibition from previously updated sets). Mixed-effect analyses were conducted and showed a substantial behavioural cost when strong associations had to be dismantled online (i.e., longer RTs), compared to weak ones; here, in primary school age children. Interestingly, this effect was independent of age; in fact, children from 7–8 to 9–10 years were comparably sensitive to the strength of LTM associations in updating. However, older children were more effective in offline inhibitory control.

Citation: Artuso C, Palladino P (2019) Long-term memory effects on working memory updating development. PLoS ONE 14(5): e0217697. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697

Editor: Burcu Arslan, Educational Testing Service, UNITED STATES

Received: November 26, 2018; Accepted: May 16, 2019; Published: May 31, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Artuso, Palladino. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: This work was supported by Blue Sky Research (BRS) 2017 Established Investigator awarded to PP. The funder played no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Introduction

Working memory (WM) is a capacity limited system, able to maintain actively sets of representations useful in complex cognitive skills such as reading [ 1 , 2 ] or text comprehension [ 3 , 4 ]. WM performance improves substantially over childhood with linear increases [ 5 , 6 ]. These developmental improvements may be driven by increases in storage capacity [ 7 ], rehearsal strategies [ 8 ], or also updating processes [ 9 ].

In fact, given capacity limits and the continuous flow of information to be processed, it is important to explore a mechanism that potentially allows WM content to be updated constantly via maintenance of relevant information and inhibition of irrelevant information. Updating investigation is usually applied to memory contents [ 10 ]. However, usually, updating tasks are based on binding and unbinding processes between memory contents (e.g., [ 11 ]). Binding updating (but not content updating) is a more sensitive measure in accounting for performance in accuracy-based updating tasks [ 12 ]. In addition, the role of associative contextual bindings in episodic memory retrieval was also supported [ 13 ]. Overall, it appears that the monitoring of associative bindings between contents is a specific challenge for the updating process (see also [ 14 , 15 ]).

In the current paper, we aimed to study how updating of long-term memory (LTM) bindings (or LTM associations) develops in primary school children (in particular from third to fifth grade). First, we briefly review development of updating components and the role of LTM representations in WM tasks through childhood; in particular, lexical-semantic and sub-lexical representations. Next, we will focus on sub-lexical LTM representations and how these are updated specifically, introducing the aims of the current study.

Updating processes, components and development

Development of the WM updating function is a recent research topic that has arisen from adult studies and modelling research. In a recent developmental study, an accuracy-based updating task modelled after the one developed by [ 4 ] was administered to children [ 9 ]; here, they were able to differentiate between inhibition (i.e., ability to suppress same-lists intrusions) and proactive interference (PI) control (i.e., ability to suppress previous-lists intrusions). They showed that memory performance improves with age, together with development of inhibitory process efficiency. However, the most interesting finding here, is that these two components are relatively dissociable. The inhibition of information explained a considerable amount of variance, but of a similar percentage magnitude at ages 7, 11 and 15 years (42%, 49% and 46%, respectively); thus, its developmental contribution is less pronounced. On the other hand, the PI control component explained smaller amounts of variance across all ages, but especially at 7 years (25%), at 11 years (17%) and at 15 years (13%; [ 9 ]); thus its developmental role appeared more pronounced.

This two-component model of updating development is consistent with other models that emphasize additional features of updating and/or investigate alternative mechanisms [ 16 ]; here, the authors decomposed the updating process, individuating at least three components: retrieval (i.e., searching for a specific representation among many competing elements maintained in the region of direct access; see also [ 17 ]); transformation (i.e., modifying a representation maintained in WM); and the most distinctive component, item-removal (i.e., replacement of previously relevant content -now irrelevant- with new relevant information; [ 16 , 18 ]).

Within this theoretical framework, age-related differences through development, from 8 years to adulthood were found [ 19 ]. They found that only the retrieval component has age-related effects, with clear development from 8 years; no differences were observed for transformation or item-removal, despite their crucial role in updating.

LTM associations and WM development

The role of LTM associations in WM performance has been previously explored in order to understand how enduring properties of verbal material affects ongoing performance, mainly through simple WM tasks involving recall (e.g., [ 20 , 21 ]). The impact of informational organization in LTM on WM performance can be observed at different processing levels, e.g., lexical, sub-lexical and semantic.

In general, it has been shown that LTM associations interact with recall, facilitating the process; the more strongly items are associated in LTM, the more WM performance will benefit. That said, few studies have investigated the influence of lexical/semantic LTM representations on verbal WM performance in children, although previous research seems to suggest that effects are similar in children and adults (e.g., [ 22 , 23 , 24 ]).

Semantically-related information enhanced WM performance more than descriptive or unrelated information [ 22 ]. Similar lexico-semantic effects to adults across development were reported [ 23 ]. In an immediate serial recall task with words, they found replication of effects observed in adults, (e.g., lexicality, word frequency and imageability) from 6 to 22 years. These were accounted for by similar redintegration processes that would operate effectively on high frequency words because their phonological representations are more easily accessed by partial information. Accordingly, item frequency effects on recall are observed with the relevant item only, and occur at the time the individual item is retrieved/recalled (see also [ 20 , 21 , 25 ]).

How LTM lexical/semantic knowledge (such as lexicality and language familiarity effects) impacts on WM performance was examined by [ 24 ]. They compared children aged 5 and 9 years in tasks of immediate serial recall, finding evidence of the semantic-similarity effect in 5 year-olds. In fact, the specific organization of semantic LTM was found to enhance recall performance.

Overall, these studies have focused on WM recall tasks (i.e., entailing temporary maintenance of information in WM; [ 2 ]) and suggest that the more associated the information is, the better memory performance will be. In addition, studies suggest that developmental changes of the LTM system happens between the age of 5 and 11 years [ 24 ]; thus, interactions between LMT and WM recall are linked to developmental changes in WM capacity and efficiency [ 6 ]. In contrast, here, we focused on the interaction between LTM and updating; here, a complex WM function comprising not only temporary maintenance of information, but also inhibition and item-removal [ 9 , 16 , 18 ].

How LTM associations are updated

To the best of our knowledge, few studies have investigated the updating of LTM associations between verbal materials [ 14 , 26 ]. Indeed, updating can be distinguished from recall, as it allows memory focus to remain attuned to the most relevant information in any specific moment.

In an initial study, the strength of association between LTM stimuli was manipulated [ 26 ]; and how strength might modulate the updating process itself. Following the literature on the beneficial effects of highly-associated LTM information (e.g., [ 20 , 25 ]), Artuso and Palladino [ 26 ] investigated whether strong or weak associations were updated differently. Strength was represented by the frequency of sub-lexical associations between consonants. Association strength was manipulated at encoding, in order to observe how strong and weak associations were updated subsequently. Overall, it was shown that the stronger the LTM association, the longer latencies (i.e., to substitute information and to control for irrelevant information) were required. Therefore, a processing cost was found for updating; this is in direct opposition to recall, which is boosted by association strength [ 14 ].

In a further study, the association strength was manipulated at both encoding and updating, and added two conditions (i.e., strong associations that were updated to strong, and weak associations updated to strong), in order to gain a more complete view of accumulation and disruption of specific associations [ 14 ]. Here, the data supported the view that as pre-existing associations became stronger, they became harder to dismantle (i.e., longer RTs). In addition, when a strong association had to be recreated, this was usually enhanced (i.e., with shorter RTs from weak to strong association). The result was observed for both processing speed (inhibition process) and interference control (i.e., of a previously activated strong association). In particular, it was shown that inhibitory control requested was greater for items strongly associated, indicating, in turn, the long lasting of the pre-existing LTM association. Those experiments demonstrated clearly that associations from LTM modulate the updating process. In fact, these results suggested that, on the one hand, strong associations are dismantled and updated with greater difficulty (i.e., they require longer RTs), and on the other, that strong associations are activated more easily (i.e., requiring shorter RTs). This evidence supported the idea that the nature of updating rests in the interplay between dismantling and reconstructing bindings via different memory systems such as WM [ 11 , 24 ] and episodic LTM [ 13 ].

In the numerical domain, it was found that numerical similarity produces facilitation during updating of information. When the numbers involved in updating were near as far as concern numerical distance, or similar through sharing a digit, substitution occurred more quickly [ 27 , 28 ]. There, it was proposed that updating is a function of the overlapping features [ 29 ] between numbers to update and those stored in LTM; the greater the amount of overlap, the quicker the update will be, as both numbers share many (already activated) features. In summary, if, as well as inhibition [ 9 ], item-removal in LTM association is a distinctive updating component [ 16 ], it is important to investigate how the strength of this inter- item association retained in LTM affects WM processing (e.g., updating, [ 14 ]).

The current study

As previously described, studies on updating development have focused on processes and components [ 9 , 19 ], whereas our aim is to examine the associative effects of updating through development. In particular, given that LTM inter-item associations seem as important as single contents [ 14 ], we aimed to investigate whether associated information modulates updating performance in development.

Hence, we manipulated LTM associations for letters as they represent initial elements of learning and therefore, should be highly familiar to children, in addition to their established use in many studies on their role across cognition. In particular, we controlled for their frequency of use at the sub-lexical level. Broad evidence has shown recall accuracy is greater for words containing high frequency phoneme combinations in English (“phonotactic effect”, see [ 25 ]). Performance would likely benefit from use of stored phonotactic representations for familiar words to fill in incomplete traces prior to output. In contrast, for unfamiliar words, no stored representations are available to reconstruct partial traces, and this will lead to diminished accuracy at recall. In addition, recall is better for high phonotactic frequency of the language in WM. As fully described in [ 25 ] the “phonotactic effect” elicits better recall for ‘consonant-vowel-consonant’ non-words containing ‘consonant-vowel’ and ‘vowel-consonant’ combinations, common in the language’s native phonology, than for non-words containing low probability ‘consonant-vowel’ combinations. Such effect would reflect the influence of phonotactic knowledge about properties of that language [ 25 ].

With this aim, we administered an updating task previously used with both children [ 30 ] and adults [ 12 , 31 ], focused on active item-removal of information shown to be the most distinctive component of updating [ 14 , 16 ]; but see also [ 19 ]. In particular, this task allows collection of both online response times (RTs) during updating (i.e., dismantling of an item-set) and offline accuracy/RTs after updating of a memory set, in order to ensure updating effectiveness and inhibition of irrelevant information [ 31 ].

Therefore, we believe this task could include at least two different types of inhibition, that is online (i.e., inhibition within the same set) as well as offline (i.e., inhibition of the previously updated set of information). Thus, the specific object of our investigation is how information, associated with different strength in LTM, i.e., strongly or weakly, might be differently updated at various ages. To this end, we manipulated association strength of the information at encoding (but not updating), in order to focus on the specific function of dismantling pre-existing LTM associations rather than reconstruction of new associations. We hypothesize that, in line with adult studies (e.g., [ 23 ]), we should observe similar effects with children, as soon as LTM representations are strengthened and consolidated (i.e., with a behavioural cost for updating strongly associated information). In particular, we should observe an increase in online updating RTs when inhibiting and dismantling a strong pre-existing association (once encoded), and a decrease when dismantling a weak pre-existing association (once encoded). Accordingly, offline, we predict greater difficulty in inhibiting items from strong LTM associations, relative to weak ones).

Participants

The initial sample was of 90 children. At the end of the testing phase, we were informed from teachers that one child had received a diagnosis of learning disorder. We therefore decided to not include his data in the final sample. Thus, a sample of 89 children took part in the study. They did not present any specific learning, neurological or psychiatric disorder. Children were divided into two groups: 44 younger children (aged 7–8 years) and 45 older children (aged 9–10 years). These specific ages were chosen as they represent the most crucial steps for children to become more and more skilled in reading and writing, and access to meaning of written texts is more automatized. In addition, and in line with previous studies suggesting the relevance of the specific age range 5–11 years (e.g., [ 6 , 24 ]), we chose two central and crucial steps that are coherent with previous research and allow comparison. All children were Italian native speaker. See breakdown of participants’ characteristics in Table 1 .

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Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviations for accuracy rate and score range) for the Italian vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning test. SDs are in brackets.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.t001

Children came from a public school located in Northern Italy, within an urban environment and mixed socio-economic background. All children had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. The study was conducted in accordance with the Ethical Standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and the standard ethical procedures recommended by the Italian Psychological Association (AIP). The study was reviewed and approved by the IRB (ethical committee) of the University of Pavia/IUSS before the study began. Written informed parental consent (as well as oral informed child assent) was obtained prior to participating, according to the ethical norms in our university.

Children were administered two tasks to assess general cognitive abilities (see following method sections for full description). Descriptive statistics for the two general cognitive abilities administered to the two age groups are displayed in Table 1 . Analyses on the accuracy scores (independent sample t-tests) showed age-related differences in the vocabulary test, t( 87) = 2.09, p = .04, with older children better scoring than younger children, but no differences in the visuospatial reasoning test, t( 88) = 1.02, p = .31.

Materials and procedures

In order to verify that children’s general cognitive performance adhered to the average for their age, they were presented with two measures: a standardized Italian vocabulary test and a nonverbal reasoning test. In particular, the vocabulary can be taken as an index of crystallized intelligence, whereas the nonverbal reasoning test is held to measure fluid intelligence.

In addition, a computerized letter updating task was administered. The vocabulary test and the nonverbal reasoning test were administered in a classroom-based group session. The updating task was administered individually at school, in a quiet room. The group session lasted on average 15 minutes, and the updating task lasted about 20–25 minutes. The two sessions were non-consecutive, in order to avoid possible fatigue effects.

Italian vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning

The vocabulary and nonverbal reasoning subtests, taken from the Primary Mental Aptitude Battery [ 32 ] were presented to the whole class group during a school day; both have a four alternative multiple-choice structure. The vocabulary subtest has 30 items and the nonverbal reasoning subtest, 25 items. Participants had time constraints for both subtests; specifically, 5 minutes for the vocabulary and 6 minutes for the nonverbal reasoning.

Letter updating task

The task we used in the current paper was described in detail previously, in [ 14 ]. As in [ 14 ] the stimuli were sub-lexical units between two consonants of the Latin alphabet. The association was based on LTM consonant representation; that is, on the basis of their combined frequency in the spoken Italian language. We evaluated this from the lexicon of frequency of Italian spoken language [ 33 ], a corpus of about 490,000 lemmas collected in four main Italian cities, emerging from different subgroups of discourse. High and low frequency lemmas were selected. Low frequency ranged from 0 to 2 (i.e., lemmas with less than 3 occurrences in the corpus). High frequency lemmas had at least 3 occurrences in the corpus.

Next, we inferred strong and weak sub-lexical associations between consonants, based on the lemmas’ frequency. That said, we should note there is no specific frequency information for consonant couples, only for lemmas of the corpus. So, for example, from the lemma “ ardere” which is low frequency, we inferred the low frequency sub-lexical association “ rd ”. In addition, low frequency associations, typically, were in the middle of the lemma, whereas high frequency lemmas were at the beginning of the lemma. In addition, we checked the corpus to find occurrences of low frequency sub-lexical associations in different lemmas, in order to preclude their presence in high frequency lemmas. We included in the low frequency sub-lexical associations those one occurring in low frequency lemmas only.

We employed the following set of consonants: B C D F G H L N P R S T. Strong associations were: T-R, S-P, P-R, N-T, B-R, C-H, G-R, F-R. Weak ones were: F-L, S-N, G-H, P-S, G-L, R-D, N-D, L-T. Strong and weak associations between consonants were controlled in order to avoid obviously familiar or meaningful couplets. Each association was legal, and thus possible at the sub-lexical level of the Italian language [ 14 ].

As described in [ 14 ] and in order to avoid ceiling (i.e., with two items) or floor effects (i.e., with four items), we used memory sets composed of three letters (i.e., triplets), which have been established as being within average memory span [ 34 ]. Some letters were overrepresented relative to others, but we controlled for this bias by randomizing these across association strengths. Further, the position of the sub-lexical unit within the triplet (i.e., in positions 1/2 or 2/3 ) was randomized between trials. We did not control for potential position effects, as it was shown in a previous experiment that position did not interact with either updating or strength (see [ 14 ], Experiment 2)

The third letter of each triplet was another consonant, which was always unrelated to the other two. Specifically, the link between the sub-lexical unit and the third letter was always linguistically impossible in Italian (e.g., see example from Fig 1 where C-H is a strong association, and the link between H and B (H-B) is impossible in Italian). This was done in order to avoid any LTM (strong or weak) or some other meaningful way association between these letters.

After encoding the first triplet ( CHB ), participants had to maintain it actively in memory (pre-updating maintenance process: + + +). Next, they were instructed to update part of the association, that is, to remove the item C and substitute the G . Thus, the triplet they were now maintaining was GHB . Lastly, they had to maintain the recently updated triplet (post-updating maintenance process). At recognition, a single red probe was displayed: here, participants had to recognize if the probed item belonged to the most recent studied/updated item or not. In the example, a target probe was presented ( B ), to which they had to give a positive answer.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.g001

Design and analyses

A three factor mixed design was implemented: Strength and Phase were within-participants factors, and Age group between-participants. The variable Strength had two levels: strong-to-weak and weak-to-weak. ‘Strong-to-weak’ represented associations between letters where the association was strong at encoding, but modified with a weak one upon updating (e.g., from C-H to G-H). Weak-to-weak represented associations between letters occurred where the association was weak at encoding and updated with another weak association (e.g., from P-S to P-R). For each trial, we considered two main phases of encoding (i.e., studying/encoding the initial triplet), and updating (i.e., partial into the triplet). Although the trial was constituted of four phases, only encoding and updating phases (i.e., phases that produce effects on RTs, see [ 31 ]) were entered into the analysis.

In addition, to make the task less predictable and ensure participants were engaged, we included several control trials (approximately 20% of the total number). Here, no updating occurred, and maintenance alone was required throughout the trials. These data were not included in further analyses, but were checked to ensure that all updating trials had longer RTs than controls ( p < .05 for each comparison; control vs. strong-to-weak, and weak-to-weak; [ 14 ]).

Procedure was described in detail previously [ 14 , 26 ]. The task was administered on a standard PC and consisted of four phase subject-paced trials, where participants pressed the spacebar to start each trial, and after each phase, in order to proceed with the task.

In each phase, triplets were always displayed in the centre of the screen. Each trial started with an encoding phase (Phase 1; see an example with letters in Fig 1 , where a strong-to-weak association is represented), where participants had to memorize the first triplet of consonants (e.g., C-H-B). A pre-updating maintenance phase followed (Phase 2), where three pluses were displayed; this indicated that the previously encoded triplet had to be actively maintained. Then, at updating (Phase 3), participants had to substitute the no-longer-relevant information (here, C) with newly relevant information (here, G). Concurrently, they needed to maintain previously relevant detail (here, H-B), thus, updating the triplet (i.e., from C-H-B to G-H-B). Finally, a post-updating maintenance (Phase 4) ended the sequence, to control for recency biases. See also Fig 1 .

Only one letter of the triplet had to be updated; this letter could be presented in any position of the triplet (i.e., left letter, right letter, or center). Position was balanced across trials, and only new consonants were presented across each phase. When a consonant did not change, a plus symbol was presented, in order to encourage active maintenance of previously encoded/memorized information.

At the end of each trial (Phase 5), participants were presented with a probe recognition task: a single red consonant was displayed in the centre of the screen. Here, they had to indicate whether this belonged to the most-recently studied triplet or not. They responded by pressing one of two keys on the keyboard; one (M for Yes ) for target probes requiring a positive answer (i.e., belonging to the final triplet of the trial); another one (Z for No ) for probes requiring a negative answer (i.e., not previously presented in the trial. For these, we included both lures i.e., (probes encoded in the trial, then substituted at updating step) and negative probes (i.e., probes not presented in that trial), mixed within the trial. Half the probes were targets (50%); the other half was equally shared between lures (25%) and negative probes (25%).

Afterwards, each participant was presented with a practice block of eight trials to familiarize themselves with the task. One hundred and twenty trials were then presented shared equally in four blocks. We recorded subject-paced RT at each of the four phases, in addition to probe recognition accuracy at Phase 5.

Results and discussion

Updating task: accuracy and data treatment.

Participants performed accurately on an average of 92.80% of trials. As expected, participants were very good in completing the task and very few errors were produced. Accuracy was analysed to verify adequate performance, but the main focus of the analysis was on RT. We ran a mixed 2 x 3 ANOVA, with Strength (weak-to-weak, strong-to-weak) as within-participants factor and Age Group (younger children, older children) as between-participants factor on mean accuracy rates of target, lures and negative responses. A main effect of Age Group reached significance, F (1, 87) = 8.38, p = .005. Accuracy rate was significantly lower in younger children (116/120 correct trials) than in older children (118/120 correct trials). Only subject-paced RTs for trials that ended with correct probe recognition were analysed. Trials with RTs of less than 150 ms, or exceeding a participant’s mean RT for each condition by more than three intra-individual standard deviations, were considered outliers, and therefore excluded from further analyses (3.92%).

In addition, updating measures (in particular, indexes of RT at the updating step), were highly inter-correlated, suggesting good reliability of the task. In particular, RTs for weak-to-weak associations were strongly correlated, r (89) = .84, p < .001, to RTs for strong-to-weak.

Overview of the statistical analyses

We used a mixed-effects model approach to test our hypotheses; the most important advantage of such models is that they allow simultaneous consideration of all factors that may contribute to understanding the structure of the data [ 35 ]. Raw RTS were logarithmically transformed to normalize them. These factors comprise not only the standard fixed-effects factors controlled by the experimenter (in our case, age group and strength) but also random-effects factors; that is, factors whose levels are drawn at random from a population (in our case, children). To test the effect of age group (younger children, older children) and strength (strong-to-weak, weak-to-weak) on the variables of online RT, and offline RT three mixed-models were used: one for online RT (with encoding and updating phases as additional factors), another one for RT of correctly detected target probes, and a third for RT of correctly rejected lures. See specific details in the subsections below.

All analyses were performed using the R software [ 36 ]; for generalized mixed-effect models, the R package lme4 was used [ 37 ]; and the lmer test package was used to obtain Type III ANOVA Tables. Results for each dependent variable are presented below. For planned comparisons, Tukey correction was used to control the Type I error rate.

Online RT analyses

A linear mixed-effects model was constructed with 3-way interactions between Age Group (younger children, older children), Strength (strong-to-weak, weak-to-weak), and Phase (encode, update). The model revealed a significant effect of Age Group, F (1, 87) = 8.11, p = .006. Overall, older children ( M = 2709.26 ms, SD = 67 ms) were faster than younger children ( M = 2960.22 ms, SD = 66 ms). Moreover, Strength affected the online processing, F (1, 261) = 5.71, p = .01; strong-to-weak associations ( M = 2898.36 ms, SD = 65 ms) were hardly updated than weak-to-weak ones ( M = 2768.30 ms, SD = 68 ms).

In addition, the Phase by Strength interaction reached significance, F (1, 261) = 7.18, p = .008. Post-hoc comparisons showed no differences at encode across associations, t( 261) = -0.21, p = .83; in contrast, at updating, strong-to-weak associations showed longer RTs compared to weak-to-weak associations, t( 261) = 3.59, p = .004, as shown in Fig 2 . No other interaction reached significance.

Plot dots represent mean predicted RTs (ms) and bars represent 95% CIs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.g002

Offline RT analyses: Target probes

A linear mixed-effects model was constructed with 2-way interactions between Age Group (younger children, older children) and Strength (strong-to-weak, weak-to-weak). The model revealed a significant effect of Strength, F (1, 87.353) = 11.13, p = .001. Indeed, we found significantly longer RTs for correct recognition of a target probe from strong-to-weak associations ( M = 2058.33 ms, SD = 58 ms), compared to weak-to-weak associations ( M = 1867.85 ms, SD = 43 ms). No other effect reached significance.

Offline RT analyses: Lures

First, we conducted a control analysis with Strength (weak-to-weak, strong-to-weak), and Probe (lure, negative) as within-participant factors and Age Group (younger children, older children) as between-participant factor, for lures vs. negative probe RTs. Importantly here, we found a main effect of Probe, F (1, 87) = 8.61, p = .004, showing longer RTs to recognize and respond to lures ( M = 2395.68 ms, SD = 52 ms) than to negative probes ( M = 2208.06 ms, SD = 44 ms).

In addition, to test our hypotheses more specifically, a linear mixed-effects model was constructed with 2-way interactions between Age Group (younger children, older children) and Strength (strong-to-weak, weak-to-weak) and was run on lures only, as these represent a measure of the ability to inhibit irrelevant information once completed the updating task. The model revealed a significant effect of Age Group, F (1, 85.250) = 16.92, p < .001. In addition, we found a main effect of Strength, F (1, 87.394) = 45.75, p < .001.

The two-way Strength by Age Group interaction reached significance, F (1, 87.394) = 25.57, p < .001. Subsequently, post-hoc comparisons showed that rejection of a lure from a strong-to-weak association needed longer RTs (compared to weak-to-weak association), but only for older children, t (87.39) = 8.41, p < .001. Rejection of a lure from a strong-to-weak association did not differ from a weak-to-weak condition in younger children, t (87.39) = 1.20, p = .23, as shown in Fig 3 .

Plot dots represent mean predicted RTs (ms) at lure rejection and bars represent 95% CIs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.g003

We believe our task is mainly based on phonological/orthographic knowledge and less on lexico-semantic knowledge (see also [ 30 ]). In fact, in order to engage with the task rapidly and effectively, the child should have developed an automatic access to orthographic/letter form representation. Therefore, we do not predict any specific vocabulary-related effect. However, in order to control for the role of vocabulary in the process examined, we ran the same mixed-effect models, covarying for vocabulary. Overall, the results did not change, showing the same effects and significance levels for both target probes (main effect of Strength, p = .002) and lures (Age group, Strength, and two-ways interaction, all ps < .001).

Conclusions

In this study, our aim was to investigate how LTM associations affect updating development. Updating is a complex activity that involves inhibition at different levels such as from the same lists set, or from previous lists [ 9 ], with the distinguishing component of the item-removal process [ 16 , 18 ]. More specifically here, we analysed how the strength of LTM association between items affects updating from a developmental perspective.

Typically, the literature on adults shows enhanced recall for strongly associated items; the stronger the pre-existing association in LTM, the better the performance in WM. For updating, a somewhat different process is indicated (i.e. not only maintenance of information in the short term, but also removal of irrelevant information). In this case, the opposite was shown: the stronger the pre-existing association, the harder it is to dismantle it [ 26 ].

In addition, the first notable difference between updating and recall (i.e., slowing of RTs in the former) could be related to the number of cognitive operations required in the task. Indeed, recall involves maintenance of information only; whereas updating entails a further item-removal component. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that an additional operation (i.e., item-removal) will add a cost in terms of longer processing latencies. However, results comparing updating performance compared to recall have demonstrated the reverse effect; that is a cost rather than a benefit. This difference is likely to be due to the nature of updating, an essential process in adaptation of WM content to new elements. In other words, updating involves integration of new elements, as well as new bindings between elements (after disrupting previous ones), thus inhibiting and removing/substituting irrelevant information [ 11 , 16 ].

A recent model of updating [ 9 ] showed that updating develops via two main components of inhibition, one more related to control of inhibition from same lists; another one of inhibition from previous lists. The former, shows fewer developmental differences, the latter (also called PI control in [ 9 ]) shows greater age-related differences. In our view, the task used here with children is suitable for consideration of both components in terms of processing speed (an index useful in studying development via more subtle and fine-grained measurement). In fact, in the current task, each participant needs to maintain information and inhibit it, when no longer relevant, by substituting with new information during the tasks (same list inhibition component). Further, to ensure effective updating, s/he has to control for interference from previously studied items which are no longer relevant (i.e., inhibition from previously studied items set).

In particular, in accordance with [ 9 ] model, we found different outcomes consistent with the measures considered. Accordingly, the online RT showed a global age-related effect (older children faster than younger children), but not specific for strength with which letter were associated (in fact, no interaction). This finding could be accounted for, if we consider the development of self-monitoring (i.e., the ability to control one own’s behaviour) in children. That is, monitoring skills develop between 7 to 10 years, and subtle but important improvements are found over the primary school years [ 38 ]. Our self-paced task, where the child had to press the spacebar when s/he thinks to have memorized/updated a given mental set, requires a self-judgment of performance from the child him/herself. In particular, it has been shown that children (from 8 years of age) are more accurate in judgment of learning when given after a delay of about 2 minutes, than immediately after study [ 39 ]. Thus our task (which requires self-monitoring of learning during the study/updating phases, and immediately after, in order to press the spacebar) might not enhance an appropriate child self-regulation. For this reason, we believe we did not find age-related effects relative to strength for self-paced RTs and thus, failed to replicate the effects found with adults [ 14 , 26 ].

Conversely, for offline inhibitory control (i.e., lure recognition), we found more pronounced developmental effects, with significant differences; older children took more time to reject strong lures than weak, whereas no difference was observed for younger children ( Fig 3 ). Therefore, we found that online inhibition component was less affected by developmental change: younger children are able to perform updating tasks successfully. The real challenge in updating (i.e., due to control for previously relevant information) elicits significantly better performance from 10 years onwards. Here, in fact there is no need for self-regulation (i.e., as in the probe recognition task) as the task is not self-paced. The modulation of association strength development in older children (but not in younger) could be well accounted by the development of both lexico-orthographic knowledge and executive mechanisms that can work simultaneously [ 5 , 6 ].

This finding supports claims that the ability to inhibit irrelevant information is a fundamental mechanism that underlines many other developmental changes [ 40 , 41 , 42 ]. In particular, decreased susceptibility to interference is observable as age increases; 7/8 years olds children were shown to be more susceptible to interference than 9/10 years old [ 40 ], as we found in our study. However, we believe the novelty of the current study lies in the specificity of the experimental manipulation. Notably, these results indicated that, from 10 years onward, children found highly familiar stimuli (such as letters) more intrusive and difficult to control when strongly associated. Therefore, although we find that older children are less susceptible to interference, it seems that they are more sensitive to strong and weakly associated stimuli, similarly to performance in adults [ 14 , 26 ].

Future studies should further investigate any additional benefits/costs in updating strong and weak LTM associations, by also manipulating the strength of the item-association at updating [ 14 ]. Through this further manipulation, a more fine-grained examination of the dismantling and recreation of associations during updating would be enabled, including analysis of the relative ease/difficulty of the process. In addition, it could be useful to administer the task to children with specific learning disorders in order to show possible modulation of WM performance by LTM knowledge. Specifically, the task could then be useful to implement ad hoc measures to train children to remediate identified weaknesses, both in educational and clinical settings. We might also speculate that, as we found that strong LTM associations are more difficult to modify, this could in turn indicate the importance of correct support for the child, so that s/he will not act to strengthen incorrect sub-lexical/phonotactic associations. Indeed, it is likely that the more those incorrect associations are reinforced, the harder will be to modify/update them.

In conclusion, the present study demonstrated how WM updating is affected by LTM strength of association in a developmental sample. A significant cost of dismantling and updating strong associations was shown, and this effect was independent from age; all children from 7 to 10 years were comparably sensitive to association strength. In addition, results allowed us to differentiate age-related effects for interference control in updating of strong LTM associations; older children (but not younger) were more susceptible to interference from strongly-associated information.

Supporting information

S1 data. dataset online rts..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.s001

S2 Data. Dataset recognition probe RTs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217697.s002

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank all children and schools participating in the study. We also thank Beatrice Colombani for her help with data collection.

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Inside the Science of Memory

When Rick Huganir, Ph.D. , was a teenager, he set out to better understand the physical and emotional changes of adolescence. “I was wondering what was happening to me, and I realized it was my brain changing,” says Huganir, director of the Johns Hopkins Department of Neuroscience.

That led to a senior project on protein synthesis and memory in goldfish, as well as a lifelong fascination in how we learn and remember things.

“Memories are who we are,” says Huganir. “But making memories is also a biological process.” This process raises many questions. How does the process affect our brain? How do experiences and learning change the connections in our brains and create memories?

Those are just some of the issues Huganir and his colleagues are studying. Their work may lead to new treatments for post-traumatic stress syndrome, as well as ways to improve memory in people with dementia and other cognitive problems.

Memory: It’s All About Connections

When we learn something—even as simple as someone’s name—we form connections between neurons in the brain. These synapses create new circuits between nerve cells, essentially remapping the brain. The sheer number of possible connections gives the brain unfathomable flexibility—each of the brain’s 100 billion nerve cells can have 10,000 connections to other nerve cells.

Those synapses get stronger or weaker depending on how often we’re exposed to an event. The more we’re exposed to an activity (like a golfer practicing a swing thousands of times) the stronger the connections. The less exposure, however, the weaker the connection, which is why it’s so hard to remember things like people’s names after the first introduction.

“What we’ve been trying to figure out is how does this occur, and how do you strengthen synapses at a molecular level?” Huganir says.

New Discoveries in Memory

Many of the research questions surrounding memory may have answers in complex interactions between certain brain chemicals—particularly glutamate—and neuronal receptors, which play a crucial role in the signaling between brain cells. Huganir and his team discovered that when mice are exposed to traumatic events, the level of neuronal receptors for glutamate increases at synapses in the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, and encodes the fear associated with the memory. Removing those receptors, however, reduces the strength of these connections, essentially erasing the fear component of the trauma but leaving the memory.

Now Huganir and his lab are developing drugs that target those receptors. The hope is that inactivating the receptors could help people with post-traumatic stress syndrome by reducing the fear associated with a traumatic memory, while strengthening them could improve learning, particularly in people with cognitive dysfunction or Alzheimer’s disease .

#TomorrowsDiscoveries: Using Data to Diagnose Brain Diseases | Michael I. Miller, Ph.D.

Johns Hopkins researcher Michael Miller explains how we can use data to create better diagnostic tools for neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease.

Definitions

Dementia (di-men-sha) : A loss of brain function that can be caused by a variety of disorders affecting the brain. Symptoms include forgetfulness, impaired thinking and judgment, personality changes, agitation and loss of emotional control. Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease and inadequate blood flow to the brain can all cause dementia. Most types of dementia are irreversible.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) : A disorder in which your “fight or flight,” or stress, response stays switched on, even when you have nothing to flee or battle. The disorder usually develops after an emotional or physical trauma, such as a mugging, physical abuse or a natural disaster. Symptoms include nightmares, insomnia, angry outbursts, emotional numbness, and physical and emotional tension.

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This 1 Dementia Symptom May Appear Years Before Memory Loss

We’ve written before at HuffPost UK about how everything from brushing your teeth to climbing the stairs can reveal early symptoms of dementia.

But scientists now think some signs that are seemingly unrelated to the condition can appear much, much sooner than previously thought.

In a study by University College London (UCL), published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association in February of this year, experts found that : “People at risk of Alzheimer’s disease have impaired spatial navigation prior to problems with other cognitive functions, including memory.”

This was seen among 100 patients who were “25 years younger than their estimated age of dementia onset.”

How did they test it?

They gave 43-to-66-year-old participants who were at a higher physiological , genetic, or lifestyle risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease VR sets and asked them to navigate the virtual space.

Participants were all part of PREVENT , “a multi-centre prospective cohort study in the UK and Ireland that aims to examine midlife risk factors for dementia and identify and describe the earliest indices of disease development.”

No matter the scale of their predisposition to dementia, those who were at a higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s tended to do worse at the navigating task ― regardless of how good their other cognitive scores were .

The impairment was observed more often in men than it was in women.

The study’s first author, neuroscientist Dr. Coco Newton, said , “Our results indicated that this type of navigation behaviour change might represent the very earliest diagnostic signal in the Alzheimer’s disease continuum – when people move from being unimpaired to showing manifestation of the disease.”

Though the results don’t definitively prove that one causes the other, the link could help to close a research “gap” in dementia research, Newton added.

Does this mean I’ll definitely get dementia if I have spatial navigation difficulties?

Speaking to Medical News Today , Dr. Douglas Scharre, a professor of clinical neurology and psychiatry, said, “We do not know, based on this study, that this technology can offer an earlier diagnosis as we do not know if any of these individuals will or will not ever get [Alzheimer’s].”

Dr. Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at Alzheimer’s Society (an organisation which partly funded the study) said , “ This innovative technology is a long way from becoming a diagnostic test, but it does provide more evidence about the role of navigational abilities as an early sign of Alzheimer’s disease.”

He added , “M ore work is needed to develop this technology, but it will be exciting to see how this research may offer a way to spot disease-specific changes early and help people living with dementia in future.”

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Lemurs use 3 things to find hidden food

Two mongoose lemurs find cantaloupe hidden in a container at the Lemur Conservation Foundation in Florida. (Credit: Elena Cunningham)

You are free to share this article under the Attribution 4.0 International license.

How do foraging animals find their food? A new study shows that lemurs use smell, social cues, and long-term memory to locate hidden fruit—a combination of factors that may have deep evolutionary roots.

“Our study provides evidence that lemurs can integrate sensory information with ecological and social knowledge, which demonstrates their ability to consider multiple aspects of a problem,” says anthropologist Elena Cunningham, a clinical professor of molecular pathobiology at New York University’s College of Dentistry and the lead author of the study in the International Journal of Primatology .

Animals rely on their senses and environmental and social knowledge to locate food and water. These factors—perhaps in combination—are thought to have played a role in primates evolving to have larger brains and higher cognitive abilities than other animals.

“Historically, there have been two schools of thought on why primates developed bigger brains: ecological pressures, such as needing to find scarce fruit in the forest, and the social pressures of living in a group where everyone is trying to outsmart one another,” says Cunningham.

“I have long been interested in the interplay between social and ecological factors when it comes to cognition—it seems like a given that these would have evolved in relation to each other.”

A brown lemur opens a cardboard food container with its hands and peeks inside.

To better understand how primates integrate these factors in order to find food, Cunningham traveled to the Lemur Conservation Foundation in Myakka City, Florida, a reserve dedicated to researching and protecting lemurs outside of their native Madagascar. The Foundation is home to several lemur species, including brown lemurs— social animals who have a keen sense of smell (far better than humans) and whose diet is primarily fruit.

Studying the brown lemurs in pairs and groups of three, the researchers conducted several experiments by hiding pieces of cantaloupe in cardboard takeout containers and placing both fruit-filled and empty containers in the lemurs’ environments. They then observed how the groups of lemurs investigated and opened the containers, noting their interactions with one another.

Despite the empty takeout containers outnumbering the ones with cantaloupe, the lemurs had little trouble finding and eating the fruit—and several factors appeared to be working in tandem.

The lemurs quickly learned which containers had food in them, and could remember the location of the fruit-filled containers days, weeks, and even months later: the order in which they approached baited containers was about 50% better than chance. But, the lemurs almost always (98% of the time) opened the fruit-filled containers first, suggesting that they used their sense of smell to detect the cantaloupe at close range.

In addition, the researchers observed that the lemurs’ individual strategies for finding fruit were influenced by social factors. Some groups were egalitarian and information and melon were willingly shared, while in other more hierarchical groups, the dominant lemurs took advantage of the subordinates discovering the cantaloupe and helped themselves once the fruit was found. But the subordinates were more likely to find the fruit and some used their “finder’s advantage” to eat more of the melon.

“What our study shows is that these three factors are all operating at the same time—the lemurs have memories of where the food is and they are considering olfactory information and social factors,” says Cunningham. “We still have much to learn about how this interplay and the evolution of cognition, but it’s important to look at these factors not in isolation, but in conversation.”

Support for the research came from the NYU Research Challenge Fund Program and NYU College of Dentistry Academy of Distinguished Educators Funding Award.

Source: New York University

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The Well-Being of the Elderly: Memory and Aging

Juan josé maldonado briegas.

1 Financial Economy and Accounting Department, University of Extremadura, Badajoz, Spain

Ana Isabel Sánchez Iglesias

2 Evolutionary and Educational Psychology Department, University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain

Sergio González Ballester

3 Association of Developmental and Educational Psychology for Children, Youth, Elderly and Disabled People (INFAD), Badajoz, Spain

Florencio Vicente Castro

The world population increases every day as a consequence of the increase in life expectancy and longevity of humans. There are several factors analyzed in the different studies that have been developed on this topic. The research carried out in this field distinguishes biological, cultural, and cognitive factors; some of them describing similar results, while many others showed antagonistic results. Our study was oriented to the accomplishment of a bibliographical revision with the objective to verify the scientific production on “memory, cognitive development, and aging linked with longevity”—international/ national studies were analyzed and identified. The method carried out was through a research in the databases: SciELO, UAM, PePSIC, LILACS, PubMed, PsycINFO, Dialnet, and Teseo; in a period of 10 years, considering the studies published between January 2008 and December 2017. From the results found at first, 16 articles were analyzed after the application of the exclusion criteria. Likewise, we analyzed the relationship of longevity with the level of studies in Spain from a group of people over 60 years of age counted in January 2017. The literature review determined that there are psycho-cultural aspects that have a decisive influence on the increase in longevity, such as the performance of activities with positive mental states, positive emotions and experiences, and the level of studies.

Introduction

The historical evolution of the world population has been one of gradual and constant growth, with fluctuations in these growths, increasing significantly since the middle of the last century as a result of advances in technology and, therefore, in the field of medicine. In fact, people can live on average up to an age range between 80 and 120 years today. This might be due to improvements in living conditions (physical activity, diet, no smoking, etc.), to care medical, as well as cognitive development which are aspect that we consider as one of the most significant and influential variables in the increase of the longevity of the population.

Spain is one of the longest living countries in the world. With more than 100,000 people of 100 years or more, Spain is the country with the highest life expectancy, after Japan, according to OECD data and the latest data from the population census, and data from various analyzes of the year 2017. Average life expectancy at birth is 83.2, somewhat below the average of 83.4 years of average life that Japanese can expect to live.

This aging of the population is one of the results of the evolution of demographic change components of the decrease in mortality, as well as of the increase in life expectancy and the decrease in birth rate. Therefore, population growth and age composition is influenced by these changes. In fact, to the extent that demographic variation advances and there are decreases in mortality and fertility fundamentally, there is a gradual process of population aging (Chackiel, 2006 ).

If Spain continues the current health trends and maintains its health potential, in 2040, it will go from being the fourth longest life expectancy country to being the first.

As of January 1, 2018 in Spain, there are 8,908,151 elderly people, 19.1% of the total population (46,722,980); and they continue to increase, both in number and in proportion. The average age of the population is 43.1 years; about 10 years above if we compare it with the 70s, where the average age were 32.7.

On the other hand, the proportion of octogenarians continues to grow to a greater extent; representing 6.1% of the entire population, and will continue to gain weight among the elderly population in an aging process of the elderly. In fact, the number of centenarians begins to be relevant; there are currently 11,229 registered voters.

This fact has led us to study the longevity of people and their relationship with the level of studies carried out throughout their lives, observing interesting results:

According to data from the INE 1 regarding the “population aged 16 and over by level of education attained, sex, and age group” in mean values for the year 2018, divisions have been established at an interval, from 16 to over 70 years.

The different types of educations that have been analyzed for each of the classes (previous intervals, from 16–19 to >70 years) for the mean values of the year 2018 have been stated below:

Incomplete primary studies
Primary education
First stage of Secondary Education and similar
Second stage of secondary education, with general orientation
Second stage of secondary education with professional orientation (includes postsecondary education not superior)
Higher education.

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The Comparative Analysis ( Figure 1 ) between people who do not have studies (illiterates and people with incomplete primary education), and people who, if they have studies for the mean values of 2018 according to data from the INE, reflects that the percentage of people who have studies is over 70% in people over 70 years, 88.76% in those between 65 and 69 years, and above 93% in people under 65 years.

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Percentage of people with and without studies in different age scales for the year 2018 (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

Also, in the same analysis of studies based on sex ( Figure 2 ), we observe that 75.04% of men of 70 or more years have studies, compared to 24.96%, who did not finish their studies.

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Percentage of men with and without studies in different age scales for the year 2018 (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

On the other hand, women in the age of 70 years or older, 67.76%, have studies compared to 32.24% which did not finish their studies ( Figure 3 ).

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Percentage of women with and without studies in different age scales for the year 2018 (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The data collected by the INE have allowed us to perform the analysis of the percentage of people who have made a study throughout their lives compared to those who have not done any. The following ( Figure 4 ) shows a comparison between the number of people in % who have done any study of any level as well as the number of people who have not done any study or have not completed it, in ages over 50 years.

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Percentage of people with and without studies in people over 50 years of age (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The distinction between the different levels of studies ( Figure 5 ) for those who finished their studies is significant, since those people over 70 with higher education levels surpass those in the Second Stage of secondary education with job or general orientation.

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Percentage of people over 50 with different levels of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The difference in the level of studies in men and women becomes relevant in people older than 65 years of age ( Figures 6 , ,7). 7 ). In people between 65 and 69 years, the percentage of people with higher education is 22.4% in men and 13.3% in women, while in people over 70, 15.5% of men has a higher education compared to 6.6% of women.

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Percentage of men over 50 with different levels of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

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Percentage of women over 50 with different levels of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The current data indicate that older people have tripled in relation to the total population. Notwithstanding, these data must be interpreted in light of other sociodemographic and sociopsychological variables.

The different demographic studies show an immovable reality because there is a greater longevity of the population in relation to the totality of the population. However, other variables must be considered together with it, such as: the decrease of the birth rate; the almost eradication of infant mortality; the improvement in hygienic conditions; the improvement in the quality of life; the advances in medicine in general; the advances in gerontology in particular. This has made our study a progressive development in the levels of studies and the corresponding cognitive development.

In this sense, some studies (Steverink et al., 2001 ) describe the influence of sociodemographic variables, indicating that people with better subjective health, higher income, less feeling of loneliness, higher educational level, and greater optimism would tend to experience a healthier aging process in terms of continuous development than of physical deterioration or social losses. This healthy aging in older people is linked to a higher emotional well-being that would favor a better aging experience (Prieto-Flores et al., 2008 ).

On the other hand, the social psychological variables would be those related to Ryff's multidimensional model: self-acceptance; positive relationships with other people; autonomy; domain of the environment; purpose in life; and personal growth. Ryff describes psychological well-being as “the effort to perfect one's own potential, thus it would have to do with life acquiring meaning for oneself, with certain efforts to overcome and achieve valuable goals; The central task of the people in your life is to recognize and make the most of all your talents. He stressed the responsibility of the individual to find the meaning of his existence, even in the face of harsh or adverse realities.”

It must therefore be understood that psychological well-being as personal construction rests on the psychological development of each individual who has the ability to interact harmoniously with their environment (Ortiz Arriagada and Salas, 2009 ).

For older adults, self-efficacy carries a meaning far beyond the overcoming of tasks of the physical order. Its importance is associated with the feeling of being able to participate in the solution of conflicts that arise in daily life, providing solutions, and all this allows them to create coping strategies necessary to deal with adversities (Ortiz Arriagada and Salas, 2009 ).

The fact of aging is a process inherent to the passage of time that involves certain transformations and vital transactions in the individual. The course of this process, as well as its consequences, is modulated on the one hand by personal variables and on the other by those derived from a broader psycho-socio-cultural context fundamentally (Borrell et al., 2011 ).

In this sense, Gerontology and the Psychology of Aging aims to describe and explain aging and intervene in the specific problems of the elderly in order to increase their well-being and improve their quality of life. To that objective, we can add that preventing and intervening in those factors are being demonstrated as propitiators of greater longevity and a higher quality of life.

Cognitive functions are all mental activities that the individual performs when interacting with the surrounding environment. From this perspective, they represent the essence of personal adaptation of the individual and of all social progress due to the ability of human beings to develop strategies and plan the future to evaluate their consequences (Bromley, 1988 ; cited in Muñoz, 2002 ).

In old age, there are deteriorations in the processing, learning, and recovery of new information, problem solving, and speed of response. Thus, it is known that one of the most frequent problems in aging is the decline of memory. In fact, the subjective complaint of lack of memory appears in 70% of elderly subjects (Laurent et al., 1997 ), but performance improves markedly when they are given clues that guide their memory (Davis and Mumford, 1984 ). In this sense, various studies (Molina et al., 2012 ) conclude that the realization of intellectual activities and the maintenance of cognitive functioning are two entities that are associated in the very elderly, in the absence of cognitive impairment, that is; the decrease in cognitive performance that occurs associated with age will be less pronounced for those more mentally active people.

Furthermore, the signs of aging can be identified in one's own body or in one's own mind. The signs of aging at the body level are manifested in the following realities: decrease in body muscle mass and increase in fat; there is also an increase in pigmentation in some tissues and in the interconnections of some molecules such as collagen; changes in glomerular filtration rate, maximum heart rate, vital capacity, and other measures of functional capacity; reduction of the capacity to respond adaptively to variations that occur in the environment; increased vulnerability to diseases; increase in mortality with age; etc. (Maldonado-Briegas et al., 2019 ).

On a psychological level, the signs of aging are identified by another set of variables closely related to cognitive development, personality, social activities, etc. and in the negative aspect mainly with memory loss. In this sense, the art of aging offers us a series of guarantees to live longer and live happier lives (Martin and Espanola, 2019 ).

All these aspects, both internal and external to the person, are what have led us to carry out an in-depth analysis of the factors that have a determining influence on the increase in longevity, variables related to the conservation of cognitive capacity, memory, and the aging process, and the level of studies.

For this, we started from the bibliographical study carried out by Lucchese et al. ( 2018 )—“The reality of memory in healthy elderly and aging MEMORY, AGING, AND LONGEVITY,” which has allowed us to know the different studies carried out on memory, aging, and longevity, and analyze its link with the level of studies.

Recent Studies on Longevity: Theoretical Framework

With the aim of offering an effective scientific contribution to the positioning of “ cognitive development and longevity,” it was necessary to proceed to a verification of what has been done in terms of research on “memory, aging, cognitive development and longevity;” that is, to consider the state of the art, not only to capture the scientific production already made, but also to clarify the problem and to have the collaboration of researchers who point out possible gaps in their studies, doubts, and controversies that persist.

To do this, we conducted a literature review in different databases, such as: SciELO, UAM, PePSIC, LILACS, PubMed, PsycINFO, Dialnet, and Theseus, in a period of 10 years, from January 2008 to December 2017.

First, the descriptors “memory” and “aging” were found in 54 articles in the SciELO, in UAM 746, in PePSIC 19, in LILACS 149, in Dialnet 417, and in Teseo 1. For the same descriptors in English, “Memory” and “aging” used in PubMed and PsycINFO databases were 21,090 and 1964, respectively.

Secondly, the research was carried out with the descriptors “cognitive development” and found in the SciELO 586 articles, in the UAM 6414, in the PePSIC 10, in the LILACS 882, in the Dialnet 7715, and in the Teseo 16; and the Anglo-Saxon terms “cognitive” and “development” were found in PubMed database 58055, and in PsycINFO 10337.

As the number of articles in both descriptors was very large, we opted for a new revision and two new searches were carried out by adding to the descriptors. The descriptor “longevity” was used so that the descriptors used in the analyzed search were “cognitive development and longevity” and “memory, aging, and longevity” for the SciELO, UAM, PePSIC, LILACS, Dialnet, and Theseus databases; and “cognitive development and longevity” and “memory, aging, and longevity” for the PubMed and PsycINFO databases. With these additions, the following results were found:

For the descriptor “ cognitive development and longevity” and “ cognitive development and longevity,” the database SciELO, PePSIC, LILACS, and Theseus were zero(0), in the UAM, there were 74, in Dialnet 17, in PubMed 201, and in PsycINFO 11.

For the descriptor “ memory, aging, and longevity” and “ memory, aging, and longevity” the database SciELO, PePSIC, and Teseo were zero(0), in the UAM, 48 articles, for LILACS 1, for Dialnet 9, for PubMed 420, and for PsycINFO 12.

Regarding these results, which would make work in UAM viable, but which, in turn, would eliminate two databases (PePSIC and SciELO) and greatly restrict the number of articles in two others (PsycINFO and PubMed), there was an option that was made to consider the search with two and three descriptors in Spanish in the databases (UAM, Dialnet, LILACS) and with two and three descriptors in English in the databases (PsycINFO, PubMed), with the aim of having a broader vision of the production of the subject studied. The articles went through an analysis process which first excludes duplicates and subtracts 53 for the analysis. The second aspect is based on the reading of the title and summary. However, this was not enough to decide the inclusion or exclusion because the title did not represent the core of the article or the summary was very succinct and left doubts as to the relevance of the inclusion, samples, results, and conclusion that were also analyzed. For the exclusion: the criteria were also used: articles not available in full free of charge, duplicates, and revision.

For inclusion: the criteria were used: study regarding the proposed topic (memory research or cognitive development, aging and longevity with or without intervention proposal), sample constituted by healthy elderly, and period of 10 years. The selected articles were read in their entirety to elaborate a comparative analysis and detect its main aspects, similarities and differences, peaceful points and controversies about the association of memory (and/or cognitive development), aging, and longevity.

Table 1 contains the flow diagram elaborated, where the process of searching and selecting the material for analysis is condensed, showing it in a synthetic way and allowing a global vision of it.

Percentage (%) of the age of death of human populations throughout different periods.



Australopithecus	(n. 173)	58.4	41.6	–		Mano 1975v
Homo erectus	(n. 33)	48.5	21.2	30.3	–	Weidenreich 1943 et 1951
H.s neanderthalensis	(n. 39)	48.7	41.0	10.3	–	Vallois 1960
H.s sapiens						Fusté 1954
Paleolithic (sup.)	(n. 76)	54.0	34.2	11.8	–	Vallois 1960
Mesolithic	(n. 71)	38.2	57.8	3.5	0.7	Vallois 1960
Néo-Entolithic	(n. 101)	39.6	41.6	17.8	1.0
Bronze (Autriche Mer)	(n. 273)	24.2	39.9	28.6	7.3	Vallois 1960
Western mer. (1829 AD)		54.0	12.2	12.8	21.0	Vallois 1960
Western (1927 AD)		18.1	11.9	22.6	47.4	Vallois 1960

Life curve of Homo erectus and current populations (taken from Alciati, 1987 ) (2) .

The analysis of the results offered different questions discussed, clearly differentiating qualitatively two genetic and non-genetic variables linked to longevity:

Longevity and Genetic Influence

We studied that the variables cited in the articles influencing longevity could be of a genetic base which results in few works focused on non-psychological aspects, although sometimes interconnected with psychological ones. The results were the following:

The longevity of the parents is associated with a better aging of the brain in the middle-aged children according to Murabito et al. ( 2013 ) and Dutta et al. ( 2014 ) who investigated the aging of the children of long-term parents.

The offspring of non-agenarians (genetic) with a family history of longevity have a better cognitive performance compared to the group of their partners of comparable age according to the study by Stijntjes et al. ( 2013 ).

According to Barral et al. ( 2013 ), they stated that genetic variants influence memory performance in long-lived families after analyzing the performance of memory in the Long Life Family Study. This aspect is also a non-genetic variable.

The Bio-Socio-Sanitary variables (Doing sports, healthy eating, not smoking, etc.) contribute to longevity (Franco et al., 2018 ) as well as to Cognitive development (Conf. Cephalal et Neurol, 2018, Vol. 28, N. 1: 5–15).

Longevity Results Due to Non-genetic or Socio-Psychological Influence

There are other factors that influence the longevity of people; they are non-genetic factors or also called socio-psychological. These factors influence in one way or another the increase in longevity, as determined by the results of various studies conducted in this field.

Thus, if we focus on the effects of a lifestyle committed to cognitive vitality (Stine-Morrow et al., 2008 ), it is concluded that the commitment to training specific skills can mitigate cognitive declines related to age.

Furthermore, Barral et al. ( 2012 ) conclude in their study that cognitive performance can serve as an important endophenotype for longevity by studying cognitive function in families with exceptional survival. Precisely, a greater sense of purpose is related to a greater probability of survival and longevity (Windsor et al., 2015 ).

Along the same lines of reasoning, a daily cognitive occupation would protect against cognitive impairment. This was stated by Zhu et al. ( 2017 ) after they conducted a longitudinal study in Chinese older adults on leisure, education, and cognitive impairment activities in Adults. According to this study, recreational activities protect against cognitive deterioration among Chinese elders, and the protective effects are deeper for educated elders.

Likewise, participating in learning new skills improves episodic memory in older adults, improves cognition in relation to participation in social or challenging activities, and helps to live longer (Chan et al., 2016 ). Although the ability to solve daily problems differs with age, along with the underlying processes, this increases longevity (Chen et al., 2017 ).

Other authors (Olchik et al., 2012 ) state that memory training is a feasible non-pharmacological intervention that could bring a positive change in performance in older adults facing cognitive impairment. They demonstrated how memory training (MT) in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) generated changes in cognitive performance; thus, Lipton et al. ( 2010 ) affirm that factors associated with longevity can protect against dementia and Alzheimer's disease. On the other hand, Miller et al. ( 2013 ) studied the effect of computerized brain exercises on the elderly; Learning new things and keeping the mind engaged can be an important key to successful cognitive aging, as suggested by popular wisdom and our own intuitions (Park et al., 2014 ). A lower level of logical abstract thinking and a slower information processing speed are associated with shorter survival among adults (Nishita et al., 2017 ).

On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that positive behavior in daily life activities represents several dimensions of personal well-being, health and safety, and may confer greater longevity (Chang et al., 2012 ). Thus, older people who buy every day to meet their needs have a 27% lower risk of death than less frequent shoppers. Similarly, extensive social participation, as well as regular participation in group leisure activities, or in organized social activities and informal social interactions in particular can have beneficial effects on the functional health of older adults through behavioral and psychosocial pathways (Gao et al., 2018 ).

Finally, a relevant result in the field of longevity is that contributed by Ritchie et al. ( 2013 ) who affirm that the increase in education significantly improves the cognitive abilities of later life.

Extensive social participation, regular participation in group leisure activities, organized social activities, and informal social interactions in particular can have beneficial effects on the functional health of older adults through behavioral and psychosocial pathways, Gao et al. ( 2018 ).

Results of the Analysis of the Articles Related to Longevity From a Socio-Psychological Influence Point of View

Field experimental studies on cognitive training were conducted in Stine-Morrow et al. ( 2014 ) and Murabito et al. ( 2013 ) examined the relationship between longevity, parental cognition, and subclinical brain aging markers in a sample of 728 individuals; Dutta et al. ( 2014 ) tested the association between the longevity of parents and the cognitive impairment of old age through a biennial evaluation for ages between 64 and 79 years. Windsor et al. ( 2015 ), in a sample of 1475 older adults, examined associations of individual differences in purpose sense with levels and rates of change in aging rates (health, cognition, and depressive symptoms). Chen et al. ( 2017 ) examined age differences in the relative contributions of fluid and crystallized skills to solve everyday problems in a sample of 221 healthy adults between the ages of 24 and 93. Chan, Haber, Drew, and Park studied the influence and benefit of cognition and the improvement of daily function by training with the use of tablet, computer, and associated software applications in a total sample of 54 older adults (60–90 years old). Olchik et al. ( 2012 ) conducted a randomized controlled trial where memory was studied through cognitive tests in three different intervention groups. Stijntjes et al. ( 2013 ) studied a sample of 500 individuals whether children of non-generic siblings with a family history of longevity perform better on cognitive tests compared to their peers as controls. Festini et al. ( 2016 ) examined the relationship between activity and cognition in adults between 50 and 89 years old, in a sample of 330 people, by completing a cognitive battery and a questionnaire of environmental demands of Martin and Park (MPED) and performing an evaluation of the activity. Miller et al. ( 2013 ) conducted research to explore whether computerized brain training exercises improve cognitive performance in older adults, using a sample of convenience by randomly assigning an intervention group ( N = 36), which used a computer program 5 days a week for 20–25 min each day, together with a waiting list control group ( N = 33). Park et al. ( 2014 ) studied whether sustained participation in learning new skills that activated working memory, episodic memory, and reasoning over a period of 3 months would improve cognitive function in older adults. Nishita et al. ( 2017 ) also studied in a sample of 1,060 individuals the longitudinal relationship between cognitive abilities and subsequent death in Japanese elderly people. Zhu et al. ( 2017 ) examined the association between leisure time activities and the risk of developing cognitive impairment among Chinese elderly people, and investigated whether the association varies according to educational level, using a sample of 6,586 participants. Furthermore, Ritchie et al. ( 2013 ) analyzed in two longitudinal cohorts the association between education and cognitive change for life. Chang et al. ( 2012 ) analyzed in a sample of 1,841 representative free-standing Taiwanese people, purchasing behavior. Gao et al. ( 2018 ) studied the effects of participating in different types of social activities at the onset of functional disability and the underlying behavioral and psychosocial mechanisms among adults aged 65 and older in China through a health longevity study during the years 2005, 2008, and 2011.

Different methods were used to test the association between the longevity of the parents and the measurements of cognition and brain volumes. Murabito et al. ( 2013 ) used multivariable linear and logistic regression to adjust age, sex, education, and time for NP or brain MRI testing, resulting that the association with hyperintensity of the white matter was no longer significant in models adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors and disease.

Dutta et al. ( 2014 ) conducted the study classifying the descendants into groups of parental longevity based on gender-specific distributive cut-off points, using for that purpose covariable models that included race, education of the respondents, and income status during childhood and Adulthood. Düzel et al. ( 2016 ) used models of structural equations in the validation of a new self-report measure; the Subjective Health Horizon Questionnaire (SHH-Q). The SHH-Q evaluated the perspectives of future time of individuals in relation to four interrelated but distinct lifestyle dimensions: (1) novelty-oriented exploration (Novelty), (2) physical fitness (Body), (3) Work objectives (Work), and (4) Life goals (Life goals). Four studies developed cognitive batteries: Chen et al. ( 2017 ) performed a cognitive battery to measure fluid capacity (processing speed, working memory, inductive reasoning) and crystallized capacity (multiple measures of vocabulary), and predicted performance in the test of everyday problems (EFA) by arriving at the result that the main predictor of performance in solving everyday problems for young adults was fluid capacity; noting further that crystallized capacity became the dominant predictor with increasing age; On the other hand, Chan, Haber, Drew, and Park, performed a cognitive battery in a sample of 54 older students by analyzing the memory of episodes and processing speed, mind control, and visuospatial processing. Festini et al. ( 2016 ) carried out a cognitive battery and a questionnaire of environmental demands of Martin and Park (MPED), on a sample of 330 adults of 50 and 89 years, to study the relationship between activity and cognition. The results showed that greater activity was associated with better processing speed, working memory, episode memory, reasoning, and crystallized knowledge. In turn, they demonstrated that living a busy lifestyle is associated with better cognition. Park et al. ( 2014 ) performed a cognitive battery and psychosocial questionnaires before and after the intervention on a sample of 211 individuals between the ages of 60 and 90 years. The evaluators were blinded to the assignment of the condition and did not participate in the intervention. The tests included paper and pencil and computer tasks. The cognitive constructs evaluated and the tasks associated with the constructions were: speed of processing, mental control, episodic memory, and visuospatial processing (Olchik et al., 2012 ). Stijntjes et al. ( 2013 ) performed a cross-sectional analysis within the longitudinal cohort of the Leiden longevity study in a sample of 500 individuals. They controlled memory function, attention, and processing speed. They also analyzed data with regression adjusted for age, sex, years of education, and additionally, for diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular diseases, alcohol consumption, smoking, inflammatory markers, and apolipoprotein E genotype. Robust standard errors were used to account for family relationships between children. Miller et al. ( 2013 ) performed neuropsychological tests, where three cognitive domains were compared (immediate memory, delayed memory, and language). Nishita et al. ( 2017 ) conducted a Longitudinal Study of Aging. The cognitive abilities of the participants were measured at the beginning using the short form of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale of Japan, which includes the following tests: information (general knowledge), similarities (logical abstract thinking), completeness of images (perception visual and long-term visual memory), and the digit symbol (information processing speed). Zhu et al. ( 2017 ) used as a means of collecting information a survey evaluated by means of a self-reported scale. They used Cox proportional hazards models to examine the association of leisure activities with cognitive incidents; deterioration by controlling age, gender, education, occupation, residence, physical exercise, smoking, drinking, cardiovascular diseases and risk factors, negative well-being and physical functioning, and the initial MMSE score. Ritchie et al. ( 2013 ) used as a tool the control of the comparison of the IQ score in childhood and in adulthood at 70 and 79 years. According to Chang et al. ( 2012 ), the analysis was based on the NAHSIT data set 1999–2000. The Cox proportional risk models were used to evaluate the frequency of purchase in case of death between 1999 and 2008 with a possible adjustment of covariates. Gao et al. ( 2018 ) conducted a Longevity Study of Longitudinal Health of China. They adopted analyzes of life tables and discrete time risk models to examine the relationship between social participation and functional disability. For this, they defined social participation as the frequencies of participating in free time group activities (playing cards) and organized social activities, getting involved in informal social interactions (the number of brothers visited frequently), and participating in paid work. The extensive social participation was measured by a composite index adding the four types of social activities in which an older person was involved. The results determined that frequent card play was a protective factor for functional decline, where the relationship was partially mediated between cognitive abilities and positive emotions. Frequent participation in organized social activities is significantly related to a reduced risk of functional impairment, and this association was mediated between physical exercises and cognitive ability. The frequent visits of the brothers had a strong inverse relationship with the functional deterioration. However, it was observed that there was no significant association between paid work and functional decline.

From the analysis of the results obtained, several affirmations were seen, such as commitment, cognitive performance, and a greater sense of purpose which can serve as endophenotypes of longevity and a greater probability of survival. Similarly, several studies determined that learning new skills, the orientation to the search for novelty, learning new things, and keeping the mind engaged are important key to achieve a successful cognitive aging. Thus, training in the ability to solve problems of daily life improves cognition and is associated with greater performance of current memory. In addition, training generates changes in cognitive performance. In short, living a busy lifestyle is associated with better cognition.

Furthermore, it was concluded that there are other non-genetic aspects, such as learning new tasks, commitment, sense of purpose, occupation of the mind, cognitive performance, activities related to thinking, finding solutions to problems, etc., that favor the longevity of people in a successful aging.

The Specific Wealth of Human Beings: Cultural Factors

Human beings are what we call a different being from the rest of living beings—we are a bio-psycho-social wholly. This is where the biological influences the psychological and the social, and where the psychological influences the biological. With this, we want to affirm that each person's personality (his psychology) and culture (his social self) modify the biology. In this way we can discern the influence of the biological, the psychological, and the social in each being and their differences with the rest of the living beings.

The Evolution of “Our Genes”

The evolution of “Our Genes” if we now turn to the large numbers of the Human Genome Project, recently researched, these indicate that humans have about 25,000 or 30,000 Genes. By that, each one of us possesses about 100,000 million neurons and about 100 billion neuronal connections.

They also indicate that in the world, there are just over 6,500 million inhabitants and only 94 of 1,278 families of proteins in our genome are specific to vertebrates. Approximately 36% of the Worm Genome (7,000 genes) is the same as that of humans. The genetic difference between the Chimpanzee and the Human Being is only 1.3% our genes. Also, there is no genome difference between ethnic groups. The difference between the genomes of two people is around 0.2%, and it is responsible for each individual being unique and living. The difference between a man and a woman is only the difference of an “x” chromosome or “y.” That single and tiny different chromosome (“XX” or “XY”) makes us something (both) different and something (both) equal to men and women.

We start from the budget that almost only 20% of what we are is biology, and that the remaining 80% is the result of psychology and fundamentally of culture. It is the fruit of our brain. We modify the brain with the stimuli that come to us from outside. Let's quote that 80% is psychological, therefore, Life or disease depends on 20% of genes and 80% of life habits. Is it possible to intervene in our genes in favor of greater longevity (Borrell et al., 2011 )?

María Blasco, director of the National Cancer Research Center of Spain has focused her research activity on telomeres, a structure of our chromosomes from which she and her team have obtained valuable information to further understand the process of life and disease and fundamentally of longevity.

In addition, environmental and psychological factors can affect the function of genes through what is called epigenetics (which acts as a switch to turn off or on, stimulate or slow down genes). That is, up to 20% of genes may be influenced by the psychological.

The length of telomeres depends on both genes—alterations in the telomerase enzyme gene can lead to telomeres that are much shorter than normal—and environmental factors. Smoking, obesity, anger, and negative position on life act negatively on telomeres. On the other hand, exercise, proper nutrition, and the psychology of optimism positively influence them.

A positive attitude can prevent depression, stress, insomnia, high cholesterol levels, and much more.

Being optimistic is directly related to enjoying good health. A positive attitude can prevent the development of diseases such as depression, stress, insomnia, inadequate cholesterol levels, etc. This is the conclusion that emerges from the study “Happiness and health perception” (2018), conducted by a group of researchers from the Complutense University of Madrid. On the other hand, it is also concluded that less happy people “tend to have more physical and psychological problems that affect them.”

In this sense, for example, the possibility of having depression in the group of less positive people is nine times greater than among those who are more positive. The probability of sleeping well is four times higher than among the most negative people.

According to this report, there is a two-way relationship between being happy and being healthy, as Carlos Chaguaceda points out, “people who feel happier and positive have a better perception of their health.”

And this association increasingly has more scientific evidence. This is confirmed by numerous studies: “Being more optimistic affects the nervous, neuroendocrine and immune system. For this reason, those who are happier, in general, suffer less cardio and cerebrovascular disorders and, as their immune system is reinforced, the chances of contracting diseases decrease” (Josep María Serra-Grabulosa, Department of Psychiatry and Psychobiology, University of Barcelona).

The Search for Happiness

The problem arises in how to seek happiness. Although the brain has a natural propensity to have positive emotions, the authors of the report say, “It is necessary to stimulate it.” “ Happiness is worked; you cannot wait sitting at home.” For example, those who perform sports on a regular basis are happy when they do it, and their brain generates a feeling that, although they get tired of exercising, they are happy. Likewise, when a painter projects himself in his work and gets excited in his construction of the painting he paints; his brain secretes serotonin and oxytocin and generates a sensation that makes him happy.

In short, we have to look for what makes us happy, and what makes us happy is to present ourselves creatively as positive human beings.

Furthermore, we should not forget the important role of social support or success and social triumph. The triumph, the achievement, the success, the creative and productive realization is fundamental for the people to feel with better state of health and help them to preserve, to a great extent, their level of satisfaction when they suffer a problem. Social support promotes happiness.

Obviously, there is not a single element that, in obtaining it, gives us happiness. It is necessary that science deepens in the way of favoring health from welfare. “Probably, there is the gene for happiness, but it is not just one, but there are several candidates that can provide this mental state and it is important to know how they are activated so that this happens.” At the moment, the gene that has more possibilities to be linked to happiness is “the one that is related to serotonin” substance that is activated mainly when we have positive experiences, when we feel creative and practice creativity both externally and internally.

Positive Psychology and Positive Experiences

The main research of Positive Psychology has focused on discovering whether positive feelings and positive experiences leave their mark; as well as the way they leave their mark on our biological history in our physiology.

The relationship between positive emotions and health is very old; thus, for example, Galen (130–200), who is considered the father of modern medicine, in his treatise on tumors (De tumoribus) noted that “melancholic” women were more likely than “blood” to have cancer of breast.

That is, Galen highlights the importance of positive and/or negative health effects. Likewise, another historical, its equivalent in Spain, Maimonides (1135–1204) says in his “Guide to good health” that the doctor must make the greatest efforts so that all patients and individuals are always happy and that this produces health. He highlighted the preventive value of positive feelings and their therapeutic use.

Already in the nineteenth century, Darwin ( 1872 ) pointed out that emotions, both in people and animals, provide a signaling system necessary for survival and happiness.

Relationship Between Emotions, Feelings and Positive Experiences, Health and Longevity

There are several researches and studies that confirm the importance of positive effects on longevity, but we have not found any that directly affect the level of studies and longevity.

Some studies related to positive experiences and/or prizes are referenced and can be a good foundation for what we are affirming. It's about the Oscar awards research. Redelmeier and Singh ( 2001 ) studied 235 deceased actors who had won an Oscar, and compared them, in longevity, with 527 actors who had participated in the same films, having been nominated without winning an Oscar; and finally, with 887 supporting actors also participating in the same films that had neither won an Oscar nor been nominated, and used as a control group. From this comparison, it appeared that the winners of an Oscar had lived 3.6 years longer than the nominees and 3.9 years more than the controls. In turn, Marmot ( 2004 ) reanalyzing these results found that the winners of several Oscars lived 2.7 years longer than those who only won one and 6.0 years more than the actors who had been used as a control group. Thus, having a great moment of positive affect that tilt the emotional balance in favor of the latter seems to influence not only health but to achieve greater longevity.

The Study on the Nuns

Another very significant study is the Positive Emotions in Early Life and Longevity: Findings from the Nun Study; Deborah D. Danner, David A. Snowdon, and Wallace V. Friesen, University of Kentucky.

It is a study made with handwritten autobiographies from 180 Catholic nuns, composed when the participants had an average age of 22 years. They were asked and scored on emotional content and analyzed the answers in relation to the survival of the same at ages 75–95.

After analyzing the data, a strong association was found between the positive emotional content in these writings and the risk of mortality in the elderly ( p < 0.001).

The quartile ranking of positive emotion in early life increased, presenting a gradual decrease in the risk of mortality that turned out to be a difference of 2.5 times between the lowest and highest quartiles. As a conclusion, it was empirically deduced that the highest positive emotional content in autobiographies, in early life, is strongly associated with longevity in 6 decades later.

The Positive Perception

Another longitudinal study that lasted more than 20 years, conducted by Levy et al. ( 2002 ) showed that older people with more positive perceptions of their aging in basic feeling (when they were 50 or older) lived longer (an average of 7.6 years more) than those who presented more negative perceptions about the process of becoming an elder. Therefore, the promotion of well-being in this vital segment is especially necessary (Chiang, 1984 ).

An Empirical Result

The results of an investigation carried out by S. MacManus in 1979 on the duration of the life of the Italian artists during the Renaissance indicate that the average age of death of these artists was more long-lived than that of their contemporaries.

The longevity of 218 artists was studied (born between 1,250 and 1,550). Their average age of life was 63.03 years when the average age was 53–56 years.

Its curve of average duration of the life of these artists was identical to that of the English men of 1,881 (five centuries later).

We see then that positive life experiences contribute to health, health to happiness, and happiness, directly or indirectly, to feel better and feeling a better one is better to achieve longevity.

Undoubtedly, after the analysis of the various investigations presented, we can indicate that the positive feelings are like Endogenous Opiates (Serotonin and Oxytocin) that produce a great benefit to health and in longevity. The direct effects of positive affect on immune function are investigated in this regard. From several investigations, it is hypothesized that a positive affective style would be associated with a greater activation of the immune system, while a negative style would be associated with a less or no activation of the immune system.

As a conclusion of this line of work, it must be said that we do not have conclusive evidence that positive affect provides a sustained increase in immune function. What the research does support is that the chronic absence of positive affect is related to immune deficiency.

Positive emotions shorten the duration of cardiovascular activation produced by negative emotions or, at least, at the level of symptoms, influence less pain, better health, and provide greater security to the disease by providing more internal security and more social support. Positive emotions have a positive effect. They stimulate and develop the positive self-concept that enables the person to feel valuable and capable; use humor as a positive reaction; feel good about yourself and others; appreciate the effort of living and committing; perceive changes and difficulties as challenges to be solved and understood; always think of the good wishes, sincerity, and truthfulness of others and be open to cultural interests, to change, ideas and values different from your own; and above all make the effort to achieve goals of realization.

In addition to the direct effects, experiences, and positive obligations also indirectly influence health through: the enhancement of activity behaviors, the need to live, and these in turn influence health. Likewise, the need to live facilitate cognitive and social processes that also result in better health (Maldonado-Briegas et al., 2019 ).

In short, emotions and positive positioning facilitate the creation of social relationships and friendship, which in turn allow the person to acquire social resources that can be used later, when needed.

If all that is so, can we find something empirical and real to prove it? Our answer and I think that almost all of you is that YES.

Cognitive Development and Longevity

It seems that a variable that affects determinantly in longevity is cognitive development. Studies of the last century, such as that of Alciati ( 1987 ) ( Table 1 ) advanced that “ as the human being has developed his brain, his cognitive capacity has been progressing in longevity.”

If we analyze the binomial cognitive development and longevity, we will observe that there are several studies that relate these two concepts. Some of them even relate it to the level of academic studies reached by people, as well as their performance as teachers. Lucchese et al. ( 2018 ) affirm that people, both men and women, who have more levels of education and practice daily as teachers live for an average of more years. The study, focused on the groups aged 60 and over collected in the INE (National Institute of Statistics) Census of 2018, concludes that having a higher level of education means being more positive and happy and living longer. Likewise, people performing a teaching task and developing this activity with satisfaction leads them to maintain an open and satisfactory cognitive life; therefore, the conjunction of a higher level of studies with a life lived with happiness helps to live more years.

It is understandable, therefore, that the performance of higher level studies at advanced ages favor longevity. In fact, learning new things and keeping the mind compromised can be an important key to successful cognitive aging (Park et al., 2014 ). Undoubtedly, the effort and commitment required by the academic formation establishes a sense of purpose and a clear objective in the life of the student that favors longevity, and (Windsor et al., 2015 ) greater sense of the purpose was associated with a greater probability of survival and longevity. Thus, participating in learning new skills improves episodic memory in older adults, improves cognition in relation to participation in social or challenging activities, and helps to live longer (Chan et al., 2016 ).

Cognitive development, the process by which the human being is acquiring knowledge through learning and experience, is established in different facets of life and in different ways, such as through the ability to solve daily problems. Although these problems differ with age along with the underlying processes, they increase longevity (Chen et al., 2017 ).

It is therefore understandable that man, as a social, dynamic, active, creative, and complex entity, is linked to a social participation. Thus, the conservation or improvement of cognitive development through social activity, regular participation in group leisure activities, organized social activities, and informal social interactions in particular can have beneficial effects on the functional health of adults (elderly people) through behavioral and psychosocial pathways (Gao et al., 2018 ).

Studies on Longevity

Previously, the results of previous investigations have been commented (Lucchese et al., 2018 ). Thus, the different demographic studies show that there is a greater longevity of the population in relation to the whole population, and that among the many variables that influence significantly, one of them is the development in the educational levels and the corresponding cognitive development.

According to the study carried out on cognitive development and longevity (Lucchese et al., 2018 ), the level of studies is a significant variable that promotes longevity. The sample used was the totality of the Spanish population according to the INE (National Statistics Institute) Census of 2017.

The main conclusions reached were that people, both men and women, who had more levels of education lived on average more years. The data indicated that the levels of studies were a significant variable with respect to the years of life. People with lower educational levels died earlier. Therefore, life expectancy is directly related to educational levels.

Returning to the study carried out, the demographic indicators, specifically data from the INE Continuous Register (on January 1, 2017), indicated that in Spain, there were 7,754,956 older people (65 and over), 16.67% of the total the population (46,528,024). The proportion of octogenarians represented 5.09% of the population, and according to some studies, this group will continue to grow thanks to technological and medical advances and the implementation of active aging programs (Abellán and Pujol, 2016 ).

According to the comparative analysis between people who have no studies (illiterate and people with incomplete primary education), and people who, if they have studies, referenced to the last 4 months of 2017, according to data from the INE. The total % of people who have studies is above 69% in people over 70 years, with 87.6% among those between 65 and 69 years old, and over 90% in people under the age of 65 years, while they only live a percentage of 30% of those who do not have studies ( Figures 8 , ,9 9 ).

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% Total people who have studies according to age (source: prepared by the authors based on INE data).

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Level of studies in % of people over 70 years of age in the last quarter of 2017 (source: prepared by the authors based on INE data).

If we make a comparison in the level of studies over 50 years, focusing on the partial % of people who have done any study over primary education, we will note that the % of people with higher education is higher in people >70 years, which, in people above 55 years of age, indicates the life and mortality rates after 65 years of age in relation to the studies ( Figure 10 ).

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Level of studies in % of people over 70 years of age in the last quarter of 2017.

In the same analysis of studies based on sex, we observe that 74% of men of 70 or more years have studies, compared to 26%, who did not finish them.

On the other hand, in women, aged 70 or older, 66.4% have studies compared to 33.6% which did not finish them. The following graph shows a comparison between the number of people in % who have done any study of any level and the number of people who have not done any study or have not completed it, in ages over 50 years (Source: INE) ( Figure 11 ).

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The % of people between the ages of 50 and 70, according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The distinction between the different levels of studies for those who finished their studies is significant, since those people over 70 with higher education levels surpass those in the Second Stage of secondary education with job or general orientation.

In fact, analyzing that segment of people with ages over 50 years, it is observed that there are more people with studies of Second Stage of Secondary or Higher Education, 16.7%, compared to those who only have studies of the First Stage of Secondary, 14.5%.

The difference in the level of studies in men and women becomes relevant in people older than 65 years of age. In people over 65 and younger than 69% of people with higher education is 22.4% in men and 13.3% in women, while in people over 70 years, 15.5% of men have higher education compared to 6.6% of women ( Figure 12 ).

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The % of women between the ages of 50 and 70, according to their level of education.

According to the data collected by the INE, the Mortality based on the level of Studies for the year 2016 was reflected in Table 2 (Collected in Table 2 of this document).

Mortality in people according to the level of studies in 2016 according to the data collected by the INE.


Both genders	407,158	12,948	98,097	139,312	79,681	22,350	9,852	22	7,938	13,790	12,499	812	2,005	7,852
	Percentage	3.18%	24.09%	34.22%	19.57%	5.49%	2.42%	0.01%	1.95%	3.39%	3.07%	0.20%	0.49%	1.93%
Men	206,801	3,104	42,553	66,987	44,909	13,796	6,049	12	5,897	8,004	8,747	529	1,596	4,645
	Percentage	2%	21%	32%	22%	7%	3%	0%	3%	4%	4%	0%	1%	2%
Women	200,357	9,844	5,544	72,325	34,772	8,581	3,803	10	2,041	5,796	3,752	283	409	3,207
	Percentage	5%	28%	36%	17%	4%	2%	0%	1%	3%	2%	0%	0%	2%

It was note as indicated in the census Las Fuentes de información to assign educational level to the entire population ( National Institute of Statistics-INE). There were Displacement statistics Assignment of educational level to death records of 2015 and obtaining method and warnings to users (December 2016) .

To Obtain the Level of Studies Reached by a Person, the Following Sources Have Been Used

∙ Register: The school or academic title is a variable of registration that must be collected by municipal councils in its municipal register and, therefore, is included in the INE's census database, although the INE does not disseminate, through the Statistics of the Continuous Register; the distribution of the population by this variable. The incorporation in the Register is related to the formation of the Electoral Census that is carried out from the census information. Thus, in the continuous management of the Register, this information is collected from the town councils and is purified with the information received semiannually by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports on titles issued .

It is important to note that the Municipal Register management standards allow two types of classifications by municipalities of this variable. However, there is no information regarding the school title with the same level of detail for all people. Thus, 33.8% of the population is encoded with the simplified classification, which is the one that appears in the electoral census (4 aggregate levels); while 66.2% has some value of the complete classification (13 detailed levels) ( Table 2 , collected in Table 2 of this document).

If we take into account data from the Women's Institute of the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality, in the academic year 2016–2017, on average, 66.45% of teachers in Spain were women ( Figure 13 ). This percentage has been gradually increasing every year ( Figure 14 ).

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Percentage of men and women teachers in the academic year 2016–2017 in average values (source: own elaboration based on data from the Institute for Women).

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Percentage of men and women teachers in different academic courses in medium terms (source: own elaboration based on data from the Institute for Women).

Among the specialties and levels of education in which the presence of women in the classrooms in the academic year 2016–2017 was leading, they were in the general education courses and in adult education centers and activities ( Figure 15 ).

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Percentage of women teachers in different specialties during the academic year 2016–2017 (source: own elaboration based on data from the Institute for Women).

However, the evolution in managerial positions of women in education has been increasing over the last decade as reflected in the following graph ( Figure 16 ).

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Source: Statistics of Non-University Teachings. Teacher series, MEFP.

In the 2016–2017 academic year, the distribution of teaching staff in general non-university education was led by women ( Figure 17 ). 5.5% of the active population is dedicated to non-university education from the age of 60.

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Distribution of teachers in the USA General non-university regime by age and sex during the 2016–2017 academic year (source: data and figures report, School year 2018/2019, Ministry of Education and Vocational Training).

On the other hand, if we analyze the relationship between the level of studies and mortality, according to the data collected in INE ( 2016 ) (the tabulated values are included in Table 2 ), we will observe the following ( Figures 18 , ,19 19 ).

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Mortality of people in 2016 according to their level of education.

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Mortality of people in 2016 in % according to their level of education.

It shows that, of 407,158 deaths in 2016, the highest number of deaths (139,312), 34.22%, were those whose highest levels of study were in Primary Education, followed by those who did not have primary education complete (98,097), that is, 24.09%.

On the other hand, if we analyze the % of total deceased men according to the level of studies ( Figure 20 ), we will observe that the highest number of people who died in 2016 were those who had Primary Education, incomplete primary education, and First stage of secondary education or similarly.

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Mortality of men in 2016 in % according to their level of education.

The same happens with the female sex ( Figure 21 ).

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Mortality of women in 2016 in % according to their level of education.

If we analyze the different Mortality Rates according to the level of studies in people between 50 and 54 years old ( Figure 22 ), we will observe that 35.45% have the First Stage of Secondary Education and similar, and Primary Education as the highest level of studies, 15.83%.

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Number of people deceased between 50 and 54 years according to their level of education.

If we analyze the different Mortality Rates according to the level of studies in people between 55 and 59 years old ( Figure 23 ), we will observe that 35.28% have Higher Secondary Education Stage and similar, and Primary Education, as the highest level of studies, 18.29%.

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Number of deceased people between 55 and 59 years of age according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

If we analyze the different Mortality Rates according to the level of studies in people between 60 and 64 years old ( Figure 24 ), we will observe that 32.81% have the Higher Education Stage and the like, and Primary Education, as the highest level of studies, 22.93%.

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Number of deceased people between 60 and 64 years of age according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

Analyzing the rest of the classes by ages from 65 to more than 95 years, the same trend is observed ( Figures 25 – 31 ).

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Number of people deceased between 65 and 69 years of age according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

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Number of people deceased between 95 and more years according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

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Number of people deceased between 70 and 74 years according to their level of education.

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Number of people deceased between 75 and 79 years according to their level of education.

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Number of people deceased between 80 and 84 years according to their level of education.

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Number of people deceased between 85 and 89 years according to their level of education.

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Number of people who died between 90 and 94 years of age according to their level of education (source: own elaboration based on INE data).

The increase in people's life expectancy (longevity) is linked to several variables; some of these variables are determinant than others. Focusing on the literature review and the studies analyzed in this document, we conclude that certain psychological variables linked to psycho-socio-cultural aspects favor the increase in longevity.

Attitudes such as commitment, maintaining an active life, related to cognitive performance and a greater sense of purpose, can serve as predictors of longevity. This means that learning new skills, keeping the mind occupied, motivated by the search for novelty, and by solving problems of daily life are important key to maintaining a successful cognitive aging. Likewise, the realization of activities with positive mental states generates health benefits. In fact, positive emotions and experiences help prevent diseases, and are often predictors of health and longevity.

Similarly, people with higher levels of study manage to live longer. It was affirmed by Ritchie et al. ( 2013 ), which conclude in their study, that the increase in education significantly improves cognitive abilities of later life. Affirmation also ratified by Lucchese et al. ( 2018 ) which assure that the levels of studies are a significant variable with respect to life expectancy is directly related to the levels of studies.

Therefore, academic training, if we understand it as a training of memory, could be interpreted as a feasible non-pharmacological intervention that could bring a positive change in performance in older adults who face cognitive impairment (Olchik et al., 2012 ).

Author Contributions

All authors contributed at the same level for the research project, data collection and analysis, and paper writing.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

1 INE: Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (Statistics National Institute) ( https://www.ine.es/ ).

NOMENCLATURE INDEX

Uam (autonomous university of madrid).

The UAM_Biblioteca works to support the development of research, teaching and study, providing access to necessary information resources, specific to this University or outside it. https://biblioguias.uam.es/psicologia/psicologia/bdatos

The portal of Electronic Newspapers of Psychology (PePSIC) is a source of the Virtual Health Library. Psychology of the Latin American Union of Psychology Entities (BVS-Psi ULAPSI) and result of the association between the National Entities Forum of Brazilian Psychology (FENPB), Dante Moreira Leche Library of the Institute of Psychology of the University of São Paulo (IP/USP) and the Latin American and Caribbean Center of Information in Health Sciences—BIREME, which provided the methodology—Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO)—model of electronic publication of newspapers to developing countries.

http://pepsic.bvsalud.org/scielo.php?lng=es

Scielo España is a virtual library formed by a collection of Spanish scientific journals of health sciences selected according to pre-established quality criteria. The SciELO project is the result of cooperation between BIREME (Latin American and Caribbean Information Center in Health Sciences) and FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo). In Spain, it is being developed by the National Library of Health Sciences, thanks to the collaboration agreement established in PAHO/WHO and the Carlos III Health Institute.

http://www.scielo.org/php/index.php?lang=es

Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences. LILACS acronym, it is a database of online bibliographic information for health sciences. In general, it covers the entire literature of the area, produced by authors from Latin America and published in the countries of the region since 1982. LILACS is maintained by the Latin American and Caribbean Center for Health Sciences Information (also known as BIREME), located in São Paulo, Brazil. As in MEDLINE, which was developed by the National Library of Medicine of the USA. UU., Includes bibliographic references of documents that have been published in a set of scientific and medical publications of the region, and that are not covered by MEDLINE.

http://lilacs.bvsalud.org/es/

Bibliographic database of the American Psychological Association that contains citations and summaries of journal articles, books, doctoral theses, and reports.

https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo/coverage.aspx

PubMed is a search engine for free access to the MEDLINE database of citations and abstracts of biomedical research articles. Offered by the National Library of Medicine of the United States as part of Entrez. MEDLINE has around 4.800 journals published in the United States and in more than 70 countries around the world from 1966 to the present.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

Teseo is the database on the internet that allows you to learn about doctoral theses defended in Spanish universities since 1976.

https://www.bvsspa.es/profesionales/bbdd-y-otros-recursos/recursos/teseo-base-de-datos-de-tesis-doctorales

It is a library cooperation project that started at the University of La Rioja. It is constituted as a portal that collects and provides access primarily to documents published in Spain in any language, published in Spanish in any country or dealing with Hispanic issues. The contents include journal articles, chapters of collective monographs, doctoral theses, books, etc. Its wide coverage makes Dialnet the largest database of Hispanic scientific articles accessible for free on the Internet.

https://dialnet.unirioja.es/

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Memory loss, conceptual illustration
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Cognitive neuroscience perspective on memory: overview and summary
This paper explores memory from a cognitive neuroscience perspective and examines associated neural mechanisms. It examines the different types of memory: working, declarative, and non-declarative, and the brain regions involved in each type. The paper highlights the role of different brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex in working ...
Memory loss
Amyloid PET imaging in MCI and MRI for subtyping AD. When memory loss is a prominent feature of MCI, we suspect that the patient has amnestic MCI (aMCI), or prodromal AD. Nevertheless, there are some situations where it is difficult to know whether we are dealing with early stages of AD, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), frontotemporal dementia ...
Diagnosis and Management of Dementia: A Review
The remaining 27 articles of original research, including 22 observational studies and 5 randomized clinical trials, informed this review. Risk factors and Neuropathology. ... Memory loss in working memory (the ability to immediately process and store information) Forgetting how to use household technology (e.g., how to use the microwave, dial ...
Delaying memory decline: different options and emerging solutions
Fig. 1: Current approaches for memory enhancement. Five different approaches are explored: novel drugs, diet and lifestyle changes, behavioral methods, novel methods, and direct medical treatment ...
Cognition and Memory after Covid-19 in a Large Community Sample
In our study cohort, we tracked the prevalence of infection with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus causing Covid-19, in England from May 1, 2020, to March ...
Memory persistence: from fundamental mechanisms to translational
Memory persistence is a double edge sword. Persistence of adaptive memories is essential for survival and even determines who we are. Neurodegenerative conditions with significant memory loss such ...
The forgotten part of memory
The forgotten part of memory. Long thought to be a glitch of memory, researchers are coming to realize that the ability to forget is crucial to how the brain works. Memories make us who we are ...
Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition
The Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (JARMAC) publishes the highest-quality applied research in memory and cognition, in the format of empirical reports, review articles, and target papers with invited peer commentary. The goal of this unique journal is to reach psychological scientists and other researchers working in this field and related areas, as well as professionals ...
Sleep deprivation induces fragmented memory loss
Abstract. Sleep deprivation increases rates of forgetting in episodic memory. Yet, whether an extended lack of sleep alters the qualitative nature of forgetting is unknown. We compared forgetting of episodic memories across intervals of overnight sleep, daytime wakefulness, and overnight sleep deprivation. Item-level forgetting was amplified ...
Why Forget? On the Adaptive Value of Memory Loss
On the surface, this seems to not be the case, and people often associate memory loss with frustration in their everyday lives. Yet, forgetting does not have exclusively negative consequences; it also serves valuable, indeed vital, functions. In this article, I review and reflect on evidence from various areas of research, and I argue that ...
More Evidence and More Work to Do
Memory, reasoning, and executive function (i.e., planning) tasks were the most sensitive indicators of impaired function, and scores on these tasks tended to correlate with brain fog. Vaccinations ...
(PDF) Coping strategies for memory problems in everyday ...
Objectives: Dealing with memory loss is a major challenge for older people. Coping strategies for memory problems could enable cognitively impaired people to live independently for longer.
(PDF) Memory loss
Dementia (F00-F03) is a syndrome due to disea se of the brain, usually of a chronic or pro gressive nature, in which there is. disturbance of multiple higher c ortical functions, including ...
Improvement of episodic memory retention by a memory ...
Participants. A total of 150 individuals participated in the study. Sample size was based on a power analysis of our previous memory strengthening studies [27, 28] and Monte Carlo simulations ...
Long-term memory effects on working memory updating development
Introduction. Working memory (WM) is a capacity limited system, able to maintain actively sets of representations useful in complex cognitive skills such as reading [1, 2] or text comprehension [3, 4].WM performance improves substantially over childhood with linear increases [5, 6].These developmental improvements may be driven by increases in storage capacity [], rehearsal strategies [], or ...
What we need to know about age related memory loss
The mildest form, age associated memory impairment, is characterised by self perception of memory loss and a standardised memory test score showing a decline in objective memory performance compared with younger adults. 1 About 40% of people aged 65 or older have age associated memory impairment—in the United States, about 16 million people.
Memory Studies: Sage Journals
Memory Studies affords recognition, form and direction to work in this nascent field, and provides a peer-reviewed, critical forum for dialogue and debate on the theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues central to a collaborative understanding of memory today.Memory Studies examines the social, cultural, cognitive, political and technological shifts affecting how, what and why ...
Inside the Science of Memory
Dementia (di-men-sha) : A loss of brain function that can be caused by a variety of disorders affecting the brain. Symptoms include forgetfulness, impaired thinking and judgment, personality changes, agitation and loss of emotional control. Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease and inadequate blood flow to the brain can all cause dementia.
(PDF) Memory, Narrative, and the Consequences
Memory, Narrative, and the Consequences. Jens Brockmeier. Department of Psychology, The American University of Paris. Received 9 October 2018; received in revised form 30 October 2018; accepted 2 ...
Short-Term Memory Capacity and Recall of Students with and without
The goal of this research is to examine the differences of short-term memory capacity between intellectually gifted, general education, and students receiving special education services. Using foundations in memory and recall research by Atkinson and Shiffrin and Baddeley and Hitch, data was collected by replication of a previous serial
Sleep Deprivation and Memory: Meta-Analytic Reviews of Studies on Sleep
There is a growing body of evidence suggesting a critical role of sleep in learning and memory (Diekelmann & Born, 2010).On the one hand, offline memory consolidation during sleep benefits both declarative and procedural memories acquired during preceding wake (Klinzing et al., 2019).On the other hand, memory encoding capacity has been argued to saturate gradually during wake, with sleep ...
This 1 Dementia Symptom May Appear Years Before Memory Loss
Dr. Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at Alzheimer's Society (an organisation which partly funded the study) said, " This innovative technology is a long way from ...
The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory
First, we examine the evidence for the architecture of short-term memory, with special attention to questions of capacity and how—or whether—short-term memory can be separated from long-term memory. Second, we ask how the components of that architecture enact processes of encoding, maintenance, and retrieval. Third, we describe the debate ...
Lemurs use 3 things to find hidden food
A new study shows that lemurs use smell, social cues, and long-term memory to locate hidden fruit—a combination of factors that may have deep evolutionary roots.
The Well-Being of the Elderly: Memory and Aging
On a psychological level, the signs of aging are identified by another set of variables closely related to cognitive development, personality, social activities, etc. and in the negative aspect mainly with memory loss. In this sense, the art of aging offers us a series of guarantees to live longer and live happier lives (Martin and Espanola, 2019).

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Sleep deprivation induces fragmented memory loss

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