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Exercise I
Name:
Matrikelnr.:
1.
Reference of the article
(citations should be based on the guidelines of the American
Psychological Assosciation [APA];
www.apa.org)
Dewar, M., Alber, J., Butler, C. Cowan, N., & Della Sala, S.
(2012). Wakeful resting boosts new
memories over the long term. Psychological Science, 23,
955-960.
Examples
Articles less than 7 authors:Kensinger, E. A., Brierley, B.,
Medford , N., Growdon, J. H., & Corkin, S. (2002). Effects of
normal aging and Alzheimer’s disease on emotional
memory. Emotion, 2, 118 –
134. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.2.2.118
Articles more than 7 authors:
Rosler, A., Ulrich, C., Billino, J., Sterzer, P., Weidauer , S.,
Bernhardt, T., ...Kleinschmidt, A. (2005). Effects of a rousing
emotional scenes on th e distribution of visuospatialattention:
Changes with aging and early su bcortical vascular
dementia. Journal of the NeurologicalSciences, 229,
109 – 116. doi:10.1016/j.jns.2004.11.007
2.
What was the central research question? (i.e. what did the
researchers investigate?)
Does post-wakeful rest support memory consolidation over 7
days?
3. What did the researcher hypothesize?
Wakeful resting supports memory consolidation over 7 days
compared to a no-rest
(distractor) condition.
4.
Why did the researchers hypothesize that? (Why did the
researchers hypothesize that? (what
was the theoretical explanation for their hypotheses?)
In a wakeful rest phase memory consolidation is supported
because no interfering
information material disturbs memory processes which transfer
the learned information
from short- to long-term memory.
5.
How was the experiment constructed (draw a flow diagram)
Story I Free recall Rest Distractor
Story II Free recall No-Rest
Distractor
Surprised Surprised 7 days
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6.
Describe the applied task and/or questionnaires. What do they
measure?
Learning task:
Participants had to learn and remember two short stories from
the Wechsler Memory Scale
(Wechsler, 1997).
Resting phase:
Participants should close their eyes in a darkened room,
experimenter left the room.
No rest phase:
Participants played the spot-the-difference game. In this task
two pictures were presented at
the same time on the screen. Participants were required to find
two errors in one of the two
pictures.
7.
Define the sample
How many participants were investigated: 14
Kids, younger adults, elderly adults: elderly adults
Age: M = 72.57 years, SD = …, age range = …
8. What was the main result?
In two experiments Dewar et al. (2012) found that a short
wakeful rest after learning
supported memory consolidation more than when participants
conducted a distractor task
(spot-the-difference game). When a learning phase was followed
by a short rest phase
participants remembered more story items after 7 days then when
the learning phase was
followed by a distractor task (F(1, 13) = 14.377, p < .01,
ηp2 = .525).
9. What did the researchers conclude?
Retention level after 7 days is significantly affected by the
cognitive activity that one is
engaged in shortly after new learning. The authors proposed that
the long-lived effect of
wakeful resting was the result of superior memory consolidation.
Wakeful resting might
provide conditions of minimal interference during which an
encoded story can be replayed
more often than is possible during activity-filled
(interference) periods. An increase in the
number of these automatic replays via wakeful rest could allow
all traces, including weakly
encoded ones, to be strengthened to a higher degree than is
possible during activity filled
periods. Retrieval itself and findings from other studies
showing that future relevance (that
the information should be maintained for a later recall test)
did not mediate the sustained
memory enhancement. Dewar and colleagues assume that
postlearning resting can be highly
beneficial if one wishes to retain new information over the long
term.
10. What was new in this study (in extension to existing
findings)?
The study of Dewar et al. (2012) was the first who demonstrated
that the retention level
after 7 days is affected by the cognitive activity that one is
engaged in shortly after new
learning.
