The aging episodic memory and its plasticity: A cross-cultural approach
Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
Final Report Abstract
In recent years, several cross-cultural studies reported that Westerners focus more on central aspects of a scene (e.g., an object) relative to peripheral aspects (e.g., the background), whereas Easterners more evenly allocate attention to central and peripheral aspects. In memory tasks, Easterners exhibit worse recognition for the central object when peripheral aspects are changed, whereas Westerners are less affected by peripheral changes. The main goal of this project was to extend on these findings by investigating the effect of culture on age-related and neurodegenerative episodic memory deficits. Initially, this question should be assessed by testing memory of older and younger German and Chinese adults and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) patients with both behavioral and ERP measures. Due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the project plan had to be adjusted to examining younger adults only in order to reflect safety regulations for vulnerable groups. In the revised ERP study (Weigl, Shao et al., 2023), we investigated item and source memory for semantically unrelated object-scene pairs in German (Experiment 1a) and Chinese (Experiment 1b) young adults. We relied on memory measures corrected for response bias (i.e. the discrimination index Pr), because most of the previous cross-cultural studies mainly assessed hit rates without correcting for response bias and studies accounting for response bias failed to replicate cultural differences in memory tasks. Both, German and Chinese young completed study-test cycles with either item memory tests or source memory tests. In item memory blocks, participants completed an old/new recognition test for the central object. Source memory blocks entailed an associative recognition test for the association between object and background. In general, item and source memory were better for intact pairs (i.e. old object in front of old background) than for recombined pairs (i.e. old object in front of new background). Contrary to our hypotheses and some previous studies, this context effect was not modulated by culture as verified with traditional frequentist and modern Bayesian analyses. The ERP results revealed an old/new effect for the item memory task in both groups which was again not modulated by culture. Moreover, the absence of effects cannot be attributed to an atypical sample of German and Chinese participants, because we found cultural effects in validated control measures. Together, our findings suggest that cultural differences in young adults do not manifest in intentional memory tasks probing memory for objectscene pairs without semantic relations when using bias-corrected memory measures. Beyond highlighting the importance of bias-corrected memory measures, this study provides several pointers for future research such as investigating the role of physical similarity and semantic fit on cultural differences in episodic memory. However, this study (Weigl, Shao et al, 2023) advanced cross-cultural memory research in a more indirect manner. Initially, we set out to investigate how episodic memory is modulated not only by age, but also by culture. Despite an increased research interest in the cultural and age-related modulation of basic cognitive processes, only few cross-culturally normed non-verbal stimulus sets are available to support cross-cultural cognitive research in younger and older adults. In order to address this research gap, we created the ORCA (Official Rating of Complex Arrangements) picture database (Weigl, Pietsch et al., 2023), which includes a total of 720 object-scene compositions sorted into 180 quadruples of visually and semantically matched object and scene pairs. Our database is particularly well suited for cognitive and neuroscientific research on cross-cultural and age-related differences in perception, attention, and memory. Another impact of the study by Weigl, Shao et al. (2023) is that the experimental design can be applied to different paradigms such as the context reinstatement effect. Context reinstatement generally enhances recognition memory relative to changing the context when specific item–context associations are established during encoding. Miao et al. (2023) used the design of Weigl, Shao et al. (2023) as a context reinstatement paradigm together with ERPs in order to examine the context-dependent effects of background scenes on recognition discrimination among similar objects. Behavioral results revealed enhanced performance on differentiating the old objects from similar objects in the old context than the new context condition. Importantly, ERP results revealed a greater recollection-related parietal object old/new effect for the old context relative to the new context condition. These findings suggest that recollection contributes to the ability to discriminate old and similar objects in memory when the encoding context is reinstated at test.
Publications
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May the source be with you! Electrophysiological correlates of retrieval orientation are associated with source memory performance. Brain and Cognition, 146, 105635.
Meßmer, Julia A.; Weigl, Michael; Li, Juan & Mecklinger, Axel
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May the source be with you: Electrophysiological evidence for the beneficial effects of retrieval orientations on performance in a source memory task [Abstract]. In C. Dobel, C. Giesen, L. A. Grigutsch, J. M. Kaufmann, G. Kovács, F. Meissner, K. Rothermund, & S. R. Schweinberger (Eds.), TeaP 2020: Abstracts of the 62nd Conference of Experimental Psychologists, p. 172. Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishing.
Meßmer, J., Weigl, M. & Mecklinger, A.
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ORCA. A database of object-scene arrangements for cross-cultural neuroscientific research. Video presented at the virtual conference of the International Cultural Neuroscience Society.
Weigl, M., Pietsch, J., Kapsali, E., Shao, Q., Zheng, Z., Li, J., Mecklinger, A. & Jutta Kray, J.
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A p-curve analysis of the experimental evidence on the influences of culture and age on episodic memory. Talk at the 63rd Conference of Experimental Psychologists in Ulm, Germany.
Doffiné, J., Zeyer, S. K., Mecklinger, A., Kray, J. & Weigl, M.
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Cross Cultural Differences in Object Identification and Episodic Memory. Talk given at the Annual meeting of the Memory Disorders Research Society. October
Mecklinger, A.
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Not so different after all? An event-related potential study on item and source memory for object-scene pairs in German and Chinese young adults. Poster presented at the Hybrid Meeting of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society.
Weigl, M., Shao, Q., Wang, E., Zheng, Z., Li, J., Kray, J. & Mecklinger, A.
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Electrophysiological evidence for context reinstatement effects on object recognition memory. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 206, 107861.
Miao, Jingwen; Weigl, Michael; Kong, Nuo; Zhao, Min-Fang; Mecklinger, Axel; Zheng, Zhiwei & Li, Juan
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Not so different after all? An event-related potential study on item and source memory for object-scene pairs in German and Chinese young adults. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 17.
Weigl, Michael; Shao, Qi; Wang, Enno; Zheng, Zhiwei; Li, Juan; Kray, Jutta & Mecklinger, Axel
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ORCA: A picture database of object–scene arrangements for cross-cultural and aging research. Behavior Research Methods, 56(2), 513-528.
Weigl, Michael; Pietsch, Jan; Kapsali, Efsevia; Shao, Qi; Zheng, Zhiwei; Li, Juan; Kray, Jutta & Mecklinger, Axel
