Individual differences in memory storage and retrieval during reading comprehensi

阅读理解过程中记忆存储和检索的个体差异

• 批准号: 7872936
• 负责人: Julie A Van Dyke
• 金额: $ 22.77万
• 依托单位: HASKINS LABORATORIES, INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7872936
• 关键词: Access to Information; Accounting; Adolescent; Age; Attention; Auditory; Awareness; Binding; Characteristics; Clinical; Code; Communities; Complex; Comprehension; Cues; Data; Development; Distant; Event; Failure; Foundations; Goals; Individual; Individual Differences; Investigation; Knowledge; Language; Lead; Left; Letters; Linguistics; Measures; Memory; Methods; Modality; Orthography; Participant; Play; Population; Printing; Probability; Procedures; Process; Publishing; Reader; Reading; Reading Disabilities; Recording of previous events; Research; Rest; Retrieval; Role; Sales; Sampling; Scanning; Short-Term Memory; Source; Speed; Stress; Structure; Students; Techniques; Text; Time; Vocabulary; Wolves; base; boys; college; disability; experience; lexical; literacy; long term memory; meetings; memory process; neglect; novel; operation; phonology; phrases; pressure; public health relevance; rehearsal; remediation; response; skills; stem; theories

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Reading and language comprehension requires the ability to identify relationships between linguistic units that are frequently non-adjacent. This means that comprehenders must be able to store partially interpreted material (e.g., the subject of a sentence whose verb occurs much later, viz. The boy with the coat with the blue stripes and the flashy buttons on the collar that he bought on sale last Tuesday sang at the bus stop.) A frequent explanation for comprehension difficulty is that individuals differ on the amount of Working Memory (WM) capacity they can devote to maintaining this information. Yet recent research in the memory domain using the Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff (SAT) method suggests that the amount of information actively maintained in working memory is quite small-perhaps as little as 1 item. This leaves very little room for individual differences in memory capacity, and suggests that alternative explanations for comprehension failure must be found. The goal of the present project is to begin exploring these alternatives via the following three aims: 1) Adaptation of the Speed-Accuracy Tradeoff (SAT) method for use with poor readers. Adaptation is required because the method puts time-pressure on participants to respond in a particular fashion, and poor readers may have difficulty meeting this pressure due to insufficient reading ability or inhibitions caused by awareness of their reading disability. The availability of this method for use with a broader population will enable us to determine whether such a severe limit on WM capacity is characteristic of throughout the range of reading ability, or whether it is concomitant with acquired reading skill. 2) The SAT method is unique in providing precise measures of the speed with which participants may access the contents of memory. Research with skilled readers from college populations suggests a very fast cue-driven access mechanism that serves to compensate for the restricted WM capacity by quickly restoring necessary information into active memory. We will investigate whether individual differences in the speed with which readers can restore previously occurring information may provide an alternative account of comprehension failure. In order to more broadly sample reading ability, we will focus on the population of non- degree seeking adolescents sampled throughout the community. 3) A consequence of cue-driven memory access is interference from similar, but incorrect items also present in memory. Interference may be increased if lexical representations are poor or else if retrieval speed for the correct item is slowed by competitors. We employ the SAT method to distinguish these possibilities. These investigations will reveal whether individual differences in the way that comprehension processes interact with the contents of memory are qualitative or quantitative. This is important for determining the most judicious remediation methods, especially the value of differential stress on measures for increasing retrieval speed (i.e., fluency) versus those that increase accuracy (i.e., vocabulary knowledge). PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: A frequent explanation for reading and language comprehension difficulty is that individuals differ in their Working Memory (WM) capacity, yet recent research suggests that the amount of information actively maintained in WM is quite small-perhaps as little as 1 item. This leaves very little room for individual differences in memory capacity, and suggests that alternative explanations for comprehension failure must be found. The goal of this project is to begin exploring these alternatives using a novel extension of the Speed- Accuracy Tradeoff technique, which has been used widely in memory research with skilled readers, but never with such a broad range of reading ability as that proposed in the current project.

描述(由申请人提供)：阅读和语言理解要求有能力识别经常不相邻的语言单位之间的关系。这意味着理解者必须能够存储部分解释的材料(例如，动词出现得很晚的句子的主语，即。上周二在打折时买的那件蓝色条纹大衣和领子上闪闪发光的纽扣的男孩在公交车站唱歌。)对理解困难的一种常见解释是，每个人在工作记忆(WM)容量上可以用来保持这些信息的数量不同。然而，最近使用速度-精度折衷(SAT)方法在记忆领域进行的研究表明，工作记忆中活跃保持的信息量相当小--可能只有1个项目。这使得记忆容量的个体差异几乎没有留下空间，这表明必须找到理解失败的其他解释。本项目的目标是通过以下三个目标开始探索这些替代方案：1)调整速度-精度折衷(SAT)方法，以供较差的读者使用。适应是必要的，因为这种方法对参与者施加了时间压力，要求他们以特定的方式做出反应，而阅读能力低下的读者可能由于阅读能力不足或意识到他们的阅读障碍而难以应对这种压力。这种方法适用于更广泛的人群，将使我们能够确定这种对工作记忆能力的严重限制是整个阅读能力范围的特征，还是伴随着后天获得的阅读技能。2)SAT方法的独特之处在于提供了参与者访问记忆内容的速度的精确测量。对来自大学群体的熟练读者进行的研究表明，一种非常快速的线索驱动的访问机制，通过将必要的信息快速恢复到活动内存中，来弥补有限的工作记忆容量。我们将调查读者恢复之前发生的信息的速度的个体差异是否可以为理解失败提供另一种解释。为了更广泛地抽样调查学生的阅读能力，我们将重点调查在全社区抽样调查的未攻读学位的青少年群体。3)提示驱动的存储器访问的结果是来自存储器中也存在的类似但不正确的项目的干扰。如果词汇表示很差，或者如果竞争对手减慢了正确项目的检索速度，则可能会增加干扰。我们使用SAT方法来区分这些可能性。这些研究将揭示理解过程与记忆内容相互作用的方式的个体差异是定性的还是定量的。这对于确定最明智的补救方法很重要，特别是区别强调提高检索速度(即流利性)的措施与提高准确性(即词汇知识)的措施的价值。与公共健康相关：阅读和语言理解困难的一个常见解释是，每个人的工作记忆(WM)容量不同，但最近的研究表明，WM中活跃保存的信息量相当小--可能只有1个项目。这使得记忆容量的个体差异几乎没有留下空间，这表明必须找到理解失败的其他解释。这个项目的目标是开始使用速度-精度权衡技术的一个新的扩展来探索这些替代方案，该技术已经在熟练读者的记忆研究中广泛使用，但从来没有像本项目中提议的那样具有如此广泛的阅读能力。