Postdoctoral Fellowship: SPRF: Taking a Computational Approach to Understanding Schema-Memory Interactions

Ramey, Michelle M, Fayetteville AR

Investigators

Abstract

This award was provided as part of the NSF Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Drs. James Lampinen and Grant Shields at the University of Arkansas, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist investigating schema-memory interactions. Loss of memory is one of the most feared and detrimental consequences of aging--but when older adults' prior knowledge (i.e., schema) is consistent with what they are trying to remember (e.g., remembering medication is in a medicine cabinet), older adults' memory is similar to younger adults' memory. When their prior knowledge is conflicting with to-be-remembered information (e.g., remembering medication is in an unusual place like the fridge), however, older adults have more difficulty remembering that information. Despite the importance of understanding memory loss with age, it is not known how or why older adults' memory differs so markedly between schema-consistent and schema-inconsistent information. This project will address this gap by using a combination of cutting-edge methods--computational cognitive model development and new eyetracking metrics--to test new mechanisms and put forth a new theory of why older adults' memory is so affected by schema consistency. The findings as well as the novel computational models we develop are expected to substantially advance the field's understanding of memory in general and in aging. Moreover, these findings are expected to provide a foundation for the future development of interventions for memory decline in aging, such as interventions targeting the use of schemas in memory decisions. The aims of the proposed research are 1) to develop two new computational cognitive models that allow the dynamics underlying schema-memory interactions to be assessed, and 2) to use these models as well as eyetracking to probe mechanisms underlying age differences in schema effects on memory and test a new theory. Older and younger adult participants will search for schema-congruent and schema-incongruent objects in scenes, complete a spatial recall and scene recognition memory test, and complete a schema-related scene rating task. Eyetracking data will be collected throughout. One computational cognitive model will be developed to capture how schema-memory interactions unfold over time, and another model will be developed to capture how they are weighted in memory decisions. The proposed research stands to substantially advance our understanding of schema-memory interactions in general and in aging by developing and disseminating new models that can be used to answer future questions in memory research, directly testing previously theorized mechanisms for the first time, identifying new mechanisms that had not previously been considered, and putting forward a new theory that stands to reconcile competing theories. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.