Fergus I. M. Craik

This article presents an obituary for Endel Tulving. Tulving's educational and professional careers are summarized. His work in the field of human memory is detailed. It is noted that Tulving's look at the field of verbal learning in the late 1950s persuaded him that the dominant associative tradition missed many important aspects of human memory. His research found that at the time of retrieval, memory for the original event may be successfully reinstated only by contextual cues that interact in a complementary fashion with the specifically encoded memory trace, a process that Tulving referred to as “synergistic ecphory”. He is also known for his work on memory systems. In his book, Elements of Episodic Memory published in 1983, Tulving proposed that memory for experienced events, episodic memory, should be distinguished from general knowledge of the world, semantic memory, and from procedural memory, the …

Building on earlier evidence showing a beneficial effect of bilingualism on children s cognitive development, we review recent studies using both behavioral and neuro-imaging methods to examine the effects of bilingualism on cognition in adulthood and explore possible mechanisms for these effects. This research shows that bilingualism has a somewhat muted effect in adulthood but a larger role in older age, protecting against cognitive decline, a concept known as cognitive reserve . We discuss recent evidence that bilingualism is associated with a delay in the onset of symptoms of dementia. Cognitive reserve is a crucial research area in the context of an aging population; the possibility that bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve is therefore of growing importance as populations become increasingly diverse.

This study examined the effect of lifelong bilingualism on maintaining cognitive functioning and delaying the onset of symptoms of dementia in old age. The sample was selected from the records of 228 patients referred to a Memory Clinic with cognitive complaints. The final sample consisted of 184 patients diagnosed with dementia, 51% of whom were bilingual. The bilinguals showed symptoms of dementia 4 years later than monolinguals, all other measures being equivalent. Additionally, the rate of decline in Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores over the 4 years subsequent to the diagnosis was the same for a subset of patients in the two groups, suggesting a shift in onset age with no change in rate of progression. © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background:Compared with monolinguals, bilinguals have a later onset of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer disease symptoms and greater neuropathology at similar cognitive and clinical levels. The present study follows a previous report showing the faster conversion from MCI to Alzheimer disease for bilingual patients than comparable monolinguals, as predicted by a cognitive reserve (CR).Purpose:Identify whether the increased CR found for bilinguals in the previous study was accompanied by greater gray matter (GM) atrophy than was present for the monolinguals.Methods:A novel deep-learning technique based on convolutional neural networks was used to enhance clinical scans into 1 mm MPRAGEs and analyze the GM volume at the time of MCI diagnosis in the earlier study.Patients:Twenty-four bilingual and 24 monolingual patients were diagnosed with MCI at a hospital memory clinic …

In this first chapter, we review the various ways in which philosophers and scientists over the centuries have attempted to understand what memory is, and how it works. Initially, the descriptions were frankly metaphors, but they typically make important points about the nature of learning and memory. One obvious feature of such metaphors is that they reflect the communication technology of the day, and this is true even of early metaphors. Both Plato and Aristotle likened memory to the wax tablets used by their students to record their lessons. A signet ring pressed into the soft wax “left an impression”—a term still in use today—and the record remained until it was overwritten by a further mark or the wax melted. These ancient philosophers also suggested that differences in memory ability could be understood in terms of differences in the consistency of the material receiving impressions. If the wax was too soft and …

This commentary is a reply to the article “Intent matters: Resolving the intentional versus incidental learning paradox in episodic long-term memory” by Popov and Dames (2022). In their article, the authors question the view that once adequate deep, elaborate, and organizational processes have been induced incidentally, the intention to learn adds nothing further to the level of subsequent retention. Opposing this view, Popov and Dames conclude that intention to learn is always necessary for good memory performance and support this claim with the results of 11 experiments in which they find strong effects of intentionality using mixed-list designs in which all items are processed semantically but only half need be remembered later. The present commentary suggests that intentionality leads to selectively greater amounts of item processing and organizational processing of the to-be-remembered items in mixed lists …

This chapter examines the links between bilingualism and executive control in older adults, with a particular focus on comparing those with lifelong bilingual experience to those who do not. While aging is a maturational process in which people become suboptimal in executive control, there is observable and documented variability associated with language experiences. The chapter reviews the literature on cognitive aging as a maturational process, and its interaction with bilingualism as a life experience. Although it should be acknowledged that there is mixed evidence, a body of literature on bilingualism and cognitive control has suggested that there is an advantage for bilingual older adults in some executive functions, such as monitoring, maintaining action goals, and possibly in working memory.My first interactions with Ellen Bialystok were not promising. We knew each other vaguely in the 1990s, largely at the …

Problems with memory are high on the list of complaints that most people have as they grow older. Are memory losses an inevitable accompaniment of the aging process? Our short answer is that some degree of decline in memory performance is usual and entirely normal in the course of healthy aging; it is not a sign of encroaching Alzheimer's disease or other neuropsychological conditions. We will make that distinction clearer toward the end of the chapter. It is also the case that age-related losses are much less in some forms of memory than in others. The purpose of this chapter is to survey what we know at the present time.