Almut Hupbach

Lehigh University · Department of Psychology

How repeated encoding affects retention of item details is an unresolved question. The Competitive Trace theory (Yassa & Reagh, Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, 107, 2013) assumes that even slight variations in encoding contexts across item repetitions induce competition among non-overlapping contextual traces, leading to semanticization an...

In a 2014 issue of Learning & Memory, Reagh and Yassa proposed that repeated encoding leads to semanticization and loss of perceptual detail in memory. We presented object images one or three times and tested recognition of targets and corresponding similar lures. Correct lure rejections after one in comparison to three exposures were more frequent...

The present study asks whether behaviors of another person can be intentionally forgotten, and whether forgetting affects how that person is evaluated. Participants read about negative and neutral behaviors of a fictional character and were then asked to forget or to keep remembering them. Afterwards, all participants learned of neutral behaviors a...

Stress can modulate episodic memory in various ways. The present study asks how post-encoding stress affects visual context memory. Participants encoded object images centrally positioned on background scenes. After encoding, they were either exposed to cold pressure stress (CPS) or a warm water control procedure. Forty-right hours later, participa...

The present study asked whether the specific method of reactivation modulates the impact of new learning on reactivated episodic memories. The study consisted of three sessions that were spaced 48 hr apart. It used an ABAC paradigm that allowed for the simultaneous assessment of retroactive interference (RI: reduced A–B recall after A–C learning) a...

The present study challenges the view that directed forgetting is a late developing mnemonic skill. In two experiments preschoolers first learned a list of everyday objects, and were then asked to “empty their heads of these objects to make room for new ones” or to keep them in their minds. Then, a new list of unrelated objects was learned. After a...

The intention to forget reduces the accessibility of information in memory, which is commonly explained with temporary retrieval difficulties. Long-term effects have rarely been studied, and results are inconsistent. The present study re-assessed the long-term effects of directed forgetting (DF). Participants encoded a first list of items (L1), and...

Does reactivation trigger episodic memory change? A meta-analysis Poster Presented at the 2017 Lehigh University Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Symposium

According to the reconsolidation hypothesis, long-term memories return to a plastic state upon their reactivation, leaving them vulnerable to interference effects and requiring re-storage processes or else these memories might be permanently lost. The present study used a meta-analytic approach to critically evaluate the evidence for reactivation-i...

People often falsely recognize items that resemble previously encountered items, particularly when the original items are not offered as response options during a recognition test. The present study examined how falsely recognizing versus correctly rejecting target-related foils in an initial recognition test affects target identification in a seco...

Complete work is currently in progress.

Retrieval enhances long-term retention. However, reactivation of a memory also renders it susceptible to modifications as shown by studies on memory reconsolidation. The present study explored whether retrieval diminishes or enhances subsequent retroactive interference (RI) and intrusions. Participants learned a list of objects. Two days later, the...

When long-term memories are reactivated, they can reenter a transient plastic state in which they are vulnerable to interference or physiological manipulations. The present study attempted to directly affect reactivated memories through a stress manipulation, and compared the effects of stress on reactivated and nonreactivated components of a decla...

The attempt to forget some recently encoded information renders this information difficult to recall in a subsequent memory test. "Forget" instructions are only effective when followed by learning of new material. In the present study, we asked whether the new material needs to match the format of the to-be-forgotten information for forgetting effe...

Emotionally arousing events are better remembered than neutral events. Not all components of these events, however, are equally well remembered and bound in memory. Although arousal enhances memory for central information, it tends to impair memory for peripheral details, referred to as central/peripheral trade-off. Therefore, people often have dif...

Semantic interference in word retrieval has been observed for both well-learned and ad hoc inter-item relations. We tested whether such semantic interference extends to the blocked cyclic naming of racially homogeneous vs. heterogeneous faces. No information except arbitrarily assigned names was provided for novel faces. Yet we observed interferenc...

What causes new information to be mistakenly attributed to an old experience? Some theories predict that reinstating the context of a prior experience allows new information to be bound to that context, leading to source memory confusion. To examine this prediction, we had human participants study two lists of items (visual objects) on separate day...

Rationale: When a consolidated memory is reactivated, it becomes labile and modifiable. Recently, updating of reactivated episodic memory was demonstrated by Hupbach et al. (Learn Mem 14:47-53, 2007). Memory updating involves two vital processes-reactivation followed by reconsolidation. Here, we explored effects of psychosocial stress on episodic...

There has been a resurgence of interest in defining the circumstances leading to memory modifications. Studies have shown that reactivating a supposedly stable memory re-introduces a time-limited window of plasticity during which presentation of interfering material can cause long-term memory changes. The present study asks whether such memory chan...

In contrast to the study of memory reconsolidation in animals, research in humans is still in the early stages. This reflects the challenge to directly target memory reconsolidation without the use of pharmacological interventions that are often not safe for humans. Most studies therefore use paradigms in which new material is presented soon after...

Retrieval practice is a powerful memory enhancer. However, in educational settings, test taking is often experienced as a stressful event. While it is known that stress can impair retrieval processes, little is known about the delayed consequences of testing memory for educationally relevant material under stressful conditions, which is the focus o...

We previously demonstrated that spatial context is a powerful reminder that can trigger memory updating (Hupbach, Hardt, Gomez, & Nadel in Learning & Memory, 15, 574-579 2008). In the present study, we asked whether the familiarity of the spatial context modulates the role of spatial context as a reminder. Since context familiarity can be easily ma...

It has recently been demonstrated that the process of memory retrieval serves as a reactivation mechanism whereby the memory trace that is reactivated during retrieval is once again sensitive to modifications by environmental or pharmacological manipulations. Recent studies have shown that glucocorticoids (GCs) have the capacity to modulate the pro...

Sleep has been shown to aid a variety of learning and memory processes in adults (Stickgold, 2005). Recently, we showed that infants' learning also benefits from subsequent sleep such that infants who nap are able to abstract the general grammatical pattern of a briefly presented artificial language (Gomez, Bootzin & Nadel, 2006). In the present st...

Reactivation of apparently stable, long-term memory can render it fragile, and dependent on a re-stabilisation process referred to as "reconsolidation". Recently we provided the first demonstration of reconsolidation effects in human episodic memory (Hupbach, Gomez, Hardt, & Nadel, 2007; Hupbach, Hardt, Gomez, & Nadel, 2008). Memory for a set of ob...

Cognitive map theory assumes that novel environmental information is automatically incorporated into existing cognitive maps as a function of exploration. Reports of blocking in place learning cast doubt on this claim. In these studies, subjects were first trained to find a place, using a set of landmarks (Set A). Then novel landmarks (Set B) were...

In contrast to the accepted wisdom that memories become fixed over time, recent evidence has renewed interest in the dynamic quality of memory, suggesting that even old memories are subject to revision and reconsolidation given the right circumstances. We discuss a new paradigm developed to study reconsolidation of episodic memory in humans, showin...

Understanding the dynamics of memory change is one of the current challenges facing cognitive neuroscience. Recent animal work on memory reconsolidation shows that memories can be altered long after acquisition. When reactivated, memories can be modified and require a restabilization (reconsolidation) process. We recently extended this finding to h...

Recent demonstrations of "reconsolidation" suggest that memories can be modified when they are reactivated. Reconsolidation has been observed in human procedural memory and in implicit memory in infants. This study asks whether episodic memory undergoes reconsolidation. College students learned a list of objects on Day 1. On Day 2, they received a...

Spatially disoriented adults flexibly conjoin geometric information (macroscopic shape) and nongeometric information (e.g., the color of a wall) to re-establish their bearings. It has been proposed that non-geometric information is incorporated into a geometric frame of reference through the use of spatial language. Support for this assumption come...

In recent years there has been a shift within developmental psychology away from examining the cognitive systems at different ages, to trying to understand exactly what are the mechanisms that generate change. What kind of learning mechanisms and representational changes drive cognitive development? How can the imaging techniques available help us...

The allostatic load model proposed by McEwen and Stellar refers to the wear and tear that the body experiences due to the repeated use of adaptive responses to stress, as well as the inefficient turning on or shutting off of these responses. The release of stress hormones is made possible through activation of a neuroendocrine axis named the hypoth...

Priming effects in perceptual tests of implicit memory are assumed to be perceptually specific. Surprisingly, changing object colors from study to test did not diminish priming in most previous studies. However, these studies used implicit tests that are based on object identification, which mainly depends on the analysis of the object shape and th...

Reorientation behavior of young children has been described as dependent upon a geometric module that is incapable of interacting with landmark information. Whereas previous studies typically used rectangular spaces that provided geometric information about distance, we used a rhombic space that allowed us to explore the way children use geometric...

Psychogenic fugue is a disorder of memory that occurs following emotional or psychological trauma and results in a loss of one's personal past including personal identity. This paper reports a case of psychogenic fugue in which the individual lost access not only to his autobiographical memories but also to his native German language. A series of e...

The present study investigated developmental improvements in category exemplar generation priming in children from kindergarten to older elementary school age. The strength of categorical links for atypical exemplars increases in this age range, whereas category knowledge for typical exemplars remains relatively stable. Therefore, in comparison wit...

Three experiments were conducted to examine age-related differences in colour memory. In Experiment 1, preschool age and elementary school age children were given a conceptual test of implicit colour memory (a colour-choice task). They were presented with the names or achromatic versions of previously studied coloured line drawings and asked to sel...

Based on the study by Hasselhorn, Jaspers, and Hernando (1990) which provides typicality norms for children in kindergarten and in grades 1, 2, 3 and 4, category-production norms for preschoolers are presented. For the first time in German-speaking areas a group of young children (aged 3;6 to 4;6) was investigated. Seventy children aged 3:6 to 3;6...