Steve Majerus- PhD
- Professor (Full) at University of Liège
Steve Majerus
- PhD
- Professor (Full) at University of Liège
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269
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January 2016 - October 2019
Publications
Publications (269)
Naturalistic events are represented in episodic memory as sequences of experience units (i.e., segments of prior experience) that are separated by temporal discontinuities, so that events are temporally compressed during memory replay. In the current study, we aimed to shed light on the interplay between the segmental structure of events and workin...
Most models of verbal working memory (WM) consider attention as an important determinant of WM. The detailed nature of attentional processes and the different dimensions of verbal WM they support remains, however, poorly investigated. The present study distinguished between attentional capacity (scope of attention) and attentional control (control...
The question of whether cognitive control is specific to certain domains or domain-general remains an extensively debated question at both cognitive and neural levels. This study examined the neural substrates associated with resistance to interference (RI) in phonological, semantic, and visual domains by using strictly matched tasks and determinin...
Extra free time improves working memory (WM) performance. This free-time benefit becomes larger across successive serial positions, a phenomenon recently labeled the “fanning-out effect”. Different mechanisms can account for this phenomenon. In this study, we implemented these mechanisms computationally and tested them experimentally. We ran three...
Extra free time improves working memory (WM) performance. This free-time benefit becomes larger across successive serial positions, a phenomenon recently labeled the “fanning-out effect”. Different mechanisms can account for this phenomenon. In this study, we implemented these mechanisms computationally and tested them experimentally. We ran three...
Although numerous studies suggest that working memory (WM) and semantic long-term knowledge interact, the nature and underlying neural mechanisms of this intervention remain poorly understood. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigated the extent to which neural markers of semantic knowledge in long-term memory (LTM...
Remembering past events usually takes less time than their actual duration—their unfolding is temporally compressed in episodic memory. The rate of temporal compression (i.e., the ratio of the actual duration of an event to the duration of its remembering) is not constant but varies between individuals and as a function of the structure of events (...
Have you ever sat next to someone in class who cannot stop talking? You would like to focus on your teacher, but you cannot avoid listening to your talkative classmate. This is what inhibition is useful for! Inhibition is the ability to ignore, suppress, and resist irrelevant information coming from the environment or from our own minds. Inhibition...
La mémoire de travail (MT) est un déterminant important des capacités d’apprentissage, et ceci particulièrement dans un contexte scolaire. Dans cet article, nous présentons les connaissances théoriques actuelles concernant la nature de la MT, en soulignant son ancrage dans d’autres domaines cognitifs tels que les connaissances en mémoire à long ter...
Previous studies have shown that psycholinguistic effects such as lexico-semantic knowledge effects mainly determine item recall in verbal working memory (WM). However, we may expect that syntactic knowledge, involving knowledge about word-level sequential aspects of language, should also impact serial-order aspects of recall in WM. Evidence for th...
Mind-blanking (MB) is termed as the inability to report our immediate-past mental content. In contrast to mental states with reportable content, such as mind-wandering or sensory perceptions, the neural correlates of MB started getting elucidated only recently. A notable particularity that pertains to MB studies is the way MB is instructed for repo...
Recall performance in working memory (WM) is strongly affected by the similarity between items. When asked to encode and recall list of items in their serial order, people confuse more often the position of similar compared to dissimilar items. Models of WM explain this deleterious effect of similarity through a problem of discriminability between...
Many studies have highlighted short-term memory (STM) impairment in dyslexic individuals. Several studies showed deficits for both item and serial order aspects of verbal STM in dyslexic individuals. These group-based studies, however, do not inform us about the prevalence of these deficits and, importantly, their potential heterogeneity at the ind...
Mind-blanking (MB) is termed as the inability to report our immediate-past mental content. In contrast to mental states with reportable content, such as mind-wandering or sensory perceptions, the neural correlates of MB started getting elucidated only recently. A notable particularity that pertains to MB studies is the way MB is instructed for repo...
The unitary nature of resistance to interference (RI) processes remains a strongly debated question: are they central cognitive processes or are they specific to the stimulus domains on which they operate? This focused mini-review examines behavioral, neuropsychological and neuroimaging evidence for and against domain-general RI processes, by disti...
Mind blanking (MB) is a waking state during which we do not report any mental content. The phenomenology of MB challenges the view of a constantly thinking mind. Here, we comprehensively characterize the MB’s neurobehavioral profile with the aim to delineate its role during ongoing mentation. Using functional MRI experience sampling, we show that t...
The assessment of residual language abilities in patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) after severe brain injury is particularly challenging due to their limited behavioral repertoire. Moreover, associated language impairment such as receptive aphasia may lead to an underestimation of actual consciousness levels. In this review, we examine...
There remain major doubts about the nature and domain specificity of inhibitory control processes, both within and between cognitive domains. This study examined inhibitory processes within the language domain, by contrasting semantic versus phonological inhibitory control. In an fMRI experiment, elderly participants performed phonological and sema...
Coding serial order of information is a fundamental ability of our cognitive system, and still, little is known about its neural substrate. This study examined the neural substrates involved in the retrieval of information that is serially stored in verbal working memory task using a sensitive multivariate analysis approach. We compared neural acti...
Coding serial order of information is a fundamental ability of our cognitive system and still little is known about its neural substrate. The present study examined the neural substrates involved in the retrieval of information that is serially stored in verbal working memory (WM) task using a sensitive multivariate analysis approach. We compared n...
Working memory (WM) precision has received little interest in the verbal WM domain, contrary to the visual WM domain. The aim of this study was to assess the precision with which words can be maintained in verbal WM. A probe-recognition task was used, in which the amount of phonological overlap between target and probe items was varied (25-75%). In...
To-be-memorized information in verbal working memory (WM) can be presented sequentially, like in oral language, and simultaneously, like in written language. Few studies have addressed the importance and implications for verbal WM processing of these two presentation modes. While sequential presentation may favor discrete, temporal encoding process...
Many studies have shown that both verbal and visuospatial working memory (WM) abilities predicted arithmetic abilities but we do not know if they represent a modality-specific contribution or reflect the involvement of an often shared WM aspect: the serial order storage. We administered verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) tasks with var...
Language assessment in post-comatose patients is difficult due to their limited behavioral repertoire; yet associated language deficits might lead to an underestimation of consciousness levels in unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) or minimally conscious state (MCS; -/+) diagnoses. We present a systematic review of studies from 2002 assessing r...
Long-term memory knowledge is considered to impact short-term maintenance of item information in working memory, as opposed to short-term maintenance of serial order information. Evidence supporting an impact of semantic knowledge on serial order maintenance remains weak. In the present study, we demonstrate that semantic knowledge can impact the p...
Ordinal processing allows for the representation of the sequential relations between stimuli and is a fundamental aspect of different cognitive domains such as verbal working memory (WM), language and numerical cognition. Several studies suggest common ordinal coding mechanisms across these different domains but direct between-domain comparisons of...
Mixed results of the impact of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on working memory have been reported. Contrarily to previous studies who focused mainly on stimulating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, we modulated the left intraparietal sulcus (IPS) area which is considered to support attentional control aspects of working memory. U...
The frontoparietal semantic network, encompassing the inferior frontal gyrus and the posterior middle temporal cortex, is considered to be involved in semantic control processes. The explicit versus implicit nature of these control processes remains however poorly understood. The present study examined this question by assessing regional brain resp...
Mind blanking (MB) is a waking state during which we do not report any mental content, challenging the view of a constantly thought-oriented brain. Here, we comprehensively characterize the MB’s neurobehavioral profile with the aim to delineate its role during ongoing mentation. Using fMRI experience-sampling, we show that MB is reported less frequ...
The maintenance of serial order information is a core component of working memory (WM). Many theoretical models assume the existence of specific serial order mechanisms. Those are considered to be independent from the linguistic system supporting maintenance of item information. This is based on studies showing that psycholinguistic factors strongl...
Primary objective: The assessment of language in patients post-comatose patients is limited by their reduced behavioral repertoire. We developed the Brief Evaluation of Receptive Aphasia (BERA) tool for assessing phonological, semantic and morphosyntactic abilities in patients with severe brain injury based on visual fixation responses.
Research de...
Numerous studies have shown a consistent relationship between verbal working memory (WM) and native-language as well as non-native language learning abilities. However, the role of attentional abilities has been rarely explored, although these abilities have been shown to be associated both with verbal working memory and oral language proficiency....
Several studies have demonstrated an influence of semantic knowledge on verbal working memory (WM) performance, such as shown by the observation of semantic relatedness (related vs. unrelated words) and word imageability (high vs. low imageability words) effects in working memory. The present study extends these observations by examining in four ex...
1. Introduction
Des troubles visuo-perceptifs et visuo-spatiaux chez l’enfant peuvent se manifester dans de nombreuses activités, telles que la reconnaissance d’images, la construction de puzzles, le dessin, l’écriture, l’orientation dans l’environnement quotidien. Cependant, l’interprétation de ces difficultés est complexe pour plusieurs raisons....
There is increasing evidence for an association between both serial order short-term memory (STM) and the long-term learning (LTL) of serial order information and reading abilities. In this developmental study, we examined the hypothesis that STM for serial order supports online grapheme-to-phoneme conversion processes during the initial stages of...
Hebb repetition learning is a fundamental learning mechanism for sequential knowledge, such as language. However, still little is known about its development. This fMRI study examined the developmental neural substrates of Hebb repetition learning and its relation with reading abilities in a group of 49 children aged from 6 to 12 years. In the scan...
Background. The minimally conscious state (MCS) is subcategorized into MCS− and MCS+, depending on the absence or presence, respectively, of high-level behavioral responses such as command-following. Objective. We aim to investigate the functional and structural neuroanatomy underlying the presence of these responses in MCS− and MCS+ patients. Meth...
Learning how to count is a crucial step in cognitive development, which progressively allows for more elaborate numerical processing. The existing body of research consistently reports how children associate the verbal code with exact quantity. However, the early acquisition of this code, when the verbal numbers are encoded in long-term memory as a...
The link between verbal working memory (WM) and vocabulary development has been explored extensively. At the same time, the vast majority of studies in this field used lexical tasks that generally involved a high WM demands, leading to an unclear understanding of this link. The present study re-explored the link between WM for serial order, WM for...
Compared to most human language abilities, the cognitive mechanisms underlying spelling have not been as intensively investigated as reading and therefore remain to this day less well understood. The current study aims to address this shortcoming by investigating the contribution of serial order short-term memory (STM) and long-term learning (LTL)...
Various approaches have been proposed for the remediation of cognitive functions in children with neurogenic cognitive impairment or for the optimization of these functions in typically developing children. The functional approach stimulates various cognitive processes, such as working memory, attention, and executive functions, in a simultaneous a...
An influential theoretical account of working memory (WM) considers that WM is based on direct activation of long-term memory knowledge. While there is empirical support for this position in the visual WM domain, direct evidence is scarce in the verbal WM domain. This question is critical for models of verbal WM, as the question of whether short-te...
The processing of ordinally organized information is a characteristic of both serial-order working memory and numerical cognition. Serial positions of items presented within a list follow an ordinal organization when stored in working memory, whereas numbers are based on an ordinal structure stored in long-term memory. We tested the hypothesis that...
Recent accounts of autistic perception, including Bayesian accounts, hypothesize a reduced influence of prior knowledge on perception across different domains in the autism spectrum (AS). The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of prior linguistic knowledge, in the form of phonemic categorical knowledge, on speech perception in a...
Near-death experiences (NDEs) are usually associated with positive affect, however, a small proportion are considered distressing. We aimed to look into the proportion of distressing NDEs in a sample of NDE narratives, categorise distressing narratives according to Greyson and Bush’s classification (inverse, void or hellish), and compare distressin...
This study explored the validity of an integrative framework for verbal and musical short-term memory (STM). Following this framework, access to domain-specific long-term knowledge bases supports the processing of musical and verbal item information in STM, while domain-general ordering processes support the representation of serial order informati...
Working memory (WM), the ability to hold and manipulate information over a short period of time, is not an isolated cognitive function but appears to be influenced by verbal knowledge stored in the language system. This is indicated by the presence of several psycholinguistic effects in WM, with verbal items associated with richer lexico-semantic r...
The recovery of patients with disorders of consciousness is a real challenge, especially at the chronic stage. After a severe brain injury, patients can regain some slight signs of consciousness, while not being able to functionally communicate. This entity is called the minimally conscious state (MCS), which has been divided into MCS- and MCS+, re...
Numerous studies have shown that verbal working memory (vWM) performance is strongly influenced by linguistic knowledge, with items more familiar at sublexical, lexical, and/or semantic levels leading to higher vWM recall performance. Among the many different psycholinguistic variables whose impact on vWM has been studied, the lexical cohort effect...
Network functioning during cognitive tasks is of major interest in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cognitive functioning in AD includes variable performance in short-term memory (STM). In most studies, the verbal STM functioning in AD patients has been interpreted within the phonological loop subsystem of Baddeley's working memory model. An alternative a...
Behavioral and developmental studies have made a critical distinction between item and serial order processing components of verbal working memory (WM). This functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study determined the extent to which item and serial order WM components are characterized by specialized neural networks already in young children...
This study aimed at establishing the neural basis of magnitude processing of multiple numbers from working memory. We designed a numerical landmark task and embedded it in a fragmented trial event-related fMRI design, allowing to separate encoding from decision processing. An attentional localiser task not involving numbers allowed further function...
The contribution of lexical and semantic knowledge to verbal short-term memory (vSTM) span is explained by language-based models, assuming that vSTM is deeply grounded within the linguistic system with to-be-remembered items being activated in a non-strategic and automatic manner. However, direct evidence for a non-strategic account of lexical and...
Patients in minimally conscious state (MCS) have been subcategorized in MCS plus and MCS minus, based on command‐following, intelligible verbalization or intentional communication. We here aimed to better characterize the functional neuroanatomy of MCS based on this clinical subcategorization by means of resting state functional magnetic resonance...
Recent theoretical accounts of verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory (STM) have proposed the existence of domain-general mechanisms for the maintenance of serial order information. These accounts are based on the observation of similar behavioural effects across several modalities, such as temporal grouping effects. Across two experiments, the...
Attentional capacity can vary amongst individuals, along several dimensions. Currently available questionnaires confound distinct dimensions of attention, such as top-down versus bottom-up attentional processes, and the orientation of these processes towards internal versus external objects of attention. This study proposes a novel questionnaire th...
Des déficits de la mémoire à court terme verbale sontobservés très fréquemment dans les troubles développementauxchez l'enfant, et ils ont un impact important sur les capacitésd'apprentissage de l'enfant. La mise en évidence et l'évaluationde ces déficits est néanmoins une opération difficile car lamémoire à court terme verbale dépend elle-même de...
It is widely assumed that a strong positive link exists between memory and vocabulary development. Nevertheless, the exact involvement of short-term memory (STM) and long-term memory (LTM) is poorly understood. STM for serial order information is argued to play a crucial role in temporarily maintaining and refreshing the order of phonemes represent...
The concept of modality specific buffers for the temporary storage of information is a fundamental characteristic of the Working memory model proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974). The phonological input buffer does not make an explicit distinction between the identity and the serial order of memoranda, both relying on phonological codes. This revi...
Recent studies suggest that the mechanisms involved in the short-term retention of serial order information may be shared across short-term memory (STM) domains such as verbal and visuospatial STM. Given the intrinsic sequential organization of musical material, the study of STM for musical information may be particularly informative about serial o...
The lexicality effect in verbal short-term memory (STM), in which word lists are better recalled than nonwords lists, is considered to reflect the influence of linguistic long-term memory (LTM) knowledge on verbal STM performance. The locus of this effect remains, however, a matter of debate. The redintegrative account considers that degrading phon...
The dorsal attention network is consistently involved in verbal and visual working memory (WM) tasks and has been associated with task-related, top–down control of attention. At the same time, WM capacity has been shown to depend on the amount of information that can be encoded in the focus of attention independently of top–down strategic control....
Behavioral assessment is a critical step for the detection of signs of consciousness and, hence, for diagnosis of states of altered consciousness. However, because of the presence of compromising factors such as severe functional and cognitive impairment, accurate diagnosis is a challenging enterprise, leading to serious consequences on the patient...
Background:
Verbal short-term memory (STM) capacity has been considered to support vocabulary learning in typical children and adults, but evidence for this link is inconsistent for studies in individuals with Down syndrome (DS). The aim of this study was explore the role of processing demands on the association between verbal STM and vocabulary m...
Working memory (WM) is a frequent and long-lasting deficit in patients with aphasia. Progress has been made in our understanding of the nature of WM impairment, by considering deficits at the level of maintenance of item and serial order information (short-term memory), deficits at the level of attentional control, and their complex interactions wi...
Learning disorders are very frequently associated with working memory deficits. These deficits are however heterogeneous and complex, requiring a detailed theoretical framework for their valid assessment and interpretation. Current working memory models suggest that working memory is characterized by at least three aspects: interactions with long-t...
Short-term/working memory deficits are frequently associated with dyslexia. Recent studies show that these deficits do not only involve the ability to maintain phonological information, but also the ability to maintain the serial order in which the information has been presented. The deficit for maintaining serial order information appears to chara...
Recent studies have demonstrated that both ordinal number processing and serial order working memory (WM) abilities predict calculation achievement. This raises the question of shared ordinal processes operating in both numerical and WM domains. We explored this question by assessing the interrelations between numerical ordinal, serial order WM , a...
Objective: This study examined the spontaneous use of allocentric and egocentric frames of reference and their flexible use as a function of instructions. Method: The computerized spatial reference task created by Heiz and Barisnikov (2015) was used. Participants had to choose a frame of reference according to three types of instructions: spontaneo...
Background
The distinction between autism and Asperger syndrome has been abandoned in the DSM-5. However, this clinical categorization largely overlaps with the presence or absence of a speech onset delay which is associated with clinical, cognitive, and neural differences. It is unknown whether these different speech development pathways and assoc...
Neuroimaging studies have revealed the recruitment of a range of neural networks during the resting state, which might reflect a variety of cognitive experiences and processes occurring in an individual's mind. In this study, we focused on the default mode network (DMN) and attentional networks and investigated their association with distinct menta...
Several models in the verbal domain of short-term memory (STM) consider a dissociation between item and order processing. This view is supported by data demonstrating that different types of time-based interference have a greater effect on memory for the order of to-be-remembered items than on memory for the items themselves. The present study inve...
Recognition accuracy data for Experiment 1.
The row in yellow corresponds to the participant with outlier recognition performance, as described in the manuscript (VNI = verbal no-interference item; VAI = verbal articulatory suppression item; VRI = verbal rhythmic interference item; VNO = verbal no-interference order; VAO = verbal articulatory suppr...
Response latency data for Experiment 1.
The rows in orange correspond to the participants with outlier RL and the row in yellow corresponds to the participant with outlier recognition accuracy, as described in the manuscript (VNI = verbal no-interference item; VAI = verbal articulatory suppression item; VRI = verbal rhythmic interference item; VNO...
Recognition accuracy data for Experiment 2.
The row in yellow corresponds to the participant with outlier recognition accuracy, as described in the manuscript (VNI = verbal no-interference item; VRI = verbal rhythmic interference item; VNO = verbal no-interference order; VRO = verbal rhythmic interference order; MNI = musical no-interference item;...
Response latency data for Experiment 2.
The rows in orange correspond to the participants with outlier RL and the row in yellow corresponds to the participant with outlier recognition performance, as described in the manuscript (VNI = verbal no-interference item; VRI = verbal rhythmic interference item; VNO = verbal no-interference order; VRO = ver...
We present a new measure of everyday memory, the Questionnaire of Memory (Q-MEM), which is specifically adapted for the ecological assessment of memory disorders in school-age children and constructed with four sections tapping effortful/intentional learning, automatic/procedural learning, prospective memory/organization, and working memory. Confir...
Verbal short-term memory (STM) impairment is one of the most consistent associated deficits observed in developmental reading disorders such as dyslexia. Few studies have addressed the nature of this STM impairment, especially as regards the ability to temporarily store serial order information. This question is important as studies in typically de...
