Kuhl, Julius. (1987). Feeling versus being helpless: Metacognitive mediation of failure-induced performance deficits.

Kuhl, Julius. (1987). Feeling versus being helpless: Metacognitive mediation of failure-induced performance deficits. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 217-235). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapter, the author introduced an explanation of learned helplessness-- the action control factor.

The role of selective attention: "... performance should be facilitated when attention is focused on action-related information.  Conversely, when attention focuses on state-related information, the performance of an intended action should be impaired.  The degree of state-orientation may mediate failure-induced performance deficits.  Subjects may be preoccupied, focusing on the state created by the failure experience, trying, for instance, to explain why they failed or trying to analyze their own emotional state...  A person who is preoccupied with analyzing his or her state may show impaired performance on any type of test, burn the dinner..." (p. 218)

Action-control

Action control is considered as a metacognitive process for two reasons: (P. 221)

1. It organizes and controls cognitive operations so as to maximizes the congruence between intention and performance.
2. Action control relies heavily on knowledge about the effective of cognitive operations to achieve the objective.

"The degree of action-control aroused in a particular situation may vary between the two extremes called state-orientation and action orientation.  The following illustrates the differential patterns between people who are state-oriented and action-oriented.  What the charts showed were the rank correlations between the degree of intentional commitment and reported time spent on activities calculated for the state-orientation and action-orientation groups separately. Essentially, the action-orientation group do what they say.

The following chart depicts the metacognitive model of action-control... almost like

f(state-orientation)+f(action-orientation)=1 with 1 denoting capacity.

kind of connotation.  Though not quite the same, it reminds me of monitor and control as per Nelson & Narens (1990) and Shimamura (2008)... (unless this is also how the model should be read in Nelson & Narens (1990) and Shimamura (2008)?  Donno.)

p. 222

Of course, differential behavioral outcome might be observed as a result of the wrestling between the proneness to state- and action-orientation.  As was found in a study conducted on participants who underwent a hernia operation, state-oriented subjects did seem to engage in more state-related behavior while action-oriented subjects, action-related behavior.

p. 225

Action-control and learned helplessness

"According to this model, repeated exposure to uncontrollable outcomes first increases a (metacognitive) tendency towards action-orientation that is replaced by a tendency towards state-orientation when a perception of uncontrollability has developed... State-orientation may interfere with optimal cognitive functioning, especially when the task is complex enough to demand full attention..."

"in contrast to traditional helplessness theory, a distinction is made between motivation for the training task and motivation regarding the test task." (p. 229)

jump to finding of the study...

"significant performance deficit could be found only when there was reason to believe that subjects were state-oriented, either as a result of experimental induction of or as a result of a disposition towards state-orientation.  (p.232)

Implication... for someone showing "impaired performance in a variety of situations because he or she is too much concerned with explaining the problem.  An attributional therapy that reinforces this state-oriented attitude towards the problem may even aggravate the disorder.  An alternative approach may focus on helping the client shift his or her attention away from the possible causes of the problem, which may never be found with absolute certainty.  Instead the client should be encouraged to think about possible ways of changing the situation; giving up unattainable goals and focusing on new attainable goals.  The client may learn that thinking about change is more helpful than ruminating about the present state and its causes." (p. 233)

I like the notion of "learning to change" since taking the learning paradigm, it gives hope.

The author's recommendation also reminded me of the notion (plausible) that talk therapy might not work too well for people with thought disorder.  If you read through the mumble jumbles I have compiled since 2005 up to today, 2013, you might get a gist of how state-oriented I am... be it the contribution of neurosis or psychosis.  The never-ending self-monitoring and analyses... albeit the 99.9 % principle, I am almost 99.9% sure that ain't no body could have monitored and analyzed me as intensive as I have... in worlds shared by the others or not.  8-O lol

Could state-oriented analyses be paralyzing?  Sure... be it in depression or in psychosis.  Though from the perspective of psychosis... hate to put it this way, yet... unless you are a delusional, you can't possibly image how impairing it is to be engaging in the never-ending analysis on how do they get the update on my moves and thoughts, for instance. The worst thing is... the state is constantly getting updated and you are stuck in the state-oriented analyses because you are constantly analyzing new states... though the same... What makes it even worst is that... there is no nothing else but resorting to the meds... 

Yet, is the meds the only way to induce change to the situation?  Could there be additional means to help the psychotics find ways to think out of their state?  Or, what it be like... the thinking of cognitive states affords the backbone knowledge for the thinking of the metacognitive states.  What it be like... it's just the rite of passage... you can't escape the inevitable though you have the option to take the action to benefit from the inevitable propensity for state-orientation and use it to devise actions for change.

Though... the reality is that I think my years of working with my mental health professionals help big time... though undocumented and unrecorded (without proof)... I learn to see develop my ability to work with my psychotic symptoms both at the cognitive and metacognitive levels... When getting out of bound, they give me feedback to help me recalibrate.  Though... it has taken a whole lot of time and work, and I ain't got no way to prove to myself whether I really have learned something or not with n=1, a delusional, especially since you can't catch your delusions... at least not 100% (something else I am quite sure albeit the 99.9 % principle, again).

Therefore, the burden of proof (for my mumble jumbles) is and has never been on me... lol

Paterson & Seligman (1987). Helplessness and attributional style in depression

After reading this article, one thing came to my mind... if you can figure out the process of becoming, you might be able to figure out how to disrupt the process of becoming, loosen its structure, and hopefully, get it at least partially deconstructed.

The purposes of the models and theories... I guess... for a good reason.

An interesting question I had... other than I am also neurotic and started my mental career as a depressive... what good does the attributional style in depression do in my pursuit to understand my psychosis?  After my disordered head got my head all fried because it insisted on my squeezing something out of my overdosed head and not allowed me to leave it like it...  I came up with the following... 

Self

• Locus of control: I reverted the Apocalypse... didn't I? 8-O
• Limelight effect: Who is being watched by all beings in all multiverses?
• Impact: People couldn't stop hearing the thoughts being broadcasted from my head.

Though not exhaustive, the three capture the attributional style under the self-dimension.  The manifestation of the attributional pattern is dependent on the mental state.  Is the attributional style the precursor of psychosis?  Donno.

Paterson, Christopher, & Seligman, Martin E.P. (1987). Helplessness and attributional style in depression. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 185-215). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Original helplessness theory: Uncontrollable events-->expectancy of response-outcome independence-->interference with learning

The reformulation

"people have a characteristic attributional style or a tendency to make similar sorts of attributions about a variety of events." (p. 190)

"Theoretically, a depressive attributional style is one that habitually attributes bad events to internal, stable, and global causes." (p. 190)

"Attributional=> pertaining to the causal inferences made by people.

As a psychotic, I surely have the attributional style to constantly see everything is about me.

The authors described a study comparing the attributional style among the depressives, surgical patients and schizophrenics using the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ), which required the participants to indicate what the causes of events might be.  The hypothetical events include good events such as "you do a project which is highly praised" and negative events such as "you meet a friend who acts hostilely towards you."  The participants were also asked to respond to questions aiming to assess the internal, stable and global dimensions.

The following as the results.

This study absolutely caught my attention because it included the psychotics as part of the study and led me to wonder how the mental state of the psychotics might have an impact on the study result.  Take the good event for instance "you do a project which is highly praised" for example, referencing the way I thought when institutionalized or right out of the hospital (that kind of mental state), the first thing that would come into my paranoid delusional mind with grandiosity might be things like... "The institution is studying Me. They are testing me and observing Me.  How would they use this information on me?" Were I a participant, I wonder worldviews like this might bias my response pattern since it might be perceived by me as a mind game... sort of like 007 kinda thing... Also, however well written a question might be... if we could see David Letterman on TV and think that he is talking to us, we surely have the potential to read the questions and interpret it as something else, I guess.  What all these boils down to, I guess, is... with the responses, are you sure the questions psychotics respond to are the ones you posed?

Nowadays, life is simpler for there is only one way to think... who gives a rat's ass about me?  Responding to  questionnaires?  The feel.

Would the outcomes be similar?  Donno.

Love the following wording:

"In order to find the answer, it is suggested the controversy be moved from arm chair or the couch to an explicit empirical domain." (p. 197)

"... changes in attributional style should accompany successful therapy for depression... To date, as a consequence of therapy, changes in attributional style have not been documented; however, there is some case history evidence regarding such changes." (p. 201)

I have lived through many a night when I prayed to God to let me wake up not... Ya... that is very depressive. (Changes in depressive symptom level).  In terms of the dimensions of internality, stability, and globality, confounded by my grandiosity, I decided to always treat all success as luck and all failures as my bad.  Interpersonal issues like "you meet a friend who acts hostilely towards you"... somebody slept on the wrong side of the bed.

If attricutional pattern can be shaped, whether it can be changed or not, I surely hope I can come up with something else to counterbalance its effect.

"The learned helplessness model does not claim that dispositional attributional style will always override situational determinants of attributions, so attention must be paid to whether or not the situational constraints were weak enough to allow attributional style to do its dirty work." (p. 206)

Forget about the issue of whether attributional style is stable... even if it is... it's nothing like dooms day since situation, situation, situation... and aren't we the ones creating our own situations (So they say about the probabilistic quantum world-- up to a certain degree, of course)!

"The learned helplessness model assumes that people operate logically with their attributional premises; however, a great deal of recent research has demonstrated that normative models of information processing are sometimes inaccurate descriptions of what people actually do." (p. 209)

Thank God.  Now I feel less ab-normal since there seem to be some great amount of variance within the norm of the norm.  8-O 

Heckhausen, Heinz. (1987). Causal attribution patterns for achievement outcomes: individual differences, possible types and their origins

Texts in blue are my notes/thoughts.

Heckhausen, Heinz. (1987). Causal attribution patterns for achievement outcomes: individual differences, possible types and their origins. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 143-184). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Achievement motivation and personality variables

1. The valence of incentive for success or failure
2. Personal standards of excellence (level of aspiration)
3. Attribution pattern (The focus of this paper)

Intraindividual asymmetry of attribution patterns

An interesting attribution pattern

	Failure	Success
Self	External var.	Self
Other	More impartial	More inpartial
Me	All my bad.  Shut the front door and work on it. Get done with that self issue... move on to something else a million a blue moon ago already	Every dog has its day… Got lucky… lol

Interesting notion about issues such as low self-concept...

Sure, I remembered the time when I didn't want to work too hard in high school because I knew if I didn't work hard and didn't do well, I could always blame it on not working hard... considered by me as an external factor since it would not be an indicator of my personal attribute... like not too bright.  That was some mechanism helping me to sustain my self-concept until the time comes when I came face to face with its outcome-- I was the top (counting from the bottom) in the first mock exam for the national joint entrance exam.  A catch 22... were I to claim that I made a lot of effort, what it would mean is I have low ability...   Oops. (And, yes, I started my mental career from neurosis before progressing into psychosis etc.)

It also reminds me of the phase of deconstruction that started in 2007 and still goes on and on since I could find figure out what I have to deconstruct... The phase of deconstruction that started about 2 months before I went back to the cuckoo's nest... when I had no body, no head, no nothing other than all them stuffs piling up in my room acquire through my ebay era.  Today, do I have low self-concept?  Don't think so... if not simply donno.  Maybe I don't quite give a bag of beans about myselves (a key to my survival) while, be honest, I really am nothing. lol 8-X Negative self-concept?  Ain't no nothing classic while ain't no nothing either, I guess?  Some out-of-whack developmental outcome? 8-O

"Recent findings are surprising, they show the degree to which individuals will hold to a preconceived notion even though it has been disproved by the facts (Ross & Lepper, 1980).  Can this phenomenon be explained by the assumption that an attribution pattern acquired in a earlier developmental phase is subsequently transformed into a mode of information processing that already distorts perception at a pre-attentive level?  Does this become an attribution pattern incapable of self-correction? Even though the individual has had positive experiences that contradict the negative self image, does this attribution pattern become "immune" to modification? Or, on the contrary, does attribution that reduce self-esteem constitute a cognitive process motivated by the intention to avoid long exposure to achievement situation and the self-evaluation entail?  So far, no conclusive statement can be made as to which of these explanations might be correct." (P. 146)

Attributional error: "Alloy's and Abramson's conclusion was that depressives are 'sadder but wiser'"  because they were able to draw a surprisingly accurate distinction between the efficacy of their own undertakings and chance events while non-depressive tend to overestimate their ability.

Almost sounding like the classic Taiwanese song... 海海人生... 8-O


Since I started my mental career as a depressive, could it have helped my attempt to approximate reality? 8-O

"It may appear paradoxical that of all people it should be these problem groups who attain a more realistic self-evaluation.  But is a realistic self-evaluation "normal" and helpful?  Is not a certain measure of self-esteem-enhancing self-deception "normal," or at least necessary, for one to cope with the problems of life?  Is such self-deception not essential to prevent one from giving up hope too soon in the pursuance of the many goals that are not easily attained?  Does self-deception not enable one to actually to achieve more than could be expected when starting an undertaking?" (p. 148)

Excellent question... as one of the queens of self-deception... such shall I refrain since, once one step in... no telling whether I can pull myself out.  At the same time, the work I put into getting the book done and what it takes to pull it through... Is it the self-deception mechanism that sustains it by making me feel that I can retire to sell my bubble tea after it is done?  Don't think so... I hope so... and knowing how "futurisitc" I can be as a psychotic, I entertain not--the future. Not to mention that... if my disordered thoughts want me to get the book done, ain't no nothing could stop it... not even the meds.  Might as well get done with it so that it won't be like a tail that I can not shake off.  lol sigh

Interindividual contrast in attribution patterns: convergence of research domains

1. Internal versus external reinforcement control
2. Depression
3. Learned helplessness in schoolchildren: Dweck cited repeatedly--mastery orientation.
4. Achievement motives: Success vs. failure
5. Self-concept: "Children low in self-esteem did not attribute their success outcome to high expenditure of effort but rather to good luck... (Nicholls, 1976)" C'est moi!  Oops la!  
6. Sex differences: Boys--attribution to motivation while girls--attribution to ability=> differential environmental impact on the development of attributional pattern even with the "same" environment.

The author further presented several types of attribution patterns and their emergence.

Attribution pattern=>schema loaded with bias?

Compione, Joseph C. (1987). Metacognitive components of instructional research with problem learners.

Compione, Joseph C. (1987). Metacognitive components of instructional research with problem learners. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 1-16). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"Metacognitive work has reawakened an interest in the role of consciousness, or awareness, or understanding, in thinking and problem-solving." (p. 117)

"Strategy training, even on the training task, did not eliminate differences between retarded and nonretarded children: the implication is that there are other sources of comparative differences that remain 'untreated'" (p. 122-123)

The multiple times when I was in institutionalizable grade and the second major psychotic episode after the onset... Why would the condition get to institutionalizable grade?  One simple answer I know is... underestimation.  La  forza... even the copegeny and the extents of its effect are dependent on the forces of the nature.  Bow in front of it.

"Will the subject continue to execute the activity when the experimenter/instructor is absent or ceases prompting; that is, will the activity be maintained?  Will the subject apply what he or she has learned to novel but related problems; that is, will the effects of training be generalized effectively?" (p. 123)

"Failure to produce strategies or to transfer them might be seen as reflecting a general metacognitive deficit." (p. 124)

Working with psychosis entails a constantly process of solving novel problems.  Sure, the problem might be "the same" though the form might seem different.  Question-- why do failure in the application of coping strategies arise? Why do we get so psychotic and get reinstitutionalized?

"Excedutive decision making also presented difficulty... it was found that retarded children do not tent to monitor their state of learning accurately."

Stating of the basic... "ignore."  How many decades would it take for a psychotic to fully master the art of ignoring if it ever happens?

"... the question of the generality/specificity of problem-solving skills... General skills canno solve problems by themselves but may provide access to the more specific and powerful skills that are necessary for problem solving.  In this context, the questions are: Are (some of) the self-regulatory mechanisms general ones?  If so, can they be taught alone or only in combination with the more specific skills to which they allow access?"  (p. 125)

The author provided a review on training research (p. 126-133)

• Knowledge alone
• Strategies plus knowledge
• Self-regulation
• Strategies plus regulation: for the less sohpisticated learners, the most effective condition was the most explicit training. The poorer students did not integrate the rules and self-management instructions for themselves; the needed explicit instruction in role control to maximize their performance  (therefore I need to explicate the tactics for myself).

Rote learning or not... there is a need for intrinsic motivation.  

The issue of integration--abstraction of one's own knowledge, strategies, training oneself to perform them, devising evaluation criteria, training oneself to apply the criteria to evaluation one's own performance.  No one can extract these knowledge and strategies for the psychotics... unfortunately.  It would be the psychotics' own decision to get some added values from the commonplace minor inconveniences in life or not.

"Poor learners are deficient in knowledge because of poor learning skills, in particular, the self-regulatory, executive mechanism... Providing the products of that processing (e.g., specific knowledge about the memory system) does not affect the underlying problems.  It is worth noting that an asymmetry is clearly possible.  For example, teaching subjects to monitor performance may well lead to the development of factual knowledge about the memory system (e.g., span limitations and strategy effectiveness)." (p. 135)

Question... did my background in human cognition help me cope?  At the same time, when the shrink told me that I was delusional, I thought he was part of the conspiracy theory.  

"... effective performance within some domain requires knowledge about the domain, specific procedures for operating within the domain, and more general regulatory processes that are task independent; slow learners experience problems in all three areas."  (p. 136)

Consider psychosis as a domain... it's no easy domain to learn.

"... making learners aware of themselves and of the availability and potential use of cognitive resources."

Kluwe, Rainer. (1987). Executive Decisions and Regulation of Problem Solving Behavior.

Kluwe, Rainer. (1987). Executive Decisions and Regulation of Problem Solving Behavior. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 31-64). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

"There is no doubt that metacognition has a long history in cognitive psychology, especially in connection with assumptions concerning the function of the executive component in information processing system (Neisser, 1967; Reitman, 1965)." (p. 32)

"The attribution of metacognitive skills to the executive component of information processing system, is important in establishing the linkage between cognitive developmental research and cognitive psychology." (p. 33)

Thank you!  I was starting to think that my low-latent-inhibition head was building up delusions on the linkage between the two...

"... effortful cognitive processes, unlike automated processes, may vary in the efficiency of their organization and execution." (p. 34)

The process of knowledge retrieval is relatively effortless and can almost be automatic, which might be out-of-whack in me.  Therefore, the need to engage in the effortful antipsychotic cognitive processes... though not always efficient and/or effective.

"... in order to maintain cognitive activity, which is subject to emotionally and motivationally determined variation, the human information processing system needs executive decision." (p. 34)

Sounds like the author believed that the executive decision might be able to overpower the impact of emotion.

"Executive decisions are based, in part, on the availability of cognitive knowledge." (P.34)

You won't be able to learn to catch your own psychotic symptoms (e.g., hallucinations, delusions) until you have enough knowledge about them.

"Executive decisions aim at the acquisition of information about own ongoing cognitive activity and about the present state of own cognitive endeavor, as well as the transformation or maintenance of one's own cognitive ability and states." (p. 35)

Monitor and control

Hypothetical executive decisions have three features

• 1. determine how to solve a problem through building the selection, organization, and termination of cognitive processes.
• 2. applied to avoid costs (e.g., risk states, failure)
• 3. not always necessary

"Executive decisions may then be considered as stored rules for the control and regulation of cognitive activities during problem solving." (p. 35)

Speaking of production rules here... like...

If like delusion (subroutine) [condition]       
(Then apply suitable workaround (subroutine)
Else abort) [action]

The connections between states and actions for control and regulation are "acquired." (P.36)

Executive control for monitoring purposes: (P. 36-41)

• Classification: Can what you know help improving the monitoring of your own cognitive activity?  As of 1987, no study results indicated this connection

Looking at what's going on in the head and tell what the heck is going on, "Am I being delusional?"  

• Checking: Training on checking strategies helps and the transfer of these strategies to other situations were observed.  Training skills without feedback is not as useful as providing both.

How am I doing in negating/neutralizing the effects of the symptoms?

• Evaluation: The difference between checking and evaluation is in the "evaluation criteria" department.  Though... what are these criteria?

I guess, I did a mean job though not perfect in evaluating my mental state on Feb. 10th, 2008... 4 days before my institutionalization. 8-O lol sigh

• Anticipation/prediction: "Prediction of cognitive states and cognitive activities provides information about: the possible alternative options for problem solving; the possible sequences of solution steps; and the possible outcomes."

Guess I am psychic... 100% accuracy in the prediction that I will still be delusional tomorrow.  The anticipation of my not being able to escape the delusion etc... what to do (e.g., tactics) and possible outcomes-->be conservative to minimize risk.

"Executive regulation refers to decisions about the organization, effort, amount, course, and direction of one's own cognitive activity. Regulatory decisions do not necessarily imply a modification of the cognitive activity, they may also result in the maintenance and continuation of a particular cognitive enterprise." (p. 41)

Four of the hypothetical processes discussed by the author: (P. 41-46)

• Regulation of processing capacity: Bank it mostly if not all on risk management
• Regulation of what is processed
• Regulation of processing intensity
• Regulation of speed of information processing: In a world pushing speed (I do like terabit networks), slow the cognitive processing down since I am not rushing anywhere in my imaginary world... 8-O Something, thank God, children acquire first.  

"The increase of time and frequency of solution activities alone is not a sufficient predictor of performance.  It is assumed that one must search for certain patterns of regulatory activities that are associated with success or failure." (p. 61)

Psychotics have to figure out what works for them.  Not Swann's way, not my way... we all need to find our own way... unfortunately... so I suspect... Like what they say... "you can't pretend the outcome without going through the motions."

F Weinert (1987) Introduction and Overview: Metacognition and Motivation as determinants of effective learning and understanding

Some interesting notions as of 1987... addressing interesting issues I am stalled with... such as bridging the gap between the notion of central executive and the executive function of metacognition.

Over 2 decades later, I hope the experts have gotten the issues they pointed out resolved!


Weinert, Franz E. (1987). Introduction and Overview: Metacognition and Motivation as Determinants of Effective Learning and Understanding. In F. E. Weinert & R. Kluwe (Eds.), Metacognition, motivation, and understanding (pp. 1-16). Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Also, if somebody knows something, then he knows that he knows it, and at the same time he knows that he knows that he knows.--Spinoza, 1632-1677

"... the meta flood... although some believe that these constructs reflect a new and stimulating research perspective, others find fault with the vague and often arbitrary distinction between cognition and metacognition." (P. 8)

The problem I have encountered is actually on the notion of the Central Executive and executive functions.

As of 1987...
"Most developmental authors agree with Cavanaugh and Perlmutter's evaluation: 'the present state of metamemory is not good.'" (P.8)

Wonder what the evaluation outcome would be as of 2013?

Issues surrounding metacognition: (p.9-10)
In addition to the diversity in research questions, procedures, and operationalization:
1.  The consciousness problem: As stated by Brown, one's position with respect to conscious and implicit knowledge influences the collection, analysis, and interpretation of metamemory data.
2. The relationship of memory performance and metamemory remains unclear both theoretically and empirically.
3. Metacognition is often regarded as referring to general and flexible knowledge that is not domain specific. (Question: Then why did (hopefully not do) I keep on going back to the psychiatric ward after the onset? Didn't I learn something throughout the development of the initial episode that extended for months if not years?)

The issue of combining research of different orientations...
"Cognition, metacognition, procedural skills, and motivational factors are important determinants of learning activity.... An integration of the different research approach is also necessary if one wants to study and measure phenomena of learning by doing, and doing in order to learn." (P. 13)

Yes, and I only want a lingua franca entailing information processing theory and metacognition please!

Saeki, Baddeley, Hitch, & Saito. (2013). Breaking a habit: A further role of the phonological loop in action control. Memory & Cognition

Before the notes I took on the paper, the following are some notes I took concerning the notions addressed in the paper and their linkage to my dasein.  The transfer might seem a bit too far though... simply an attempt to translate the findings to my living experiences.  So to speak, imperfect translation...

Today's benchmark made... though imperfect note taking and grammatical issues... gotta go nite nite now.

Rehearsal

Something unproveable-- what it be like, the practice of the speaking out loud of my thinking process, a manifestation of either the defect or the jamming up of the rehearsal mechanism of the phonological loop?  

Jamming up as a result of the activation of the anti-psychotic task force?   Sort of like... keep the priority straight, the core is the core... all other goals are secondary... though compensating mechanisms can be established to function (at times) as vocal rehearsal.

Interesting way to see it... the phonological loop was already running short of breathe handing the long standing competition between my psychotic and antipsychotic schemata.  Additional processing... find a way to outsource.

Unless, the head is simply jammed up by the side effects of the meds and the vocalization of my thoughts is simply a means my head has to employ in order to get the phonological loop engaged.

One thing I can say for sure is that, part of the vocalization process is to help me figure out which part of the thoughts in my head is "consciously controlled" by me although it ain't no fail-safe measure either.

So, could the speak-out-loud practice makes me appear more komish? The reality is that people don't know 1 percent of how crazy I am and it's far better than my talking to my voices 24/7, I guess.

Thoughts about and beyond the notion of asymmetrical interference of physical and numerical size

It's a very interesting notion... the asymmetrical interfering impacts of judgments on physical-size and numerical size... with the judgment of the physical size to have a stronger interfering effects on the numerical size.  I guess, we do learn to judge physical sizes before learning to differentiate numerical values.  Also, learning results in neurological restructuring--the biological equivalence of encoding knowledge in LTM.  

Transferring the above notions to psychosis...

Think about it, it took much longer than 6 months for my psychotic onset to progress to institutionalizable grade... the full-blown episode... definitely sufficient amount of time for the learned part of the "thinking pattern" to be crafted, encoded, and perfected with extensive practices.  Sure, the dysregulation of neurochemistry is the precursor of it all and sustains it.  But, it's the synergistic effects of both the physical (e.g., neurochemical, structural) and "cognitive" (e.g., thinking habit) levels that sustain our worldview.  

I don't know whether anyone could think themselves out of their psychotic worldview.  The issues at the physiological level will be something harder to charge... at least not at my own will... For instance, when your brain is shrunken, how do you get it to function the same way as them normal size brain of the normal people?  Yet, for the learned thinking habit, there is more than simply hope.  As long as we can get our head to be functional enough to learn, there's a possibility for us to unlearned the learned habit (though might not entirely)... with the learned psychotic thinking habit, the schemata easily triggered by the most irrelevant environmental cues... 

Sure, the physiological part of it sounds almost like doom's day--that's why we have to bet the desregulated shrunken head on the promises of neuroplacitisity-- with learning, the way to have neuroplacitisity siding with us... whatever gain grated is a gain... can only be grateful about it.

Saeki, Erina, Baddeley, AlanD, Hitch, GrahamJ, & Saito, Satoru. (2013). Breaking a habit: A further role of the phonological loop in action control. Memory & Cognition, 1-14.

This study aimed to investigate whether the loop has executive function in a "long-term" task conflict situation when the current task goal competes with established habits.
Supporting studies
1. task switching with concurrent tasks that are assumed to disrupt only the phonological loop or both the loop and the central executive.
2.  It has been suggested that articulatory suppression prevented the retrieving and activation of goals upon task-switching
3. Results of studies using alternating-runs paradigm (i.e., task A, task A, task B, task B...) found that articulatory suppression affected repetition and switch trials equally. Thus, the effect is not confined to the switching process but a global task control process that resolved task conflicts.
4.  "As Monsell (1996) pointed out, without goal-directed executive control, our thought and action would be "a prisoner of habit."
(I am a prisoner of habitual thinking pattern sustained by the dysregulation of my out-of-whack neurochemicals and the (plausible) altered brain structure.)

Components of the study:

• Alternative form of Stroop effect: Physical and numerical size.  RT time has been found to be longer in incongruent condition than in congruent condition independent of the judgment target.
• Task switching: Judgments of physical or numerical size: the continuation group performed the same task (e.g., judging physical size only) while the change group switched the task to judging the size of a different feature (e.g., numerical to physical size)
• Dual task: control, articulatory suppression, nonarticulatory concurrent task (repeated foot tapping)

The authors also intended to test the following

• Script theory: Instruction
• Nature of switch: switching from easier to difficult?
• Source of interference: "articulatory suppression did not interact with stimuli congruity; thus, the phonological loop doesn't not contribute to resolving interference arising from activation driven by the irrelevant dimension."

Experiment 1

Participants in the change group were given instructions pertaining to the "=" sign to cue them to continue with the task and the "-" sign just before the switching from the numerical to physical judgment.

These instructions were not provided to the continuation group.

Phase 1: establish task habit.  Phase 2: the change group change the judging task.

Results: 

• Ceiling effect observed 12 participants in the continuation group and 2 participants in the change group.
• Switching from a difficult task (numerical judgment) to an easier task (physical judgment) resulted in similar findings of Saeki (2007).  Thus, the nature of how tasks are switched has no bearing on the results.
• Also, as shown in the following figure: RT is longer for the change group than for the continuation group especially in concurent-task situations when stimuli are incongruent with articulatory suppression also having a stronger impact than foot tapping. 

1. The differential impacts between articulatory suppression and foot tapping suggest the role of the phonological loop in protecting current goal from a competing and irrelevant task goal.
2. The articulatory suppression did not interact with stimuli congruity.  This seemed to indicate that the control of the phonological loop is different from what is needed to resolve issues of incongruency.

Experiment 2

Both groups were given the same instructions.

Results:

Albeit some differences, results of this experiment are pretty much consistent with previous findings such as in experiment 1 and Saeki (2007)... suppression disrupt the performance of the change group, supporting the role of the phonological loop in maintaining task goals in the face of competing goals.  The potential impact of differential instruction is also ruled out.

However, it was found that, for the change group, RTs under articulatory suppression were faster in the second half than in the first half of the experiment during phase 2.

Experiment 3

In this experiment, everything is the same as was in experiment group except participants in the continuation group performed numerical judgment throughout while those in the change group started with physical judgment before switching to the numerical task.

Results

In this experiment, the interfering effects of suppression on the change group seemed as less clear cut.  Also, foot tapping doesn't seem to have significant impact on the change group (like what was found in experiment 2).  Also, no difference between the first and the second half of the experiment during phase 2, meaning the disrupting interference of articulatory suppression persisted.

The results, again provide evidence concerning the role of the phonological loop in goal control.

Yet, after the judging tasks were switched around, the findings on congruity effects seemed to became a bit fuzzy.  The effects of congruity itself were consistent and robust but how it interacts with other factors change:

• Unlike what was found in exp. 1 and 2, there was no interaction between congruity and group.
• Albeit the observation of an interaction between congruity and concurrent task, it was due to the effects in the tapping condition, in contrast to the effect of the articulatory suppression observed in experiment 2.

General discussion

The following table provides a summary of the results of the three-way ANOVA on RTs.

• Consistent: group and concurrent task interaction (articulatory suppression especially)
• Congruity effect with longer RTs for incongruent stimuly)
• Target task as the physical-size judgment (reflecting a larger congruity effect in change group)

The role of the phonological loop in action control

Suppression has no reliable effects on habits (even recently acquired habits) but disrupts performance when switching to a new task where there is a need to overwrite the old habits.

(Therefore, do yourself a favor, make it easier for yourself... accept false positive to save you some of the unnecessary switching around)

Albeit the slowed RTs, the performance on accuracy remained pretty high in the change group. As a result, "although the phonological loop may facilitate speedy access to the task goal, it's not necessary for accurate performance."

Congruity effects and articulatory suppression

Results found that the congruity effect was bigger in the change group when needing to compare physical size (Exps. 1 and 2) but similar between the two groups when comparing numerical size (Exp. 3 and Saeki, 2007).

So the authors averaged data from all 3 experiments to see what was going on in the first 3 blocks (i.e., phase 1).  In order to read the chart, you have to remember that except for the block 1 in the first cycle, all block 1s followed the fourth block (i.e., phase 2).

As you could see, numerical judgment in the fourth bock has a significant interfering effect on physical judgment in the first block though the effects faded away in the 2nd and 3rd blocks.  However, the performance of the continuation and change group didn't differ in the judgement of numerical size.

Some interesting asymmetry effects observed here and are in accordance to findings of existing literature...

• The impact of numerical size on physical size judgment gradually emerge during child development (Does make sense since kids learn to judgment physical size before learning their numbers.  For more time to practice the judgment of physical size as the brain structure is developing.)

(Therefore, the earlier you start to work on the ABCs of psychosis, the better.)

• The impact of numerical size on the judgment of physical size is typically smaller than the impact of physical size on the judgment of numerical size.

Thus, the authors suggested that the numerical feature dimension has to be more activated in order to compete with the physical feature dimension in response selection.

Moreover...

"a congruity effect was always observed for each type of judgment, indicating that stimulus presentation on each trial always led to some automatic activation of both the physical-size and numerical-size feature dimensions, which delayed responses on incongruent relative to congruent trials."

Think this is very important... both are activated albeit differential impacts.

(The competition between the intervening process for psychotic symptoms and simple psychotic cognitive process... Sure... like numerical size judgment to physical size judgment, the later developed intervening process might be an under dog to the simple psychotic cognitive processing.  That's fine.  As long as I can be functional, I bite the loss in efficiency.)

What about the inconsistent pattern in the interaction between articulatory suppression and congruity effect?

The issue might reside in the differences between task decision and response selection. While the phonological loop might support conflict resolution during the task decision process, the congruity effect might operate at the level of response selection... thus... the inconsistent pattern.

The phonological loop and two types of control/operation

Norman and Shallice's model of cognitive control (1986)

• The limited-capacity "supervisory attentional system
• lower-level "action schemata activated by environmental cues and compete with each other to control action

Love this wording "bias"...

• In certain circumstances, "input from the higher-level supervisory attentional system is necessary to bias the competition towards the favored schema." 
• The consistent impact of articulatory suppression indicate the role of subvocal supplementation in the biasing process during the goal/task competition.
• The lack of consistency in the effect of our concurrent tasks on the size congruity effect: Stroop-like phenomenon "may operate at a lower level of control."
• "It could be argued that subvocalization is a process whereby explicit and declarative forms of working memory are used to facilitate the implicit procedural system, providing an ongoing set of cues that protected action from disruption by recent habits."

(Can't tell you how many times when my delusional head was trying went on entertaining observations or things heard shared or not with the others... I have to come out and stop the process... with all means possible... starting from the most basic... repeating to myself... "I am delusional"... however effective it might be.)

The authors' conclusion... "the phonological loop can play an important role in the control of action."

Baddeley, Allen, & Hitch (2011) Binding in visual working memory: The role of the episodic buffer

The notion of binding is an interesting one... reminding of the paired-associations I have entertained else where...  (too many elsewhere in the dungeon of limited my words that I can keep track not where them words are.  lol 8-X)

On a lousy weather afternoon... done taking notes on this paper...  Lightening and thunder running wild on the outside paired with pouring rain when I plowed away jotting down notes on the paper "Binding in visual working memory: The role of the episodic buffer". Like splitting on the outside while binding on the inside? lol

For psychotics, one skill we have to learn is to unbind... at the feature level, object level, or in the episodic buffer or not.  The good thing, according to the following, is... you can do something to interfere... Let's jam up the limited capacity with alternative processes... imposing excessive workload to disrupt the fragile bound object!  Will it work.  Donno.

Baddeley, Alan D., Allen, Richard J., & Hitch, Graham J. (2011). Binding in visual working memory: The role of the episodic buffer. Neuropsychologia, 49(6), 1393-1400.

What is working memory for Baddeley, Allen, & Hitch?

"We use it principally to refer to a broad framework of interacting processes that involve the temporary storage and manipulation of information in the service of performing complex cognitive activities."

1. The two slave systems: Phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad
2. The central executive (with no capacity for information storage).
3. The episodic buffer: A storage "accessible through conscious awareness and provides the milti-feature binding mechanism-- controlled by the central executive.  (Somewhere in time but I don't remember when... I remember reading that episodic buffer is sort of like a spin-off of the central executive.) 

The model as of Baddeley (2000)

1. Exploring the episodic buffer

As seen in the above diagram for the model as of Baddeley (2000), originally, it was assumed that everything bound by the buffer has to go through the central executive.  Under this assumption, it's reasonable to assume that the disruption of CE function should disrupt the binding of features into an integrated presentation... such as that ice-hockey playing elephant.

Research paradigm: using dual task methodology to study the binding of features in visually or verbally.

(As I was reading about that ice-hockey playing elephant yet another time the other day, this man on the street was talking about the elephant he was trying to sell.  When stealing a smoke outside of the cafe, I saw these two bronze elephants... and made an interesting observation...  It's more difficult to look at an elephant and try to envision it playing ice-hockey... the binding of the image doesn't go as smooth and stable as binding the image up... frame by frame not not... by retrieving the features directly through LTM. Don't know how common it is...  It was quite funny though... like the LTM-based elephant was playing ice-hockey on top of leisurely throwing out triple toes for the sake of it while the one based on both LTM and external visual stimuli could barely keep the gloves to its hand.  Funny enough... given that I am psychotic, my head should be really skilled in this binding thing since it could bind the most irrelevant stimuli... shared by the others or not... It might speak of the unmentioned power of LTM or the interfering effect of real visual input... unless the central executive was simply in a mood of chilling and didn't want to work too hard? 8-O lol 8-X)

2. Binding in visual working memory

1. Limited storage capacity: Automatic biding of features into objects with a storage capacity of 4 objects (regardless the features for the objects).
2. Limited capacity for attention: Its attentionally demanding to combine features into objects and maintain them in the visual working memory (Wheeler and Treisman, 2002) (You see Treisman... you can guess that it's about attention.)
3. The third possibility: The initial binding of features into object is automatic but the maintenance takes effects. 

(One problem of disordered thinking is that I can't stop my head from binding things together... faulty automaticity at fault... not me...)

The rationale behind the studies done to address the third possibility:  The participants had to carry out simple or complex verbal task (attention load) while performing feature and binding task (encoding phase).  Since the concurrent task is verbal in nature, shall there be interference effect, it's gotta be the issue of the workload on the central executive rather than the visuo-spatial processing.

So they say, a picture speaks a thousand words... the following figure shows you all the studies done to test the third possibility.  While a, b, c, d, and e represents how the color and shape features are presented, f and g are the recognition probe (i.e., did this appear in the previous presentation?)

Study result of presentation a: 

Counting backwards 3 digits interfered greatly with performance accuracy, which indicate the role of CE.  However, the effect was no larger for binding than for features.  Findings of this study was replicated in subsequent experiments utilizing different concurrent tasks.  These findings seemed to suggest that the binding of features into objects in visuospatial sketchpad is automatic and does not require [much] attentional resources.

The issue... could the binding of shape and color something too "basic, rapid and automatic" to impose cognitive load?

3. Binding across space, time and modality

In three sets of studies, the features were presented in separated fashion...

• c: separate presentation of features
• d: separate presentation of features in time

Results: Performance in c and d was above chance level although not as accurate as in the unitized presentation (a).

• e. separate presentation of features in modality

Results: Performance in e was as accurate as in the unitized presentation (a) and was no more disrupted by concurrent backward counting task.

Thus, "objects requiring the binding of features across space, time, or modality are no more disrupted by an attentionally demanding task than are those for which the features are unitized at presentation." Yet, such findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that episodic buffer is at the mercy of the CE.

Love this part...

"Our finding that disrupting Gestalt principles does not engage executive processes in binding might seem to imply that the perceptual system binds all features automatically.  However, if this were the case it would surely result in perceptual chaos, potentially combining totally unrelated features to create illusory objects."

Ya... this is life with psychosis.  Like... my head's ability to bind things together is my demise.  Therefore, the pursuit to find ways to unbind.  Since normal people don't do it, it shall mean that some part of the binding between the psychotics and the normal is different... CE related or not.

4. How are bindings maintained?

Though there seems to be automaticity in binding, results of some studies found the retention of found objects to be more fragile than those of the features.

b: sequential presentation as opposed to presenting stimuli in an array
Results:

As you could see easily... recency effect... while performance on bound object suffered more than features in earlier items.  Also, when comparing sequential vs. simultaneous presentation, memory on bound object was significantly worse than feature objects in sequential presentation.  In terms of performance under the concurrent task of counting backwards in decrements of two, there was no differences between the sequential and simultaneous presentation conditions; thus, the fragility in bound object is independent of attentional load.

The unanswered question: What contributes to the differential findings in the sequential and simultaneous presentations?

What is forgetting? A reflection of limited storage or an over-write process when participants intend to register new items?

Suffix paradigm: Presenting a suffix the participants have to ignore after an array of stimuli.  If bound objects are more fragile or susceptible to overwriting, it should be more disrupted by the suffix.  The "implausible" suffix does not contain features drawn from the target set while the "plausible" suffix doe.

Implausible suffix: Small but statistically significant decrements though no major differences between object and feature memory.  It didn't matter whether the suffix changed from trial to trial or not.
Plausible suffix: As you should be able to see in the figure below, the plausible suffix caused significantly more disruption on the memory of bound object than that of features. In terms of the level of decrements, smaller decrements similar to those observed in the implausible suffix condition were observed.

The above experiments applied the probe recognition paradigm (e.g., 2f, 2g).

Cured recall experiments were conducted to replicate findings of the probe recognition paradigm.  It was found that plausible, semi-plausible (i.e., stimuli consisting features from one dimension but not the other) had equivalent effect on cued recall... both larger than the impact of the implausible suffix.

What are the lessons learned?

Disruption has nothing to do with the intent to encode the items or not but has to do with the nature of the item.  The findings also reflect two processes:

• Filtering mechanism: To-be-ignored items are required to be filtered out before entering the WM.  Given the equivalent impacts of plausible and semi-plausible suffixes, it suggests that the filtering operates at the feature level. "as stimulus-based filtering draws on knowledge of task demands and what has been previously encountered, this process reflects one way in which the products of prior experience can impinge on perceptual input before information is encoded into working memory."
• A process of overwriting:  It's assumed that anything passing the filter is automatically combined as an object.  This level is particularly susceptible to overwrite and the loss of representation... a way to explain why bound objects suffers more than features. At the same time, the assessment through recognition probe or cued recall intends to assess memory of items at the object level. With features, there is a greater redundancy since they appear both at the feature and object level.

Such findings provides supports for the assumption of the displacement in a limited capacity store rather than  feature-based interference (where fully plausible suffix should be more distruptive than semi-plausible suffix).

"Visual stimuli are at least initially represented at both the level of constituent features and of objects.... with filtering proceeding on the basis of features and overwriting particularly impacting on object representation."

How does the above have anything to do with the Working Memory model?

Features are bound into objects in the visuospatial sketchpad before being fed into the episodic buffer.  It's in episodic buffer when objects were conscious retained and manipulated as per the command of CE.

5. Does binding depend on the hippocampus?

Findings of a lot of studies seem to show that binding seemed to involve hippocampus.

Then, along came Jon who had reduction of about 50% of both left and right hippocampal regions while, in comparison to the performance of 6 undergraduate students from the University of work, his performance in a range of visual binding tasks as described earlier didn't seem to differ all that much from the college students... In reality... better at times...

This other lady with a left medial splenoid ridge meningioma removed was found to have a very marked deficit in the short-term binding of color and shape although the intact ability in long-term visual or short-term verbal binding.

6. Binding and the episodic buffer

What about verbal binding?

"As with the visuo-spatial binding experiments just described, we found no interaction between concurrent load and binding. The binding of words into chunks therefore appears to reflect automatic processes, this time clearly involving long-term memory. It does not appear to depend on the central executive."

Automaticity or at least semi-automatic.

Following is the revised model of working memory as of 2011.

.
To end this note... in the authors' own words...

"Our results do however place constraints on such models, requiring an explanation of (1) the lack of an effect of attentional load on the capacity to bind the features of shape and color, (2) the fragility of such binding, (3) the capacity to filter out “implausible” but not “plausible” suffixes and (4) the mechanism by which plausible suffixes disrupt the retention of bound objects."

Baddeley, Alan. (2000). The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory?

Baddeley, Alan. (2000). The episodic buffer: a new component of working memory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4(11), 417-423.

The concept of working memory by Baddeley and Hitch:

1. It abandoned the concept of a unitary store in favour of a multi-component system
2. It emphasized the function of such a system in complex cognition, rather than memory perse.

Anatomical affiliation

• Phonological loop (BA40, BA44)
• Visuospatial sketchpad (BA6, 19, 40, 47)
• Central executive (... frontal lobe areas)

Also... the loop... is it designed for language acquisition while the sketchpad, visual semantics?

My thoughts on the notion of language... 

1. What is a language? 
2. What is a vocabulary?  
3. What is grammar?  
4. What is syntax?...

(Why entertaining this/these?)

Back to the paper, where does the component of Episodic Buffer come from?

Problems for the current model (as of 2000)

1.1. The phonological loop: limits and limitations

The phonological contains both a temporary storage and the articulatory rehearsal process. Without the articulatory rehearsal process, traces of the auditory memory decays within a few seconds.

This model use useful in explaining the following phenomena:

• The phonological similarity effect: Items more similar in sounds are harder to remember although visual or semantic similarities have no impact.
• The word-length effects: Because longer words takes longer time to rehearse and reproduce, the longer time requires to do these makes it easier for traces of memory to deteriorate.  
• The effect of articulatory suppression: When people are prevented from rehearsing items to be remembered, their recall performance decline and the word-length effect disappears.
• Transfer of information between codes: Articulatory suppression removes the phonological similarity effect for visually presented items but not for auditory ones.

(Come to think about it... there is something interesting about the transfer of information between codes... In times when I was very drugged out though not yet to the state of from 2-3 words, I had problems reading while comprehending the texts.  Yet, I found out that I had no problem listening to the same texts in auditory format.  So I had the computer reading the texts to me.  Also, sometimes, when typing, I had to type things out without looking at the screen and that's how thoughts can flow out... Feels as if these have something to do with the notion of transferring information between codes.)

• Neuropsychological evidence: What is essential for rehearsal is the central rehearsal code (i.e., speech motor code in dyspraxic patients) rather than its over operation.

There are phenomena that doesn't fit the model

• 1. Recall on visual representation of sequences of numbers do not suffer traumatically with the concurrent articulatory suppression task (i.e., pronounce words such as "the").  Generally, the digital span only drop from 7 to 5.
• 2. Patients with impaired phonological memory can recall about 4 digits when stimuli were presented visually.

What about visuospatial sketchpad? Theoretically, it's for the storing of patterns... not suited for digits.

Visual similarity effect?  In Logie et al., the authors found visual similarity effect except the effects are small and not limited to the articulatory suppression condition. (Under the assumption that, if you can count on the phonological loop, visual similarity or not should be an issue.)  Since the visual similarity effect is present during non-suppressed condition, it means the performance is not all based on the phonological loop... therefore, the info from these two slave systems might be combined somewhere.

1.2. Prose recall

With unrelated words, people can remember up to 5-6 words before starting to make errors.  However, in the context of a meaningful sentence, the span can be as high as 16... a manifestation of Miller's "chunking." Based on knowledge in LTM, the sentence is broken down to smaller chunks with the capacity set by the number of chunk as opposed to words.  But where are the chunks stored?  In phonological loop, LTM, or a different storage space?

The phonological loop hypothesis doesn't fly in the case of patient "PV." Patient "PV" had the loop capacity of 1 word and intact LTM has a sentence span of five.

This reminds me of the recurrent eras of from 2-3 words.  I was so drugged out that I couldn't read and couldn't understand people if they spoke in longer sentences because, when they get to the end of the sentence, I would have forgotten what they said before.  It was the drug effect.  What I eventually had to learn to do is... when reading, because my digit span went as low as 1 (like... what was the last word I read? Forgotten already), instead of trying to comprehend the sentences (extremely high tech), if not simply terms, I identified key words or chunks of words and deliberately tried to find them from LTM.  Sure, it took an awful lot of time to finish a sentence or two, and what was read was already forgotten, the way I saw it... at least some part of LTM got activated... path strengthened... and hopefully, it would make it easier for me to read the same texts again when, if, one day, I could grow out of from 2-3 words.  Did it work and did anything got retained?  I don't know.  One thing I do know is I did get to read something with a digit span of from 1, 2, 3 words.  

Also, while severely amnesic patients are uniformly bad at recall after a 20-minute delay, their immediate recall of a prose paragraph containing 15-20 idea units could be relatively normal.  The issues.... the amount of items far exceed the capacity of phonological loop with the recalling process might overwrite what's in it.   What about visuospatial sketchpad? Theoretically, it's unsuitable for serial recall and there is no evidence that only imageable sequences can be recalled.  What about the central executive?  Theoretically, it has no storage capacity.

It takes both the retrieval of knowledge in LTM and the manipulation on what gets retrieved to envision an ice-hockey-playing elephant. Sure the process can take place in LTM.  Yet, there is no evidence claiming patients with normal intelligence and grossly impaired LTM cannot get the elephant envisioned.

Also, Tulving had seen a densely amnesic patient to play a good game of bridge and win the game.  He apparently could keep track of what was going on and which cards had been played... a task beyond the assumed capacity of the two slave systems.

1.3. The problem of rehearsal

Think about the notion of rehearsal in phonological loop... equivalent to subvocal rehearsal adults often do when trying to memorize something.  The subvocal rehearsal is more advantageous than rehearsal in other modalities in two ways: First, people can generate the items by speaking them out... making it easier to be in a covert format.  Second, digits and words have intrinsic lexical representation, making it easier to repair the deterioration of memory during the rehearsal process.

Yet, how could the rehearsal be done in the visuospatial sketchpad or the other back-up store?

1.4. Consciousness and the binding problem

Existing studies showed the role of consciousness in information processing.

In this section, this author tried to explain to the readers that the model is lacking a component where complex info from different channels in all modalities (e.g., slaves systems, LTM) could be stored, manipulated, integrated, and controlled by the central executive.... a solution to the binding issue.

The episodic buffer

The episodic buffer is episodic because "it holds episodes whereby information is integrated across space and potentially extended across time, which makes it resembles Tulving's notion of episodic memory.  However, it is temporary and can feed and receive information from LTM. It's a component that interface with multiple systems and codes.  It's capacity is assumed to be limited due to the high demands in the tasks involved.  Also, it can be accessed "by the central executive through the medium of conscious awareness" and CE can therefore decided what to do about the information... attending to it or not, creating new cognitive representation or not, etc.

There is something interesting about the notion of episodic buffer and it's relation with LTM.  Reminds me of the strange psychotic experience of the reenactment of past psychotic episodes.  How did it happen? Either the central executive went out of whack and decided to do some recherche du tempt perdu through replaying some past psychotic episode.  Or, the out-of-whack potentially automatic and effortless process of knowledge retrieval decided to get the whole set of episodic memory replayed.  Regardless, the entire muti-modal episode need to be placed somewhere... a perfect place to be... episodic buffer.  At the same time, though I had no control over the retrieval and reenactment of the episode in my head, I was capable of trying my best to keep it running in the back of my head... albeit the inevitable bodily sensation.

2.1. How is the buffer implemented biologically?

fMRI studies showed greater right frontal activation for integrated info while the activation of unintegrated retention were more in the posterior areas (verbal and spatial WM).

2.2. So what's new?

Episodic buffer as a new component or a fractionation of Central excecutive.

The revised model:

• WM as multi-component
• WM is not simply the activated portion of LTM
• Reject the view that "the slave systems merely represent activations within the process of visual and verbal perception and production." (Bye bye to dual channel)
• WM is considered a seperate system from LTM and perceptual and motor function because it has it's own "dedicated storage process.

Some outstanding issues

"conscious monitoring of the evidence supporting an apparent memory plays a crucial role in separating accurate recall from false memory, confabulation and delusion."

Not quite sure where the notion of delusion comes from.. since I have entertained this notion else where... in short, a multi-dimensional concept.