News

• 2007-04-12: Rubicon (by: Steve Janssen)
  

  Two members of the neuroMod group have been awarded the Rubicon research grant by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO)

  Dr Janneke Jehee, who currently works at the University of Rochester, will go to Vanderbilt University for two years. There she will work with Frank Tong. They will try to uncover the neural mechanisms of visual learning. People can detect minor differences between simple objects, such as the orientation of the lines, well if they practise these skill frequently. Jehee and Tong will examine what happens in the brain during the development of these skills.

  Steve Janssen, who currently works at the University of Amsterdam, will work with David Rubin at Duke University for two years. They will examine the temporal distribution of autobiographical memory. People tend to recall more personal events from adolescence than from other lifetime periods. The researchers will collect memories of American, Danish, Dutch and Japanese participants through the Internet and look for cultural and cohort effects.

• 2007-02-15: Newspaper Article in De Telegraaf (by: Steve Janssen)
  

  De Telegraaf, which is a Dutch newspaper, published an article about our website on Tuesday March 27. Unfortunately, it was only released in the paper version of the newspaper. Therefore, I will give the text here.

  Geheugensite werkt verhelderend

  Wie was dat nu ook al weer? En ik kan even niet op het woord komen. Wanneer dat was? Vergeten... Als u dit soort zinnen vaak gaat bezigen, zult u zich zorgen gaan maken. Is dat terecht of valt het wel mee met de werking van uw geheugen? Doe een test en u weet hoe het zit. De Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) heeft een site die vol staat met allerlei geheugentests, bijvoorbeeld over het herinneren van het dagelijks nieuws of gebeurtenissen in het eigen leven.

  Wie online gaat en memory.uva.nl intikt, krijgt een hele serie van dergelijke tests onder ogen. Bovendien staat er een cursus geheugenverbetering op de site. De medewerkers van de universiteit doen onderzoek naar de hersenprocessen achter leren en vergeten. Ze hebben daar de hulp van het publiek, van de sitebezoekers nodig. Daarom vragen ze de deelnemers aan de site of ze zo vriendelijk willen zijn zich de eerste keer in te schrijven, puur voor het onderzoek. Ook vragen ze bezoekers in de toekomst via e-mail mogen benaderen om vaker een korte test online te doen. Wie zich inschrijft (onder de verzekering dat die naam echt nergens anders dan voor onderzoek gebruikt zal worden) kan kiezen uit verschillende tests. De meest uitgebreide vergt 30 minuten, de korste 5 minuten tijd. We probeerden: 'Tijd Vliegt': 'Wanneer gebeurde wat alweer? Op welke dag van de week vonden de aanslagen op de vier treinen in Madrid plaats? Op welke dag van de maand vond de vuurwerkramp in Enschede plaats? In welk jaar overleed prins Claus? Bij iedere vraag vraagt het onderzoeksteam aan te geven of u zeker bent van uw antwoord, een beetje zeker, of dat u gokt en waarom u tot een antwoord bent gekomen: relateert u de gebeurtenis aan iets anders: was u bijvoorbeeld jarig en weet u het daardoor zo zeker? Het is maar een voorbeeld. Wie liever vragen over films beantwoordt, zijn kennis van de geschiedenis test of aan gezichtsherkenning doet, kiest voor een van de vele andere tests. Ze zullen verhelderend werken.

• 2007-02-15: Daily News Memory Test taken by over 40,000 visitors (by: Steve Janssen)
  

  The International and the Dutch versions of the Daily News Memory Test have been taken by more than 40,000 visitors from all over the world in a period of six years. The participants came from Australia to the United States, from Finland to South-Africa and from Japan to Chile. The results will be used to verify our memory models and to support development of tests of memory loss in patients with brain damage.

• 2007-02-15: Presentation at SARMAC VII (by: Steve Janssen)
  

  Steve Janssen will give a paper presentation at the Seventh Biennial meeting of the Society of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, which will be held in Bates, ME. The conference begins with an opening keynote and reception on Wednesday, July 25 in the late afternoon. Keynote speakers scheduled for the conference include Dr. Norbert Schwarz, University of Michigan, Dr. Mark Howe, Lancaster University, and Dr. Suparna Rajaram, SUNY Stony Brook. In addition, Cognitive Technology will sponsor a keynote address by Dr. Craig Anderson, Iowa State University. For more information about the conference go to SARMAC VII.

  The paper presentation is called 'Reminiscence Bump in Memory for Remote Events'. and was written with Jaap Murre and Martijn Meeter. People recall more events from the period when they were adolescents and young adults than from other lifetime periods. This reminiscence bump has been examined extensively. However, the question whether the bump is caused by differential encoding or re-sampling remains unanswered. To shed more light on this discussion, we examined memory for remote events. When one examines memory for remote events, one has to make sure that the events are time specific, equally difficult, and learned at time of the event. We circumvented the issue of equal difficulty by calculating deviation scores for each trial. We found that participants answered questions about events that occurred when they were between 15 and 25 years old more frequently correct than questions about events that occurred when they were younger than 15 or older than 25 years. This result supports the view that people store events better in adolescence and early adulthood.

• 2007-02-14: New Test: The Diary Study (by: Steve Janssen)
  

  We have developed a new test on our website. The test is called the Diary Study. It consists of two phases. In the first phase, participants are asked to describe a recent personal event. They are also asked to answer a series of questions about the event, such as who was involved, where the event took place and when the event occurred. Furthermore, they have to rate the event on scales, such as pleasantness, frequency and importance.

  After a few days or a few weeks, participants are sent an e-mail with an invitation to take the second part of the test. In the second phase, they receive similar questions as in the first phase. We want to examine which information about the event is remembered best and which factors influence retention.

There is also an archive of old news.