An active inference and epistemic value view of metacognition

Metacognition concerns our monitoring and control of mental operations (knowing what you know). Much thinking about metacognition is liable to fall foul of the classic homunculus problem: Nobody can specify who or what does the "metacognition." We describe how the Active Inference and Epistemic Value (AIEV) model offers an operationalization of epistemic behaviors which can explain two example metacognitive phenomena: Control and monitoring of word learning, and the search for unretrieved information in the feeling of knowing. Curiosity drives a search forward, but it is held in check by considering the utility of what is retrieved from memory.

History repeating itself: Arnaud's case of pathological déjà vu.

International audience; We present a translation of Arnaud's (1896) case report of Patient Louis, a case he describes as having a pathological form of déjà vu. Louis has the delusional belief that the present moment is a repetition of an exact same previous event. Arnaud's paper is critical for two reasons. Firstly, it is amongst the first articles in the scientific literature to describe the déjà vu experience using the term 'déjà vu'. Secondly, the case report of someone with delusional and persistent déjà vu, anticipates recently reported cases with similar symptoms, which are beginning to gain interest as a particular form of memory disorder. We offer a contemporary analysis of Louis an…

The cognitive neuropsychology of recollection

The recognition of whether someone, something or somewhere has been experienced before rests on a decisionmaking process. In humanmemory, information is not reproduced as it would be in a computer, but is a reflective, conscious process. This is more so the case when encountering the same scene, environment or idea for a second time. When we recognize something as having been encountered before we arguably make a comparison between what is represented in the cognitive system and what is currently perceived. Consider that somebody uses the word ‘loquacious’, a word which you have only just encountered recently, and up until then, you did not know its meaning, or even existence. When encounte…

Memory Improvement in clinical groups using Life-Logging Technologies.

In the here and now: Short term memory predictions are preserved in Alzheimer's disease

According to neuropsychological models of anosognosia, there is a failure to transfer on-line awareness of dysfunction into a more generalised long term belief about memory function in Alzheimer's disease. This failure results in specific metamemory deficits for global predictions: patients overestimate their performance before the task but are able to monitor their memory performance after having experienced the task. However, after a delay, they are still not able to make accurate predictions. As previous work has mainly focused on long-term memory, the present study investigates this issue in short-term and working memory. Using both global and item-by-item metacognitive judgements in a …

Le jugement d’oubli dans la maladie d’Alzheimer

International audience; IntroductionAvez-vous déjà eu l’impression d’oublier quelque chose ? Le sentiment d’oubli est très commun dans la vie quotidienne mais a été très peu étudié expérimentalement.ObjectifsL’objectif de cette étude est d’évaluer les jugements d’oubli sur des tâches de mémoire sémantique et épisodique dans le vieillissement normal et dans la maladie d’Alzheimer.Patients et méthodesCinquante jeunes adultes, 35 personnes âgées et 33 patients Alzheimer ont été testés. Les participants effectuaient soit des jugements d’oubli, soit des jugements de rappel sur 2 tâches de mémoire. Pour la tâche de mémoire sémantique, les participants devaient rappeler toutes les régions de Franc…

Working Memory and the Enactment Effect in Early Alzheimer’s Disease

This study examines the enactment effect in early Alzheimer’s disease using a novel working memory task. Free recall of action-object instruction sequences was measured in individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (n=14) and older adult controls (n=15). Instruction sequences were read out loud by the experimenter (verbal-only task) or read by the experimenter and performed by the participants (subject-performed task). In both groups and for all sequence lengths, recall was superior in the subject-performed condition than the verbal-only condition. Individuals with Alzheimer’s disease showed a deficit in free recall of recently learned instruction sequences relative to older adult controls, yet b…

Recollection in adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Abstract Introduction Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder primarily affecting social interaction and communication. Recently, there has been interest in whether people with ASD also show memory deficits as a result of abnormal brain development. However, at least in adolescents with ASD, the recollection component of episodic memory has rarely been explored. This paper is an evaluation of recollection in three different experiments in adolescents with ASD, using both objective (source discrimination) and subjective methods (Remember–Know judgments). Methods Three experiments were designed to measure different aspects of contextual information: sensory/perceptual …

Does Embryo Culture Medium Influence the Health and Development of Children Born after In Vitro Fertilization?

International audience; In animal studies, extensive data revealed the influence of culture medium on embryonic development, foetal growth and the behaviour of offspring. However, this impact has never been investigated in humans. For the first time, we investigated in depth the effects of embryo culture media on health, growth and development of infants conceived by In Vitro Fertilization until the age of 5 years old. This single-centre cohort study was based on an earlier randomized study. During six months, in vitro fertilization attempts (No. 371) were randomized according to two media (Single Step Medium—SSM group) or Global medium (Global group). This randomized study was stopped prem…

Selective deficits in episodic feeling of knowing in ageing: A novel use of the general knowledge task

Failure to recall an item from memory can be accompanied by the subjective experience that the item is known but currently unavailable for report. The feeling of knowing (FOK) task allows measurement of the predictive accuracy of this reflective judgement. Young and older adults were asked to provide answers to general knowledge questions both prior to and after learning, thus measuring both semantic and episodic memory for the items. FOK judgements were made at each stage for all unrecalled responses, providing a measure of predictive accuracy for semantic and episodic knowledge. Results demonstrated a selective effect of age on episodic FOK resolution, with older adults found to have impa…

Memory dysfunction

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SenseCam: A new tool for memory rehabilitation?

International audience; The emergence of life-logging technologies has led neuropsychologist to focus on understanding how this new technology could help patients with memory disorders. Despite the growing number of studies using life-logging technologies, a theoretical framework supporting its effectiveness is lacking. This review focuses on the use of life-logging in the context of memory rehabilitation, particularly the use of SenseCam, a wearable camera allowing passive image capture. In our opinion, reviewing SenseCam images can be effective for memory rehabilitation only if it provides more than an assessment of prior occurrence in ways that reinstates previous thoughts, feelings and …

Autobiographical memory in Parkinson's disease: A retrieval deficit

This study examined the effects of providing cues to facilitate autobiographical memory retrieval in Parkinson's disease. Previous findings have shown that individuals with Parkinson's disease retrieve fewer specific autobiographical memories than older adult controls. These findings are clinically significant since the quality of autobiographical memory is linked to identity and sense of self. In the current study, 16 older adults with Parkinson's disease without dementia and 16 matched older adult controls were given 3 min in which to recall autobiographical memories associated with five different time periods and to give each memory a short title. Participants were later asked to retriev…

Anosognosia and Metacognition in Alzheimer's disease: Insights from Experimental Psychology

International audience; While metacognition and anosognosia have long been studied as distinct concepts, more recently we have endeavored to construct a theoretical framework for exploring how metacognition can contribute to our understanding of anosognosia and vice versa. Following this approach, with a particular focus on Alzheimer's disease (AD), this chapter first gives an overview of the key experimental findings and issues on metacognition in AD patients: in particular, overconfidence and absolute awareness; the sensitivity approach; the fractionation of metacognition in AD; the neural substrates of metacognition in the Alzheimer brain; and metacognitive control in these patients. Sec…

Subjective states associated with retrieval failures in Parkinson's disease.

Abstract Instances in which we cannot retrieve information immediately but know that the information might be retrieved later are subjective states that accompany retrieval failure. These are expressed in feeling-of-knowing (FOK) and Tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) experiences. In Experiment 1, participants with Parkinson’s disease (PD) and older adult controls were given general questions and asked to report when they experienced a TOT state and to give related information about the missing word. The PD group experienced similar levels of TOTs but provided less correct peripheral information related to the target when in a TOT state. In Experiment 2, participants were given a Semantic (general kno…

Short-term memory predictions across the lifespan: monitoring span before and after conducting a task.

Our objective was to explore metamemory in short-term memory across the lifespan. Five age groups participated in this study: 3 groups of children (4-13 years old), and younger and older adults. We used a three-phase task: prediction-span-postdiction. For prediction and postdiction phases, participants reported with a Yes/No response if they could recall in order a series of images. For the span task, they had to actually recall such series. From 4 years old, children have some ability to monitor their short-term memory and are able to adjust their prediction after experiencing the task. However, accuracy still improves significantly until adolescence. Although the older adults had a lower …

Autobiographical memory and the self in a single-case of chronic unilateral spatial neglect

International audience; Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is mainly defined as a condition affecting perception and the mental representation of the environment. However, nothing is known about its impact on the ability to mentally represent one's past and on personal identity. We addressed these questions in a case of chronic USN, DR, a 59-year-old right-handed woman, who underwent a variety of measures exploring the self and autobiographical memory (AM). DR showed preserved self-images and her AM performance was only preserved when memories were prompted by her own self-images and not by self-unrelated cues. Our findings are discussed in light of the interconnection between the self and AM.

Eliciting the implicit: Metacognition in Alzheimer’s disease

The literature on metacognition in Alzheimer's disease points to there being implicit and explicit routes to the control and monitoring of memory. For instance, despite not being able to make predictions of performance which reflect future behavior, people with Alzheimer's disease can regulate effectively the amount of time they spend studying an item. Thus, empirical tasks from the metacognition literature shed some light on the idea of implicit awareness. But the complex pattern of preservation and impairment in metacognitive knowledge also points to other dimensions on which we need to consider patient awareness.

Anosognosia and Metacognition in Alzheimer’s Disease

While metacognition and anosognosia have long been studied as distinct concepts, more recently we have endeavored to construct a theoretical framework for exploring how metacognition can contribute to our understanding of anosognosia and vice versa. Following this approach, with a particular focus on Alzheimer’s disease (AD), this chapter first gives an overview of the key experimental findings and issues on metacognition in AD patients: in particular, overconfidence and absolute awareness; the sensitivity approach; the fractionation of metacognition in AD; the neural substrates of metacognition in the Alzheimer brain; and metacognitive control in these patients. Second, the chapter discuss…

Heterozygous deletion of the LRFN2 gene is associated with working memory deficits

International audience; Learning disabilities (LDs) are a clinically and genetically heterogeneous group of diseases. Array-CGH and high-throughput sequencing have dramatically expanded the number of genes implicated in isolated intellectual disabilities and LDs, highlighting the implication of neuron-specific post-mitotic transcription factors and synaptic proteins as candidate genes. We report a unique family diagnosed with autosomal dominant learning disability and a 6p21 microdeletion segregating in three patients. The 870 kb microdeletion encompassed the brain-expressed gene LRFN2, which encodes for a synaptic cell adhesion molecule. Neuropsychological assessment identified selective w…

Subjective Experience of Episodic Memory and Metacognition: A Neurodevelopmental Approach

Episodic retrieval is characterized by the subjective experience of remembering. This experience enables the co-ordination of memory retrieval processes and can be acted on metacognitively. In successful retrieval, the feeling of remembering may be accompanied by recall of important contextual information. On the other hand, when people fail (or struggle) to retrieve information, other feelings, thoughts and information may come to mind. In this review, we examine the subjective and metacognitive basis of episodic memory function from a neurodevelopmental perspective, looking at recollection paradigms (such as source memory, and the report of recollective experience) and metacognitive parad…