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The integration of gestures and pictures into pedagogy has demonstrated potential for improving adults' learning of foreign language (L2) vocabulary. However, the relative benefits of gestures and pictures on children's L2 vocabulary learning have not been formally evaluated. In three experiments, we investigated the effects of gesture-based and picture-based learning on 8-year-old primary school children's acquisition of novel L2 vocabulary. In each experiment, German children were trained over 5 consecutive days on auditorily presented, concrete and abstract, English vocabulary. In Experiments 1 and 2, gesture enrichment (auditorily presented L2 words accompanied with self-performed gestures) was compared with a non-enriched baseline condition. In Experiment 3, gesture enrichment was compared with picture enrichment (auditorily presented words accompanied with pictures). Children performed vocabulary recall and translation tests at 3 days, 2 months, and 6 months post-learning. Both gesture and picture enrichment enhanced children's test performance compared with non-enriched learning. Benefits of gesture and picture enrichment persisted up to 6 months after training and occurred for both concrete and abstract words. Gesture-enriched learning was hypothesized to boost learning outcomes more than picture-enriched learning on the basis of previous findings in adults. Unexpectedly, however, we observed similar benefits of gesture and picture enrichment on children's L2 learning. These findings suggest that both gestures and pictures enhance children's L2 learning and that performance benefits are robust over long timescales. (ZPID).

This article explores how migrants utilize and access different forms of capital. Using a Bourdieusian approach to capital, we focus on how migrants’ temporal and spatial journeys are shaped by and in turn shape their opportunities to mobilize resources and convert them into capitals. These processes depend on migrants’ social positioning, including their gender, class, ethnic and national positioning, as well as citizenship status, and how this is articulated in relation to different fields in different spatial and temporal contexts. Drawing upon our combined corpus of data on migration to the UK, and a lesser extent Germany, with third country nationals and EU citizens and new data collected since the Brexit referendum, we examine these issues through biographical approaches to migrant women’s life stories. In so doing, we build theory on capital accumulation as dynamic, multi-level and spatio-temporally contingent.

We examine the role of technological change in explaining the large and persistent decline in earnings following job loss. Using detailed skill requirements from the near universe of online vacancies, we estimate technological change by occupation and find that technological change accounts for 45 percent of the decline in earnings after job loss. Technological change lowers earnings after job loss by requiring workers to have new skills to perform newly created jobs in their prior occupation. When workers lack the required skills, they move to occupations where their skills are still employable but are paid a lower wage.

Brain oscillations are increasingly recognized by memory researchers as a useful tool to unravel the neural mechanisms underlying the formation of a memory trace. However, the increasing numbers of published studies paint a rather complex picture of the relation between brain oscillations and memory formation. Concerning oscillatory amplitude, for instance, increases as well as decreases in various frequency bands (theta, alpha, beta and gamma) were associated with memory formation. These results cast doubt on frameworks putting forward the idea of an oscillatory signature that is uniquely related to memory formation. In an attempt to clarify this issue we here provide an alternative perspective, derived from classic cognitive frameworks/principles of memory. On the basis of Craik's levels of processing framework and Tulving's encoding specificity principle we hypothesize that brain oscillations during encoding might primarily reflect the perceptual and cognitive processes engaged by the encoding task. These processes may then lead to later successful retrieval depending on their overlap with the processes engaged by the memory test. As a consequence, brain oscillatory correlates of memory formation could vary dramatically depending on how the memory is encoded, and on how it is being tested later. Focusing on oscillatory amplitude changes and on theta-to-gamma cross-frequency coupling, we here review recent evidence showing how brain oscillatory subsequent memory effects can be modulated, and sometimes even be reversed, by varying encoding tasks, and the contextual overlap between encoding and retrieval. •Novel processing based perspective on oscillatory correlates of memory formation•Oscillatory subsequent memory effects vary with different encoding tasks.•Overlap of encoding and retrieval modulates oscillatory subsequent memory effects.

People can intentionally forget studied material when cued to do so. Corresponding evidence has arisen from studies on item-method directed forgetting, in which participants are asked to forget single items directly upon presentation. We measured memory performance of to-be-remembered (TBR) and to-be-forgotten (TBF) items across retention intervals of up to 1 week and fitted power functions of time to the observed recall (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) rates. In both experiments and each retention interval condition, memory performance for the TBR items was higher than for the TBF items, supporting the view that directed forgetting effects are lasting. Recall and recognition rates of both TBR and TBF items were well fit by the power function. However, the relative forgetting rates of the two item types differed, with a higher forgetting rate for the TBF than the TBR items. The findings are consistent with the view that TBR and TBF items differ (mainly) in recruitment of rehearsal processes and resulting memory strength.

Practice of two simultaneous component tasks in dual-task situations leads to an improvement in dual-task performance. The present paper reviews empirical evidence for this practice-related improvement and discusses its underlying cognitive mechanisms. In particular, the robustness of the phenomenon of dual-task practice advantage (DTPA) is evaluated. This phenomenon is described as an advantage in dual-task performance at the end of dual-task practice (i.e., simultaneous task practice) in comparison to the dual-task performance after single-task practice (i.e., separate task practice). The review investigates the existence of empirical evidence of the DTPA phenomenon and specifications of its mechanisms in the context of the allocation and scheduling hypothesis and the integration hypothesis. Evidence for the existence of the DTPA phenomenon and the allocation and scheduling hypothesis was demonstrated in dual tasks with (1) combinations of two sensorimotor tasks, (2) combinations of one continuous task and one sensorimotor task, (3) combinations of two working-memory tasks, and (4) combinations of one motor task and one cognitive task. In contrast, the findings demonstrate that the DTPA phenomenon in dual tasks with (5) combinations of two long-term memory retrieval tasks can instead be explained by the integration hypothesis. The relevance of these findings is discussed in relation to real-world problems.

Numerous studies suggest that sleep benefits memory. A major theoretical question in this area is however if sleep does so by passively shielding memories from interference that arises during wakefulness or by actively stabilizing and strengthening memories. A key finding by Ellenbogen et al. Current Biology , 16 , 1290–1294 ( 2006a ) indicates that sleep can protect memories from retroactive interference, which suggests that sleep plays more than a passive role for memory consolidation. Sample size in this study was however small and subsequent reports in the literature provided mixed results. We therefore conducted an online study via Zoom to replicate Ellenbogen et al. Current Biology , 16 , 1290–1294 ( 2006a ). Subjects were asked to study paired associates. After a 12-h delay that included either nocturnal sleep or daytime wakefulness, half of all subjects were asked to study an additional list to elicit retroactive interference. All participants were then asked to complete a memory test for the studied list(s). The results were fully consistent with those reported by Ellenbogen et al. Current Biology , 16 , 1290–1294 ( 2006a ). We discuss this successful replication against the background of the mixed literature, with a focus on the possibly critical role of study-design features, like the use of high learning criteria that resulted in performance being at ceiling, or a confound between interference and the length of the retention interval. A collaborative replication effort may be needed to reach a straightfoward answer to the question if sleep protects memories from interference (and under what conditions).

Memories are thought to undergo an episodic-to-semantic transformation in the course of their consolidation. We here test if repeated recall induces a similar semanticisation, and if the resulting qualitative changes in memories can be measured using simple feature-specific reaction time probes. Participants studied associations between verbs and object images, and then repeatedly recalled the objects when cued with the verb, immediately and after a two-day delay. Reaction times during immediate recall demonstrate that conceptual features are accessed faster than perceptual features. Consistent with a semanticisation process, this perceptual-conceptual gap significantly increases across the delay. A significantly smaller perceptual-conceptual gap is found in the delayed recall data of a control group who repeatedly studied the verb-object pairings on the first day, instead of actively recalling them. Our findings suggest that wake recall and offline consolidation interact to transform memories over time, strengthening meaningful semantic information over perceptual detail. Consolidation theories posit that memories gradually change in nature over time. Here the authors use a simple, feature-based reaction time task to show that with time and repeated remembering, access to conceptual features is preserved over perceptual detail, reflecting this qualitative change.

Recent reexaminations of the storage of verbal information in working memory have distinguished two mechanisms of maintenance. While a language-based mechanism of rehearsal was long considered the specific means of maintaining verbal information in the short term, another attention-based mechanism of refreshing has been more recently described. New evidence has established that these two mechanisms are affected by different constraints inherent to their respective language-based and attentional natures, have different impacts on recall performance, and are sustained by distinct brain networks. Moreover, adults can use either one or the other mechanism based on strategic choice or instructions. This dissociation presents some similarities with a dichotomy put forward in the 70s between mechanisms permitting short-term versus long-term maintenance, but many questions remain about the functioning of these mechanisms and their interplay.

Oscillatory activity robustly correlates with task demands during many cognitive tasks. However, not only are the network mechanisms underlying the generation of these rhythms poorly understood, but it is also still unknown to what extent they may play a functional role, as opposed to being a mere epiphenomenon. Here we study the mechanisms underlying the influence of oscillatory drive on network dynamics related to cognitive processing in simple working memory (WM), and memory recall tasks. Specifically, we investigate how the frequency of oscillatory input interacts with the intrinsic dynamics in networks of recurrently coupled spiking neurons to cause changes of state: the neuronal correlates of the corresponding cognitive process. We find that slow oscillations, in the delta and theta band, are effective in activating network states associated with memory recall. On the other hand, faster oscillations, in the beta range, can serve to clear memory states by resonantly driving transient bouts of spike synchrony which destabilize the activity. We leverage a recently derived set of exact mean-field equations for networks of quadratic integrate-and-fire neurons to systematically study the bifurcation structure in the periodically forced spiking network. Interestingly, we find that the oscillatory signals which are most effective in allowing flexible switching between network states are not smooth, pure sinusoids, but rather burst-like, with a sharp onset. We show that such periodic bursts themselves readily arise spontaneously in networks of excitatory and inhibitory neurons, and that the burst frequency can be tuned via changes in tonic drive. Finally, we show that oscillations in the gamma range can actually stabilize WM states which otherwise would not persist.