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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

aural memory test baseline, visual pattern separation, long-term memory

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Visual pattern separation is the ability of an individual to correctly distinguish between images that they have already seen, images that are very similar but not identical, and novel images. Over the last eight years visual pattern separation has come to be well accepted as a measure of an individual’s ability to form long-term memories. Studies have been conducted to see the effects of aging, exercise, depression and anxiety among other things on their ability to do the pattern separation task (Shelton et. al 2013) (Holden et. al 2013). This has been a very useful metric so far, but by itself has failed to account for many of the expected outcomes. For example, despite the commonly held understanding that anxiety affects the ability of an individual to form long-term memories, in a recent study conducted in Dr. Kirwan’s lab, subjects who have been diagnosed with anxiety scored similarly to a control group of healthy individuals in the visual pattern separation test. An aural test could provide a second, crucial way to understand the process of memory formation and to see how the process is affected in different populations. Other studies have shown differences in how the brain handles visual and audio stimuli (Conway et. al 2009). As of yet the pattern separation task has never been done in the aural domain.

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