The importance of interest for memory performance has been established in previous studies. One way to induce interest in experiments is to use trivia questions. However, previous studies have used only a limited number of trivia questions and these questions differ substantially across studies, making it difficult to ensure the comparability and generalizability of the findings. Most of these studies also have not differentiated between interest in the trivia question itself and interest in the corresponding answer. To address these issues, the current study established a normative database for 244 trivia questions with a large sample (N = 1498) and examined how pre-answer interest (i.e., interest in the question) and post-answer interest (i.e., interest in the answer) relate to learning performance. Participants were presented with trivia questions, asked to provide their best guess for the answer, rated their confidence in the guess, and indicated their interest in learning the true answer. Following the presentation of the answer, participants indicated their post-answer interest. One week later, participants were given a memory test on the questions. A multilevel structural equation model revealed that the positive relationship between pre-answer interest and memory was fully mediated by post-answer interest (i.e., interest in the questions' answer). Confidence had both a direct and a mediated effect (over interest) on memory. These results provide a more fine-grained analysis of how interest can fuel learning.

Distractions and multitasking are generally detrimental to learning and memory. Nevertheless, people often study while listening to music, sitting in noisy coffee shops, or intermittently checking their e-mail. The current experiments examined how distractions and divided attention influence one's ability to selectively remember valuable information. Participants studied lists of words that ranged in value from 1 to 10 points while completing a digit-detection task, while listening to music, or without distractions. Though participants recalled fewer words following digit detection than in the other conditions, there were no significant differences between conditions in terms of selectively remembering the most valuable words. Similar results were obtained across a variety of divided-attention tasks that stressed attention and working memory to different degrees, which suggests that people may compensate for divided-attention costs by selectively attending to the most valuable items and that factors that worsen memory do not necessarily impair the ability to selectively remember important information.

Background

Hormonal contraception (HC) is widely used throughout the world and has been associated with venous thrombosis (VT) such as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary emboli, and cerebral VT.

Objectives

To provide a current comprehensive overview of the risk of objectively confirmed VT with HC in healthy women compared to nonusers.

Search methods

PubMed was searched from inception to April 2018 for eligible studies in the English language, with hand searching from past systematic reviews.

Selection criteria

We selected original research evaluating risk of objectively confirmed VT in healthy women taking oral or nonoral HC compared with nonusers.

Data collection

The primary outcome of interest was a fatal or nonfatal VT in users of HC compared to nonusers or past users. Studies with at least twenty events were eligible. Adjusted relative risks with 95 percent confidence intervals were reported. Three independent reviewers extracted data from selected studies.

Results

1,962 publications were retrieved through the search strategy, with 15 publications included. Users of oral contraception with levonorgesterol had increased risk of VT by a range of 2.79-4.07, while other oral hormonal preparations increased risk by 4.0-48.6. Levonorgestrel intrauterine devices did not increase risk. Etonogestrel/ethinyl estradiol vaginal rings increased the risk of VT by 6.5. Norelgestromin/ethinyl estradiol patches increased risk of VT by 7.9. Etonogestrel subcutaneous implants by 1.4 and depot-medroxyprogesterone by 3.6. The risk of fatal VT was increased in women aged fifteen to twenty-four by 18.8-fold.

Conclusion

Users of HC have a significant increased risk of VT compared to nonusers. Current risks would project at least 300-400 healthy young women dying yearly in the United States due to HC. Women should be informed of these risks and offered education in fertility-awareness-based methods with comparable efficacy for family planning.

Summary

HC is widely used throughout the world and has been associated with blood clots in the legs and lungs. We searched the literature and found the risks of currently used forms of birth control increased between three- and ninefold for blood clots for healthy women. The risks found would project 300-400 women dying from using HC each year in the United States.

People are often exposed to more information than they can actually remember. Despite this frequent form of information overload, little is known about how much information people choose to remember. Using a novel "stop" paradigm, the current research examined whether and how people choose to stop receiving new-possibly overwhelming-information with the intent to maximize memory performance. Participants were presented with a long list of items and were rewarded for the number of correctly remembered words in a following free recall test. Critically, participants in a stop condition were provided with the option to stop the presentation of the remaining words at any time during the list, whereas participants in a control condition were presented with all items. Across 5 experiments, the authors found that participants tended to stop the presentation of the items to maximize the number of recalled items, but this decision ironically led to decreased memory performance relative to the control group. This pattern was consistent even after controlling for possible confounding factors (e.g., task demands). The results indicated a general, false belief that we can remember a larger number of items if we restrict the quantity of learning materials. These findings suggest people have an incomplete understanding of how we remember excessive amounts of information. (PsycINFO Database Record

Older adults often experience associative memory impairments but can sometimes remember important information. The current experiments investigate potential age-related similarities and differences associate memory for gains and losses. Younger and older participants were presented with faces and associated dollar amounts, which indicated how much money the person "owed" the participant, and were later given a cued recall test for the dollar amount. Experiment 1 examined face-dollar amount pairs while Experiment 2 included negative dollar amounts to examine both gains and losses. While younger adults recalled more information relative to older adults, both groups were more accurate in recalling the correct value associated with high-value faces compared to lower-value faces and remembered gist-information about the values. However, negative values (losses) did not have a strong impact on recall among older adults versus younger adults, illustrating important associative memory differences between younger and older adults.