Associative Recognition Processes Are Modulated by Modality Relations

Abstract

Although memory of episodic associations is generally considered to be recollective in nature, it has been suggested that when stimuli are experienced as a unit, familiarity-related processes might contribute to their subsequent associative recognition. Furthermore, intradomain associations are believed to be unitized more readily than interdomain associations. To assess these claims, we tested associative recognition following two types of pair associate learning. In the unimodal task, stimulus pairs were pictures of common objects, whereas in the cross-modal task, stimulus pairs consisted of an object picture and an unrelated environmental sound. At test, participants discriminated intact from recombined pairs while ERPs were recorded. In the unimodal task only, associative recognition was accompanied by a robust frontal deflection reminiscent of a component commonly interpreted as related to familiarity processes. In contrast, ERP correlates of associative recognition observed at more posterior sites, akin to a component that has been related to recollection, were apparent in both tasks. These findings indicate that retrieval of unimodal associations can be supported by familiarity-related processes that are dissociable from recollective processes required for the retrieval of cross-modal associations.

Associative recognition processes are modulated by the semantic unitizability of memoranda

“…It therefore seems that regardless of the occurrence of early familiarity-related processes, late recollective processes may also contribute to the retrieval of associative information. This notion is supported by previous reports of recollection-based retrieval and their physiological correlates, irrespective of the presence or absence of familiarity and its effects (e.g., Diana et al, 2011;Greve et al, 2007;Rhodes & Donaldson, 2007Tibon et al, 2014). This would be expected by the dual-processes model of recognition memory, which proposes that the two processes are orthogonal.…”

“…The late recollection-related LPC was also expected to index item recognition for both semantically related and unrelated pairs. However, while some previous studies report that associative recognition elicits LPC regardless of the occurrence of earlier familiarity processes (e.g., Diana et al, 2011;Greve et al, 2007;Rhodes & Donaldson, 2007Tibon et al, 2014), in other cases, modulation of this component was reduced, or even eliminated, when it followed familiarity-related activations (e.g., Bader et al, 2010;Jäger et al, 2006;Kriukova et al, 2013). The latter findings suggest that if familiarity is sufficiently mnemonically diagnostic to support recognition, recollection may be bypassed.…”

“…Such models can be considered a generalization of ANOVA, but use maximum likelihood estimation instead of sum of squares decomposition. An advantage of such an approach over the standard repeated measures ANOVA is that mixed-effects models are better suited for complex designs (e.g., Bagiella, Sloan, & Heitjan, 2000; see also our previous reports, where we employed a similar approach: Tibon & Levy, 2014a, 2014bTibon et al, 2014). Moreover, such an approach is particularly recommended for unbalanced data, as in the current case in which the number of trials in each condition varied due to differences in accuracy rates between conditions (see Table 1).…”

“…As the individual members of intact and recombined pairs are equally familiar, it is argued that recollection is required to retrieve the newly formed associations between items. In recent years, however, a growing corpus of research has suggested that under certain circumstances familiarity might also contribute to associative memory -specifically, when the to-be-associated stimuli are bound together to form a unitized representation during study, and are thus perceived and encoded as a single unit entity Jäger, Mecklinger, & Kipp, 2006;Quamme, Yonelinas, & Norman, 2007;Rhodes & Donaldson, 2007Tibon & Levy, 2014a, 2014bTibon, Ben-Zvi, & Levy, 2014;Yonelinas, Kroll, Dobbins, & Soltani, 1999; for review, see Yonelinas et al, 2010). 1 Arguably, in such cases familiarity can contribute to associative recognition due to direct links between the components comprising the encoded representation (e.g., Mayes, Montaldi, & Migo, 2007).…”

“…In one type of bottom-up approach, the manipulation is primarily perceptual. This may take the form of comparing encoding presentations of unimodal, within-domain associative memoranda (e.g., picture pairs) with those of crossmodal, between-domain associative memoranda (e.g., picture-environmental sound pairs; Tibon & Levy, 2014b;Tibon et al, 2014). Alternatively, simultaneous versus sequential presentation of associative memoranda may differentially engender unitization at encoding (Tibon & Levy, 2014a).…”