Immediate recognition memory for wine

Abstract

Word count: 3994 (excluding references but including the acknowledgement section) AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank Dr. John Williams for his advice regarding the selection of wines, and both Prof. Geoff Ward and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on the manuscript. AbstractWe describe a preliminary investigation concerning the short-term recognition memory function for gustatory stimuli (wines). In Experiment 1a, 24 non-expert wine drinkers completed a yes/no recognition task for 3-wine sequences. For the raw recognition scores, the serial position function comprised both primacy and recency. Recency did not, however, achieve significance for the d′ scores. In Experiment 1b, 24 participants completed the same yes/no recognition task for 3-visual matrix sequences. In contrast to Experiment 1a, the serial position function comprised recency and an absence of primacy. We argue that the presence of primacy for the wine sequences cannot be interpreted via a verbal labelling strategy, nor can it be interpreted via proactive interference from the first wine in the list on subsequent list items. The result suggests qualitative differences in the memory processing for gustatory and non-verbal visual stimuli.

Item-specific proactive interference in olfactory working memory

“…Recognition sensitivity (d') was significantly above chance, demonstrating that participants were able to perform the task. Yes/no recognition performance for the 4-odour sequences revealed some evidence for recency but no primacy; a function consistent with when visual stimuli are employed in this task (Johnson, Volp, & Miles, 2014;Kerr, Avons, & Ward, 1999). However, the main focus of Experiment 1 concerned analysis of the negative probes (lures) and we report an absence of recent probe PI for hard-to-name odours.…”

“…This difference is curious given similarities in the serial position functions produced across stimuli in the present study for single yes/no recognition (recency but not primacy, consistent with Hay, Smyth, Hitch, & Horton, 2007;Johnson et al, 2014;Kerr et al, 1999). However, beyond the present study, memory for olfactory stimuli have produced serial position functions that appear qualitatively different to other stimulus types (Johnson et al, 2013;Johnson & Miles, 2009;Reed, 2000).…”

“…We argue that this is unlikely because (1) performance was significantly above chance and (2) the conventional serial position function was observed for single yes/no recognition (e.g. Johnson et al, 2014;Kerr et al, 1999).…”

“…see Johnson & Miles, 2009;Reed, 2000) and this study assesses cross-modal differences in yes/no recognition functions. Second, immediate yes/no recognition has been shown to produce a specific serial position function for visual stimuli (Hay et al, 2007;Johnson, Volp, & Miles, 2014;Kerr, Avons, & Ward, 1999); in later studies using visual stimuli (Experiments 3 and 4) we are able to check whether our task has produced this canonical function. Based upon these previous studies (Hay et al, 2007;Johnson et al, 2014;Kerr et al, 1999), we predict that recognition for positive probes (i.e.…”

Primacy and recency effects for taste.

“…Recent work by A. J. Johnson, Volp, and Miles (2014) tested WM for tastes using lists of three liquids.…”