Memory-related encoding-specificity paradigm: Experimental application to the exercise domain

Abstract

The Encoding-Specificity Paradigm indicates that memory recall will be superior when contextual factors are congruent between memory encoding and memory retrieval. However, unlike other contextual conditions (e.g., verbal context, mental operations, global feature context, mood dependency, and physical operations), this paradigm has nearly been ignored in the exercise domain. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the Encoding-Specificity Paradigm in the context of exercise and rest conditions. 24 young adults (age: M = 21 years) completed a within-subject, counterbalanced experiment involving four laboratory visits, including 1) R-R (rest-rest) condition, 2) R-E (rest-exercise) condition, 3) E-R (exercise-rest) condition, or 4) E-E (exercise-exercise) condition. The exercise bout included a 15-minute moderate-intensity walk on a treadmill. Memory recall was assessed via a 15 word-list task. Memory recall was greater for R-R (8.71 ± 3.1) versus R-E (7.46 ± 2.8), and similarly, for E-E (8.63 ± 2.7) versus E-R (8.21 ± 2.7). The mean word recall for the congruent and incongruent conditions, respectively, was 8.67 (2.4) and 7.83 (2.4). There was a statistically significant condition effect (F = 5.02; P = .03; partial η² = .18). This experiment provides direct support for the Encoding-Specificity Paradigm in the exercise domain.

SkillGym AI Digital Role Play to Support Leadership Soft Skills Development Through Practice: A Case Study

“…Since a neuroscientific explanation of the method is not the main purpose of the present statement-only a brief overview will be provided. Encoding-Specificity Paradigm [1,2] indicating that memory recall will be enhanced when contextual factors are congruent between memory encoding and memory retrieval, Global Environmental Context [1], and finally, we refer to automaticity as related to memory retrieval [3,4]. We claim that SkillGym might also impact on implicit processing of information, such as structural priming [5,6] and what we call "Dejà-vu Effect," based on Clearly et al [7] findings about deja-vu as a stimuli-driven phenomenon.…”

Rubber hands and astral bodies: An argument for the reality of a cognitive science of magic

“…Building on the work of Rossano (2007; and Farb (2012), it is argued that 1) ritual bridges hypnosis and meditation in its training of attention and induction of trance states, 2) hypnosis uses ritual actions to induce states similar to those found in meditation, and 3) meditative practices make use of ritual elements in their training to ease the achievement of self-hypnotic states. In the case of the latter, adding ritual elements to meditative practice helps induce encoding specificity, the well-studied psychological mechanism by which cues in the environment or mental state of an individual can facilitate recall of information, skills, or capacities encoded to memory in the presence of those cues (McLaughlin, 2019;Yanes, Frith, & Loprinzi, 2019) Beyond the more anthropological work on ritual of Winkelman and Rossano, recent work on the psychological aspects of ritual by Hobson and colleagues (Hobson et al, 2018) finds theoretical concurrence with the above arguments from anthropology and cognitive science.…”