Process-specific interference effects during recognition of spatial patterns and words.

Abstract

The authors examined recognition memory for words or visuospatial patterns under full (FA) or divided attention (DA) conditions with a distracting task requiring either phonological (rhyme) or visuospatial (curved-line) processing of letters, in 72 young adults. The authors found an interaction such that the curved-line distracting task had a more detrimental effect on corrected recognition, and discriminability measured by d', for spatial patterns than did the rhyme distracting task, whereas the reverse was true for memory of words. There was also a general effect of DA on response bias such that C increased under DA relative to FA conditions, regardless of the distracting task, and type of information being remembered. Results suggest memory interference from DA at retrieval is process-specific, and that DA at retrieval leads to a more conservative response strategy.

Representation of Linguistic Information Determines Its Susceptibility to Memory Interference

“…We aimed to show that individual differences in how participants are able to encode and store information influences the magnitude of memory interference experienced during its retrieval when performed under DA conditions with different distracting tasks. To offer further support for our claim, that learned mode of representation of information influences its susceptibility to interference, we compared the current set of data to those from our previous study (Fernandes and Guild [23]) in which English-only speakers had to retrieve English words (not Chinese characters) from memory under distracting conditions identical to those from our current study. Apart from using English words instead of Chinese characters, this experiment was exactly the same as our current study.…”

“…Our comparison to this study allowed for a direct contrast of the influence of representational bias due to linguistic background on susceptibility to interference from different distracting tasks. We predicted that the English-only group from Fernandes and Guild [23] would show the complementary pattern to the Chinese-English group in the current study, such that their memory for English words would be more susceptible to phonological than visuo-spatial interference. This pattern should occur, due to the phonological bias in processing of English words.…”

“…More recent work has refined this claim by suggesting representations of words or visuo-spatial information held in memory can be disrupted when the mode of processing (rather than material) overlaps with that required for retrieval of those items from memory. Specifically, Fernandes and Guild [23] tested whether episodic memory retrieval of words and spatial patterns was affected differently by concurrently performed distracting tasks which were distinguishable only by the type of processing required for each: phonological or visuo-spatial. They found an interaction such that a distracting task involving visuo-spatial processing of letters ( i.e.…”

“…To further explore individual differences in word representations, we performed a secondary analysis, comparing our data set to that of Fernandes and Guild [23], in which memory for English words was assessed in monolingual English-speaking participants under conditions of full and divided attention. Importantly for the comparison, the paradigm (including distracting tasks) was identical to that of the current experiment, except for the to-be-remembered stimuli.…”

Context-Dependent Recognition Is Related to Specific Processes Taking Place at Encoding and at Retrieval

“…Such conditions could help determine the extent of the effect various learning instructions have on the unique CE profile (Ahmad & Hockley, 2014). Third, we used typical, sensitive measures of memory performance that have been reported in previous studies as representing different recognition strategies (Fernandes & Guild, 2009;Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984). Yet, in order to illustrate a more sensitive accuracy measure in accordance with modern signal-detection theories, participants should have indicated their level of confidence when recognizing stimuli as old or not (Busey, Tunnicliff, Loftus, & Loftus, 2000;Tunney, Mullett, Moross, & Gardner, 2012).…”