Short-term Temporal Changes in Free Recall

Postman, Leo; Phillips, Laura W.

doi:10.1080/17470216508416422

Cited by 389 publications

(304 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…4C), we performed an analysis of the neural correlates of the primacy effect in our data. It has been well established that rehearsal is associated with enhanced recall for early list items [i.e., the primacy effect (36)(37)(38)(39)(40)]. Thus, if our basic findings were driven by rehearsal, one might expect that participants exhibiting strong neural contiguity should also show a strong primacy effect.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Manning

Polyn

Baltuch³

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

221

223

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Psychological theories of memory posit that when people recall a past event, they not only recover the features of the event itself, but also recover information associated with other events that occurred nearby in time. The events surrounding a target event, and the thoughts they evoke, may be considered to represent a context for the target event, helping to distinguish that event from similar events experienced at different times. The ability to reinstate this contextual information during memory search has been considered a hallmark of episodic, or event-based, memory. We sought to determine whether context reinstatement may be observed in electrical signals recorded from the human brain during episodic recall. Analyzing electrocorticographic recordings taken as 69 neurosurgical patients studied and recalled lists of words, we uncovered a neural signature of context reinstatement. Upon recalling a studied item, we found that the recorded patterns of brain activity were not only similar to the patterns observed when the item was studied, but were also similar to the patterns observed during study of neighboring list items, with similarity decreasing reliably with positional distance. The degree to which individual patients displayed this neural signature of context reinstatement was correlated with their tendency to recall neighboring list items successively. These effects were particularly strong in temporal lobe recordings. Our findings show that recalling a past event evokes a neural signature of the temporal context in which the event occurred, thus pointing to a neural basis for episodic memory.EEG | electrocorticography | oscillations | free recall | contiguity T he pivotal distinction between memory for facts (semantic memory) and memory for episodes or experiences (episodic memory) has been argued to reflect, at least in part, the reinstatement of a gradually changing context representation that reflects not only external conditions, but also an ever-changing internal context state (1, 2). According to this view, the unique quality of episodic memory is that in remembering an episode, we partially recover its associated mental context, and that this context information conveys some sense of when the experience took place, in terms of its relative position along our autobiographical time line.A number of laboratory memory tasks rely on episodic memory, including experimenter-cued tasks (e.g., item recognition and cued recall) and self-cued tasks (e.g., free recall). Performing these episodic memory tasks requires distinguishing the current list item from the rest of one's experience. According to early theories of episodic memory (e.g., 3, 4), context representations are composed of many features that fluctuate from moment to moment, gradually drifting through a multidimensional feature space. These contextual features may reflect environmental cues, recently studied items, participants' internal mental states, or may evolve randomly over time. During recall, the context representation forms part of th...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 82%

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Manning

Polyn

Baltuch³

et al. 2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

221

223

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“…For example, when rehearsal of initial list items is reduced or prevented by presenting a free recalllist in an incidental learning situation (Marshall & Werder, 1972) or by manipulating rehearsal strategies by instructions (Fischler, Rundus, & Atkinson, 1970;Glanzer & Meinzer, 1967;Palmer & Ornstein, 1971), the primacy effect in immediate recall is reduced or eliminated, while the recency effect continues to be present. On the other hand, if rehearsal of terminal input positions is hampered by introducing a filled delay interval before the immediate test, the recency effect is reduced, while primacy continues to be manifested (Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966;Postman & Phillips, 1965).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incentives, information, rehearsal, and the negative recency effect

Light

1974

Memory & Cognition

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The negative recency effect is generally attributed to inadequate rehearsal of terminal input items during study. In two experiments, Ss were encouraged to increase rehearsal of initial or terminal input items by offers of incentives for remembering these items and information that there would be a delayed memory test (Experiment I) or by explicit instructions to rehearse terminal items and provision of added rehearsal time (Experiment II). Serial position curves in immediate and delayed recall were little affected by these manipulations. These results are more in line with models that give rehearsal the role of maintaining items in a short-term store than with models that accord rehearsal a role in transfer of information to a more permanent store.

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“…An important problem for this research is that many studies have failed to find a negative recency effect in an initial recall test delayed by an irrelevant interpolated activity (e.g., Bruce & Crowley, 1970;Glanzer & Cunitz, 1966;Glanzer, Gianutsos, & Dubin, 1969;Jacoby & Bartz, 1972;Postman & Phillips, 1965;Raymond, 1969;Richardson & Baddeley, 1975). Watkins and Watkins (1974) suggested that an irrelevant distractor task induced an elaborative mode of rehearsal for the last few list items.…”

Section: Variations In the Negative Recency Effect John T E Richardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variations in the negative recency effect

Richardson

1979

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Short-term Temporal Changes in Free Recall

Cited by 389 publications

References 12 publications

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search

Incentives, information, rehearsal, and the negative recency effect

Variations in the negative recency effect

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