Encoding In Social Context Enhances And Biases Long-Term Recognition Memory: Behavioral And Electrophysiological Evidence

Encoding often occurs in social contexts, yet research has hardly addressed their role in verbal memory. In three experiments, we investigated the behavioral and neural effects of encoding context on memory for positive, negative, and neutral adjectives, contrasting a social-feedback group (N=24) with an explicit verbal-learning (N=24) and a levels-of-processing group (N=24). Participants in the social-feedback group were not aware of a recognition session one week later, but their memory was better than the explicit learning or the levels-of-processing groups’. However, they also exhibited the strongest response bias, particularly for positive words. Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) revealed largest early negativities (EPN) and late positivities (LPP) in the social-feedback group. Only in the subsequent slow-wave did the explicit learning group show higher amplitudes than the other two groups, suggesting reliance on strategic rather than automatic processes. Still, context-driven incidental encoding outweighed explicit instructions, specifying a decisive role of social factors in memory.

The loci of Stroop effects: a critical review of methods and evidence for levels of processing contributing to color-word Stroop effects and the implications for the loci of attentional selection

Despite instructions to ignore the irrelevant word in the Stroop task, it robustly influences the time it takes to identify the color, leading to performance decrements (interference) or enhancements (facilitation). The present review addresses two questions: (1) What levels of processing contribute to Stroop effects; and (2) Where does attentional selection occur? The methods that are used in the Stroop literature to measure the candidate varieties of interference and facilitation are critically evaluated and the processing levels that contribute to Stroop effects are discussed. It is concluded that the literature does not provide clear evidence for a distinction between conflicting and facilitating representations at phonological, semantic and response levels (together referred to as informational conflict), because the methods do not currently permit their isolated measurement. In contrast, it is argued that the evidence for task conflict as being distinct from informational conflict is strong and, thus, that there are at least two loci of attentional selection in the Stroop task. Evidence suggests that task conflict occurs earlier, has a different developmental trajectory and is independently controlled which supports the notion of a separate mechanism of attentional selection. The modifying effects of response modes and evidence for Stroop effects at the level of response execution are also discussed. It is argued that multiple studies claiming to have distinguished response and semantic conflict have not done so unambiguously and that models of Stroop task performance need to be modified to more effectively account for the loci of Stroop effects.

Comparing Face and Object Processing in Perception and Recognition

Faces can be speedily processed, although they convey an immense amount of information. Hence, in psychophysiological experiments, human faces constitute very special stimuli! Numerous studies have investigated the electrophysiological correlates of face processing, showing the existence of multiple event-related components. Nevertheless, dissimilarities in various levels of processing are still controversial. In this present study, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine how facial processing is different in perception and recognition from object processing and also determined 95% confidence interval for the onset and peak time of the effects we found. Our results confirm the face-selectivity for the M170 component, but not always for the M100 component. Additionally, we observed a unique speed pattern for the M170 component in perception and recognition both at the onset and the peak time.

Processing Views of Remembering

The chapter describes and discusses previous accounts that viewed human memory as an activity of mind. These include members of the “Act Psychology School” and other early psychologists described by Boring (1950). The theoretical ideas of James (1890) and Bartlett (1932) are described and discussed, especially as emphasized in Bartlett’s 1932 classic book, Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology. The notions associated with “activity theory” in Soviet psychology are outlined, and the studies in educational psychology deriving from these theories are described. The relevance of Hebb’s theory of cell assemblies is pointed out, as is the congenial work of James Jenkins and his students in the 1960s and 1970s. These latter studies are a clear forerunner of later experiments in the levels of processing tradition. Finally, Robert Crowder’s views on proceduralism are summarized and discussed.

Closing the door to false memory: the effects of levels-of-processing and stimulus type on the rejection of perceptually vs. semantically dissimilar distractors

False recognition memory for nonstudied items that share features with targets can be reduced by retrieval monitoring mechanisms. The recall-to-reject process, for example, involves the recollection of information about studied items that disqualifies inconsistent test probes. Monitoring for specific features during retrieval may be enhanced by an encoding orientation that is recapitulated during retrieval. In two experiments, we used concrete words or door scenes as materials and manipulated the level of processing at study and the type of distractors presented at test. We showed that for the verbal material, semantic level of processing at study results in an effective rejection of semantically inconsistent distractors. However, for the pictorial material, the perceptual level of processing leads to an effective rejection of perceptually inconsistent distractors. For targets, the effect of levels of processing was observed for words but not for pictures. The results suggest that retrieval monitoring mechanisms depend on interactions between encoding orientation, study materials, and differentiating features of distractors.

Levels of Processing

This chapter focuses on the background and development of the levels of processing (LOP) ideas proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972) and on the empirical support for the ideas provided by Craik and Tulving (1975). The chapter describes how the concept arose from the British work on models of attention by Donald Broadbent and Anne Treisman in the 1960s; specifically on how the concept of depth of processing grafts a framework for memory research on to Treisman’s hierarchical model of selective attention. After a brief survey of empirical work, the chapter deals with criticisms and rebuttals of the LOP ideas and findings, its relations to other ideas such as transfer–appropriate processing and to some more recent extensions.

Retrieval Processes

Endel Tulving’s views of synergistic ecphory and cue-dependent forgetting are discussed and endorsed, in particular the view that external stimulation (or self-initiated internal stimulation) necessarily interacts with encoded records to yield retrieval. Paul Kolers’ view of retrieval as repetition of processing operations is also evaluated. Other topics include retrieval as recapitulation of encoding, transfer-appropriate processing, environmental and schematic support, and self-initiated activities. It is concluded that the concepts of levels of processing and transfer-appropriate processing are both necessary to describe observed patterns of retrieval. Two postulated bases for recognition memory—familiarity and recollection—are described and evaluated, as are the ideas of processing fluency and attribution proposed by Larry Jacoby. Finally, studies of involuntary retrieval, mind-wandering, and prospective memory are described and their implications assessed.

The integration of continuous audio and visual speech in a cocktail-party environment depends on attention

In noisy, complex environments, our ability to understand audio speech benefits greatly from seeing the speaker’s face. This is attributed to the brain’s ability to integrate audio and visual information, a process known as multisensory integration. In addition, selective attention to speech in complex environments plays an enormous role in what we understand, the so-called cocktail-party phenomenon. But how attention and multisensory integration interact remains incompletely understood. While considerable progress has been made on this issue using simple, and often illusory (e.g., McGurk) stimuli, relatively little is known about how attention and multisensory integration interact in the case of natural, continuous speech. Here, we addressed this issue by analyzing EEG data recorded from subjects who undertook a multisensory cocktail-party attention task using natural speech. To assess multisensory integration, we modeled the EEG responses to the speech in two ways. The first assumed that audiovisual speech processing is simply a linear combination of audio speech processing and visual speech processing (i.e., an A+V model), while the second allows for the possibility of audiovisual interactions (i.e., an AV model). Applying these models to the data revealed that EEG responses to attended audiovisual speech were better explained by an AV model than an A+V model, providing evidence for multisensory integration. In contrast, unattended audiovisual speech responses were best captured using an A+V model, suggesting that multisensory integration is suppressed for unattended speech. Follow up analyses revealed some limited evidence for early multisensory integration of unattended AV speech, with no integration occurring at later levels of processing. We take these findings as evidence that the integration of natural audio and visual speech occurs at multiple levels of processing in the brain, each of which can be differentially affected by attention.