1. Effects of Working Memory on Spontaneous Recognition
Fatma Ebru Ates & Dinkar Sharma
Cognitive Psychology, School of Psychology, University of Kent.
Corresponding authors: FEA:
INTRODUCTION
Spontaneous recognition (SR) could be described as a feeling of familiarity which occurs automatically and unintentionally.
Anderson et al. (2011) found that older adults showed SR on a memory Stroop task (MST) and younger adults did so when their attention was divided by a secondary listening task (3). In the MST, SR was measured as the effects of old vs. new distractors (picture) on recognition of targets (words).
We investigated effects of dividing attention with a working memory (WM) on SR in healthy young adults.
Experiment 1
Experiment 2
SAMPLE AND DESIGN
Participants: 50 right-handed, neurologically healthy English speakers.
Design: The experiment contained 10 study-test rounds, with 6 words and 6 pictures in each study phase (blocked), and 12 pictures with 12 superimposed words in each recognition test phase.
A working memory task (1-back and 2-back) was done simultaneously with the recognition test in order to load WM and divide attention (3).
SAMPLE AND DESIGN
Participants: 36 right-handed, neurologically healthy English speakers.
Design: The experiment contained 5 study-test rounds, with 12 words and 12 pictures in each study phase (mixed), and 24 pictures with 24 superimposed words in each recognition test phase.
A working memory task (1-back and 2-back) was done simultaneously with the recognition test in order to load WM and divide attention (3).
RESULTS
The analysis of hits for old words revealed a significant main effect of distracter type with more hits for old distractors compared to new distractors, F (1, 34) = 4.54, p = 0.04.
The analysis of false alarms for new targets revealed a significant main effect of distracter type with more false alarms for old distractors compared to new distractors, F (1, 34) = 14.12, p =
A paired sample t-test revealed that participants in the 2-back condition, hits for new targets were greater when they were coupled with new vs old distractors [t(16) = 2.6, p = 0.019] and hits for old targets were greater when coupled with old distractors vs new distractors [t(16) = 4.2, p = 0.001].
Table 2. Mean hit and false alarm scores for Experiment 2
No SR effects were found in the 1-back WM task.
Evidence for SR revealed only for 2-back task.
RESULTS
The analysis of hits to old words revealed a significant main effect of distracter type, F (1, 43) = 5.32, p = Unexpectedly this was due to more hits to new vs. old distractors.
The analysis of false alarms revealed a significant main effect of distractor type with more false alarms to old vs. new distractors F (1, 43) = 11.98, p =
Table 1. Mean hit and false alarm scores for Experiment 1
There was no significant interaction effect between distractor type and WM load.
MST with blocked format and fewer stimuli during encoding could make the MST easier than Anderson’s study which may lead the different results.
Difficulty
Old Target
New Target
Old Distractor
New Distractor
1-back
0.85 (0.11)
0.87 (0.09)
0.06 (0.07)
0.03 (0.04)
2-back
0.75 (0.13)
0.80 (0.16)
0.12 (0.12)
0.10 (0.12)
Difficulty
Old Target
New Target
Old Distractor
New Distractor
1-back
0.79 (0.16)
0.77 (0.17)
0.12 (0.13)
0.09 (0.15)
2-back
0.81 (0.12)
0.74 (0.18)
0.20 (0.16)
0.13 (0.12)
CONCLUSIONS
We used a novel task to measure SR with an ongoing WM task to divide attention. For experiment 2, we found similar results with Anderson et al. (3). 2-back task, unlike 1-back task created enough effect to divide attention and resulted in participants effected by the oldness of items encoded in the study phase.
When the target item was old, there was an increase in hits to old distractors vs new distractors whereas when the target item was new, there was an increase in hits to new distractors vs. old distractors. These findings suggest that if the oldness of target and distractor items are different (incongruent) it facilitates SR.
Quantity of the items to be encoded in the study phase effects occurrence of SR. If there are less items to kept in mind during the recognition task SR is less likely to occur.
We might gain further insight into SR by considering different cognitive and neural underpinning of expression of emotion and mood.
PROCEDURE
Study phase
Test phase
Ignore the picture. Has the word been shown before? (6000ms)
Try to memorize words and pictures.(2500ms)
boat
boat
Target (Word)
Distracter (Picture) 1
OLD 2
NEW 3 4
Conditions:
There were four conditions: new words and new pictures (6 trials), new words and old pictures (6 trials), old words and new pictures (6 trials) and old words and old pictures (6 trials).
Working Memory task: 5
Is the number on the current trial is the same with two numbers before?
REFERENCES
1.Rasmussen AS, Ramsgaard SB, Berntsen D. Frequency and Functions of Involuntary and Voluntary Autobiographical Memories Across the Day
2.Berntsen D. Involuntary autobiographical memories. Applied Cognitive Psychology
3.Anderson BA, Jacoby LL, Thomas RC, Balota DA. The effects of age and divided attention on spontaneous recognition. Memory & Cognition. 2011;39(4):