Intra- and Inter-Item Associations Doubly Dissociate the Electrophysiological Correlates of Familiarity and Recollection

Abstract

Single-process models of recognition memory posit that recognizing is based on a unidimensional value of global memory strength. By contrast, dual-process models propose the existence of two independent processes subserving the explicit recognition of previously encountered episodes, namely "familiarity" and "recollection." Familiarity represents a noncontextual form of recognition that may only support the retrieval of associative information when the to-be-associated information can be unitized, such as when two photographs depicting the same person are memorized (intra-item associations). Conversely, recollection enables retrieving associations between arbitrarily linked information, such as associations between photographs of different persons (inter-item associations). By measuring event-related brain potentials (ERPs), we obtained a double dissociation of familiarity and recollection that strongly favors dual-process accounts of recognition memory: the electrophysiological correlate of familiarity was significantly larger for intra- than for inter-item associations. Conversely, the electrophysiological correlate of recollection was significantly larger for inter- than for intra-item associations.

Electrophysiological evidence for the effect of interactive imagery on episodic memory: Encouraging familiarity for non-unitized stimuli during associative recognition

“…Although familiarity is traditionally associated with item recognition, the present study reinforces the idea that familiarity can be used to support retrieval during an associative recognition task, consistent with recent behavioural evidence of face recognition (Yonelinas et al, 1997), behavioural evidence from amnesic patients (Quamme et al, 2007), electrophysiological evidence for pre-existing associations between words (Rhodes and Donaldson, 2007), and for pairs of faces (Jager et al, 2006). We interpret this finding as showing that the use of interactive imagery at encoding successfully encouraged unitization of these word-pairs in memory, and this in turn leads to familiarity becoming a viable retrieval route.…”

Remember and know judgments during recognition in chronic schizophrenia

“…Our results with regard to the retrieval of stimulus feature information corroborate those of others in suggesting that patients with schizophrenia have a deficit in binding information into a coherent episodic memory (Danion et al 1999;Waters et al 2004). More specifically, in terms of a deficit in associative learning and consistent with a larger deficit in recollection than familiarity (Jager et al 2006;Mayes et al 2007;Staresina and Davachi 2006), this study, to our knowledge, is the first to show a deficit in inter-item, but not intra-item associative learning in patients with schizophrenia compared with controls.…”

“…Furthermore, there is some evidence from clinical (Mayes et al 2007), electrophysiological (Jager et al 2006), and neuroimaging (Staresina and Davachi 2006) studies that suggests that "intra-item" and "inter-item" learning have separate neural correlates, with "intra-item" learning relying on the perirhinal cortex and familiarity processes, and "inter-item" learning involving the hippocampus and relational/ recollection processes.…”

Is a novel conceptual unit more than the sum of its parts?: FMRI evidence from an associative recognition memory study

“…Although evidence for reduced recollection for unitized associations has been reported before in ERP Jäger, Mecklinger, & Kipp, 2006;Kriukova, Bridger, & Mecklinger, 2013) as well as fMRI studies (Ford et al, 2010), this finding has until now received only little attention.…”