Monitoring retrieval from long‐term memory by slow event‐related brain potentials

Abstract

Slow event-related brain potentials of nine subjects were recorded in an experimentally controlled long-term memory retrieval task (the Fan paradigm) from electrode sites F3, Fz, F4, Cz, P3, Pz, and P4. In all retrieval conditions, a very pronounced DC-like negative potential appeared over the left frontal cortex. This negativity was switched on with the presentation of the probe stimuli and prevailed in some conditions throughout the total recording epoch of 14 s. Particular retrieval conditions became manifest in distinct slow wave effects. The amplitude of a bilaterally distributed frontal negative slow wave increased when a more diversified associative structure had to be searched. The amplitude of another negative slow wave, which peaked bilaterally over parietal areas, was affected by the type of concepts that had to be retrieved. The amplitude was larger with general concepts (category labels) and smaller with specific concepts (category exemplars). These results suggest that distinct strategies are invoked when subjects are required to draw conclusions about different contents stored permanently in an associative network.

Reasoning with Exceptions: An Event-related Brain Potentials Study

“…This explanation is supported by Baggio et al (2008), who also found a sustained negativity when a default inference had to be overridden and revised, albeit that the scalp distribution of the observed effect in our study was more central than in their study. Alternatively, the sustained negativity may reflect an attempt to link the exception with information retrieved from long-term memory, or extra working memory demands to hold information about the exception in mind in order to withdraw the conclusion (Markovits & Potvin, 2001;Vadeboncoeur & Markovits, 1999;Rösler, Heil, & Glowalla, 1993). However, the working memory account seems less likely because we failed to find any relationship between reading span and suppression, and between reading span and the ERP effect.…”

ERP effects of listening to speech compared to reading: the P600/SPS to syntactic violations in spoken sentences and rapid serial visual presentation

“…We also explicitly tested for the topographical di erences between the ®rst and second P600/SPS latency window. This was done after rescaling the e ect sizes in the two windows as z-scores such that for each window means and variances across electrode sites became 0 and 1, respectively [31]. This procedure is equivalent to the procedure suggested by McCarthy and Wood [19].…”

Event-related potentials elicited by spoken relative clauses

“…To some extent, a similar pattern was seen in previous w x w x work with visual sentences 15 and word pairs 17 ; negativities with a similar distribution but of shorter duration than these slow potentials were seen for moderate w x working memory loads by Ruchkin et al 32 . More w x recently, Rosler et al 30 have used ERPs to investigatë the fan effect and have shown very robust left anterior negativities related to the active retrieval and evaluation of information in these paradigms; moreover, the size of this frontal negativity increases with the difficulty of the comparison being made. Thus, more work will have to be done with both visual and auditory sentences, however, before we can be certain exactly what aspect of the processes involved are indexed by these slow potentials.…”