Short article: Visual similarity at encoding and retrieval in an item recognition task

Mate, Judit; Baqués, Josep

doi:10.1080/17470210802680769

“…Consistent with recent findings (Johnson et al, 2009; Lin & Luck, 2009; Mate & Baques, 2009), memory sensitivity was higher when the encoding items were similar than dissimilar, F (1, 30) = 13.92, p < .01, η p 2 =.32. However, there was a marginally significant interaction between experiment and encoding similarity, F (1, 30) = 3.95, p = .057, η p 2 =.12, as the effect of encoding similarity was stronger in Experiment 1b than 1a.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Finally, Experiment 1 showed higher d′ for the high-encoding-similarity condition than the low-encoding-similarity condition, replicating recent findings (Johnson et al, 2009; Lin & Luck, 2009; Mate & Baques, 2009). This difference may partly arise from relational encoding of memory items that makes it easier to chunk similar items than dissimilar ones.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 84%

“…Recent studies have shown that unlike verbal WM, increased similarity in the to-be-encoded items results in better performance in visual WM tasks (Johnson, Spencer, Luck, & Schoner, 2009; Lin & Luck, 2009; Mate & Baques, 2009). Lin and Luck (2009) suggested that the representation of highly similar visual items may be more stable than that of dissimilar items.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity.

Makovski

¹

,

Watson

²

,

Koutstaal

³

et al. 2010

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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Visual working memory (WM) is traditionally considered a robust form of visual representation that survives changes in object motion, observer's position, and other visual transients. This study presents data that are inconsistent with the traditional view. We show that memory sensitivity is dramatically influenced by small variations in the testing procedure, supporting the idea that representations in visual WM are susceptible to interference from testing. In this study, participants were shown an array of colors to remember. After a short retention interval, memory for one of the items was tested with either a same-different task or a 2-alternative-forced-choice (2AFC) task. Memory sensitivity was much lower in the 2AFC task than in the same-different task. This difference was found regardless of encoding similarity or whether visual WM required a fine memory resolution or a coarse resolution. The 2AFC disadvantage was reduced when participants were informed shortly before testing which item would be probed. The 2AFC disadvantage diminished in perceptual tasks and was not found in tasks probing visual long-term memory. These results support memory models that acknowledge the labile nature of visual WM, and have implications for the format of visual WM and its assessment.

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“…Stimulus density or similarity is a fundamental determent of cognitive processes ranging from attention (Nosofsky, 1986;Ward, Duncan, & Shapiro, 1997), visual search (Phillips, Takeda, & Kumada, 2006), storage (Mate & Baqués, 2009), retrieval (Glanzer, Knoppenaal, Nelson, 1972;Lewandowsky & Farrell, 2008;Nosofsky, 1988Nosofsky, , 1991, and processing speed (Unkelbach et al, 2010) to evaluative judgments (Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner, 2008). The differential density might therefore account for a number of observed valence asymmetries in information processing (Unkelbach, 2012).…”

Section: The Density Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

A density explanation of valence asymmetries in recognition memory

Alves

¹

,

Unkelbach

²

,

Burghardt

³

et al. 2015

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The density hypothesis states that positive information is more similar than negative information, resulting in higher density of positive information in mental representations. The present research applies the density hypothesis to recognition memory to explain apparent valence asymmetries in recognition memory, namely, a recognition advantage for negative information. Previous research explained this negativity advantage on the basis of valence-induced affect. We predicted that positive information's higher density impairs recognition performance. Two old-new word recognition experiments tested whether differential density between positive and negative stimuli creates a negativity advantage in recognition memory, over and above valence-induced affect. In Experiment 1, participants better discriminated negative word stimuli (i.e., less false alarms) and showed a response bias towards positive words. Regression analyses showed the asymmetry to be function of density and not of valence. Experiment 2 varied stimulus density orthogonal to valence. Again, discriminability and response bias were a function of density and not of valence. We conclude that the higher density of positive information causes an apparent valence asymmetry in recognition memory.

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“…Recent studies have shown that unlike verbal WM, increased similarity in the to-be-encoded items results in better performance in visual WM tasks (Johnson, Spencer, Luck, & Schoner, 2009;Lin & Luck, 2009;Mate & Baques, 2009). Lin and Luck (2009) suggested that the representation of highly similar visual items may be more stable than that of dissimilar items.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity

Makovski¹,

Watson²,

Koutstaal³

et al. 2010

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Visual working memory (WM) is traditionally considered a robust form of visual representation that survives changes in object motion, observer's position, and other visual transients. This study presents data that are inconsistent with the traditional view. We show that memory sensitivity is dramatically influenced by small variations in the testing procedure, supporting the idea that representations in visual WM are susceptible to interference from testing. In this study, participants were shown an array of colors to remember. After a short retention interval, memory for one of the items was tested with either a same-different task or a 2-alternative-forced-choice (2AFC) task. Memory sensitivity was much lower in the 2AFC task than in the same-different task. This difference was found regardless of encoding similarity or whether visual WM required a fine memory resolution or a coarse resolution. The 2AFC disadvantage was reduced when participants were informed shortly before testing which item would be probed. The 2AFC disadvantage diminished in perceptual tasks and was not found in tasks probing visual long-term memory. These results support memory models that acknowledge the labile nature of visual WM, and have implications for the format of visual WM and its assessment.

show abstract

Short article: Visual similarity at encoding and retrieval in an item recognition task

Cited by 22 publications

References 29 publications

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity.

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity.

A density explanation of valence asymmetries in recognition memory

Method matters: Systematic effects of testing procedure on visual working memory sensitivity

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