The myth of the encoding-retrieval match

Nairne, James S.

doi:10.1080/09658210244000216

Cited by 228 publications

(214 citation statements)

References 24 publications

(26 reference statements)

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“…with We note that this model is agnostic as to whether interference reduces the number of items that can be maintained in memory, or acts only at retrieval (see Nairne, 2002a, for arguments that remembering involves both the status of the memory trace and retrieval), as to whether there is a separate short-term memory store or not, and about many other important distinctions. For the proofs below, we just need to assume that interference is a growing function of the number of items in memory.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

Endress

Szabó

2017

Psychological Review

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. However, the origins of these capacity limitations are debated, and generally attributed to active, attentional processes. Here, we show that the existence of interference among items in memory mathematically guarantees fixed and limited capacity limits under very general conditions, irrespective of any processing assumptions. Assuming that interference (i) increases with the number of interfering items and (ii) brings memory performance to chance levels for large numbers of interfering items, capacity limits are a simple function of the relative influence of memorization and interference. In contrast, we show that time-based memory limitations do not lead to fixed memory capacity limitations that are independent of the timing properties of an experiment. We show that interference can mimic both slot-like and continuous resource-like memory limitations, suggesting that these types of memory performance might not be as different as commonly believed. We speculate that slot-like WM limitations might arise from crowding-like phenomena in memory when participants have to retrieve items. Further, based on earlier research on parallel attention and enumeration, we suggest that crowding-like phenomena might be a common reason for the three major cognitive capacity limitations. As suggested by Miller (1956) and Cowan (2001), these capacity limitations might thus arise due to a common reason, even though they likely rely on distinct processes. Permanent repository link:

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Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

Endress

Szabó

2017

Psychological Review

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“…This degree of match, or cue-diagnosticity, can be defined as the retrieval cue's resonance the antecedent relative to its match to other items in memory (Nairne, 2002b). More specifically, the probability that a given antecedent will be successfully retrieved by a given cue, is determined by the resonance between cue and antecedent divided by the resonance between that cue and other items in memory, modulated by salience and other properties of the memory trace (Gillund and Shiffrin, 1984;Nairne, 2002b, see Van Dyke and for a discussion of cue combinatorics).…”

Section: Cue-based Retrieval and Cue-diagnosticity In Sentence Comprementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this sense, memory processes subserve online language comprehension; necessarily then, the language processing system becomes subject to properties of the human memory system. General memory variables, such as interference from other representations in memory that weaken the link between linguistically dependent items, may then determine successful retrieval (Nairne, 2002a(Nairne, , 2002bÖztekin and McElree, 2007;Watkins and Watkins, 1975). Consequently, aspects of the human memory system are relevant for any neurocognitive theory of the language faculty, yet remain largely underspecified in some extant processing models (e.g., Friederici, 2002;Hagoort, 2005; but see BornkesselSchlesewsky and Schlesewsky, 2009b;Lewis et al, 2006;McElree, 2006).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension

2012

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Successful language use requires access to products of past processing within an evolving discourse. A central issue for any neurocognitive theory of language then concerns the role of memory variables during language processing. Under a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, linguistic dependency resolution (e.g., retrieving antecedents) is subject to interference from other information in the sentence, especially information that occurs between the words that form the dependency (e.g., between the antecedent and the retrieval site). Retrieval interference may then shape processing complexity as a function of the match of the information at retrieval with the antecedent versus other recent or similar items in memory. To address these issues, we studied the online processing of ellipsis in Castilian Spanish, a language with morphological gender agreement. We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences containing nounphrase ellipsis indicated by the determiner otro/a ('another'). These determiners had a grammatically correct or incorrect gender with respect to their antecedent nouns that occurred earlier in the sentence. Moreover, between each antecedent and determiner, another noun phrase occurred that was structurally unavailable as an antecedent and that matched or mismatched the gender of the antecedent (i.e., a local agreement attractor). In contrast to extant P600 results on agreement violation processing, and inconsistent with predictions from neurocognitive models of sentence processing, grammatically incorrect determiners evoked a sustained, broadly distributed negativity compared to correct ones between 400 and 1000 ms after word onset, possibly related to sustained negativities as observed for referential processing difficulties. Crucially, this effect was modulated by the attractor: an increased negativity was observed for grammatically correct determiners that did not match the gender of the attractor, suggesting that structurally unavailable noun phrases were at least temporarily considered for grammatically correct ellipsis. These results constitute the first ERP evidence for cue-based retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences.

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“…Recently, Nairne (2001Nairne ( , 2002 challenged the idea that the encoding-retrieval match played a veritable causal role in performance and insisted on a view where retrieval is conceived of as a discrimination problem.…”

Section: Cue Overloadmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One way in which this analysis can be made explicit is by considering a simple choice rule, as often incorporated in memory and categorisation models (Nairne, 2001(Nairne, , 2002Nosofsky, 1986). This choice rule states that the probability that a particular event, E 1 , will be retrieved from memory depends on how well a cue, X 1 , matches (s for similarity) the target E 1 to the exclusion of other retrieval candidates (E 2 , E 3 , …E n ), as follows:…”

Section: Memory-as-discriminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Memory as discrimination: A challenge to the encoding–retrieval match principle.

Poirier

Nairne

Morin

et al. 2012

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cogni

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This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractFour experiments contrasted the predictions of a general encoding-retrieval match hypothesis with those of a view claiming that the distinctiveness of the cue-target relationship is the causal factor in retrieval. In Experiments 1, 2, and 4 participants learned the relationships between four targets and trios of cues; in Experiment 3 there were three targets, each associated with a pair of cues. A learning phase was followed by a cued-recognition task where the correct target had to be identified based on one or more of the cues. The main performance measurement was response time. Learning was designed to lead to high accuracy so effects could be attributed to retrieval efficiency rather than to variations in encoding. The nature of the cues and targets was varied across experiments. The critical factor was whether each cue was uniquely associated with the to-be-recalled target or not. All experiments orthogonally manipulated 1) how discriminative-or uniquely associated with a target-each cue was and 2) the degree of overlap between the cues present during learning and those present at retrieval. The novel finding reported here is that increasing the encoding retrieval match can hinder performance if the increase simultaneously reduces how specifically cues predict a target-that is, a cue's diagnostic value. Encoding-retrieval match was not the factor that determined the effectiveness of retrieval. Our findings suggest that increasing the encoding-retrieval match can lead to no change, an increase, or a decrease in retrieval performance. Memory as discrimination 3Memory as Discrimination:A Challenge to the Encoding-Retrieval Match PrincipleOne of the most fundamental questions that research on human cognition has to answer is how we remember -or retrieve information from memory. A better knowledge of this process will contribute to our understanding of normal memory functioning, of forgetting, and of the memory problems that accompany various illnesses and brain disorders.When considering memory from this perspective, we are referring to explicit and conscious attempts to retrieve events or information from our past -we are referring to recollectionor what is typically known as retrieval from explicit/episodic memory (Tulving, 2002).

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The myth of the encoding-retrieval match

Cited by 228 publications

References 24 publications

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

Interference and memory capacity limitations.

Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension

Memory as discrimination: A challenge to the encoding–retrieval match principle.

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