The time course of response suppression: No evidence for a gradual release from inhibition

Abstract

Most models of serial recall postulate that recalled items are suppressed and thus temporarily rendered unavailable. Response suppression can explain several results, for example the small number of erroneous repetitions and people's reluctance to report repeated items. Although it is clear that response suppression is not permanent (thus permitting renewed recall of an item on the next trial), nothing is known about its time course. We report two experiments that measured the time course of response suppression with a multiple cued-retrieval response-deadline method. Emphasis was on the extent of repetition inhibition for lists that contained a repeated item. Regardless of whether presentation was rapid (Experiment 1; 150 ms/item) or slow (Experiment 2; 500 ms/item), (a) the standard pattern of repetition inhibition and erroneous repetitions occurred and (b) repetition inhibition remained constant across increasing retrieval time. This suggests that the release from response suppression is a discrete, list-wide effect rather than a continuous, gradual wearing off. The latter conclusion is consistent with the operation of the SOB model (Farrell & Lewandowsky, 2002) but not with models that postulate complete suppression with gradual wearing off.

Response suppression contributes to recency in serial recall

“…Our findings complement other results that have underscored the importance of response suppression for ordered recall (Duncan & Lewandowsky, 2005;Henson, 1998a;Vousden & Brown, 1998). These results are problematic for models that rely exclusively on factors other than response suppression to account for recency (Anderson & Matessa Brown et al, 2007;Estes, 1972).…”

Tactile order memory: evidence for sequence learning phenomena found with other stimulus types

“…That is, once an item is retrieved it is suppressed to prevent perseveration. Furthermore, that repetition errors occurred after approximately 3 intervening items suggests that if release from response suppression does occur, it follows the outputting of a large proportion of the sequence (for further exploration of the release from response suppression see Duncan & Lewandowsky, 2005). Indeed, response suppression in tactile memory could be examined further through examination of the Ranschburg Effect.…”

Tactile Ranschburg effects: facilitation and inhibitory repetition effects analogous to verbal memory

“…Armstrong & Mewhort, 1995;Duncan & Lewandowsky, 2005;Henson, 1998a) the dependent variable for the repetition analysis was delta (d). This is calculated by computing the proportion of trials for which the two repeated items were correctly recalled in the correct position [P(r)] and subtracting the proportion of trials for which the corresponding items in the control trials were correctly recalled in the correct position [P(c)].…”

“…Here, participants are disinclined to recall within-sequence repeated items when such repetitions were present at encoding (e.g. Armstrong & Mewhort, 1995;Crowder, 1968;Duncan & Lewandowsky, 2005;Jahnke, 1969;Henson, 1998a;Maylor & Henson, 2000). For short presentation rates (approximately 100ms) the effect has been attributed to encoding failure (i.e.…”