The visual nonverbal memory trace is fragile when actively maintained, but endures passively for tens of seconds

Abstract

Despite attempts at active maintenance in the focus of attention, the fragile nature of the visual nonverbal memory trace may be revealed when the retention interval between target memoranda and probed recall on a trial is extended. In contrast, a passively maintained or unattended visual memory trace may be revealed as persisting proactive interference extending across quite extended intervals between trials in a recent probes task. The present study, comprising five experiments, used this task to explore the persistence of such a passive visual memory trace over time. Participants viewed some target visual items (for example, abstract colored patterns) followed by a variable retention interval and a probe item. The task was to report whether the probe matched one of the targets or not. A decaying active memory trace was indicated by poorer performance as the memory retention interval was extended on a trial. However, when the probe was a member of the target set from the preceding trial, task performance was poorer than a comparison novel probe, demonstrating proactive interference. Manipulations of the intertrial interval revealed that the temporal persistence of the passive memory trace of an old target was impressive, and proactive interference was largely resilient to a simple 'cued forgetting' manipulation. These data support the proposed two-process memory conception (active-passive memory) contrasting fragile active memory traces decaying over a few seconds with robust passive traces extending to tens of seconds.

Tracking Proactive Interference in Visual Memory

“…These interval lengths were chosen as that previous study did find a temporal recovery from PI, showing that the difference between the short and long delays was sufficient. In addition, the shortest inter-trial interval was briefer than those used in some other similar studies ( McKeown et al, 2014 , 2020 ), which may increase the chances of detecting changes to PI.…”

“…Targets and probes were selected from the shape-line (SL) stimuli used in McKeown et al (2020 , Experiments 4–5, see Figure 1 for examples). These are simple stimuli featuring a single shape (a circle, a square, a triangle, a diamond, a star, a cross, an “L” and an “X”) and three lines of different length/orientation.…”

“…PI was documented on both response time and accuracy measures at a short 300 ms inter-trial interval, but this disappeared after an 8.3 s delay. More recently, McKeown et al (2020) conducted five experiments with visual material in the recent probes task. In two of these experiments, there was some evidence for PI declining over the inter-trial interval, though not in the other three.…”

“…Second, the study aimed to determine whether factors that were not controlled or tested in prior studies influenced the lifetime of PI. While several studies have examined the influence of the inter-trial interval on PI in visual memory (e.g., McKeown et al, 2014 , 2020 ; Mercer and Duffy, 2015 ), there has been little attempt to investigate the factors that may affect the temporal persistence of PI. To do this in the current study, the reported experiments assessed whether the effect of PI over short and long inter-trial intervals was affected by the number of targets to be remembered (Experiment 1) or the number of stimuli forming the target set (Experiment 2).…”

A Random Controlled Trial to Examine the Efficacy of Blank Slate: A Novel Spaced Retrieval Tool with Real-Time Learning Analytics

“…Learning is fundamentally about retrieving; we learn in order to later remember and apply what we have recalled. Practicing retrieval while you study is thought to strengthen the neurosynaptic connections that are the basis of memory traces, enriching and improving the learning process [38]. Indeed, there has been an exponential rise in the number of papers published on retrieval practice in education journals between 1991 and 2015 [9].…”