Part-list Cueing Effect In Recognition And Free Recall Tasks: Mechanism And Influencing Factors

There is much more information stored in an individual’s memory than the individual can remember at a particular point in time. Numerous factors determine whether an available memory can be accessed during a retrieval attempt. A particularly crucial factor is the presence of adequate retrieval cues.However, retrieval cues are not always beneficial for memory performance and, under certain conditions, can even be detrimental. Indeed, when people are asked to recall items from a previously studied list and are given a subset of the items on that list as retrieval cues, they often do more poorly at recalling the remaining items on the list than do people asked to recall the items in the absence of such retrieval cues. This finding has attracted the attention of memory researchers in memory area for almost fifty years, and extensive research has established part-list cuing inhibition as a robust effect occurring across a range of conditions.An old, though still prominent, account of part-list cuing is strategy disruption hypothesis. According to this account, participants form individual retrieval plans or strategies when they encode a set of items. Such retrieval plans can be based on a variety of information to organize recall, including temporal, spatial, and interitem associative information. The theory assumes that when part-list cues are presented, these cues disrupt retrieval by forcing a serial recall order that is inconsistent with the initial retrieval plan. Another more recent account of part-list cuing is retrieval inhibition hypothesis. This account assumes that the presentation of part-list cues leads to covert retrieval of the cue items at test. The covert retrieval is assumed to cause inhibition of the noncue items, very similar to how overt retrieval of a subset of previously learned material has been shown to cause inhibition of the nonretrieved material. The mechanism and impact factor of part-list cueing effect was examined using recognition and free recall task in present study.Two studies including six experiments were carried out.Four experiments were included in study one, the empirical support for retrieval inhibition hypothesis was carried out in three contexts:the process dissociation, the individual difference, and the inhibition process. Using the remember/know procedure (Experiment la) and the receiver operating characteristic procedure (Experiment lb), experiment1examined how the familiarity and recollection memory processes contributed to part-list cueing effect, and then providing support for retrieval inhibition hypothesis. On the basis of behavior experiment, using the same procedure as experiment la, experiment2investigated the old/new effect of familiarity and recollection, as well as the recollection effect of the part-list and no part-list retrieval conditions by using64-channel ERP technology, providing the neural mechanism of part-list cueing effect some supplements. Experiment3examined the relationship between cognitive inhibition, which was assessed by means of working memory capacity (WMC) and Stroop task, and the part-list cueing effect. Using a new paradigm which combines the classical part-list cuing paradigm with emotional Stroop task, experiment4further evaluated the inhibitory executive-control account of part-list cuing effect.Study two explored the effect of encoding-retrieval match and cue-overload on part-list cueing effect. Adopting perceptual context match task (Experiment5a) and semantic content match task (Experiment5b), experiment5examined the effect of encoding-retrieval match on part-list cueing effect. On the basis of experiment5, experiment6examined the combined effect of encoding-retrieval match and cue-overload on part-list cueing effect.Combining with the results of study one and study two, the conclusion were as follows:(1) The behavioral resluts indicated that the part-list cueing effect of recognition task reflected a reduction in general memory strength; The ERP results showed that the presentation of part-list cues affected the FN400old/new effect which reflects the familiarity process of recognition memory in old/new judgment, and the presentation of part-list cues affected the know old/new effect which reflects the familiarity process of recognition memory in remember/know judgment. Both the behavioral and ERP resluts are consistent with single-process account of recognition memory.(2) There was a positive relationship between WMC and PLC and a negative relationship between Stroop effect and part-list cuing effect, with high-WMC individuals showing more part-list cuing effect than low-WMC individuals, and low-Stroop-effect individuals showing stronger part-list cuing effect than high-Stroop-effect individuals. The results are consistent with previous individual-differences work, which suggests a close link between WMC, Stroop task and inhibitory efficiency. In particular, the finding supports the inhibitory executive-control account of part-list cuing effect.(3) In the part-list cuing effect, inhibition occurred once the part-list cues were provided, and before the full completion of the retrieval task, the inhibition process would persist. The results support the retrieval inhibition hypothesis of part-list cuing effect, and do some supplement to the retrieval inhibition hypothesis——the duration of inhibition was mediated by the retrieval task.(4) Increasing the overall encoding-retrieval match will reduce the negative influence of part-list cues, and this reducing effect is sensitive to cue-overload; only when the part-list cues can provide the diagnostic information of target items, the memory performance can have a gain. And the combined action of encoding-retrieval match and cue-overload are the boundary condition of part-list cueing effect.