The Effects Of Retrieval Interference On Identification And Production Implicit Memory

Human life cannot be lived without memory,but memory is complex and can be divided into explicit and implicit memory due to the involvement of the conscious and unconscious.Most traditional studies have concluded that "unconscious implicit memory should be fully automated processing" because the performance of explicit memory is disrupted by encoding interference,while implicit memory shows significant resistance to encoding interference.Importantly,since implicit memory mainly reflects processing during the retrieval phase,does the "interference resistance" of implicit memory also apply to the retrieval phase? However,studies have disagreed on whether retrieval interference affects implicit memory.In this regard,a meta-analysis was conducted to examine whether retrieval interference affects implicit memory.Through literature search,18 studies and 34 independent effect sizes were included,and the total sample size was1247.It was found that,generation priming was less affected by retrieval interference than identification priming.The results of the meta-analysis answer previous objections to whether there is an retrieval interference effect in implicit memory,as studies that have found an extraction interference effect have primarily used identification priming,while studies that have not significantly found the effect have primarily used production priming.With this,a new question arises in this thesis,namely,why is production priming less affected by retrieval interference than identification priming? This is an interesting and worthwhile question to continue exploring.Based on the "stimulus-response" characteristics of identification and production implicit tests,it is possible that differences in the "production" presentation characteristics and the level of "response competition" between the two types of tests,Therefore this thesis explores the reasons for the differences in the effects of retrieval interference on identification and production priming through three studies with a total of eight experiments(five behavioral experiments and three EEG experiments),starting from the two aforementioned differences.In Study 1,a dual-task interference paradigm was used to examine whether the lower impact of implicit memory on retrieval interference was related to the "production" presentation characteristics through three behavioral experiments,using a category verification task,a perceptual recognition task,and a lexical naming task as implicit tests,respectively;In Study 2,two behavioral experiments were conducted with high and low response competition for identification and production priming,and the dual-task interference paradigm was continued to examine whether the size of the effect of implicit memory on retrieval interference was related to the modulation of "response competition".Based on this,Study 3 further investigated the ERPs of the effect of retrieval interference on implicit memory with different stimulus presentation characteristics through three EEG experiments,using a lexical judgment task,a perceptual identification task and a production lexical judgment task as implicit tests to provide cognitive neural evidence for the differentiation of the effect of retrieval interference on identification and production priming.The results were as follows:1.Study 1 found that the priming effect of the category verification task with fully presented stimulus features was disrupted by retrieval interference,but that the identification priming of the perceptual identification task and the lexical naming task,both with "production" presentation features,was not significantly less affected by retrieval interference;and that the effect of retrieval interference on the priming of the category verification task with "production" presentation features was significantly less affected by retrieval interference.The effect size of the effect of retrieval interference on identification priming with "production" presentation features(d = 0.26)was very similar to that of traditional generation priming(d = 0.21),suggesting that the magnitude of the implicit memory retrieval interference effect may be related to "production" presentation features.2.Study 2 found that identification priming was significantly affected by retrieval interference under both high and low response competition conditions,but there was a significant priming effect for production priming under retrieval interference,i.e.,production priming was still less susceptible to retrieval interference than identification priming,suggesting that high and low "response competition" did not significantly modulate the effect of implicit memory retrieval interference.This suggests that the level of "response competition" does not significantly modulate the magnitude of the implicit memory retrieval interference effect.3.Study 3 found that the cognitive neural correlates of ERPs(N400,P600)for both recognition and generation priming were differently affected by the retrieval interference,i.e.,the old-new effects of N400 and P600 related to the priming effect of the lexical judgment task were not found in the posterior and its different brain regions,but the old-new effects of N400 and P600 for the production lexical judgment and perceptual identification tasks in the anterior frontal regions were still present.However,the old-new effects of P600 were still present in the frontal regions N400 and P600,suggesting that production or implicit tests with "production" presentation features have smaller retrieval interference effects,possibly related to whether or not frontal regions are involved in the priming effect.The present study shows that implicit memory has an retrieval interference effect,which is sensitive to changes in attentional resources,and that implicit tests are not fully automated processing;the retrieval interference effect of implicit memory differs between types,i.e.,production priming and identification priming with "production" features are more affected by retrieval interference than identification priming with fully presented stimuli.The magnitude of the implicit memory retrieval interference effect is less related to differences in "response competition" and is mainly related to "production" features,Because the "production" feature activates the frontal regions of the brain,under the retrieval interference,the identification priming and production priming with the "production" feature do not fully overlap with the processing components of target detection in the frontal brain regions(prefrontal and frontal regions),and the ERP old/new effects in these regions are not significantly affected.In contrast,the ERPs of identification priming were significantly disrupted because the processing components involved largely overlapped with those of target detection(digital odd/even decision)in the central and parietal regions.Thus,the differential effects of retrieval interference on identification-based and production-based priming should be related to competition for memory processing components.