| Memory, a hot research field in cognitive psychology, is the processes of encoding, storage and retrieval of information in brain. The encoding of information includes different levels that would affect the remembering quality. This study focused on the issue that what result would be like when adding interference during encoding.The perceptual interference effect of memory is the phenomenon that words present briefly and followed by a backward mask in the study phase can improve later explicit memory performance. There are two encoding conditions in the study phase; one is the perceptual interference condition in which items present for 100 ms followed by a 2400 ms backward mask, the other is the intact condition in which items present for 2500 ms. Results always show that compared to intact condition, the performance of memory in the interference condition is better. It is surprising, counterintuitive and contradicts with the traditional perspectives.The main hypotheses for perceptual interference effect are generation effect explanation, the semantic-elaboration account, compensatory-processing account and the item-specific-relation framework. The hypotheses are all emphasize the effect of encoding. Experiments with perceptual interference effect were limited to English words. However, Chinese characters that belong to ideographic system are different from English words which are alphabetic writing in many aspects. The perceptual interference effect in Chinese characters might have a different pattern with English words.Using "study-test" paradigm, present study investigated the perceptual interference effect on high frequency Chinese characters and common English words in Chinese participants.Experiment 1 used old-new recognition test explored the perceptual interference effect of memory on Chinese characters on 110-ms perceptual interference condition,260-ms perceptual interference condition, and relative intact condition. Experiment 2 adopted multiple recall tests estimated furthermore the Chinese characters'perceptual interference effect of memory and the relationship between traditional memory theories and the item-specific-relation framework. Different processing biases were controlled in experiment 3 to investigate the perceptual interference of memory on English words with Chinese participants.The results show that:1. Chinese participants performed better in the intact condition rather than the interference condition, perceptual interference impaired the memory of Chinese characters;2. Chinese participants in phoneme-emphasized group performed similar as the traditional research that the remembering was better in perceptual interference condition, while participants in the control group were performed better recognition in the intact condition;3. The perceptual interference effect of memory was not contradicted to the traditional theory of memory, and it can be explained by the item-specific-relation framework. |
