The Effects Of Divided Attention And Source-monitoring Types On The Performance Difference Between Item Memory And Source Memory

In recent years, the relation between source memory and item memory has become a hot topic in the area of memory research. There are two major different points of view about this relation. One proposed that these two kinds of memory are different in the aspects of cognitive process, performance levels and neural mechanism. But the other proposed that these two memories are not different in nature, their neural mechanisms are overlapped in some aspects.In this paper, two experiments were conducted to examine the performance difference between item memory and source memory as well as its related factors, for the purpose of getting better understanding of the relation between item memory and source memory and enriching episodic memory theories.In the first experiment, two kinds of attention conditions, full attention and divided attention, were arranged; and two materials (concrete pictures, Chinese word composed of two characters) and two task paradigms (three-button task and sequential task) were used in each attention condition. The dependent variable was the performance of memory, which used percentage of correct memory as the criteria. The results showed that: (1) the materials had significant effects on item memory's performance and source memory's performance, but had no effects on the performance difference between these two kinds of memory. (2) In the three-button paradigm, source memory was harder than item memory, and the performance difference between these two kinds of memory was even bigger under the condition of divided attention than under the condition of full attention. In the sequential paradigm, the performance of source memory was almost as the same as the performance of item memory under two conditions of attention. In the second experiment, two kinds of attention conditions were also arranged, and two types of source monitoring, exterior source monitoring(woman's voice or man's voice) and interior source monitoring (to read aloud or silently), were used in each attention condition. The dependent variable was the performance of memory. The results showed that: (1) The performance of item memory was always better than source memory under two kinds of attention condition; (2) the type of source monitoring had significant effects on the performance of item memory and source memory, while it had no effects on the performance difference between these two kinds of memory; (3) the performance difference between two kinds of memory under the condition of divided attention was bigger than under the condition of full attention.