The Integration Mechanism Of Enactment Effect In Working Memory:the Role Of The Episodic Buffer

In the domain of action memory,the advanced researchers bring forward the theory of episodic integration to explain the origin of enactment effect,and they affirm that the integration was critical to this effect.But the process of integration has not been interpreted thoroughly.It is still not been explored clearly how the different information and the integration mechanism works during the enactment encoding.By controlling the integration of verbal,spatial and enactment information,the present study conducted two experiments to analyze the mechanism of integration in enactment effect,and discussed the role of the episodic buffer for the enactment effect in working memory.Experiment 1 employed 2 type of encoding(enactment vs.verbal)× 2 consistency of verbal and spatial information(consistent vs.inconsistent)mixed experiment design,in which the former was the between-subjects factor,and the latter was the within-subjects factor.It is made to investigate the impact of the integration of the verbal,spatial and action information on enactment effect.The results show that,the recognition performance of subjects in enactment encoding was better than that of verbal,namely that the enactment effect was significantly.And in the consistent condition,more items was recognized than that of inconsistent condition.The enactment effect was not affected by the consistency of verbal and spatial information.Based on the conclusion of Experiment 1,the interference task added in the Experiment 2.In this experiment,we adopted 2 the interference task(with vs.without)× 2 type of encoding(enactment vs.verbal)× 2 the consistency of verbal and spatial information(consistent vs.inconsistent)mixed experiment design,in which the former two variables were between-subjects factors,and the latter was within-subjects factor.This experiment was designed to investigate the role of the episodic buffer effect of enactment effect in working memory.The findings show that the enactment effect is affected by the interference task.And the further analysis revealed that the enactment effect robustly accrued without the interference task.If there is an interference task,this effect will disappeared.In addition,the consistency effect was also influenced by the interference task.With the interference task,this effect decreased significantly.The present study proved that the episodic buffer can integrate the information of verbal,spatial and action,then promote the enactment effect.When the integration function of the episodic buffer inhibited by the interference task,the enactment effect will be disappeared and the consistency effect of verbal and spatial information will be reduced significantly as well.Meanwhile,the present study supplement the episodic theory and put forward that the integration of different information should be included in the episodic integration,and the integration of different information plays a key role in the enactment effect according to the previous studies.