Enactment Improve Integration In Action Memory:a Proof From Context Cuing Effect

In traditional action memory theory,Integration theory suggests that the cause of enactment effect is self involvement which is brought by performance.This kind of self involvement makes all parts of memory items integrated better,resulting in enactment effect.The theory is not give a clear illustration on the specific process of integration,and it is not clear whether the background information of action memory can participate in integration and its specific integration mechanism.In order to further explore the background information in the study of source item integration mechanism in action memory,this study designed and conducted two experiments,using the context cuing effect which comes from multidimensional source memory research to explore how the single dimension background affects the extraction of other dimensions of the background information,and then discusses the possible mechanism of different background information in memory processing function.The first experiment adopted 4 encoding(self-performed task and verbal task,experimenter-performed task and observation-experimenter task)* 2 context cues(non-clues presented,clues presented)mixed experimental design in which encoding used within-subject design and context cues used between-subject design,to explore the integrated mechanism of medium related information and the effect of the enactment effect of background information.The results show that in the medium familiarity projects,individual source judgement is significantly better in enactment conditions than in word conditions which shows there is an obvious enactment effect;individual source judgement is significantly better in cues conditions than in non-cues conditions which shows there is an obvious context cues effect.The two variables aresignificantly interacted.The enactment promotes the integration of two kinds of background information,and then improve the source judgement performance under the clue condition.On the basis of the first experiment,experiment two increased familiarity variables.This study used 4 encoding(self-performed task and verbal task,experimenter-performed task and observation-experimenter task)* 2 context cues(non-clues presented,clues presented)* 2 familiarity(high familiarity,low familiarity)mixed design in which encoding condition used within-subject design,context cues condition and familiarity condition used between-subject designs.The results showed that the enactment effect was not affected by the familiarity of materials,and the enactment effect was always significant regardless of familiarity.When the clue was not present,the source judgement performance was better.This study confirms that there are enactment effects in source memory retrieval.Action information,word information and background information are integrated into a mixed unit where the task-related background information are bind to this independent memory unit.Action encoding promotes this kind of integration,which leads to the production of enactment effects in source memory retrieval.The benefit of this effect is not only manifested in the recognition or source judgement when the item composition is used as a clue,but also in the case of using the source information as a clue based on background components.At the same time,compared with the integration of item itself and its background,the integration of background information brought by enactment is more fragile and vulnerable and easily affected by other factors,such as item-familiarity,background information load and so on.Under the condition of non action encoding,there is also the integration of different forms of information.This integration may be the root cause of the context cuing effect in the source memory context.However,the whole response time of the individuals is not affected by enactment,which may be due to the difficulty in retrieval of the multidimensional background information.There may be a floor effect.