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Abstract
We combined a mechanistic model of episodic encoding with theories on the functional significance of two event-related potential (ERP) components to develop an integrated account for the Von Restorff effect, which refers to the enhanced recall probability for an item that deviates in some feature from other items in its study list. The buffer model of Lehman and Malmberg (2009, 2013) can account for this effect such that items encountered during encoding enter an episodic buffer where they are actively rehearsed. When a deviant item is encountered, in order to re-allocate encoding resources towards this item the buffer is emptied from its prior content, a process labeled “compartmentalization”. Based on theories on their functional significance, the P300 component of the ERP may co-occur with this hypothesized compartmentalization process, while the frontal slow wave may index rehearsal. We derived predictions from this integrated model for output patterns in free recall, systematic variance in ERP components, as well as associations between the two types of measures in a dataset of 45 participants who studied and freely recalled lists of the Von Restorff type. Our major predictions were confirmed and the behavioral and physiological results were consistent with the predictions derived from the model. These findings demonstrate that constraining mechanistic models of episodic memory with brain activity patterns and generating predictions for relationships between brain activity and behavior can lead to novel insights into the relationship between the brain, the mind, and behavior.
Highlights
Lehman and Malmberg [1,2] recently proposed a mechanistic model of episodic memory, which posits that a multidimensional memory trace that consists of item, context, and associative features is episodically encoded when an item is studied
We combined a mechanistic model of episodic encoding with theories on the functional significance of two event-related potential (ERP) components to develop an integrated account for the Von Restorff effect, which refers to the enhanced recall probability for an item that deviates in some feature from other items in its study list
Our prediction that due to a strong item-to-context association, subjects tend to use the context of the isolate as a retrieval cue and First recall probabilities (FRPs) will be enhanced for the isolate, was not supported in the whole group
Summary
Lehman and Malmberg [1,2] recently proposed a mechanistic model of episodic memory, which posits that a multidimensional memory trace that consists of item, context, and associative features is episodically encoded when an item is studied. The context in the trace representing the first item on the study list tends to match the context in the retrieval cue better than context stored in any other trace, because the first item on the study list is rehearsed by itself initially and is most strongly associated with study context. This mechanism accounts for the primacy effect in free recall [1]. Temporal context is assumed to change only slowly over time, and traces of items encountered quickly one after another contain
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