Abstract
We report 2 eye-tracking experiments with human variants of 2 rodent recognition memory tasks, relative recency and object-in-place. In Experiment 1 participants were sequentially exposed to 2 images, A then B, presented on a computer display. When subsequently tested with both images, participants biased looking toward the first-presented image A: the relative recency effect. When contextual stimuli x and y, respectively, accompanied A and B in the exposure phase (xA, yB), the recency effect was greater when y was present at test, than when x was present. In Experiment 2 participants viewed 2 identical presentations of a 4-image array, ABCD, followed by a test with the same array, but in which one of the pairs of stimuli exchanged position (BACD or ABDC). Participants looked preferentially at the displaced stimulus pair: the object-in-place effect. Three further conditions replicated Experiment 1’s findings: 2 pairs of images were presented one after the other (AB followed by CD); on a test with AB and CD, relative recency was again evident as preferential looking at AB. Moreover, this effect was greater when the positions of the first-presented A and B were exchanged between exposure and test (BACD), compared with when the positions of second-presented C and D were exchanged (ABDC). The results were interpreted within the theoretical framework of the Sometime Opponent Process model of associative learning (Wagner, 1981).
Highlights
Recognition memory is a key aspect of human declarative memory, and may be defined as the ability to discriminate between items that have been previously encountered from those that have not
A relative recency effect was obtained in this study: dwell times were greater for the first presented stimulus A than for the secondpresented B, and this was true in all three conditions
We found evidence that this effect was reliably influenced by the identity of the contextual cue that appeared at test, being reliably smaller in the relative recency (RR) Ϫ Object-in-Place condition (OIP) condition in which x was present at test than in the RR ϩ OIP condition where y was present
Summary
Recognition memory is a key aspect of human declarative memory, and may be defined as the ability to discriminate between items that have been previously encountered from those that have not. X Charlotte Bonardi, and Jasper Robinson, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham. These experiments were conducted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the doctoral degree of Aleksander W. Nitka, which was supported by a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Doctoral Training Programme award. Recognition is typically studied in the spontaneous object recognition procedure (Ennaceur & Delacour, 1988), a paradigm that relies on rodents’ natural curiosity, and proclivity to explore their environment and novel items that appear within it. Despite the fact that one could view recognition memory as requiring some kind of learning— when it is sustained over long retention intervals—none of these accounts make any direct link with extant learning models
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