Discriminating preexperimental (semantic) from learned (episodic) associations: A speed-accuracy study

Abstract

This research investigates the process by which people discriminate preexperimental (semantic) from experimental (episodic) associations. Subjects were instructed to recognize (reply old) only to experimentally studied materials. The questions are how is context information used to select relevant memories, and how successful is the exclusion of irrelevant information? The recognition accuracy and the retrieval speed (rate of approach to asymptotic accuracy) are jointly measured using a speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) paradigm, with collateral reaction time (RT) experiments. Experiment 1 presented both semantically related and unrelated pairs for study. In Experiment 3, semantically related pairs were never presented for study and preexperimentally related lures could be rejected by rule. Semantically related lures in both of these SAT experiments showed evidence for elevated false alarm rates early in retrieval, followed by late suppression of false alarms (at about 1 s). When related pairs were studied in the experiment, suppression was incomplete; when related pairs were never studied, rule-based supersuppression obtained. Results from collateral reaction time studies (Experiments 2 and 4) showed points that corresponded to the pattern of results in Experiments 1 and 3 near asymptote, although the RT data by themselves would have been interpreted quite differently. These results are compatible with a single-store, two-phase retrieval model in which context information, or recall-like information about correct pair mates, is used to correct spurious false alarms resulting from the incomplete filtering of semantic information.