Encoding Organizational Source and Associative Source under Incidental and Intentional Learning Conditions

Lei Zhu

doi:10.4236/psych.2013.49096

Abstract

The present study aimed at providing a plausible answer for the controversy whether organizational source or associative source could be encoded in a more automatic manner through incidental learning. In the experiment, subjects were asked to learn organizational and associative sources under incidental or intentional learning conditions. It turned out that only associative source accuracy increased when subjects were instructed to intentionally learn that source, which implied that associative source might be encoded in a more effortful way, whereas processing of organizational source might be performed incidentally.

Highlights

People encounter lots of information from various sources every day
Further analysis revealed that the source accuracy of color in the color-oriented task was higher than that in the other two tasks, whereas the difference of source accuracy of color between the location-oriented and the item-oriented tasks did not reach statistical significance (t(13) = 0.41, p > .05, 1 − β = 0.07). These findings suggested that the associative source needs to be encoded intentionally because its source accuracy benefited from intentional learning, whereas the organizational source could be encoded in a more automatic manner
The present study aimed at providing a plausible answer for the controversy whether organizational source or associative source could be encoded in a more automatic manner through incidental learning

Summary

Introduction

People encounter lots of information from various sources every day. Sometimes, when they retrieve the remembered information, they are required to identify the related source of this information. In the typical source memory tasks, subjects were presented with items from at least two different sources (e.g., Zhu et al, 2010). That is, compared to memory formation for item, encoding source is a more effortful task which is performed intentionally and requires considerable attentional resources (Spencer & Raz, 1995; Troyer & Craik, 2000). Encoding source was interfered more severely by the secondary tasks under divided attention condition than was encoding item (Troyer et al, 1999; Troyer & Craik, 2000). Compared with intentional learning conditions, source accuracy decreased under incidental learning conditions (Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996; Marsh et al, 2004; Kuo & Van Petten, 2006; Uncapher & Rugg, 2009)

Methods

Results

Conclusion