Impact of Semantic Relatedness on Associative Memory: An ERP Study.

Pierre Desaunay,Anna Lambrechts,Jean-Marc Baleyte,Bérengère Guillery-Girard,Franck Doidy,Dermot M Bowler,Priscille Gérardin,Francis Eustache,Patrice Clochon

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00335

Abstract

Encoding and retrieval processes in memory for pairs of pictures are thought to be influenced by inter-item similarity and by features of individual items. Using Event-Related Potentials (ERP), we aimed to identify how these processes impact on both the early mid-frontal FN400 and the Late Positive Component (LPC) potentials during associative retrieval of pictures. Twenty young adults undertook a sham task, using an incidental encoding of semantically related and unrelated pairs of drawings. At test, we conducted a recognition task in which participants were asked to identify target identical pairs of pictures, which could be semantically related or unrelated, among new and rearranged pairs. We observed semantic (related and unrelated pairs) and condition effects (old, rearranged and new pairs) on the early mid-frontal potential. First, a lower amplitude was shown for identical and rearranged semantically related pairs, which might reflect a retrieval process driven by semantic cues. Second, among semantically unrelated pairs, we found a larger negativity for identical pairs, compared to rearranged and new ones, suggesting additional retrieval processing that focuses on associative information. We also observed an LPC old/new effect with a mid-parietal and a right occipito-parietal topography for semantically related and unrelated old pairs, demonstrating a recollection phenomenon irrespective of the degree of association. These findings suggest that associative recognition using visual stimuli begins at early stages of retrieval, and differs according to the degree of semantic relatedness among items. However, either strategy may ultimately lead to recollection processes.

Highlights

Episodic memory refers to the most complex human memory system and requires both the individual’s self-awareness of having personally experienced a past event while retrieving the overall phenomenological details bound to that unique moment and the ability to make sense of this recall for future experiences (Tulving, 2002; Eustache and Desgranges, 2008)
Using EventRelated Potentials (ERP), we aimed to identify how these processes impact on both the early mid-frontal FN400 and the Late Positive Component (LPC) potentials during associative retrieval of pictures
The behavioral results showed no effect of semantic relatedness on accuracy, Event-Related Potentials (ERP) revealed different patterns of associative recognition on the early mid-frontal and late parietal potentials

Summary

Introduction

Episodic memory refers to the most complex human memory system and requires both the individual’s self-awareness (i.e., autonoetic consciousness) of having personally experienced a past event while retrieving the overall phenomenological details (i.e., context or source) bound to that unique moment (which gives a peculiar vividness to the recall) and the ability to make sense of this recall for future experiences (Tulving, 2002; Eustache and Desgranges, 2008). Associative memory paradigms are well suited to test the ability to bind two or more items into a unique mental representation. These tasks involve memorizing each item (item 1, item 2) as ERP Correlates of Associative Memory well as the associative information (item1–item 2) and may lead to the use of different strategies based either on similarities between items or on item-specific features. Experimental and neuroimaging data confirmed that recollection as well as familiarity are implicated in associative memory (Addante et al, 2012; Wang et al, 2012) They are differentially affected by the nature of any association between two studied items (Yonelinas, 2002)

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