Abstract
One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact. Here we present results which draw attention to the fact that the reappearance of irrelevant and unattended background contexts of encoding significantly impairs memory discrimination functions. This manuscript presents the results of two experiments in which participants made indoor/outdoor judgements for a large number of object images presented together with individual, irrelevant and presumably unattended background scenes. On a subsequent unexpected recognition test participants saw the incidentally encoded target objects, visually similar lures or new foil objects on the same or new background scenes. Our results showed that although the reappearance of the background scene raised the hit rate for target objects, it decreased mnemonic discrimination, a behavioral score for pattern separation, a hippocampal function that is affected in early dementia. Furthermore, the presence of the encoded background scene at the recognition test increased the false recognition of lure objects, even when participants were explicitly instructed to neglect the context scene. Altogether these results gave evidence that if context increases recognition hits for target memories, it does so at the cost of increasing false recognition and diminished discriminability for similar information.
Highlights
One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact
Our results show that irrespective of the specific instruction, presenting the target objects on the previously studied context is associated with better target identification performance in both Experiment 1, t(27) = 5.500, p < 0.001, d = 1.054, and Experiment 2, t(39) = 4.601, p < 0.001, d = 0.615
Lure discrimination was impaired when the lure objects were presented on the same background scene which was previously paired with the original version of the object
Summary
One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact. That is, during the study, the object was presented on a scene, whereas during the test, it was shown on a white background Using both incidental and intentional learning instructions, the authors found decreased recognition performance when the context was changed between encoding and a yes/no recognition memory task. Some computational models of the hippocampus suggest that before the correct rejection of a similar stimulus, one needs to recall the previously perceived item to detect differences between them[15,20], a process called the “recall-to-reject” strategy[23,24] Related to these concepts, another hippocampal computational mechanism (pattern completion), refers to the processes when a memory becomes accessible following the presentation of a partial (degraded) cue[10,16,17]
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