Stimulus novelty, task demands, and strategy use in episodic memory.

Otto Waris,Jussi Jylkkä,Matti Laine,Daniel Fellman

doi:10.1177/1747021820980301

Abstract

Cognitive task performance is a dynamic process that evolves over time, starting from the first encounters with a task. An important aspect of these task dynamics is the employment of strategies to support successful performance and task acquisition. Focusing on episodic memory performance, we: (1) tested two hypotheses on the effects of novelty and task difficulty on strategy use, (2) replicated our previous results regarding strategy use in a novel memory task, and (3) evaluated whether repeated open-ended strategy queries affect task performance and/or strategy use. The present pre-registered online study comprised 161 adult participants who were recruited through the Prolific crowdsourcing platform. We employed two separate 5-block list learning tasks, one with 10 pseudowords and the other with 18 common nouns, and collected recall performance and strategy reports for each block. Using Bayesian linear mixed effects models, the present findings (1) provide some support for the hypothesis that task-initial strategy development is not triggered only by task novelty, but can appear also in a familiar, moderately demanding task; (2) replicate earlier findings from an adaptive working memory task indicating strategy use from the beginning of a task, associations between strategy use and objective task performance, and only modest agreement between open-ended versus list-based strategy reports; and (3) indicate that repeated open-ended strategy reports do not affect objective recall. We conclude that strategy use is an important aspect of memory performance right from the start of a task, and it undergoes development at the initial stages depending on task characteristics. In a larger perspective, the present results concur with the views of skill learning and adaptivity in cognitive task performance.

Highlights

It has been argued that cognition is a dynamic system that changes in the long run and while in the midst of task processing (Beer, 2000; Riley & Holden, 2012; Smith & Thelen, 2003; Van Gelder, 1998)
Task performance becomes gradually more automatic and modular in the Automatic Execution phase, and the resources of the Metacognitive and Cognitive Control systems are freed for other tasks. With this general approach as our starting point, we studied the evolvement of strategies and objective task performance during two episodic memory tasks that varied in stimulus novelty, enabling us to examine how this factor affects the dynamics of episodic memory performance
Sections “Strategy development: frequency of strategy use across the task blocks,” “Strategy development: level of strategy detail across the task blocks,” “Relationships between strategy type and episodic memory performance,” and “Relationships between strategy level of detail (LoD) and episodic memory performance” test the predictions derived from the two hypotheses

Summary

Introduction

It has been argued that cognition is a dynamic system that changes in the long run and while in the midst of task processing (Beer, 2000; Riley & Holden, 2012; Smith & Thelen, 2003; Van Gelder, 1998). This would call for a paradigm shift in cognitive assessment, moving from the study of cognitive abilities as stable, invariable capabilities measured by summative scores, towards an inquiry of the cognitive dynamics that unfold during task performance. Upon encountering a novel task, the cognitive system enters the Formation stage, where the metacognitive system establishes strategies and behavioural routines that manage task performance. These processes are put into use in the Controlled Execution phase, which relies on the cognitive control system

Results

Discussion

Conclusion