Long-Term Perceptual Specificity Effects in Recognition Memory

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Long-Term Perceptual Specificity Effects in Recognition
Memory: The Transformed Pictures Paradigm
Colleen A. Ray and Eyal M. Reingold, University of Toronto
Abstract The effects of a study/test mismatch in the
viewing mode of natural scenes on recognition memory performance were examined. At both encoding and
retrieval, scenes were presented either by being divided into quarters that were displayed in a sequential
cumulative fashion or by scrolling the images through
the screen, thereby gradually revealing the content of
the images. Half of the participants were tested immediately after encoding and the other half after 48 hours.
For both the immediate and delayed retrieval conditions, better recognition memory was demonstrated
when viewing modes matched across study and test
than when they mismatched. Implications for current
processing and multiple systems views of memory are
discussed.
A handful of studies have demonstrated perceptual
specificity effects in recognition memory, showing
reduced performance when there was a stimulus mismatch between study and test for variables such as size
(Beiderman & Cooper, 1992; Cooper, Schacter,
Ballesteros, & Moore, 1992; Jolicoeur, 1987; Kolers,
Duchnicky, & Sundstroem, 1985; Milliken & Jolicoeur,
1992; Rajaram, 1996), contrast and illumination
(Srinivas, 1996), orientation (Cooper et al., 1992;
Dallett, Wilcox, & D’Andrea, 1968; Rajaram, 1996;
Srinivas, 1995) and colour (Cave, Bost, & Cobb, 1996).
However, such findings of perceptual specificity have
had little impact on current theoretical models. It is
likely that this is because of the emphasis that has been
placed on task dissociations involving traditional
explicit tasks, such as recognition memory and recall,
and traditional implicit tasks, such as perceptual identification, word-stem completion and word-fragment
completion. Using these tasks, empirical evidence has
been compiled whereby performance on explicit tasks
was found to be sensitive to conceptual elaborative
encoding (e.g., levels of processing manipulations),
whereas mismatches in stimulus form across study and
test (e.g., modality manipulations) were found to influ-
ence implicit task performance. In contrast, the former
manipulation had relatively little effect on performance
on traditional implicit tasks, and the latter had relatively
little effect on performance on traditional explicit tasks
(for detailed discussions, see Blaxton, 1989;
Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988; Roediger &
McDermott, 1993; Schacter, 1987).
Recently, however, powerful perceptual specificity
effects on recognition memory performance were
demonstrated with both patients and normal participants, suggesting that such effects merit closer scrutiny.
Specifically, in an important series of studies, patients
with semantic dementia, who by definition have
“impaired performance on any task that requires conceptual knowledge about objects, facts, concepts, and
the meaning of words” (Simons, Graham, Galton,
Patterson, & Hodges, 2001, p. 102) have, nonetheless,
been found to show normal recognition memory for
pictures of nameable objects provided the stimuli were
identical across study and test (Graham, Becker, &
Hodges, 1997; Graham, Simons, Pratt, Patterson, &
Hodges, 2000; Simons & Graham, 2000). However,
when perceptually different exemplars were used
across study and test, the patients’ recognition memory
was severely impaired compared to that of controls
(Graham et al., 2000).
In addition, an eye-movement study by Reingold
(2002) demonstrated sizable perceptual specificity
effects with normal participants. In this study, as participants viewed pictures or words, they could only see
the portions of the stimuli that were either in their central vision or in their peripheral vision. Thus, the participants had to move their eyes differently to process
the stimuli depending on the viewing mode.
Importantly, the results showed that recognition performance was better when the viewing mode was congruent across study and test (peripheral-peripheral, central-central), than when the viewing mode was incongruent (central-peripheral, peripheral-central).
Furthermore, Reingold (2002) reported that when perceptual features of the stimuli were altered, while
maintaining the same semantic object or word, the
Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2003, 57:2, 131-137
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viewing mode congruency effect was eliminated.
Together, these two lines of research provide strong
evidence that recognition memory is, under some conditions, strongly mediated by perceptually specific
memory representations.
The primary goal of the present study was to investigate the persistence or longevity of the perceptually
specific congruency effects demonstrated by Reingold
(2002). A finding of long-term perceptual specificity
effects on recognition memory performance would be
theoretically important because it would further challenge the prevailing view of this task as primarily conceptually driven. The notion that recognition memory
performance is dominated by semantic or conceptual
factors has its origin in what Kolers and Roediger
(1984) referred to as the semantic primacy assumption.
This assumption was the dominant view of memory
during the 1970s. For example, the levels of processing approach postulated that “the durability of the trace
is a positive function of ‘depth’ of processing, where
depth refers to greater degrees of semantic involvement” (Craik & Tulving, 1975, p. 268) and “conversely,
manipulations that influence processing at a structural
level should have transitory, but no long-term, effects”
(Craik & Lockhart, 1972, p. 680). However, the introduction and the enormous rise in popularity of implicit
memory tasks resulted in a large body of evidence that
documented “that semantic processing is not necessary
for long-lasting priming effects” (Richardson-Klavehn &
Bjork, 1988, p. 524; see Roediger & McDermott, 1993,
for a review). For example, using a word-fragment
completion task, Roediger and Blaxton (1987) found
that priming was of a greater magnitude when the font
(either hand-printed or typed) was congruent across
study and test, both immediately and after a one-week
delay. Furthermore, the magnitude of this congruency
effect did not decrease over time. An even more dramatic demonstration of a long-term priming effect was
reported by Kolers (1976) who trained participants to
read geometrically transformed text and documented
savings in re-reading times one year following initial
exposure.
Several studies attempted to contrast decay rates, for
retention intervals ranging from several minutes to a
few weeks, between recognition memory and several
implicit memory tasks (see Richardson-Klavehn &
Bjork, 1988 for a review). Many of these studies
reported that priming persisted for longer durations
than recognition memory (e.g., Jacoby & Dallas, 1981;
Komatsu & Ohta, 1984; Mitchell & Brown, 1988;
Tulving, Schacter, & Stark, 1982; Woods & Piercy,
1974). These findings of long-term priming effects are
clearly in opposition to the semantic primacy assumption. However, it is important to note that caution
Ray and Reingold
Panel A
Panel B
Figure 1. Panel A: Sequential viewing mode. As seen
moving from top to bottom, this mode involved progressively displaying the scene by quarters, and then removing the
scene components in the opposite order. The entire
sequence took 4 seconds. Panel B: Scrolling viewing
mode. Shown here at regular intervals, this mode involved
a smooth progression of the image moving vertically
through the screen taking 4 seconds to completion.
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TABLE 1
Hit and False Alarm Proportions by Viewing Mode
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Viewing Mode
_______________________________________________________________
Group (n = 16)
Congruent
Incongruent
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Immediate
Hit rate (SE)
.607 (.029)
.538 (.026)
False alarm (SE)
.240 (.021)
.240 (.021)
Hit-false alarm (SEa)
.367 (.034, .010)
.298 (.032, .010)
Delay (48 hour)
Hit rate (SE)
.574 (.029)
.483 (.028)
False alarm (SE)
.300 (.027)
.300 (.027)
Hit-false alarm (SEa)
.274 (.043, .017)
.182 (.037, .017)
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
a
The first number shown in brackets is the traditional standard error measure, the
second is within-subjects standard error (see Loftus & Masson, 1994).
should be exercised when comparing decay rates
across implicit and explicit tasks as they differ not only
in the instructions given to the participants but also in
terms of other task dimensions, such as retrieval cues,
metric or measurement scales, and susceptibility to
response bias (e.g., Reingold & Merikle, 1988, 1990;
Reingold & Toth, 1996). Such interpretive difficulties
are avoided by the present methodology as it isolates
the decay rate of the perceptual specificity effects
underlying the viewing mode congruency effect from
the overall decay rate of recognition memory performance.
Accordingly, in the current study, natural scenes
from two categories (Interiors and Landscapes) were
used as stimuli, where each participant viewed scenes
from only one category. Viewing mode was manipulated at both encoding and retrieval by varying the
method by which the scenes were unveiled.
Specifically, as shown in Figure 1, natural scenes were
either divided into quarters that sequentially appeared,
revealing the pictures, and then disappeared
(Sequential mode), or the scenes appeared and disappeared by scrolling vertically through the screen
(Scrolling mode). In addition, half of the participants
were tested immediately after encoding (Immediate
group), while the other half were tested after a 48-hour
delay (Delay group). Based on the results of Reingold
(2002), we predicted better recognition memory when
the viewing mode was congruent across study and test
than when it was incongruent (i.e., a viewing mode
congruency effect). More importantly, if such a congruency effect emerges, its magnitude would be compared across the two retention intervals.
Method
Participants
Thirty-two paid participants took part in the present
study. All participants had normal or corrected-to-normal vision. Half of the participants were randomly
assigned to the Immediate group and half to the Delay
group.
Materials and Design
Stimuli were grayscale images with a resolution of 360
by 240 pixels that were displayed on a 17” monitor.
Participants viewed the images from a distance of 60
centimeters, which subtended a visual angle of 30° horizontally and 22.5° vertically. The display was generated using an S3 VGA card, and the frame rate was 120
Hz. To avoid recognition memory ceiling effects, each
participant was shown scenes from one of two categories of images (Interiors or Landscapes), for a total of
16 participants per scene type (8 in each group).
During the study phase of the experiment, each participant was shown 36 images presented in the Sequential
mode (see Figure 1, Panel A) and 36 images presented
in the Scrolling mode (see Figure 1, Panel B), for a
total of 72 trials. During the test phase of the experiment, 36 new images were added (18 shown in each
viewing mode) and the 72 study or “old” images were
shown as follows: 36 in the congruent viewing mode
condition (18 with Scrolling encoding and Scrolling
retrieval and 18 with Sequential encoding and
Sequential retrieval) and 36 in the incongruent viewing
mode (18 with Sequential encoding and Scrolling
retrieval, 18 with Scrolling encoding and Sequential
retrieval). In addition, to help participants become
familiar with the two viewing modes, 12 additional
images were shown at the beginning of the study
phase and designated as practice trials (6 shown in
each viewing mode). For each participant, the pairing
of scenes to conditions and trial order was determined
randomly. Half of the participants were tested immediately after encoding (Immediate group), and the other
half after 48 hours (Delay group).
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Ray and Reingold
Figure 2. Mean recognition performance, calculated as hits minus false alarms, in the congruent and incongruent viewing modes for the Immediate and Delay (48-hour) test conditions.
The error bars represent within-subjects SE (N = 16) (see Loftus & Masson, 1994).
Procedure
During the study phase, participants were instructed to
study the scenes and told that they would be asked to
recognize them later. As shown in Figure 1, in each
viewing mode the presentation sequence of the scenes
lasted four seconds. During the test phase, half of the
participants were given an immediate recognition test
(Immediate group), whereas the other half returned 48
hours later to perform the recognition test (Delay
group). Participants in both groups were instructed to
judge, regardless of viewing mode, whether the images
shown were old (i.e., seen in the study phase) or new.
In each test trial, participants were required to view the
entire presentation sequence, which lasted four seconds, and then were prompted to classify the scene as
old or new by pressing one of two response buttons.
They were told that the speed of responding was not
important and they were asked to be as accurate as
possible.
Results
For each participant and condition, recognition memory performance was computed as the proportion of hits
minus the proportion of false alarms (see Snodgrass &
Corwin, 1988). The results of the experiment were
analyzed using a 2 x 2 mixed ANOVA, which crossed
group (Immediate, Delay) as a between participant factor, and viewing mode (Congruent, Incongruent) as a
within participant factor (see Table 1 for means and
standard errors). Not surprisingly, recognition performance was better for the Immediate than the Delay
group, F(1, 30) = 4.68, p < .05. Most importantly, as
shown in Figure 2, recognition memory was better,
F(1, 30) = 17.0, p < .001, when viewing modes were
congruent than when they were incongruent, the mag-
nitude of which did not differ across groups, F(1, 30) <
1. Thus, the present experiment documented a longlasting viewing mode congruency effect indicating the
durability of the perceptually specific memory representations underlying this finding.
Discussion
Consistent with the previous studies involving both
patients (Graham et al., 1997; Graham et al., 2000;
Simons & Graham, 2000; Simons et al., 2001) and normal participants (Beiderman & Cooper, 1992; Cave et
al., 1996; Cooper et al., 1992; Dallett et al., 1968;
Jolicoeur, 1987; Kolers et al., 1985; Milliken & Jolicoeur,
1992; Rajaram, 1996; Reingold, 2002; Srinivas, 1995,
1996), the present experiment documented perceptual
specificity effects in recognition memory, showing
reduced performance when there was a viewing mode
mismatch across study and test. Furthermore, the magnitude of this viewing mode congruency effect did not
decrease over time, despite a substantial decrease in
overall recognition memory performance. That is,
whereas some influences on recognition memory performance substantially weakened with delay, the size
of the viewing mode congruency effect, and hence, the
influence of perceptually specific memory representations, remained constant over time.
Taken together, such perceptual specificity effects
on recognition memory performance, along with the
well-documented conceptual effects demonstrated with
this task (see Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988;
Roediger, Weldon, & Challis, 1989; Schacter, 1987; for
reviews), clearly indicate that any “single process” view
of recognition memory is untenable (see also Gardiner,
1988; Jacoby, 1991; Mandler, 1980; Tulving, 1985).
More generally, the present findings point to the dan-
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PERCEPTUAL SPECIFICITY EFFECTS
ger of assuming a one-to-one mapping between tasks
and processes/systems (see Jacoby, 1991; Reingold &
Merikle, 1988, 1990; Reingold & Toth, 1996;
Richardson-Klavehn & Bjork, 1988; Ryan & Cohen,
2002; Toth & Reingold, 1996; Toth, Reingold, & Jacoby,
1994).
The enduring nature of the present perceptual specificity effect is inconsistent with the notion of semantic
primacy in explicit memory (e.g., Craik & Lockhart,
1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975). Furthermore, it is intriguingly reminiscent of the long-term priming effects
found with implicit memory tasks (see Roediger &
McDermott, 1993 for a review). These findings of perceptual specificity effects documented with implicit
memory tasks had a marked influence on both processing views of memory (e.g., Jacoby, 1983; Roediger &
Blaxton, 1987; Roediger & Srinivas, 1993; Roediger et
al., 1989) and multiple memory systems views (e.g.,
Moscovitch, 1992; Schacter, 1994; Schacter & Tulving,
1994; Schacter, Wagner, & Buckner, 2000; Squire, 1992;
Tulving & Schacter, 1990). Thus, in order to account
for perceptual specificity effects on recognition performance, such as the ones demonstrated in the present
study, it is potentially important to reconsider the
almost exclusive linkage in current theorizing between
perceptual specificity effects and implicit task performance.
Preparation of this paper was supported by a grant to Eyal
Reingold from the Natural Science and Engineering
Research Council of Canada. We wish to thank Noah Ivers
and Dave Stampe for their assistance with this project. We
also thank Peter Dixon, Alinda Friedman, John Henderson,
and William Hayward for their helpful suggestions and
input on an earlier version of this manuscript.
Correspondence should be addressed to Eyal Reingold,
University of Toronto, Department of Psychology, 100 St.
George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3. (E-mail: [email protected]).
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Sommaire
Des études récentes, menées auprès de patients atteints
de démence sémantique (p. ex., Simons, Graham,
Galton, Patterson et Hodges, 2001) et de participants
normaux (Reingold, 2002), ont pu mettre en évidence
les effets marqués de la spécificité perceptuelle sur la
performance de la mémoire de reconnaissance, qui
constitue une tâche explicite traditionnelle. Ces conclusions s’avèrent importantes, compte tenu que les modèles théoriques actuels reposent sur des preuves scientifiques démontrant que les erreurs de correspondance, observées à la fois pendant l’étude et le test, en
ce qui a trait à la forme du stimulus, ont un effet plutôt
faible sur la performance obtenue à des tâches
explicites traditionnelles (pour une présentation détaillée de ces résultats, lire Blaxton, 1989; Schacter, 1987;
Richardson-Klavehn et Bjork, 1988; Roediger et
McDermott, 1993).
L’objectif principal de la présente étude consistait à
examiner la persistance ou la longévité des effets de
congruence propres à la perception mis en lumière par
Reingold (2002). Les effets de spécificité perceptuelle à
long terme sur la performance de la mémoire de reconnaissance, s’ils étaient démontrés, pourraient remettre
sérieusement en question le point de vue dominant
selon lequel cette tâche est principalement régie par
des composantes conceptuelles. En conséquence, dans
la présente étude, les stimuli prenaient la forme de
paysages naturels. Le mode d’affichage était manipulé
tant au niveau de l’encodage que de la récupération,
car la méthode d’apparition des paysages variait. En
particulier, les paysages naturels étaient soit fractionnés
en quatre parties, qui apparaissaient à l’écran suivant
un ordre séquentiel, pour dévoiler les paysages puis
disparaître de l’écran (mode Sequential), soit ils apparaissaient et disparaissaient de l’écran lorsque les participants faisaient défiler l’écran vers le haut ou vers le
bas (mode Scrolling). En outre, la moitié des participants a été testée immédiatement après l’encodage
(groupe Immediate), tandis que l’autre moitié était
testée après un délai de 48 heures (groupe Delay).
Comme nous nous y attendions, la performance de
reconnaissance était meilleure chez les participants du
groupe Immediate que chez ceux du groupe Delay (F
(1, 30) = 4.68, p < .05). Autre observation d’autant plus
intéressante, la mémoire de reconnaissance était plus
performante lorsque les modes d’affichage présentaient
des paysages congruents que dans le cas inverse, alors
que l’amplitude de la mémoire de reconnaissance était
identique d’un groupe à l’autre (F (1, 30) < 1). En
d’autres termes, tandis que certaines influences affectant la mémoire de reconnaissance de façon marquée
s’atténuaient après le délai, l’importance de l’effet de
congruence du mode d’affichage, et par là, l’influence
des représentations de la mémoire propres à la perception, demeuraient constants au fil du temps. En somme,
l’expérience présentée ici vient appuyer la présence
d’un effet durable de la congruence liée au mode d’affichage, dont découle une conclusion sous-jacente,
celle de la durabilité des représentations de la mémoire
propres à la perception.
Mis ensemble, ces effets de spécificité perceptuelle
sur la performance de reconnaissance de la mémoire,
conjugués aux effets conceptuels bien étayés que cette
tâche a mis en évidence (voir Schacter, 1987;
Richardson-Klavehn et Bjork, 1988; Roediger, Weldon
et Challis, 1989 pour une recension) indiquent clairement que la mémoire de reconnaissance ne peut être
considérée comme un « processus unique » (voir également Gardiner, 1988; Jacoby, 1991; Mandler, 1980;
Tulving 1985). De plus, il pourrait devenir important de
réexaminer la relation quasi exclusive, dont font appel
les théories actuelles, entre les effets de spécificité perceptuelle et la performance aux tâches implicites, si on
veut prendre en compte les effets de spécificité perceptuelle sur la performance de reconnaissance, tels
que ceux observés dans le cadre de la présente étude.
Revue canadienne de psychologie expérimentale, 2003, 57:2, 137