Comparing two unitisation manipulations: effects on familiarity, recollection-based recognition, and semantic interference.

The recognition of associative memory can be significantly influenced by the use of an encoding strategy known as unitisation, which has been implemented through various manipulations. However, [Shao, H., Opitz, B., Yang, J., & Weng, X. (2016). Recollection reduces unitised familiarity effect. Memory (Hove, England), 24(4), 535-547. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2015.1021258] found intriguing distinctions between two common manipulations, the compound task and the imagery task, leading to a dispute. We propose that differences in levels of processing in the imagery task may account for these discrepancies. This study tested our hypothesis using two approaches. The first two experiments utilised the R/K paradigm to investigate the effects of these methods on familiarity-based and recollection-based recognition. The results demonstrated that familiarity was increased in the compound task, while recollection was increased in the imagery task. In the subsequent two experiments, an interference paradigm was employed to examine differences in semantic processing within the two tasks. The results showed that the compound task did not impact participants' inclination towards lures, while the imagery task led to a bias towards semantic lures over episodic lures, suggesting that the two encodings in the imagery task involve different levels of semantic processing. These results support our hypothesis and underscore the importance of carefully choosing comparisons that account for other variables in the study of unitisation.

The Relational Trip Task, a novel ecological measure of relational memory: data from a schizophrenia sample.

INTRODUCTION: Relational memory (RM) is severely impaired in schizophrenia. Unitisation can circumvent RM impairments in clinical populations as measured by the transverse-patterning (TP) task, a well-established measure of RM capacity. We compared memory performance on a new ecological RM measure, the Relational Trip Task (RTT), to that of TP at baseline and examined the effects of a unitisation intervention in RTT performance. RTT involves learning relational information of real-life stimuli, such as the relationship between people and places or objects. METHODS: TP and RTT performances were examined in 45 individuals with schizophrenia. TP-impaired participants (n = 22) were randomised to either the intervention or an active control group. TP and RTT were administered again after unitisation training. Task validity and reliability were assessed. Intervention group's pre- and post-RTT accuracies were compared and contrasted to that in the control group. RESULTS: RTT and TP were moderately correlated. TP non-learners had inferior performance in RTT at baseline. Improvement in RTT performance after unitisation training was observed in the intervention group; no pre-post improvement was observed in the control group. CONCLUSION: RTT has an acceptable criterion validity and excellent alternate-form reliability. Unitisation seemed to be successfully generalized to support associations of real-life stimuli.

Recollection reduces unitised familiarity effect.

Two types of encoding tasks have been employed in previous research to investigate the beneficial effect of unitisation on familiarity-based associative recognition (unitised familiarity effect), namely the compound task and the interactive imagery task. Here we show how these two tasks could differentially engage subsequent recollection-based associative recognition and consequently lead to the turn-on or turn-off of the unitised familiarity effect. In the compound task, participants studied unrelated word pairs as newly learned compounds. In the interactive imagery task, participants studied the same word pairs as interactive images. An associative recognition task was used in combination with the Remember/Know procedure to measure recollection-based and familiarity-based associative recognition. The results showed that the unitised familiarity effect was present in the compound task but was absent in the interactive imagery task. A comparison of the compound and the interactive imagery task revealed a dramatic increase in recollection-based associative recognition for the interactive imagery task. These results suggest that unitisation could benefit familiarity-based associative recognition; however, this effect will be eliminated when the memory trace formed is easily accessed by strong recollection without the need for a familiarity assessment.

Evidence Against Effects of Cultural Group and Prior Knowledge on Feature Binding in Working Memory.

Feature binding is the process of integrating features, such as colour and shape, into object representations. A persistent question in the literature concerning whether feature binding is an automatic or resource-demanding process may depend on unitisation, that is, whether the to-be-bound information is intrinsic (belonging to) or extrinsic (contextual). Given extensive evidence showing that Easterners may process information more holistically than Westerners, such cultural differences may be useful to understand the fundamental processes of feature binding in visual working memory (WM). Accordingly, we recruited British and Chinese participants to complete a visual WM task wherein to-be-remembered colours were integrated within (i.e., intrinsic binding) or as backgrounds (i.e., extrinsic binding) of to-be-remembered shapes (Experiments 1 and 2). Experiment 2 further investigated the role of prior knowledge in long-term memory to facilitate feature binding in WM. During retrieval, participants decided among three probes: a target, a lure (i.e., recombination of the presented features), and a new colour/shape. Hierarchical Bayesian multinomial processing tree models were fit to the data to estimate parameters representing binding and item memory. The current results suggest that intrinsic and extrinsic binding memory are similar between the two cultural groups, with no prior knowledge benefits for either intrinsic or extrinsic binding for either cultural group. This result conflicts with the Analytic and Holistic framework and suggests that there are no cultural differences or prior knowledge benefits in feature binding.

Is a novel conceptual unit more than the sum of its parts?: FMRI evidence from an associative recognition memory study.

Recollection, an effortful process relying on the integrity of a brain network including the hippocampus, is generally required to remember arbitrary associations whereas a simple familiarity signal arising in the perirhinal cortex is sufficient to recognize single items. However, the integration of separate items into a single configuration (unitization) leads to reduced involvement of recollection and greater reliance on familiarity. This seems to imply that unitized associations are processed similar to single items. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the effects of unitization as encoding strategy on retrieval processes in a between-group-design. A definition was provided that allows combining two unrelated words into a novel conceptual unit (e.g., milk taxi = a delivery service, which is directly dispatched from a farm). We compared this to an encoding strategy in which the words were studied as parts of a sentence. We included pairs in reversed order at test because reversing a unitized word pair is assumed to disrupt the unit while leaving item familiarity for the single constituents intact. This enabled us to compare recognition memory for novel units and single items. Sentence encoding led to a flexible recruitment of brain areas previously associated with recollection, irrespective of the order of the test pair. Unitization encoding reduced the involvement of the recollection network and specifically engaged regions within the parahippocampal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex for novel units. In contrast, recognition of reversed pairs involved activation of BA 45 in the left inferior frontal gyrus. This possibly suggests that familiarity for novel units and single items are associated with different brain networks.