The neural measures of fluency and disfluency during recognition memory using event-related potentials

Abstract

Recognition memory is a commonly studied memory process which can be further be divided into two concepts: familiarity and recollection. A previous study looked at the effects of match (i.e. RIGHT), orthographically similar (OS) (i.e. SIGHT), and semantic (i.e. LEFT) primes on processing of target word (i.e. RIGHT) during recognition memory test. The results of the study show that match causes fluency whereas OS causes disfluency and that essentially, there is a different between prime type and response to old (studied) and new (unstudied) words. Another study examined the effects of match (i.e. RIGHT), OS (i.e. SIGHT), and unrelated word (i.e. ANIMAL) prime on processing of target word (i.e. RIGHT) during recognition memory test. In the study, unrelated word was hypothesized to serve as a control prime. The results show that unrelated words also cause disfluency like OS primes because the letters do not match. Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) predicted this effect. The research question of our study is as follows: Will using symbols serve as an effective unprimed control condition? We predicted the following: 1) Since the symbols have no perceptual overlap with English alphabets, they should not cause disfluency; 2) A true baseline should consist of a prime that does not activate letter fluency in any way; 3) Results will show a positive ERP for match prime conditions, negative ERP for OS prime conditions, and a baseline ERP for unprimed conditions.