Unitization and the creation of episodic memory: Semantic, spatial, and schematic encoding factor effects on associative recognition and its electrophysiological correlates in young and old adults and cortical lesion patients

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The main goal of this research project is to explore the circumstances under which encoding manipulations that promote unitization support associative recognition in young and old adults, and in patients with impairments in recollection and associative remembering. We hypothesize that unitization provides an effective method of supporting associative memory, as unitization increases memory primarily by increasing familiarity, which is less affected by old age and brain lesions than recollection. We plan to identify the conditions under which unitization facilitates associative memory by exploring encoding factors (semantic and spatial relations between objects) and retrieval factors (context effects and associative priming) using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. As a second research goal we plan to directly compare the value of unitization for the amelioration of memory deficits in two populations characterized by recollection deficits (stroke patients and old adults), using the same experimental paradigm in both populations. In a final set of studies, we will investigate whether unitization may be engendered not only by the presence of focal semantic and spatial relations between objects, but also by the activation of preexisting semantic schema knowledge. An overarching goal is to identify conditions under which old adults benefit from unitization to ameliorate their associative memory deficit by compensatory familiarity-based remembering. In light of the aging population and the high relevance of learning arbitrary associations in a variety of educational contexts, a better understanding of the role of unitization for the formation of novel associative memories is of great theoretical and practical relevance.