Incidental and Intentional Encoding of Associative Information in Human Memory

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The proposed research concerns memory for item information (the representation of individual events) and associative information (the representation of relations between events). Forming new associations between items is a fundamental aspect of building and expanding knowledge structures. Associations between individual items, and between items and their context, also play a critical role in the retrieval of stored information. Therefore, the encoding and retrieval of new associations is an essential aspect of successful memory function. Two series of studies are proposed. The first describes examinations of associations between to-be-remembered items and their background picture contexts (e.g., Hockley, 2008). The intentional and incidental encoding of item-context associations will be examined indirectly in tests of item recognition in same versus different contexts, and directly in tests of associative recognition and associative reinstatement (pair recognition). In the second series of studies, associative memory between individual items will be assessed. These studies will include random word pairs, and word pairs with categorical (e.g., violin-guitar), and pre-experimental (e.g., sea-food) associations in order to evaluate the influences of experimental and pre-experimental familiarity and degree of unitization on associative memory, and will compare yes-no and forced-choice associative recognition performance. The proposed studies are guided by a general dual-process account in which it is assumed that recognition decisions can be based on the recollection of specific details of a prior experience, or on a more diffuse sense of familiarity in the absence of recollection (e.g., Joordens & Hockley, 2000; Vokey & Hockley, 2012). Dual process theory has largely been assessed for item recognition as associative recognition has been assumed to be principally based on recollection (e.g., Hockley & Cristi, 1999). More recently, however, it has been shown that associative recognition can also be based on familiarity when associations are unitized (e.g., Ahmad & Hockley, 2014). The short-term research goals of the proposed studies are to examine the roles of familiarity and recollection in associative recognition for both the incidental and intentional encoding of relational information. The proposed studies also have applied implications for memory and aging as older adults experience greater difficulty in encoding associative information and they also rely to a greater extent on familiarity (e.g., Ahmad, Fernandes, & Hockley, 2015). My long-term research goal is to develop a principled and unified dual-process account of recognition memory for both item and associative information.