A spatial-context effect in recognition memory

We designed a novel experiment to investigate the modulation of human recognition memory by environmental context. Human participants were asked to navigate through a four-arm Virtual Reality (VR) maze in order to find and memorize discrete items presented at specific locations in the environment. T...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autores: Pacheco, Daniel, Sánchez Fibla, Martí, Duff, Armin, Verschure, Paul F. M. J.
Tipo de documento: artigo
Estado:Versão publicada
Data de publicação:2017
País:España
Recursos:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositório:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10230/43761
Acesso em linha:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/43761
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00143
Access Level:Acceso aberto
Palavra-chave:Recognition memory
Spatial behavior
Context effects
Spatial memory and navigation
Virtual reality
Descrição
Resumo:We designed a novel experiment to investigate the modulation of human recognition memory by environmental context. Human participants were asked to navigate through a four-arm Virtual Reality (VR) maze in order to find and memorize discrete items presented at specific locations in the environment. They were later on tested on their ability to recognize items as previously presented or new. By manipulating the spatial position of half of the studied items during the testing phase of our experiment, we could assess differences in performance related to the congruency of environmental information at encoding and retrieval. Our results revealed that spatial context had a significant effect on the quality of memory. In particular, we found that recognition performance was significantly better in trials in which contextual information was congruent as opposed to those in which it was different. Our results are in line with previous studies that have reported spatial-context effects in recognition memory, further characterizing their magnitude under ecologically valid experimental conditions.