Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2010 Nov;36(6):1536-42. doi: 10.1037/a0020448.
It is well established that the memory strength of studied items is more variable than the strength of new items on tests of recognition memory, but the reason why this occurs is poorly understood. One account for this old item variance effect is based on single-process theory, which proposes that this effect is due to variability in how well items are initially encoded into memory (i.e., the encoding variability account). In contrast, dual-process theory argues that old items are more variable because they are influenced by both recollection and familiarity, whereas recognition of new items relies primarily on familiarity. The present study shows that increasing encoding variability did not increase old item variance and that old item variance is directly related to the contribution of recollection. These results indicate that old item memory variability is due to the relative contribution of recollection and familiarity.
研究表明，在再认记忆测试中，与新的项目相比，学习过的项目的记忆强度的可变性更大，但造成这种情况的原因却知之甚少。对于这种旧项目变异效应，有一种解释是基于单一加工理论，该理论提出，这种效应是由于项目最初在记忆中的编码方式的变化所致（即编码变异性解释）。相比之下，双重加工理论认为，旧项目的变异性更大，是因为它们受到再认和熟悉度的双重影响，而新项目的识别主要依赖于熟悉度。本研究表明，增加编码变异性并不会增加旧项目的变异性，并且旧项目的变异性与再认的贡献直接相关。这些结果表明，旧项目记忆变异性是由于再认和熟悉度的相对贡献所致。
