Blanco Nathaniel, Gureckis Todd
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, 108 Dean Keaton Stop A8000, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Cogn Process. 2013 Mar;14(1):73-9. doi: 10.1007/s10339-012-0530-4. Epub 2012 Oct 12.
What effect does labeling an object as a member of a familiar category have on memory for that object? Recent studies suggest that recognition memory can be negatively impacted by categorizing objects during encoding. This paper examines the "representational shift hypothesis" which argues that categorizing an object impairs recognition memory by altering the trace of the encoded memory to be more similar to the category prototype. Previous evidence for this idea comes from experiments in which a basic-level category labeling task was compared to a non-category labeling incidental encoding task, usually a preference judgment (e.g., "Do you like this item?"). In two experiments, we examine alternative tasks that attempt to control for processing demands and the degree to which category information is explicitly recruited at the time of study. Contrary to the predictions of the representational shift hypothesis, we find no evidence that memory is selectively impaired by category labeling. Overall, the pattern of results across both studies appears consistent with well-established variables known to influence memory such as encoding specificity and distinctiveness effects.
将一个物体归类为熟悉类别的成员会对该物体的记忆产生什么影响？最近的研究表明，在编码过程中对物体进行分类可能会对识别记忆产生负面影响。本文考察了“表征转移假说”，该假说认为，对物体进行分类会通过改变编码记忆的痕迹使其更类似于类别原型，从而损害识别记忆。此前支持这一观点的证据来自一些实验，在这些实验中，将一个基本层次的类别标记任务与一个非类别标记的附带编码任务进行比较，后者通常是一个偏好判断（例如，“你喜欢这个物品吗？”）。在两项实验中，我们考察了一些替代任务，这些任务试图控制加工需求以及在学习时明确引入类别信息的程度。与表征转移假说的预测相反，我们没有发现证据表明类别标记会选择性地损害记忆。总体而言，两项研究的结果模式似乎与已知影响记忆的既定变量一致，如编码特异性和独特性效应。
