Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e56155. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056155. Epub 2013 Feb 7.
Newly learned information that is congruent with a preexisting schema is often better remembered than information that is incongruent. This schema effect on memory has previously been associated to more efficient encoding and consolidation mechanisms. However, this effect is not always consistently supported in the literature, with differential schema effects reported for different types of memory, different retrieval cues, and the possibility of time-dependent effects related to consolidation processes. To examine these effects more directly, we tested participants on two different types of memory (item recognition and associative memory) for newly encoded visuo-tactile associations at different study-test intervals, thus probing memory retrieval accuracy for schema-congruent and schema-incongruent items and associations at different time points (t = 0, t = 20, and t = 48 hours) after encoding. Results show that the schema effect on visual item recognition only arises after consolidation, while the schema effect on associative memory is already apparent immediately after encoding, persisting, but getting smaller over time. These findings give further insight into different factors influencing the schema effect on memory, and can inform future schema experiments by illustrating the value of considering effects of memory type and consolidation on schema-modulated retrieval.
新习得的与先前存在的图式一致的信息通常比不一致的信息更容易被记住。这种图式对记忆的影响以前与更有效的编码和巩固机制有关。然而，这种效应在文献中并不总是得到一致的支持，不同类型的记忆、不同的检索线索以及与巩固过程相关的时间依赖性效应都报告了不同的图式效应。为了更直接地研究这些效应，我们在不同的学习-测试间隔下，对参与者进行了两种不同类型的记忆（项目识别和联想记忆）的测试，以测试新编码的视触觉联想，从而在编码后不同的时间点（t=0、t=20 和 t=48 小时）探测图式一致和图式不一致的项目和联想的记忆检索准确性。结果表明，图式对视觉项目识别的影响仅在巩固后才会出现，而图式对联想记忆的影响在编码后立即显现，并持续存在，但随着时间的推移逐渐减小。这些发现进一步深入了解了影响记忆中图式效应的不同因素，并通过说明考虑记忆类型和巩固对图式调节检索的影响的价值，为未来的图式实验提供了信息。
