Department of Psychology, Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, Saarland University, Campus A2.4, D-66123, Saarbrücken, Germany.
Department of Forensic Psychiatry, University Psychiatric Clinics, University Basel, Wilhelm Klein-Str. 27, CH-4002, Basel, Switzerland.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Dec;24(6):1844-1855. doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1256-1.
In event-related potential (ERP) studies, the left-parietal old/new effect is commonly considered as a neural correlate of recollection. In memory exclusion tasks, the effect is usually observed when the targeted information is identified, but it is not necessarily present when studied items are rejected as nontargets. Interestingly, both the presence and the absence of such old/new effects to nontargets have been regarded as indicator for strategic retrieval. We reviewed previous ERP studies using memory exclusion tasks to analyze the reaction time (RT) pattern in such studies, as well as the influence of task difficulty on the occurrence of nontarget retrieval. We identified 44 test conditions, reported in 24 studies, and subjected the behavioral data to a meta-analysis. The RTs to correctly rejected new items were shorter than the RTs to hits, in particular in studies that required differentiating conceptual or perceptual information at test. When the retrieval of target information was prioritized, RTs to nontargets were delayed relative to targets. Without such prioritization, no such RT differences were observed. For test conditions with nontarget retrieval, the retrieval accuracy was poorer compared with test conditions without such retrieval. The findings support previous studies that claimed that nontarget retrieval becomes more likely when target retrieval is difficult, but the strong overlap in task difficulty between conditions with and without nontarget retrieval indicates that other, partly yet to-be-identified factors contribute to the occurrence of nontarget retrieval as well.
在事件相关电位（ERP）研究中，左顶叶的旧/新效应通常被认为是回忆的神经相关物。在记忆排除任务中，当目标信息被识别时，通常会观察到这种效应，但当研究项目被拒绝为非目标时，这种效应不一定存在。有趣的是，非目标的这种旧/新效应的存在和不存在都被认为是策略检索的指标。我们回顾了使用记忆排除任务的先前 ERP 研究，以分析此类研究中的反应时（RT）模式，以及任务难度对非目标检索发生的影响。我们确定了 44 个测试条件，这些条件在 24 项研究中进行了报道，并对行为数据进行了荟萃分析。正确拒绝新项的 RT 短于命中的 RT，特别是在需要在测试中区分概念或感知信息的研究中。当优先检索目标信息时，相对于目标，非目标的 RT 会延迟。没有这种优先级，就不会观察到这种 RT 差异。对于有非目标检索的测试条件，检索准确性比没有这种检索的测试条件差。这些发现支持了先前的研究，即当目标检索困难时，非目标检索变得更有可能，但有和没有非目标检索的条件之间的任务难度强烈重叠表明，其他因素，部分尚未确定，也促成了非目标检索的发生。
