University of St Andrews, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, St Andrews, KY16 8JP, United Kingdom.
Nottingham Trent University, School of Social Sciences, Nottingham, NG1 4FQ, United Kingdom.
Sci Rep. 2018 Aug 1;8(1):11579. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-30030-7.
Translational recognition memory research makes frequent use of the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) paradigm in which animals are simultaneously presented with one new and one old object. The preferential exploration of the new as compared to the old object produces a metric, the Discrimination Ratio (DR), assumed to represent recognition memory sensitivity. Human recognition memory studies typically assess performance using signal detection theory derived measures; sensitivity (d') and bias (c). How DR relates to d' and c and whether they measure the same underlying cognitive mechanism is, however, unknown. We investigated the correspondence between DR (eye-tracking-determined), d' and c in a sample of 37 humans. We used dwell times during a visual paired comparison task (analogous to the NOR) to determine DR, and a separate single item recognition task to derive estimates of response sensitivity and bias. DR was found to be significantly positively correlated to sensitivity but not bias. Our findings confirm that DR corresponds to d', the primary measure of recognition memory sensitivity in humans, and appears not to reflect bias. These findings are the first of their kind to suggest that animal researchers should be confident in interpreting the DR as an analogue of recognition memory sensitivity.
转化识别记忆研究经常使用新物体识别（NOR）范式，在该范式中，动物同时呈现一个新物体和一个旧物体。与旧物体相比，动物更倾向于探索新物体，这产生了一个度量标准，即辨别比（DR），被认为代表识别记忆的敏感性。人类识别记忆研究通常使用基于信号检测理论的测量方法评估性能；敏感性（d'）和偏差（c）。然而，DR 与 d'和 c 的关系以及它们是否测量相同的潜在认知机制尚不清楚。我们在 37 名人类样本中研究了 DR（眼动追踪确定）、d'和 c 之间的对应关系。我们使用视觉配对比较任务（类似于 NOR）中的停留时间来确定 DR，并使用单独的单个项目识别任务来得出反应敏感性和偏差的估计值。结果发现，DR 与敏感性显著正相关，但与偏差无关。我们的研究结果证实，DR 与人类识别记忆敏感性的主要测量指标 d'相对应，似乎不反映偏差。这些发现是首次表明动物研究人员应该有信心将 DR 解释为识别记忆敏感性的模拟。
