Ning Xueling, Li Cuihong, Yang Jiongjiong
School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2018 Aug 8;9:1429. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01429. eCollection 2018.
Previous studies have shown that prior knowledge can have both enhancing and detrimental effects on memory for relevant information. Few studies have explored the boundary conditions under which prior knowledge facilitates or interferes with memory processes. In addition, to what extent the effects of prior knowledge change over time is unclear. In this study, we addressed this question by separating category familiarity (i.e., prior conceptual knowledge) and stimulus familiarity at different retention intervals. Participants were tested with a recognition task after they learned four types of words, that is., familiar words from familiar categories (FwordFcate) and unfamiliar categories (FwordUcate) as well as unfamiliar words from familiar (UwordFcate) and unfamiliar categories (UwordUcate). The results showed a significant interaction between category familiarity and word familiarity, that is, unfamiliar words, but not familiar words, from familiar categories were remembered better than those from unfamiliar categories. The enhancing effect of category familiarity depended on the recollection process and remained stable over time. This study suggested that stimulus familiarity modulates the effects of category familiarity on memory performance, and clarified the boundary conditions for the effects of prior knowledge.
先前的研究表明，先验知识对相关信息的记忆可能既有增强作用，也有不利影响。很少有研究探讨先验知识促进或干扰记忆过程的边界条件。此外，先验知识的影响随时间变化的程度尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们通过在不同的保持间隔下分离类别熟悉度（即先前的概念知识）和刺激熟悉度来解决这个问题。参与者在学习了四种类型的单词后进行了识别任务测试，这四种类型的单词分别是：来自熟悉类别的熟悉单词（FwordFcate）和不熟悉类别（FwordUcate），以及来自熟悉类别（UwordFcate）和不熟悉类别的不熟悉单词（UwordUcate）。结果显示，类别熟悉度和单词熟悉度之间存在显著的交互作用，也就是说，来自熟悉类别的不熟悉单词，而不是熟悉单词，比来自不熟悉类别的单词记忆得更好。类别熟悉度的增强作用取决于回忆过程，并且随时间保持稳定。本研究表明，刺激熟悉度调节类别熟悉度对记忆表现的影响，并阐明了先验知识影响的边界条件。
