Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Ministry of Education), Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
Psychophysiology. 2020 Oct;57(10):e13639. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13639. Epub 2020 Jul 27.
While proactive inhibition (PI) frequently occurs in response to novel stimuli due to interference from previously learned information, shifts in semantic category on a preceding trial lead to the attenuation of learning interference effects such as PI, resulting in significantly improved performance on short-term memory tasks. This study examined how the release from PI also leads to a reduction in semantic inhibition, as measured primarily through an event-related potential (ERP) electroencephalography (EEG) design. The study used Chinese characters denoting different categories (word nouns for categories such as plants, clothes, and flowers) to test short-term memory recall in a control group (same category/no PI release) and experimental group (different category/PI release). Both behavioral data (recall accuracy) and ERP responses for the N400 and Late Positive Component (LPC) at frontal, central, and parietal electrode sites were collected. Behaviorally, recall accuracy declined continuously on the initial three consecutive trials, regardless of group, while recall increased significantly on the last trial specifically for the experimental group, due to the shift in semantic category. We reported a significant interaction between group and electrode site for the LPC component, indicating that inhibition effects were still active for both groups at the initial memory encoding stage (corresponding to N400), with inhibition release in the experimental group occurring through later LPC processing. These results provide electrophysiological evidence that release from PI can be distinguished from semantic forms of processing through changes in amplitude over the course of learning.
当由于先前学习的信息干扰而对新刺激产生主动抑制（PI）时，在前一个试验中语义类别发生转变会导致 PI 等学习干扰效应减弱，从而导致短期记忆任务的表现显著提高。本研究通过事件相关电位（ERP）脑电图（EEG）设计来检验 PI 的释放如何导致语义抑制的减少。该研究使用表示不同类别的汉字（植物、衣服和花卉等类别的名词）来测试对照组（相同类别/无 PI 释放）和实验组（不同类别/PI 释放）的短期记忆回忆。收集了行为数据（回忆准确性）和 N400 和晚期正成分（LPC）的 ERP 反应在前额、中央和顶叶电极部位。行为上，无论组如何，在最初的三个连续试验中，回忆准确性都连续下降，而实验组在最后一个试验中的回忆准确性显著提高，这是由于语义类别的转变。我们报告了 LPC 成分中组和电极部位之间的显著交互作用，表明抑制效应在初始记忆编码阶段（对应于 N400）对于两个组仍然活跃，而实验组通过后来的 LPC 处理释放抑制。这些结果提供了电生理证据，表明 PI 的释放可以通过学习过程中振幅的变化与语义形式的处理区分开来。
