Liu Zejun, Li Xian, Li Xiaohuan, Yuan Jing, Guo Chunyan
Department of Psychology, Educational College, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory of Learning and Cognition, Department of Psychology, Capital Normal University, Beijing, China.
Psychophysiology. 2023 Feb;60(2):e14161. doi: 10.1111/psyp.14161. Epub 2022 Aug 10.
Although it is widely accepted that familiarity could support associative recognition when the to-be-learn items are 'unitized' into a new representation, the effects of unitization on associative recognition and recollection remain much debated. The current study aimed to explain these debates by exploring when and how unitization benefits associative recognition using event-related potentials (ERPs). During the encoding phase, participants learned compound words and unrelated word pairs (i.e., High vs. Low level of unitization). At retrieval, the compound words were rearranged into new compound words (i.e., no-change) and unrelated word pairs (i.e., change). Similarly, the unrelated word pairs were rearranged into new unrelated word pairs (i.e., no-change) and compound words (i.e., change). Results showed that under the no-change condition, unitization did not affect associative recognition, nor its underlying processes. In contrast, under the change condition, unitization improved associative recognition by increasing both familiarity-related FN400 effect and recollection-related LPC effect. In addition, a planned comparison between the compound-change and unrelated-no change conditions-a common index for unitization effect in past studies-revealed that unitization could not only elicit significant FN400 effect, but also improve associative recognition by increasing LPC effect. Collectively, these results not only allowed to explain the current discrepancies in the literature concerning the effect of unitization on associative recognition, but also emphasized the importance of matching the level of unitization between the studied and rearranged word pairs.
尽管人们普遍认为，当待学习项目被“整合”成一种新的表征时，熟悉度有助于联想识别，但整合对联想识别和回忆的影响仍存在诸多争议。当前的研究旨在通过使用事件相关电位（ERP）探索整合何时以及如何有利于联想识别来解释这些争议。在编码阶段，参与者学习复合词和不相关的词对（即高与低整合水平）。在检索时，复合词被重新排列成新的复合词（即无变化）和不相关的词对（即变化）。同样，不相关的词对被重新排列成新的不相关词对（即无变化）和复合词（即变化）。结果表明，在无变化条件下，整合既不影响联想识别，也不影响其潜在过程。相比之下，在变化条件下，整合通过增加与熟悉度相关的FN400效应和与回忆相关的LPC效应来提高联想识别。此外，对复合词变化和不相关词对无变化条件之间的计划比较（过去研究中整合效应的一个常用指标）表明，整合不仅能引发显著的FN400效应，还能通过增加LPC效应来提高联想识别。总的来说，这些结果不仅有助于解释当前文献中关于整合对联想识别影响的差异，还强调了在学习和重新排列的词对之间匹配整合水平的重要性。
