Dissertation
The influence of recent history on the formation of long-term memory templates
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2023
DOI: 10.25820/etd.006965
Abstract
In three sets of experiments, I examined how real-world object categories structure the learning of environmental regularities, influencing the long-term memory template that guides visual search. In the first set of experiments, participants learned to associate two colors in each of 42 categories with scene context backgrounds (e.g., red staplers with a classroom scene). Participants then completed a visual search task, searching for these categories when the associations either matched or mismatched the learned associations. The results suggested that the templates were biased towards the properties of the recent exemplars episodically, based on the associations they had learned.
In the second set of experiments, participants completed a repeated search task for categories, similar to a contextual cuing paradigm. Half of the categories were Repeated, in which a feature value (e.g., color, orientation, target location) of the target objects was constant for the category, and half were Novel, in which a feature value randomly varied for that category. The resulting effect suggested episodic retrieval of the immediately preceding within-category search episode, but also reflected cumulative learning across all the category searches. Participants were explicitly aware of the category feature value for Repeated categories, even at a point in the experiment where the effect was driven by non-strategic guidance.
The final set of experiments carefully investigated simultaneous explicit memory and on-strategic guidance. Participants completed a non-strategic repeated search task for categories, similar to the inter-trial priming literature, in which each category could appear in one of two locations and one of two colors. Inter-trial effects were observed over location repetition. Crossing the location and color manipulations in a category produced four conditions over which to observe changes in the inter-block effects: either feature repeated (Color or Location), both features repeated (Both), or neither feature repeated (Neither). This provided evidence for non-strategic guidance to the last category-general target’s features and the last category-specific target’s features. Memory tests also suggested that the inter-trial effects were based on explicit memory for the last category-general target or category-specific target’s features. Together, this work suggests that recent experience with a category can influence the formation of long-term memory templates both episodically and cumulatively through non-strategic guidance while the features are explicitly available.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The influence of recent history on the formation of long-term memory templates
- Creators
- Ariel Kershner
- Contributors
- Andrew Hollingworth (Advisor)Cathleen Moore (Committee Member)J Toby Mordkoff (Committee Member)Shaun Vecera (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Psychology
- Date degree season
- Summer 2023
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.006965
- Number of pages
- x, 146 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2023 Ariel Kershner
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 07/10/2023
- Description illustrations
- illustrations, tables
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 129-146).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
- Each day we complete thousands of visual searches, like searching for your car keys in the morning. This real-world search behavior often involves retrieving a template, or visual representation, of your car keys from long-term memory to guide attention. Recently, we have found that long-term memory templates for categories, like car keys, can be biased by your recent experience, like seeing many black keys. But how does this information influence the formation of long-term memory templates? In three sets of experiments, participants learned the recent statistical distribution of different features (e.g., color, orientation, location, scene context) for categories, and then used this learning to guide their search to find a category member. In one set of experiments, participants learned to associate a category, color, and scene context together (e.g., the keys in your purse tend to be black). We found that the learning can occur episodically, based on individual previous episodes of seeing black keys in your purse. In another set of experiments, we confirmed that the guidance can occur episodically and cumulatively, based on all of your recent experience with black keys. In the final set of experiments, we confirmed that while you can explicitly report that the keys you have seen tend to be in a certain purse pocket, you may guide your attention non-strategically to that pocket when searching for keys, rather than strategically looking in the pockets when looking for your keys. Together, these findings provide novel insight into the mechanisms of attention guidance by long-term memory during everyday visual searches.
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984454643802771
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