Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory

One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact. Here we present results which draw attention to the fact that the reappearance of irrelevant and unattended background contexts of encoding significantly impairs memory disc...

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Autores principales: Racsmány, Mihály, Bencze, Dorottya, Pajkossy, Péter, Szőllősi, Ágnes, Marián, Miklós
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7973510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33737589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85627-2
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author Racsmány, Mihály
Bencze, Dorottya
Pajkossy, Péter
Szőllősi, Ágnes
Marián, Miklós
author_facet Racsmány, Mihály
Bencze, Dorottya
Pajkossy, Péter
Szőllősi, Ágnes
Marián, Miklós
author_sort Racsmány, Mihály
collection PubMed
description One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact. Here we present results which draw attention to the fact that the reappearance of irrelevant and unattended background contexts of encoding significantly impairs memory discrimination functions. This manuscript presents the results of two experiments in which participants made indoor/outdoor judgements for a large number of object images presented together with individual, irrelevant and presumably unattended background scenes. On a subsequent unexpected recognition test participants saw the incidentally encoded target objects, visually similar lures or new foil objects on the same or new background scenes. Our results showed that although the reappearance of the background scene raised the hit rate for target objects, it decreased mnemonic discrimination, a behavioral score for pattern separation, a hippocampal function that is affected in early dementia. Furthermore, the presence of the encoded background scene at the recognition test increased the false recognition of lure objects, even when participants were explicitly instructed to neglect the context scene. Altogether these results gave evidence that if context increases recognition hits for target memories, it does so at the cost of increasing false recognition and diminished discriminability for similar information.
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spelling pubmed-79735102021-03-19 Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory Racsmány, Mihály Bencze, Dorottya Pajkossy, Péter Szőllősi, Ágnes Marián, Miklós Sci Rep Article One of the greatest commonplaces in memory research is that context improves recall and enhances or leaves recognition intact. Here we present results which draw attention to the fact that the reappearance of irrelevant and unattended background contexts of encoding significantly impairs memory discrimination functions. This manuscript presents the results of two experiments in which participants made indoor/outdoor judgements for a large number of object images presented together with individual, irrelevant and presumably unattended background scenes. On a subsequent unexpected recognition test participants saw the incidentally encoded target objects, visually similar lures or new foil objects on the same or new background scenes. Our results showed that although the reappearance of the background scene raised the hit rate for target objects, it decreased mnemonic discrimination, a behavioral score for pattern separation, a hippocampal function that is affected in early dementia. Furthermore, the presence of the encoded background scene at the recognition test increased the false recognition of lure objects, even when participants were explicitly instructed to neglect the context scene. Altogether these results gave evidence that if context increases recognition hits for target memories, it does so at the cost of increasing false recognition and diminished discriminability for similar information. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-03-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7973510/ /pubmed/33737589 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85627-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Racsmány, Mihály
Bencze, Dorottya
Pajkossy, Péter
Szőllősi, Ágnes
Marián, Miklós
Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title_full Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title_fullStr Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title_full_unstemmed Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title_short Irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
title_sort irrelevant background context decreases mnemonic discrimination and increases false memory
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7973510/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33737589
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85627-2
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