Part-set cuing facilitation for spatial information

Abstract

Part-set cuing inhibition refers to the counterintuitive finding that hints--specifically, part of the set of to-be-remembered information--often impair memory performance in free recall tasks. Although inhibition is the most commonly reported result, part-set cuing facilitation has been shown with serial order tasks. The present study examined the influence of part-set cuing for spatial locations using novel methods and materials. Participants viewed the construction of Snap Circuit objects and then attempted to reconstruct the objects in either the presence or absence of part-set cues. Two experiments revealed robust part-set cuing facilitation on the spatial memory tasks. Generally, these results are consistent with the predictions of the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis (e.g., D. R. Basden & Basden, 1995) and the 2- and 3-mechanism accounts of part-set cuing (Bäuml & Aslan, 2006; Bäuml & Samenieh, 2012).