Part-List Cues Hinder Familiarity but Not Recollection in Item Recognition: Behavioral and Event-Related Potential Evidence

Abstract

Participants' memory performance is normally poorer when a subset of previously learned items is provided as retrieval cues than none of the retrieval cues is provided. This phenomenon is called the part-list cuing effect, which has been discovered in numerous behavioral studies. However, there is currently no relevant behavioral or event-related potential (ERP) research to investigate whether the forgetting effect caused by part-list cues is more sensitive to recollection or to familiarity. By combining the part-list cuing paradigm with the Remember/Know procedure, we investigated this issue in the present ERP study. Behavioral data showed part-list cuing induced detrimental effect in two aspects: significantly lowered familiarity of the target items and decreased memory discrimination score (P_r score) for "Know" but not for "Remember" items in the part-list cue condition than in the no-part-list cue condition. ERP data revealed that the FN400 old/new effects, which are associated with familiarity, were absent when providing part-list cues, whereas the late positive complex (LPC) old/new effects, which are associated with recollection, were observed comparably in both part-list cue and no-part-list cue conditions. Converging behavioral and ERP results suggested that part-list cues hindered familiarity-based retrieval but not recollection-based retrieval of item recognition. Theoretical implications of the findings for the part-list cuing effect are discussed.

Keywords: FN400; familiarity; late positive complex; part-list cuing effect; recognition; recollection.

Figure 1

Schematic of trial procedure in learning, distractor/distractor-plus-cues, and recognition phases. English translations of the originally Chinese words are in parentheses.

Figure 2

The grand-average waveforms for Remember (Remember responses to old items), Know (Know responses to old items), and New (New responses to new items) items in part-list cue and no-part-list cue conditions at F3, Fz, and F4 electrodes.

Figure 3

Difference wave of FN400 and late positive complex (LPC). (A) dFN400 (ERPs of Know response to old items minus ERPs of New response to new items) at F3, Fz, and F4 electrodes in part-list cue and no-part-list cue conditions, respectively. (B) dLPC (ERPs of Remember response to old items minus ERPs of New response to new items) at P3, Pz, and P4 electrodes in part-list cue and no-part-list cue conditions, respectively. (C) Topographic maps for dFN400 in the time window of 300–500 ms. (D) Topographic maps for dLPC in the time window of 500–700 ms.

Figure 4

The grand-average waveforms for Remember (Remember responses to old items), Know (Know responses to old items), and New (New responses to new items) items in part-list cue and no-part-list cue conditions at P3, Pz, and P4 electrodes.