Part-set cuing effects in spatial memory: the role of interitem associations

Abstract

Part-set cuing facilitation and impairment effects are rarely found in spatial memory, which is a challenge to the theories of part-set cuing effects based on lexical stimulus. This study aims to investigate whether there part-set cuing facilitation and impairment effects are present in spatial memory by constructing two types of memory scenes with high and low degrees of interitem associations, achieved by manipulating the presentation of miniatures. This study examined the effects of different part-set cues on free recall, recognition, and reconstruction tasks. The results of two experiments revealed that matrix cues impaired the performance of three recall tasks in memory scenes with a high degree of interitem associations, and scene cues facilitated the reconstruction performance (Experiment 1). Conversely, in memory scenes with a low degree of interitem associations, the impairment effect of matrix cues was not observed in the three recall tasks, but scene cues still facilitated the reconstruction performance (Experiment 2). These findings supported the retrieval strategy disruption hypothesis, the two-mechanism and the multi-mechanism accounts, demonstrating the significance of interitem associations in spatial memory. Furthermore, the results provided direct evidence for the importance of the encoding-retrieval strategy matching principle in spatial memory tasks.

Keywords: interitem associations; miniatures; part-set cuing facilitation effect; part-set cuing impairment effect; spatial memory.

Figure 1

Take the zoo scene (A) of the 3 scene types as an example, the background (B), matrix cues (C), and scene cues (D) in Experiment 1.

Figure 2

Mean proportion correct recall for the target items as function of cuing condition (background condition, matrix condition, scene condition) and recall task (free recall, recognition, reconstruction) in Experiment 1. The error bars indicate standard error.

Figure 3

Sixteen representative animal miniatures with 4 × 4 matrix arrangement to form the zoo scene (A) with a low degree of interitem associations, and the scene cues refer to the remaining scenes after removing the target animal miniatures (B).

Figure 4

Mean proportion correct recall for the target items as function of cuing condition (background condition, matrix condition, scene condition) and recall task (free recall, recognition, reconstruction) in Experiment 2. The error bars indicate standard error.