Veit Kubik

Exploring the enactment effect from an information processing view: What can we learn from serial position analyses?

The focus of the present article was to analyze processes that determine the enactment and age effect in a multi-trial free recall paradigm by looking at the serial position effects. In an experimental study (see Schatz et al 2010), the performance-enhancing effect of enactive encoding and repeated learning was tested with older and younger participants. As expected, there was a steady improvement of memory performance as a function of repeated learning regardless of age. In addition, enactive encoding led to a better memory performance than verbal encoding in both age groups. Furthermore, younger adults outperformed the elderly regardless of type of encoding. Analyses in the present article show that encoding by enacting seems to profit especially from remembering the last items of a presented list. Regarding age differences, younger outperformed older participants in nearly all item positions. The performance enhancement after task repetition is due to a higher amount of recalled items in the middle positions in a subject performed task (SPT) and a verbal task (VT) as well as the last positions of a learned list in VT.

The enactment effect in a multi-trial free-recall paradigm

Recent evidence suggests that enacting compared to reading action phrases during encoding increases item-specific processing, but hampers “retrieval” (i.e. processes uniquely required in a free-recall test). Based on this notion, we predicted an enactment effect in free recall—a memory test that is supposed to rely on both processing types—and its size to be attenuated over the learning phase. In a multi-trial, study–test learning paradigm, participants (N = 40) studied and free-recalled repeatedly the same 24 action phrases either by enacting them or by reading them aloud during study trials. As predicted, we demonstrated the enactment effect only for the first study–test cycle, and then this mnemonic advantage attenuated over the remaining cycles. The present results support the notion that enactment increases item-specific processing but hampers retrieval.

Study for now, but judge for later : Delayed judgments of learning promote long term retention

Delayed judgments of learning (JOL) are assumed to be based on covert retrieval attempts. A common finding is that testing memory during learning improves later retention (i.e., the testing effect), and even more so than an equivalent amount of study, but only after a longer retention interval. To test the assertion that also delayed JOLs improve memory, the participants either studied Swahili-Swedish word pairs four times, or they both studied (two times) and performed delayed JOLs (two times) alternately. Final cued recall test were given after either five minutes or one week. Results showed a reliable learning-group by retention-interval interaction, with less forgetting in the group that alternated between studying and making JOLs. The results are discussed in relation to the self-fulfilling prophecy account of Spellman and Bjork (1992), and in terms of study advice, the results further underscore the importance of delaying JOLs when studying and evaluating ones ongoing learning.

Test-potentiated learning of motor sequences

ABSTRACT We investigated effects of retrieving body movements from memory on subsequent re-encoding of these movements (i.e., test-potentiated learning). In Experiment 1, participants first learned to perform 12 sequential finger movements as responses to letter stimuli. Eight of these movements then had to be recalled in response to their stimuli (initial test). Subsequently, learning trials were repeated for four of the previously to-be-retrieved movements as well as the previously not-to-be-retrieved movements. Restudy benefited from prior retrieval. In a final test, again requiring motoric recall in response to letter stimuli, performance was better for restudied items that were previously cued for retrieval as compared to items that had been restudied without prior retrieval. However, no such indirect testing benefit occurred when initial and final testing formats were incongruent, that is, when participants had to recall the stimuli in response to movements as cues at the final test. In Experiment 2, we replicated the finding of test-potentiated learning with a different design, manipulating initial-testing status between participants.

Putting action memory to the test: testing affects subsequent restudy but not long-term forgetting of action events

ABSTRACT Testing memory typically enhances subsequent re-encoding of information (“indirect” testing effect) and, as compared to restudy, it also benefits later long-term retention (“direct” testing effect). We investigated the effect of testing on subsequent restudy and 1-week retention of action events (e.g. “water the plant”). In addition, we investigated if the type of recall practice (noun-cued vs. verb-cued) moderates these testing benefits. The results showed an indirect testing effect that increased following noun-cued recall of verbs as compared to verb-cued recall of nouns. In contrast, a direct testing effect on the forgetting rate of performed actions was not reliably observed, neither for noun- nor verb-cued recall. Thus, to the extent that this study successfully dissociated direct and indirect testing-based enhancements, they seem to be differentially effective for performed actions, and may rely on partially different mechanisms.

Time takes space: selective effects of multitasking on concurrent spatial processing

Many everyday activities require coordination and monitoring of complex relations of future goals and deadlines. Cognitive offloading may provide an efficient strategy for reducing control demands by representing future goals and deadlines as a pattern of spatial relations. We tested the hypothesis that multiple-task monitoring involves time-to-space transformational processes, and that these spatial effects are selective with greater demands on coordinate (metric) than categorical (nonmetric) spatial relation processing. Participants completed a multitasking session in which they monitored four series of deadlines, running on different time scales, while making concurrent coordinate or categorical spatial judgments. We expected and found that multitasking taxes concurrent coordinate, but not categorical, spatial processing. Furthermore, males showed a better multitasking performance than females. These findings provide novel experimental evidence for the hypothesis that efficient multitasking involves metric relational processing.

Two effects, one explanation : a study on the effects of intended and actual enactment

Motor-function encoding action phrases, facilitates recollection more than verbal encoding (enactment effect, c.f. Nilsson, 2000). Further, if the phrases are intended to be recalled via motor-function encoding it also leads to higher memory accessibility, referred to as the intention-superiority effect (Goschke & Kuhl, 1993) or the intended enactment effect (Freeman & Ellis, 2003), depending on whether the same process or different processes are assumed to underlie both effects. In three experiments, both effects were studied as a function of list length (18, 30, 60, or 90 items), retrieval measures (free recall, cued recall and recognition). Additionally, different moderator variables for these effects were investigated (familiarity, degree of motor involvement of the action phrases, individual differences in action orientation). Similar effects of intended and actual enactment were found for memory accuracy and accessibility (i.e., response latencies), but the effects were moderated by the nature of the action phrase and action orientation. State-oriented individuals and highly motoric action phrases showed a pronounced (intended) enactment effect. The results, at least partially, support a common explanation for both effects.