Context Effects in Episodic Memory for Natural Scenes PRI ...
Transcript of Context Effects in Episodic Memory for Natural Scenes PRI ...
Context Effects in Episodic Memory for Natural Scenes
Pernille Hemmer1, Kimele Persaud1, Mark Steyvers2, Joseph DeAngelis1, & Rachel Venaglia3
1Rutgers University; 2University of California, Irvine; 3Lafayette College
Introduction
Introduction Introduction Introduction
Conclusion
• Research suggests that both the global and local context of a
scene has a strong impact on recognition of objects in that scene
• However, the various levels at which context effects can occur are
ill-defined. Little is known about how people use spatial/positional
properties of the environment in episodic memory for natural
scenes
Goal: to understand the contribution of the separate and combined
effects of associative and spatial context of natural scenes to
memory performance, and to assess the amount of study time
needed to achieve equivalent performance across varying
conditions of contextual information
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Acknowledgments
This material is based upon work supported
by the National Science Foundation under
Grant Number (IIS - 1062735)
Undergraduate students were funded by the
Aresty Summer Science Program
The graduate student was funded by the
NSF-IGERT Program
No Spatial Context (spatial context of objects removed)
Full Scene Context (Hemmer & Steyvers, 2009)
No Context (random objects)
Partial Scene Context (scene background removed)
Rich Context of Natural Scenes
• Strong influence of levels of context on
episodic memory for objects in natural scenes
• Associative & Spatial Context assist in recall
for natural scenes
•8 seconds of additional study time is needed
to achieve equivalent performance across
conditions
Intrusions
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Spatial Context of Objects
Associative context of Objects
• Intrusions dependent on contextual
levels of processing
• Global (Scene Type)
Kitchen refrigerator, silverware
Office calculator, paper clips
• Local (Object Association)
Plant dirt fertilizer
Sky clouds balloon
& PRI ors ME mory
LAB
Responses
Sources of Context
Recall as a function
of 0, 2 & 10 sec.
study time
Zero sec. gives
baseline contribution
from prior
knowledge of full
natural scene
context
Removal of
background effects
2 sec. condition
negatively
This might be due to
disturbed global
level gist extraction
Removal of spatial
context effects
accuracy in all
conditions
Two sec. study time
is no better than
guessing with prior
knowledge after 5 output positions
No coherent context
effects accuracy in
all conditions
Two sec. condition is
worse than guessing
with prior knowledge
Quantifies pure
episodic memory