Intervention of Memory Consolidation by Post-Trial Learning: A Time Dependent Effect

• Main Authors: Fang-Yu Cheng, 鄭芳諭
• Other Authors: Tai-Li Chou
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2015
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/u4dhkp

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 心理學研究所 === 103 === Memory consolidation is a process during which a memory trace becomes stable and resistant to disruption over time. This process is supported by evidence that a period of rest after learning would enhance retention of learned materials. However, whether a memory trace in humans would become more resistant to post-learning interference along with time has been questioned. This study aimed to examine the time-dependent influence of the post-learning intervention on consolidation of associative memory for figure-word pairs. Four experiments were conducted in this study, in which two groups of participants were randomly assigned into an immediate intervention (II) condition or a delayed intervention condition (DI) on day 1. In the II condition learned the target list, followed immediately by learning the intervention list, and finally receiving the delay interval. In contrast, participants in the DI condition, participants learned the target list, followed by a delay interval, and then learning an intervention list. Memory performance was assessed by recognizing target pairs from foil pairs and indexed by sensitivity (d-prime) of signal detection analysis. We found that the reduction of the d-prime score for detecting the target pairs from day 1 to day 2 was greater in the II condition than in the DI condition in Experiment 4. Our findings indicate that learning an intervention list immediately after the target list produced more interruption on the 1-day memory than listening to music, suggesting that consolidation of memory is impaired by processing similar materials in a time dependent manner.