Does context recollection depend on the base-rate of contextual features?

Cogn Process. 2023 Sep 11. doi: 10.1007/s10339-023-01153-1. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTEpisodic recollection is defined by the re-experiencing of contextual and target details of a past event. The base-rate dependency hypothesis assumes that the retrieval of one contextual feature from an integrated episodic trace cues the retrieval of another associated feature, and that the more often a particular configuration of features occurs, the more effective this mutual cueing will be. Alternatively, the conditional probability of one feature given another feature may be neglected in memory for contextual features since they are not directly bound to one another. Three conjoint recognition experiments investigated whether memory for context is sensitive to the base-rates of features. Participants studied frequent versus infrequent configurations of features and, during the test, they were asked to recognise one of these features with (vs. without) another feature reinstated. The results showed that the context recollection parameter, representing the re-experience of contextual features in the dual-recollection model, was higher for frequent than infrequent feature configurations only when the binding of feature information was made easier and the differences in the base-rates were extreme, otherwise no difference was found. Similarly, base-rates of features influenced response guessing only in the condition with salient differences in base-rates. The Bayes factor analyses showed...

Source: Cognitive Processing - September 11, 2023 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Marek Niezna ński Micha ł Obidziński Daria Ford Source Type: research