Remembering the data: analyzing interactive processes in reading

Abstract

Past experience can facilitate subsequent perceptual activities as well as serve as the basis for recognition memory. However, the memory underlying perception is commonly assumed to be more "general" and, consequently, to preserve less information about the initial event than does the memory that underlies recognition for a specific episode. In contrast, experiments are performed which demonstrate that perceptual identification and recognition memory both rely on memory for single prior processing episodes. In these experiments, the subjects' reliance on data-driven rather than conceptually driven processing of a word was changed by varying the context in which the word was read. A greater degree of data-driven processing of a word, such as having a subject read the word out of context, facilitated later perceptual identification of that word. Conversely, a greater degree of conceptually driven processing of a word, such as having the subject generate the word from a conceptual clue, resulted in better recognition memory and less facilitation of perceptual identification. This sensitivity of perceptual identification to the balance between data-driven and conceptually driven processing in a single prior processing episode provides a means of analyzing interactive processes in reading.