Investigating Accelerated Long-term Forgetting: The Effects of Associative and Item Memory, and Semantic Relatedness on Long-term Retention
Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: We sought to create a test that could delineate memory for semantically related and unrelated associative and item information, for future use with patients with temporal lobe epilepsy in the study of accelerated long-term forgetting. Healthy participants studied semantically related and unrelated object-scene pairs and completed forced-choice recognition tasks for item and associative memory over variable delays. Participants recognized significantly less associative than item stimuli by 6-hours post-study due to degraded memory for associative stimuli. While item memory remained stable, memory was boosted for associative stimuli after a night of sleep but continued to decline thereafter. These effects were particularly robust for pairs that were semantically unrelated, as semantically related pairs demonstrated superior memory across the delays with relatively minimal decay over time. Possible neurobiological correlates of forgetting for the different types of stimuli in the context of current theories of consolidation are discussed, and implications for the phase II patient study are explored.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Sam Audrain
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2604119926