Year: 2015
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The evaluation of past experience is influenced both by the strength of retrieved \nmemories and factors in the immediate retrieval environment, including emphasised \ngoals and cued expectations. However, the laboratory study of episodic memory has \nneglected such environmental influences, despite their overt contribution to real-world decision outcomes. The aim of this PhD thesis was to rectify this neglect, and \nclarify the interaction of memory evidence and environmental strategies in the \nservice of strategic memory control. A related aim was to investigate whether control \nprocesses identified in the isolated domain of episodic memory in fact performed a \nmore general or “cross-domain” function. \nAn initial series of behavioural experiments (Experiments 1-3) elucidated an \noverlooked source of strategic bias in the standard recognition environment – implicit \ngoal emphasis imparted by question format. Experiment 4 investigated whether the \nquestion bias was commonly enacted across different domains of evaluation, \nyielding modest evidence in favour of this underlying cross-domain function. \nExperiment 5 instantiated more explicit manipulation of goal emphasis and cued \nexpectation, and recovered independent and opposing strategic effects of these two \nenvironmental factors, emerging across episodic and non-episodic domains. \nExperiment 6 employed a simultaneous EEG-fMRI approach to elucidate the neural \ncorrelates of memory control, identifying a modulation of the late positive event-related potential during the resolution of mnemonic conflict, which was sourced to \nBOLD variation in regions of the rostral cingulate zone and intraparietal sulcus. \nExperiment 7 used pupillometry to examine pupil-linked autonomic systems that \nhave also been implicated in memory control, and isolated two distinct components \nof the dilation response evoked during environmental conflict – an “early amplitude” \nunexpected familiarity effect and a “trailing slope” uncertainty effect. The findings \nilluminate the cross-domain underpinnings of an adaptive memory control system, \nevidenced in behaviour and across different functional neuroimaging modalities, and \nacross episodic and non-episodic domains of evaluation.
Author: Ravi D. Mill
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2746037671