Proactive interference in a semantic short-term memory deficit: role of semantic and phonological relatedness.

Full Abstract

Previous research has indicated that patients with semantic short-term memory (STM) deficits demonstrate unusual intrusions of previously presented material during serial recall tasks (Martin and Lesch, 1996). These intrusions suggest excessive proactive interference (PI) from previous lists. Here, we explore one such patient's susceptibility to PI. Experiment 1 demonstrated patient M.L.'s extreme susceptibility to PI using a probe recognition task that manipulates the recency of negative probes (the recent negatives task). When stimuli consisted of letters, M.L. showed greatly exaggerated effects of PI, well outside of the range of healthy control participants. Experiment 2 used a variation of the recent negatives task to examine the relative contribution of semantic and phonological relatedness in PI. This task manipulated semantic and phonological relatedness of probes and recently presented list items. Relative to healthy control participants, patient M.L. showed exaggerated interference effects for both phonological and semantically related probes, both for probes related to the current list and for probes related to the previous list. These data have important implications for theories of semantic STM deficits. Specifically, these data suggest that it is not the rapid decay of semantic representations that is responsible for difficulties in short-term recall, but rather the abnormal persistence of previously presented material. We propose that this susceptibility to PI is the result of a deficit in control processes acting on STM.

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Author information

Author/s: Hamilton, A Cris (AC); Martin, Randi C (RC);

Affiliation: Psychology Department, Rice University, Houston, TX 77251, USA.

Grants: DC-00218 (Agency:NIDCD NIH HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Journal: Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior (Cortex), published in Italy. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jan; vol 43 (issue 1) : pp 112-23

Dates: Created 2007/03/05; Completed 2007/03/29; Revised 2007/11/15;

PMID: 17334211, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Articulation Disorders - diagnosis; etiology; physiopathology
Case-Control Studies
Form Perception - physiology
Frontal Lobe - physiology; physiopathology
Humans
Male
Memory Disorders - diagnosis; etiology; physiopathology
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Mental Recall - physiology

Mental Recall - physiology
Middle Aged
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Proactive Inhibition
Reaction Time - physiology
Reference Values
Semantics
Serial Learning - physiology
Stroke - complications; physiopathology

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