An isolation effect in serial memory for spatial information.

Full Abstract

This paper reports the first demonstration of an isolation effect or von Restorff effect (von Restorff, 1933) in the context of a spatial-memory task:
Short-term serial recall was enhanced for both the location and the serial position of one red dot presented amongst a sequence of otherwise black dots. When the serial position of the isolate was fixed, the spatial isolation effect only emerged when participants received a control block of trials before the block of isolation trials (Experiment 1). However, when the serial position of the isolate was varied across isolation trials, an isolation effect was still produced regardless of condition order (Experiment 2). It is suggested that both temporal grouping strategies and greater item-specific processing may have contributed to the enhanced retention of the isolate.

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Author information

Author/s: Guérard, Katherine (K); Hughes, Robert W (RW); Tremblay, Sébastien (S);

Affiliation: Ecole de Psychologie, Université Laval, Québec, Canada.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006) (Q J Exp Psychol (Colchester)), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-May; vol 61 (issue 5) : pp 752-62

Dates: Created 2008/04/22; Completed 2008/07/24;

PMID: 17853236, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Humans
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Mental Recall - physiology
Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology
Photic Stimulation - methods

Photic Stimulation - methods
Serial Learning - physiology
Space Perception - physiology
Students - psychology
Task Performance and Analysis

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