Won’t get fooled again: The benefit of spatial proximity to the rejection of lures in an associative memory task

Poster Session E - Monday, April 15, 2024, 2:30 – 4:30 pm EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Alexa Becker¹, Nancy Dennis¹; ¹The Pennsylvania State University

The current study examined the associative memory benefit of spatial proximity relative to spatial distality for pairings of unrelated objects. Retrieval consisted of intact pairs (targets) as well as rearranged pairs (lures) within each condition. Past research has demonstrated a discriminability benefit for spatially proximal stimuli (e.g., Gestalt groupings) relative to spatially distal stimuli, with some work suggesting that this benefit is driven by a heightened ability to reject lures in the spatially proximal condition. Additionally, univariate fMRI work in Gestalt perception has found that Gestalt groupings are associated with reduced BOLD response in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) relative to spatially distal objects, argued to be indicative of greater ease of processing of the grouped stimuli. We extended this work to examine the neural signature of lures in each condition by investigating differences in neural distinctiveness that may contribute to these discriminability benefits. Behaviorally, we found that the false alarm rate was significantly lower for proximal stimuli relative to distal stimuli, consistent with past research. We also found a difference in neural distinctiveness within the IPS between proximal lures and distal lures. Specifically, proximal lures were less confusable with proximal targets than distal lures were with distal targets in this region, as indicated by within-category similarity amongst lures. In tandem with behavioral results, this indicates that the reduced neural confusability of proximal lures was supportive in their correct rejection.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic