title: The effects of perceptual interference at encoding on implicit memory, explicit memory, and memory for source.
abstract: Interfering with stimulus identification can enhance later explicit memory performance. This counterintuitive (and theoretically unexpected) phenomenon was investigated in 5 experiments. Perceptual interference enhanced category-cued recall (a conceptually driven explicit test) but had no effect on a comparable implicit memory test, category-exemplar production. This dissociation was obtained across higher levels of priming and with high-frequency as well as low-frequency exemplars. Furthermore, although perceptual interference enhanced old-new recognition memory, it did not enhance rhyme recognition (a data-driven explicit test) or source discriminability. Explanations based on enhanced semantic elaboration or enhanced encoding of spatio-temporal context do not account for the perceptual-interference effect. An account based on compensatory processing of higher level perceptual representations remains viable and is discussed in terms of the transfer-appropriate processing framework and the item-specific-relational distinction.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, Normal 61790-4620, USA. nwmulli@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu
authors.forename: N W
authors.initials: NW
authors.lastname: Mulligan
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D012153:Retention, Psychology