Memory for perceived and imagined pictures : an event-related potential study

• Event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioural measures were used to investigate recognition memory and source-monitoring judgements about previously perceived and imagined pictures. At study, word labels of common objects were presented. Half of these were followed by a corresponding picture and the other half by an empty frame, signalling to the participants to mentally visualise an image. At test, participants in a source-monitoring task made a three-way discrimination between new words and words corresponding to previously perceived and imagined pictures. Participants in an old/new-recognition task indicated whether test words were previously presented or not. In both tasks, correctly identified old items elicited more positive-going ERPs than correctly judged new items. This widely distributed old/new effect was found to have an earlier onset and to be of a greater magnitude for imagined than for perceived items. Task (source versus item-memory) affected the old/new effects over prefrontal areas and the reaction times to remembered old items. The present findings are consistent with the view that a greater amount, or a different type, of information is necessary for accurate source-memory judgements than for correct recognition, and moreover, that different types of source-specifying information revive at different rates. In addition, the results add weight to the view that the late widespread ERP-old/new effect is sensitive to the quality or the amount of information retrieved from memory.

Subject headings

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Neurologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Neurology (hsv//eng)

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Adult

Evoked Potentials

Female

Humans

Imagination/*physiology

Male

Memory/*physiology

Recognition (Psychology)

*Visual Perception

Psychology

Psykologi

SOCIAL SCIENCES

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

Visual-Perception

Evoked-Potentials

Memory-

Object-Recognition

Word-Recognition

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)