Retrieval-induced forgetting and recognition memory: insights from behavioral and electrophysiological experiments

Retrieving a subset of previously studied items can impair later recognition of related items. Using the remember/know procedure (Experiment 1 and 5), the ROC procedure (Experiments 2-4), and analysis of EEG old/new effects (Experiment 5), it was investigated how such retrieval-induced forgetting can be explained in terms of single-process and dual-process accounts of recognition memory. Across experiments, dual-process analysis yielded a complex pattern of results which suggests that retrieval practice can affect familiarity and - less reliably - also recollection of the unpracticed material. Assuming that recognition is entirely based on a single source of memorial information, single-process analysis led to an excellent description of the data and suggests that retrieval practice reduced unpracticed items' general memory strength in each of the experiments. This suggestion is consistent with prior work on free recall, cued recall, associative recognition, and response latencies, and agrees with the inhibitory account of retrieval-induced forgetting. Recognition of unpracticed material was further characterized by reduced theta power in the EEG, indicating that unpracticed material triggered only relatively weak memory signals. It is argued that the detrimental effect of retrieval practice is best characterized as a weakening of the unpracticed item's inherent memory representation. Analysis of inter-electrode synchronisation further revealed a novel type of recognition correlate in the theta frequency range