TITLE:
A Novelty-Induced Change in Episodic (NICE) Context Account of Primacy Effects in Free Recall
AUTHORS:
Eddy J. Davelaar
KEYWORDS:
Distinctiveness; Novelty-Detection; Episodic Context; Distributed Context; Contextual Change
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.4 No.9,
September
11,
2013
ABSTRACT: Formal cognitive models of episodic memory
assume that during encoding list items become associated with a changing
context representation. However, this representation is recency-biased and thus
can not account for primacy effects under conditions that prevent rehearsal. In
this paper, it is hypothesized that one source underlying primacy effects is
the detection of novelty. In three experiments, it is shown how novelty at the
perceptual and semantic level can explain the full serial position function of
first recall probabilities, including primacy effects. It is proposed that an
item becomes distinctive due to increase in the change within a distributed
episodic context representation, induced by novelty detection. The theory makes
three assumptions. First, items become associated with a distributed context
representation. Second, the context representation changes with item
presentation. Third, the rate of contextual change is related to the perceptual
and conceptual difference computed between the presented item and the previous
item (or items in the buffer). This theory captures primacy effects in first
recall probabilities without recourse to a rehearsal process and provides a
mechanistic account of distinctiveness.