Lesourd, M. & Versace, R.
Laboratoire EMC, Université Lumière Lyon 2
Objective. Replicate classical sensory interference effect in memory (Lehman & Murray, 2005) and explain those effects regarding Act-In model (Versace et al, 2009), which argues that knowledge are sensory-based. Specifically in this model, sensory components of memory traces are activated and progressively integrated during retrieval. In this frame, a sensory interference during encoding may selectively interfere with the activation of sensory components of the memory trace. Instead, a bimodal congruent stimulus presented during encoding should facilitate memory retrieval compared to unimodal condition. Method. First, participants had to complete a categorization task (living vs. non-living). Items could be presented either audio-visually (i.e., a visual picture presented with a semantically congruent sound or with a white noise) or only visually. In the second part of the experiment, participants completed a recognition task of visual items, which supposed to implicate familiarity and recollection processes. Results. In multimodal condition, items are globally better recognized than other ones. Instead, sensory interference (i.e., white-noise interference) selectively disrupts familiarity process compared to unimodal condition. Discussion. Retrieval from memory seems to be influenced by sensory manipulation during encoding. Theses results can be discussed related to activation mecanism in Act-In modelization.