The Influence of Reward on Recognition Memory and Source MemoryTools Jin, Liling (2022) The Influence of Reward on Recognition Memory and Source Memory. MPhil thesis, University of Nottingham.
AbstractReward motivation is an important factor that influences human learning and memory. In this behavioural study, we explored the influence of reward anticipation on recognition memory and source memory in a dual rewarded memory task. The experiment consisted of a study phase followed by separate recognition memory and source memory test phases. During the study phase, participants saw words following high or low or reward cues. The reward cues indicated the monetary rewards participants would get by the correct memory judgments in the following recognition memory and source memory tests. The words were presented in one of four locations of a computer screen. Participants were instructed to remember the words and memorize the locations of the words. In the recognition memory test, studied (old) words mixed with some new words were presented to the participants one at a time. Participants made an old/new recognition memory judgment to these words. In the subsequent source memory test, all old words were shown again in the middle of a screen. Participants made source memory judgments to indicate the location of the words which were shown during the study phase. Participants were rewarded for the correct judgments in the recognition memory and source memory tests. The results showed that the recognition memory and source memory performances in the high-reward and low-reward conditions were not significantly different. Our findings indicate that rewards cannot enhance item recognition memory and source memory in a dual rewarded memory task. In our study, we both rewarded item recognition memory and source memory with the same amount of monetary rewards. In a dual rewarded memory task, due to the people’ s processing resources are limited, rewards might lead to resource competition and influence resource allocation. Because rewards given to the correct item recognition memory and source memory were the same, the resource allocated to memorize the item and location might be nearly equal. This discouraged participants from allocating more resources to one type of memory to enhance either item or source memory performance. Thus, in our dual rewarded memory task, rewards may have failed to improve memory performance due to nearly equal resource distribution between item and source memory. Our data also suggest that the dopaminergic reward mechanism cannot explain memory performance in our dual rewarded memory task. However, the executive control mechanism might act on our dual rewarded memory task to influence resource allocation. In future work, we want to further test our hypotheses on reward-guided resource allocation and memory, and explore other factors that might influence the effects of reward on human memory.
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