The Role of Working Memory in Spontaneous Recognition: Neural Correlates and Behavioural Influences in the Memory Stroop Paradigm

Research suggests that unintentional recognition of distracting non-target stimuli can bias goal-related, intentional recognition judgements to target stimuli encountered in the same environment. Spontaneous recognition (SR) effect can be defined as the unintentional recognition of stimuli and is measured by the effect of familiarity to distractors on a recognition task. This thesis investigated how previously seen or not-seen distractors affect recognition of targets when working memory (WM) resources are manipulated by a secondary WM load task (chapter 2), using both behavioural and ERP measures (Chapter 3). The findings suggest that when working memory resources are low, SR is then easier to observe. Additionally, neural and memory processes are dissociable for unintentional and intentional recognition and retrieval monitoring is found to be enhanced when the new targets were paired with old distractors. Furthermore, the findings on the early ERPs may suggest that the proactive control might be activated. Finally, a set of experiments revealed that, SR effect may not be related to conscious awareness since having a low or high confidence did not modulate the SR effect indicating a lack of conscious awareness of the SR effect (Chapter 4). Together these findings may help to understand the mechanisms underlying the SR effect.