Studies of recognition memory often demonstrate a recency effect on behavioral performance, whereby response times (RTs) are faster for stimuli that were previously presented recently as opposed to more remotely in the past. One account of this relationship between performance and presentation lag posits that memories are accessed by serially searching backward in time, such that RT indicates the self‐terminating moment of such a process. Here, we investigated the conditions under which this serial search gives way to more efficient means of retrieving memories. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a continuous recognition task, in which subjects made binary old/new judgments to stimuli that were each presented up to four times across a range of lags. Stimulus repetition and shorter presentation lag both gave rise to speeded RTs, consistent with previous findings, and we novelly extend these effects to a robust latency measure of the left parietal ERP correlate of retrieval success. Importantly, the relationship between repetition and recency was further elucidated, such that repetition attenuated lag‐related differences that were initially present in both the behavioral and neural latency data. These findings are consistent with the idea that an effortful search through recent memory can quickly be abandoned in favor of relying on more efficient “time‐independent” cognitive processes or neural signals.

中文翻译：

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重复减弱了新近度对识别记忆的影响：行为和电生理证据。

识别记忆的研究通常证明对行为表现有新近度的影响，因此，对于先前出现的刺激，响应时间（RTs）更快，而过去则较远。关于性能和表现滞后之间这种关系的一个解释是，通过按时间顺序向后搜索可以访问内存，因此RT表示该过程的自终止时刻。在这里，我们研究了这种串行搜索让位于更有效的内存检索方法的条件。与事件相关的电位（ERP）是在连续识别任务期间记录的，其中受试者对刺激做出二元的新旧判断，每组在一系列滞后中均出现多达四次。重复刺激和较短的表现滞后都加快了RT，与以前的发现一致，我们新颖地将这些影响扩展到了检索成功的左顶壁ERP相关性的可靠延迟测量。重要的是，进一步阐明了重复与新近度之间的关系，从而使重复减弱了最初存在于行为和神经潜伏期数据中的滞后相关差异。这些发现与这样的想法是一致的，即可以迅速放弃对最近记忆的费力搜索，转而依赖更有效的“时间独立”的认知过程或神经信号。这样，重复操作可以减弱最初在行为和神经潜伏期数据中都存在的滞后相关差异。这些发现与这样的想法是一致的，即可以迅速放弃对最近记忆的费力搜索，转而依赖更有效的“时间独立”的认知过程或神经信号。这样，重复操作可以减弱最初在行为和神经潜伏期数据中都存在的滞后相关差异。这些发现与这样的想法是一致的，即可以迅速放弃对最近记忆的费力搜索，转而依赖更有效的“时间独立”的认知过程或神经信号。