SELECTIVE INTERFERENCE DURING MEMORY CONSOLIDATION OF NOVEL WORDS IN ADULTS

LAURA KACZER; EITHAN HOCHMAN; LUZ BAVASSI; MARIA EUGENIA PEDREIRA

Congreso; Society for Neuroscience; 2015

We analyzed the role of memory consolidation in the acquisition of novel words using an interference procedure. We separately studied the effects of interference in the aspects of word form (phonology and orthography) and the semantic content. Participants learned 9 nonwords, visually presented, associated with a picture and a definition. A short term memory test was performed 5 min after learning, and a long term memory test took place 48 h after. During testing participants were asked to recall the words when given the corresponding pictures (word form test), and recall the definitions when given the corresponding word name (semantics test). The interference consisted of a similar learning task and was presented at different times respect to the end of the first session (5m, 30m, 4h, 24h). Results show that only the word form memory was affected by the interference, while the semantic memory was immune to the treatment. The interference was found to be time limited, supporting the proposal that memory consolidation is the process being affected. Our results suggest a dissociation between the memory systems involved in novel word learning. Semantic aspect would be rapidly incorporated by fast mapping, while the word form memory would form gradually and imply a systems consolidation process.