Process-specific interference effects during recognition of spatial patterns and words.

The authors examined recognition memory for words or visuospatial patterns under full (FA) or divided attention (DA) conditions with a distracting task requiring either phonological (rhyme) or visuospatial (curved-line) processing of letters, in 72 young adults. The authors found an interaction such that the curved-line distracting task had a more detrimental effect on corrected recognition, and discriminability measured by d', for spatial patterns than did the rhyme distracting task, whereas the reverse was true for memory of words. There was also a general effect of DA on response bias such that C increased under DA relative to FA conditions, regardless of the distracting task, and type of information being remembered. Results suggest memory interference from DA at retrieval is process-specific, and that DA at retrieval leads to a more conservative response strategy.