Exploring how the presence of a pattern affects both memory and generalisation

Many theories of schema-based processing implicitly assume that information irrelevant to a schema will be unaffected by its presence. However, this notion has yet to be formally examined. In the present work, the precision paradigm was used to explore memory-based generalisation as a means of assessing schematic influence for both relevant and irrelevant information. Here, participants learned word-location associations, with one group of words having locations grouped in one area of the circle (clustered condition) and the other having locations distributed uniformly (non-clustered condition). Using a series of approaches (i.e., behavioural, computational modelling, and neuroimaging), the present thesis explored how schematic information influenced behaviour. It was found that the presence of a pattern does impact information that could be considered irrelevant to the pattern itself. This result suggests that the use of schema-irrelevant controls, or theories ignoring possible biases produced by schematic information, may need to be updated. However, alternative explanations for these effects were proposed and examined (e.g., interference) using computational modelling. Here it was found that proximity- (i.e., items close together will have a reduced probability of retrieval) and semantic-based (i.e., spreading of activation for similar items in memory) interference could produce these patterns of effects. This opens up further questions regarding whether other studies implementing the same paradigm have studied schema or another process entirely. Finally, the neural underpinnings of memory-based generalisation were explored via a preliminary analysis of pilot data. These results suggested that the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and dorsal striatum may play important roles in memory. However, some design and analysis considerations were proposed to assess these effects more closely. Overall, the present thesis provides clear evidence that the presence of a pattern can affect both memory and generalisation for both relevant and irrelevant information.