ERPS DURING CONTINUOUS RECOGNITION MEMORY FOR WORDS AND PICTURES

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and performance measures were recorded from young adults during continuous recognition memory for word or picture representations of the same concepts. Subjects made speeded choice responses as to whether the item was “new” or “old,” with “old” items repeated after lags of 2,8, or 32 intervening stimuli following their first presentation. Longer lags were associated with poorer performance in words but not in pictures. A sequence of endogenous ERP components was responsive to repetition (old vs. new) and stimulus modality (pictures vs. words), and differed in scalp distribution as a function of both variables. The data suggest that multiple brain generators contribute to ERP repetition effects and support theoretical models that hypothesize processing differences between words and pictures. © 1991, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.