They found enhanced P3 component for correctly remembered salient words and backgrounds, as compared with those that were not remembered. Fabiani and Donchin (1995) also found that isolate words elicit higher P3 components than the nonisolates, but no comparison between correctly and erroneously recalled trials was made in this study (the N2 component was again not studied). Current study This

study aims to investigate the involvement of novelty in encoding. We Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical will create a von Restorff effect by changing the font, color, and size of some of the words within a list, making these words easier to recall. This robust behavioral effect will allow us to elucidate the specifics of the processing of novel stimuli, using electrophysiological techniques. If the isolated words are recognized as novel, they may generate the N2–P3 novelty complex, with higher amplitudes for novel as compared with standard words. If, in addition, this novelty value would be one reason for better encoding of isolates Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in a von Restorff paradigm, we would expect a correlation between N2 and P3 magnitudes and recall performance, with higher (more positive or more negative, accordingly) novelty components for words subsequently recalled correctly than for words not recalled. To maximize the likelihood that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a von Restorff effect would reflect processes at encoding and not at retrieval, we chose to use cued recall and recognition as memory measures instead

of the free recall task used in the vast majority of studies of the von Restorff effect (e.g., Karis et al. 1984; Dunlosky

et al. 2000; Otten and Donchin 2000; Wiswede et al. 2006). In free recall tasks, a feature that renders a word an isolate can be used as a cue. Typically, Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical there is a Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical single word in a study list that is printed in a LY317615 larger font or color, and participants can explicitly search their memory for the large or colored item (with, e.g., large font size acting as a cue). Fabiani and Donchin (1995) offer evidence that such a selleck catalog strategy is indeed used, as they found that in their free recall task physical isolates (words printed in larger font) were the last to be reported, as if participants, after attempting to retrieve the rest of the list, specifically searched their Dacomitinib memory for this item. Such a strategy would not be possible in cued recall or recognition as each item is cued separately and thus has to be retrieved on its own (and as participants do not know which cue is associated with an isolate before retrieving the word, isolate features cannot be used to inform the search for a specific word). Here, we thus presented multiple isolates within one study list (as was done by Kishiyama et al. 2004), and tested retrieval of those isolates and of standard words with cued recall and recognition tests. If novelty aids encoding, it may also do so when novelty is not integral to the to-be studied item, but merely co-occurs with this item.