The role of cognitive control affects memory encoding: evidence from subsequent memory paradigm

TL;DR

This paper explores how cognitive control affects memory encoding, showing that different aspects of cognitive control can either help or hinder memory depending on the task.

Contribution

The study reveals differential effects of cognitive control sub-components on memory encoding, offering new insights into their mechanisms.

Findings

Switch trials impair memory of target stimuli but enhance memory of distractors.

Inhibition facilitates memory only in interference tasks like the Stroop task.

Both proactive and reactive inhibition can impair memory encoding.

Abstract

Memory and cognitive control are fundamentally intertwined, but their interactions have only recently attracted researcher attention and the underlying mechanism of the interactions remains to be further explored. Several theoretical explanations for the influence of cognitive control on memory encoding include common-resource account, interactive model, and stage-specific encoding account. Specifically, common-resource account advocates that cognitive control sub-components compete for limited cognitive resources during memory encoding. Interactive model highlights the importance of selective attention and stage-specific encoding account emphasizes specific processing stage where cognitive control plays a role in memory encoding. By combing the existing literature, we found that different cognitive control sub-components exert differential effects on memory encoding. In other words, cognitive control can either enhance or impair memory encoding depending on the specific task demands and context. Firstly, compared to trials in which the current task is the same as the preceding task (repetition trials), the trials where current task is different from the preceding task (switch trials) will impair the memory encoding of target stimuli and enhance the memory encoding of distractor. Secondly, inhibition can facilitate memory encoding solely when the interference detecting from competing stimuli (i.e., Stroop task) rather than from stimulus and response (i.e., Simon task). Thirdly, both proactive and reactive inhibition possess the possibility to impair memory encoding. Future research could delve into this phenomenon from the perspective of exploring how multiple cognitive control integration influences memory encoding.