The Influence Of The Association Between Action And Words On The Subject Performed Task

The mechanism of enactment effect is a research field which attracted lots ofattentions but still be argued. In the former research, people taken approached to thisissue from the information input/the separate encoding and the integration toexplained this effect, but failed to reach a consistent conclusion. Theory eitherfocused on the specific motor encoding system but ignored the association betweenmotor system and other systems, or emphasized on the integration but denied thepossibility of separate encoding. Based on the analysis of previous studies, thisresearch try to explain this inconsistency from association view, and to dig out moreabout the enactment effect.The present study contains two experiments, with the purpose of find out theinfluence of the association between action and words on the enactment effect in theexperiment1, and in the experiment2we will probe into how it influenced further, inother words, we will discuss how the association between action and words workedon the mechanism of enactment effect.In the experiment1, we adopt2study condition (verbal study VT vs. subjectperformed study SPT)×2material (the association level between action and words ishigher vs. lower) between subject design. Compare the memory performance oflearning different materials which varied in the association level between action andwords both under VT and SPT condition, to probe the influence of the associationbetween action and words on the enactment effect. The results show that, in the SPTcondition, contrast to the association level between action and words is lower, moreitems will be recalled when the association level is higher. What`s more, when theassociation level between action and words is lower, the enactment effect isdisappeared. In the experiment2, we adopt2material (the association level between actionand words is higher vs. lower)×3retrieval modality (motor vs. verbal vs. both motorand verbal) mixed design. Compare the memory performance of these three retrievalmodalities: motor information retrieval/verbal information retrieval and both motorand verbal information retrieval after learning different materials which varied in theassociation level between action and words under SPT condition, to investigatewhether the different association level will lead different act on the memoryperformance when one type of information is needed and when both information areneeded. The results show that, when the association level between action and words ishigher, the memory performance under each retrieval modality are similar. But whenthe association level between action and words is lower, the memory performancewhen only verbal information needed is better than the memory performance whenboth motor and verbal information needed.This study prove our hypothesis that the good association between action andwords is the premise of the enactment effect, and the lost sight of this association wasthe mostly reason which caused the conflict between former theories. From theperspective of the association between action and words, we further speculate that, it`sthe combined action of different memory system which lead to the enactment effect.