Spatial Discrimination Performance at Levels of Pattern Separation Demand after Global/Local Processing

The pattern separation process, where sensory input is given an individual place in memory without compromising or overwriting older memory representations, is highly sensitive to small changes in input, and as the similarity between items increases so does pattern separation demand (Clelland et al., 2009; Yassa & Stark, 2011). This experiment tested performance on a pattern separation-dependent spatial discrimination task after manipulating participants’ processing styles using the NAVON task. The specific hypothesis was that local processing before testing – a detail oriented approach – would benefit discrimination performance for items at a high level of pattern separation demand, since such items only differ from each other on a detail-level. The constructed material successfully reflected three levels of pattern separation demand, but the processing manipulation only showed different effects on performance at a medium level of demand, where it was best following local processing.