Changes in the level of unitization moderate the impact of unitization on associative memory and its underlying processing.

The viewpoint that unitization provides a possibility of increasing the contribution of familiarity to associative memory has been widely accepted, but its effects on associative memory and recollection remain controversial. The current study aims to explain these mixed results by considering a potential moderator: changes in the level of unitization from encoding to retrieval phases. During the encoding phase, participants learned the related and unrelated picture pairs (i.

Improving associative memory in younger and older adults with unitization: evidence from meta-analysis and behavioral studies.

Introduction: The finding that familiarity can support associative memory by unitizing the to -be-learned items into a novel representation has been widely accepted, but its effects on overall performance of associative memory and recollection are still controversial.

Methods: The current study aims to elucidate these discrepancies by identifying potential moderating factors through a combined approach of meta-analysis and behavioral experiment.

Results: Results consistently showed that changes in the level of unitization and age groups were two important moderators.