Visual Hebb repetition effects survive changes to both output order and concurrent articulation.

Abstract

Building upon the work of Guerrette et al. (2017), we examine the effect of output order on the visual Hebb repetition effect. We limit the opportunities for forward recall at test by using a novel positional recall procedure, employing non-verbal visual stimuli, and requiring participants to undertake concurrent articulation (CA). During the encoding phase, participants received sequences of six unfamiliar-faces. For every third sequence, participants received the same faces in the same serial order (i.e. the Hebb sequence). For the remaining trials, the sequence items were presented in a random order (i.e. the filler sequences). At test, participants were required to either select the faces in their order of original presentation (SR) or recall the serial position of each individually re-presented face tested in a randomised order (PR). For both recall conditions, the Hebb repetition effect was evident, and this persisted with CA. The findings demonstrate that the Hebb repetition effect is not dependent upon forward recall and is consistent with the view that the effect is underpinned by perceptual processing rather than repeated retrieval.