Tasks used in Experiment 3 of Gasser & Davachi (2023). "Cross-modal facilitation of episodic memory by sequential action execution." Summaries and previews of each task are provided below, but please see the full manuscript for details about the full experiment procedure and design.
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Initial instructions given to participants at the start of the task that introduce the general paradigm. At the end of instructions, participants answer two simple questions to ensure comprehension of the instructions.
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Pretraining task. During this task, participants are trained to memorize a 6-item sequence of aisles/motor responses. Participants are told that every time they go to the "predictable store" (see Gasser & Davachi, 2023), they will be following this exact same sequence of aisles. Pretraining consists of three study-test cycles, during which participants are repeatedly cued to execute this to-be-learned aisle sequence, and then tested on their ability to retrieve it from memory.
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Encoding task block. Each participant completes 8 blocks throughout the experiment.
During this task, participants embark on a series of "errands" to two different stores: the pet store and the grocery store. During each errand, participants visit a sequence of aisles within each store, where each aisle is represented as a circle on the screen, and aisles are visited by pressing the corresponding keyboard key (D, F, J, or K). Critically, aisle sequences in one store follow the same pattern on each errand, which was learned during the pretraining task. Aisle sequences in the other store change with each errand. When going to the store with the learned ("predictable") aisle sequence, participants must visit the sequence of aisles from memory; in the other store, they are given explicit visual cues that indicate which aisle to visit next.
After visiting an aisle in either store, participants view a visual stimulus "in" or above that aisle. They are instructed to remember the order of these stimuli and the aisles that they appeared in.
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Distractor task administered between all encoding and retrieval blocks. Participants see a stream of single-digit numbers and are told to press the space bar whenever one of those numbers is even.
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Retrieval block. Each participant completes 8 blocks throughout the experiment.
During this test, participants view all 6 items from one of their recent errands (i.e., one of the four errands run during the preceding encoding block) and must select them in the correct temporal order.
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Reminder task. Participants complete this task after retrieval block 4. This task is intended to refresh and assess memory for the predictable aisle sequence halfway through the experiment. It follows a similar structure as the pretraining task, such that participants are first reminded of the aisle sequence with explicit visual cues, and then must execute it from memory.
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Math distractor task given to participants after the final retrieval block, but prior to the item recognition test. In this task, participants complete a set of 20 addition and subtraction problems.
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Item recognition task. During this task, which is administered at the very end of the experiment, participants see items one at a time and must indicate whether they are OLD (seen during previous portions of the experiment) or NEW (never before seen in this experiment). Answers are given on a four-point scale, such that participants also indicate whether they are "definitely" or "maybe" certain in the accuracy of their response.
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