An experiment was carried out using the Brown-Peterson task to test the hypothesis that proactive inhibition (PI) with recall distractors occurs during recall of words of the same semantic category, and that release occurs if the semantic category of the stimulus words is changed. Participants were students at........, who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: PI with no release; PI with release; and a control group with no PI. Results showed that proactive inhibition of recall did occur using the same semantic category, but that this inhibition was released by changing the semantic category. The only problem encountered was that the results of the third trial did not align with those of the other four trials, the recall being higher than expected in the experimental groups, and lower than expected in the control group. This was deemed due to experimental error.
Key words: proactive inhibition, release from proactive inhibition, recall performance, semantic category, distractor
The Brown-Peterson paradigm is a well-studied phenomenon in which subjects are shown a small number of words from the same semantic category for a short time, followed by a distracting action, such as an arithmetic activity, and then asked to recall the words (Talasli, ????). It has been found that although the word recall may be good on the first trial, it deteriorates with subsequent trials using words from the same semantic category. This phenomenon is called proactive inhibition (PI). If the subjects are then shown words from a different semantic category, the recall improves dramatically. This is known as release from proactive inhibition.
Talasli (????) studied the proactive inhibition and release phenomenon by using self-paced study times, and proved the hypothesis that PI results from faster paced study times and that release results from slower study times because of the respective presence or absence of inertial activat...