Un nuevo paradigma experimental para resolver un viejo problema: ¿Recupera nuestra memoria con mayor facilidad análogos distantes o símiles superficiales?
Resumen
Los estudios tradicionales de laboratorio muestran que los ítems de la memoria de largo plazo que comparten entidades y acciones aisladas con ítems de la memoria de trabajo (símiles superficiales) se recuperan más fácilmente que aquellos que comparten solo un sistema de relaciones abstractas (análogos distantes). Los estudios naturalistas más recientes muestran sin embargo resultados exactamente opuestos. En este trabajo buscamos resolver esta paradoja a través de un paradigma que combina la validez ecológica de los estudios naturalistas con el control metodológico de los experimentales. Presentamos a los participantes una historia que mantenía similitudes superficiales con una película popular y similitudes estructurales con otra. A través de este método retuvimos del enfoque naturalista el trabajo con análogos base procesados en profundidad, así como la separación contextual y temporal entre la fase de aprendizaje y la de recuperación. A su vez, conservamos del enfoque de laboratorio la equiprobabilidad de recuperar análogos distantes y símiles superficiales, así como la posibilidad de distinguir entre análogos recuperados de inventados. Los resultados mostraron que los símiles superficiales se recuperan en mucha mayor medida que los análogos distantes, sugiriendo que nuestra memoria no se ajusta a un diseño ideal de búsqueda de información.
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