UC Irvine

Background

When confronted with ambiguous stimuli, the ability to utilize contextual information is crucial for survival. Context processing involves the ability to discriminate new information from previously encountered information and to recognize something as previously encountered, even briefly or partially. Deficits in context processing are a key feature across a number of psychiatric conditions. Existing tasks only examine the discrimination and recognition of cues as opposed to contextual information. Thus, new tasks using complex scenes are urgently needed.

Objective

We developed the Context Discrimination and Recognition Task (CDRT) and established baseline performance in healthy adults.

Methods

Final analyses included 44 participants (mean age 30.27, SD 11.78) who completed the CDRT to characterize memory performance for (1) discrimination between previously viewed and never viewed complex scenes (Discrete Discrimination Score [DDS]), (2) recognition of previously viewed complex scenes (Discrete Recognition Score [DRS]), (3) sensitivity to distinctions across a gradient of complex scenes (width), and (4) bias in recognition of complex scenes (bias). Pearson correlations were conducted to examine associations between these scores.

Results

The results revealed a significant positive relationship between DDS and DRS scores, r(41)=0.71, P<.001, and between DDS and modified recognition scores, r(41)=0.71, P<.001. Width was also negatively correlated with DDS, r(41)=-0.31, P=.04; DRS, r(41)=-0.47, P=.001; and DRSmid, r(41)=-0.35, P=.02.

Conclusions

We found that the CDRT is sensitive to a range of discrimination and recognition levels and is uniquely positioned to probe context processing. Additionally, both recognition and discrimination scores increased with decreased ambiguity of complex scenes, demonstrating the sensitivity of the task in detecting variability of performance across participants. Better recognition of complex scenes was associated with greater sensitivity to differences between contexts. This novel task can be used to assess memory-associated processes for complex scenes in future studies aiming to elucidate neural functions underlying context processing in psychiatric conditions.