Integrative representation of semantic and motor information underlies the enactment effect in memory for actions.

The present study adopted the retrieval-induced forgetting (RIF) effect to determine whether semantic representation might favour the enactment effect, in which noun-verb phrases are remembered better by enacting during learning (subject-performed tasks, SPTs) than by studying verbally (verbal tasks, VTs). Experiment 1 controlled the semantic category to investigate the RIF effect in SPT vs. VT conditions. The RIF effect was similar irrespective of the mode of encoding (SPT vs.VT), indicating that semantic representation was not the main factor for favouring the enactment effect. Furthermore, Experiment 2 added motor physical properties to simultaneously control the semantic category and one category by motor features. The results of Experiment 2 showed stronger cooperative representation of semantic and motor information under the VT condition, indicating that the processing of action memory may be conceptual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]