How does intentionality of encoding affect memory for episodic information? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Do humans use episodic memory to solve a What-Where-When memory task?
Animal Cognition, 2011
What-Where-When (WWW) memory tasks have been used to study episodic(-like) memory in nonhuman animals. In this study, we investigate whether humans use episodic memory to solve such a WWW memory task. Participants are assigned to one of two treatments, in which they hide diVerent coin types (what) in diVerent locations (where) on two separate occasions (when). In the Active treatment, which mimics the animal situation as closely as possible, participants are instructed to memorize the WWW information; in the Passive treatment, participants are unaware of the fact that memory will be tested. In both groups, the majority of participants report using a mental time travel strategy to solve the task, and performance on a diVerent episodic memory test signiWcantly predicts performance on the WWW memory task. This suggests that the WWW memory task is a good test of episodic memory in humans. Participants remember locations and coins from the Wrst hiding session better than they do those of the second hiding session, suggesting their memories may be reinforced during the second hiding session. We also investigated how well episodic memory performance predicted performance on the three aspects of the WWW memory task separately. In the Passive treatment, episodic memory performance predicts performance on all three aspects of the WWW memory task equally. However, in the Active treatment it only predicts performance on the what component. This could imply that during active encoding a diVerent memory system is used for where and when information than during passive encoding. Encoding of what information seems to rely on episodic memory processing in both conditions.
Recalled aspects of original encoding strategies influence episodic feelings of knowing
We tested the hypothesis that the feeling of knowing (FOK) after a failed recall attempt is influenced by recalling aspects of the original encoding strategy. Individuals were instructed to use interactive imagery to encode unrelated word pairs. We manipulated item concreteness (abstract vs. concrete) and item repetitions at study (one vs. three). Participants orally described the mediator produced immediately after studying each item, if any. After a delay, they were given cued recall, made FOK ratings, and attempted to recall their original mediator. Concreteness and item repetition enhanced strategy recall, which had a large effect on FOKs. Controlling on strategy recall reduced the predictive validity of FOKs for recognition memory, indicating that access to the original aspects of encoding influenced FOK accuracy. Confidence judgments (CJs) for correctly recognized items covaried with FOKs, but FOKs did not fully track the strategy recall associations with CJs, suggesting emergent effects of strategy cues that were elicited by recognition tests but not accessed at the time of the FOK judgment. In summary, cue-generated access to aspects of the original encoding strategy strongly influenced episodic FOKs, although other influences were also implicated.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2003
Intentionally forgotten information remains in memory at essentially full strength, as measured by recognition and priming, but access to that information is impaired, as measured by recall. Given that pattern, it seemed plausible that intentionally forgotten information might have a greater impact on certain subsequent judgments than would intentionally remembered information. In 2 experiments, participants cued to forget nonfamous names were subsequently more likely to make false attributions of fame to those names than were participants instructed to remember them. These findings implicate retrieval inhibition as a potent factor in the interplay of recollection and priming in memory and judgment. They also point to possible unintended consequences of instructions to forget, suppress, or disregard in legal or social settings.
Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience, 2013
Episodic memory often is conceptualized as a uniquely human system of long-term memory that makes available knowledge accompanied by the temporal and spatial context in which that knowledge was acquired. Retrieval from episodic memory entails a form of first-person subjectivity called autonoetic consciousness that provides a sense that a recollection was something that took place in the experiencer's personal past. In this paper I expand on this definition of episodic memory. Specifically, I suggest that (1) the core features assumed unique to episodic memory are shared by semantic memory, (2) episodic memory cannot be fully understood unless one appreciates that episodic recollection requires the coordinated function of a number of distinct, yet interacting, "enabling" systems. Although these systems-ownership, self, subjective temporality, and agency-are not traditionally viewed as memorial in nature, each is necessary for episodic recollection and jointly they may b...
Cue familiarity and ‘don’t know’responding in episodic memory tasks
Metacognitive monitoring and control are two interdependent mechanisms by which people regulate encoding and retrieval processes in memory. While much is known about monitoring, and how the results of monitoring processes affect control at encoding, much less evidence is available for the monitoring-control relationship with respect to the regulation of retrieval. The present study provides information on this point by assessing whether a factor that is known to affect metacognitive monitoring at retrieval, i.e. cue familiarity, affects also metacognitive control at retrieval (i.e. the decision to volunteer or withhold a response in a memory task). In seven experiments cue familiarity was manipulated by having participants make a pleasantness judgment beforehand for half of the critical cues. Results showed that cue familiarity affected not only metacognitive judgments of feeling-of-knowing and retrospective confidence, but also the rate of 'don't know' responses in different recognition tasks. These results demonstrate that a factor known to affect metacognitive monitoring determines also the decision to volunteer or withhold a response (metacognitive control), which in turn shapes participants' performance in a memory task.
Examining the Influence of Semantic Knowledge on Episodic Memory
2021
Memory is a critical capacity for everyday life. Memory is not one process but consists of different systems (Robertson & Khler, 2007). Semantic memory is memory for general knowledge about the world and episodic memory is memory for a specific event from a particular time and place in the past (Tulving, 1972, 1983). Tulving (1972) referred to these systems as two separated but partially related memory systems. However, relatively little is known about how these two systems relate. Specifically, the influence of semantic memory on episodic memory is not fully understood. This study investigated the influence of semantic memory on memory for events (actions) and their spatial locations. The final sample for this study included 73 participants. Participants were divided into two groups that varied in the delay they experienced between the encoding phase and retrieval phase (immediate group, n=37; delay group, n=36). During the encoding phase, participants were presented with images of...
Psychophysiology, 1998
Episodic memory encoding and distinctiveness detection were examined using event-related potentials~ERP! in a single-trial word list learning paradigm with free recall following distraction. To manipulate distinctiveness, encoding of high-and very low-frequency words was contrasted. Amplitudes of the N400 and late positive component~LPC! were larger for low-than for high-frequency words, and ERPs were more positive for subsequently recalled than not recalled words. This subsequent memory effect was dissociated from the correlates of distinctiveness by polarity for the N400 and by time course for the LPC and dissociable into two effects. The data suggest that the first subsequent memory effect, which occurred for both word categories, is more directly related to episodic memory formation, whereas the second effect, which occurred for high-frequency words only, is related to processes influencing episodic encoding success indirectly.
Cognitive neuroscience of episodic memory encoding
Acta Psychologica, 2000
This paper presents a cognitive neuroscienti®c perspective on how human episodic memories are formed. Convergent evidence from multiple brain imaging studies using positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) suggests a role for frontal cortex in episodic memory encoding. Activity levels within frontal cortex can predict episodic memory encoding across a wide range of behavioral manipulations known to in¯uence memory performance, such as those present during levels of processing and divided attention manipulations. Activity levels within speci®c frontal and medial temporal regions can even predict, on an item by item basis, whether an episodic memory is likely to form. Furthermore, separate frontal regions appear to participate in supplying code-speci®c information, including distinct regions which process semantic attributes of verbal information as well as right-lateralized regions which process nonverbal information. We hypothesize that activity within these multiple frontal regions provides a functional in¯uence (input) to medical temporal regions that bind the information together into a lasting episodic memory trace.