Is memory organized by temporal contiguity? (original) (raw)
Related papers
Temporal contiguity between recalls predicts episodic memory performance
Psychonomic Bulletin & …, 2010
Manuscript under review. One way to study the associative processes at work during episodic memory is to examine the order of participant responses, which typically reveal the strong tendency to transition between temporally contiguous or semantically proximal items. Here we assessed the correlation between participants' recall performance and their use of semantic and temporal associations to guide retrieval across nine delayed free-recall studies. The size of participants' temporal contiguity effects predicted their recall performance. High semantic proximity effects, on the other hand, did not predict better recall performance. These results suggest that participants who more effectively form and retrieve associations between items that occur nearby in time perform better on episodic recall tasks.
Memory retrieval as temporal discrimination
Journal of Memory and Language, 2009
Temporal distinctiveness models of memory retrieval claim that memories are organised partly in terms of their positions along a temporal dimension, and suggest that memory retrieval involves temporal discrimination. According to such models the retrievability of memories should be related to the discriminability of their temporal distances at the time of retrieval. This prediction is tested directly in three pairs of experiments that examine (a) memory retrieval and (b) identification of temporal durations that correspond to the temporal distances of the memories. Qualitative similarities between memory retrieval and temporal discrimination are found in probed serial recall (Experiments 1 and 2), immediate and delayed free recall (Experiments 3 and 4) and probed serial recall of grouped lists (Experiments 5 and 6). The results are interpreted as consistent with the suggestion that memory retrieval is indeed akin to temporal discrimination.
The temporal orientation of memory: It's time for a change of direction
Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition
This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier. The attached copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution and sharing with colleagues. Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party websites are prohibited. In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or institutional repository. Authors requiring further information regarding Elsevier's archiving and manuscript policies are encouraged to visit: http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights
Effects of Order on Memory of Event Times
2021
Memorizing time of an event may employ two processes (1) encoding of the absolute time of events within an episode, (2) encoding of its relative order. Here we study interaction between these two processes. We performed experiments in which one or several items were presented, after which participants were asked to report the time of occurrence of items. When a single item was presented, the distribution of reported times was quite wide. When two or three items were presented, the relative order among them strongly affected the reported time of each of them. Bayesian theory that takes into account the memory for the events order is compatible with the experimental data, in particular in terms of the effect of order on absolute time reports. Our results suggest that people do not deduce order from memorized time, instead people's memory for absolute time of events relies critically on memorized order of the events.
Judgments of learning are influenced by memory for past test
Journal of Memory and Language, 2008
The Underconfidence with Practice (UPW) effect . Comparing objective and subjective learning curves: Judgment of learning exhibit increased underconfidence with practice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 131,[147][148][149][150][151][152][153][154][155][156][157][158][159][160][161][162], found in multi-trial learning, is marked by a pattern of underconfidence accompanied by an increase in resolution between the judgments and test on and after the second trial. We tested whether the memory for past test (MPT) heuristic . The role of memory for past test in the underconfidence with practice effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 33, 238-244.] could explain the resolution and calibration effects. To selectively alter Trial 1 test performance, and hence MPT, we manipulated the number of repetitions (Experiment 1) or the study time (Experiment 2) on Trial 1, but then the manipulation was reversed on Trial 2, thereby equating final performance. Despite equivalent Trial 2 recall performance, Trial 2 JOLs reflected the manipulated Trial 1 test performance, providing support for the MPT hypothesis. Follow up experiments tested alternative explanations. We found that people could remember past test and that use of this information would produce both underconfidence and improved resolution. In contrast, neither memory for Trial 1 encoding fluency nor memory for Trial 1 JOLs was able to explain both aspects of the UWP effect. These experiments support the proposal that people use the memory for past test heuristic to make second trial immediate JOLs, and that its use can account for the UWP effect.
Associative Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory
Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, 2008
Association and context constitute two of the central ideas in the history of episodic memory research. Following a brief discussion of the history of these ideas, we review data that demonstrate the complementary roles of temporal contiguity and semantic relatedness in determining the order in which subjects recall lists of items and the timing of their successive recalls. These analyses reveal that temporal contiguity effects persist over very long time scales, a result that challenges traditional psychological and neuroscientific models of association. The form of the temporal contiguity effect is conserved across all of the major recall tasks and even appears in item recognition when subjects respond with high confidence. The nearuniversal form of the contiguity effect and its appearance at diverse time scales is shown to place tight constraints on the major theories of association. [Y]ou are wrong to say that we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1898 In the above quote from Wells' classic science-fiction novel, the protagonist compares his actual travels through time to the mental time travel one experiences through the act of This research was funded by National Institutes of Health grants MH55687 and MH61975. We thank Ben Murdock, Per Sederberg, Jeremy Caplan, and Kelly Addis for helpful discussions related to this work.
Journal of Memory and Language, 2006
According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Event-based theories, by contrast, deny that time plays a role at encoding and predict no beneficial effect of temporal isolation, although they acknowledge that a pause after item presentation may afford extra opportunity for a consolidation process such as rehearsal or grouping. We report two experiments aimed at differentiating between the two classes of theories. The results show that neither serial recall nor probed recall benefit from temporal isolation, unless participants use pauses to group a list. Simulations of the SIMPLE model provide convergent evidence that short-term memory for serial order need not involve temporal representations.
The influence of context boundaries on memory for the sequential order of events
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2013
Episodic memory allows people to reexperience the past by recovering the sequences of events that characterize those prior experiences. Although experience is continuous, people are able to selectively retrieve and reexperience more discrete episodes from their past, raising the possibility that some elements become tightly related to each other in memory, whereas others do not. The current series of experiments was designed to ask how shifts in context during an experience influence how people remember the past. Specifically, we asked how context shifts influence the ability to remember the relative order of past events, a hallmark of episodic memory. We found that memory for the order of events was enhanced within, rather than across, context shifts, or boundaries (Experiment 1). Next, we showed that this relative enhancement in order memory was eliminated when across-item associative processing was disrupted (Experiment 2), suggesting that context shifts have a selective effect o...