Journal article
Semantic influences on episodic memory distortions
Journal of experimental psychology. General, v 150(9), pp 1800-1824
01 Sep 2021
PMID: 33475397
Abstract
Prior knowledge has long been known to shape new episodic memories. However, it is less clear how prior knowledge can scaffold the learning of a new class of information, and how this can bias memory for the episodes that contributed to its acquisition. We aimed to quantify distortions in episodic memories resulting from the use of prior category knowledge to facilitate learning new information. Across 4 experiments, participants encoded and retrieved image-location associations. Most members of a category (e.g., birds) were located near each other, such that participants could leverage their prior category knowledge to learn the spatial locations of categories as they encoded specific image locations. Critically, some typical and atypical category members were in random locations. We decomposed location memory into 2 measures: error, a measure of episodic specificity; and bias toward other category members, a measure of the influence of newly-learned information about category locations. First, we found that location memory was more accurate for images whose locations were spatially consistent with their category membership. Second, when images were spatially inconsistent (i.e., in random locations), retrieval of typical category members was more biased toward their category's location relative to atypical ones. These effects replicated across 3 experiments, disappeared when images were not arranged by category, and were stronger than effects observed with images arranged by visual similarity rather than category membership. Our observations provide compelling evidence that memory is a reconstruction of multiple sources of prior knowledge, new learning, and memory for specific events. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
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Details
- Title
- Semantic influences on episodic memory distortions
- Creators
- Alexa Tompary - Department of PsychologySharon L Thompson-Schill - Department of Psychology
- Publication Details
- Journal of experimental psychology. General, v 150(9), pp 1800-1824
- Grant note
- F32 NS108511 / NINDS NIH HHS R01 DC009209 / NIDCD NIH HHS NIH HHS
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences (Psychology)
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000728911200013
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85108394288
- Other Identifier
- 991021448166104721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Web of Science research areas
- Psychology, Experimental