Influences on memory for naturalistic visual episodes: Sleep, familiarity, and traits differentially affect forms of recall

8Citations
Citations of this article
18Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

Abstract

The memories we form are composed of information that we extract from multifaceted episodes. Static stimuli and paired associations have proven invaluable stimuli for understanding memory, but real-life events feature spatial and temporal dimensions that help form new retrieval paths. We ask how the ability to recall semantic, temporal, and spatial aspects (the "what, when, and where") of naturalistic episodes is affected by three influences - prior familiarity, postencoding sleep, and individual differences - by testing their influence on three forms of recall: cued recall, free recall, and the extent that recalled details are recombined for a novel prompt. Naturalistic videos of events with rare animals were presented to 115 participants, randomly assigned to receive a 12- or 24-h delay with sleep and/or wakefulness. Participants' immediate and delayed recall was tested and coded by its spatial, temporal, and semantic content. We find that prior familiarity with items featured in events improved cued recall, but not free recall, particularly for temporal and spatial details. In contrast, postencoding sleep, relative to wakefulness, improved free recall, but not cued recall, of all forms of content. Finally, individuals with higher trait scores in the Survey of Autobiographical Memory spontaneously incorporated more spatial details during free recall, and more event details (at a trend level) in a novel recombination recall task. These findings show that prior familiarity, postencoding sleep, and memory traits can each enhance a different form of recall. More broadly, this work highlights that recall is heterogeneous in response to different influences on memory.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Coutanche, M. N., Koch, G. E., & Paulus, J. P. (2020). Influences on memory for naturalistic visual episodes: Sleep, familiarity, and traits differentially affect forms of recall. Learning and Memory, 27(7), 284–291. https://doi.org/10.1101/lm.051300.119

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free