American Psychological Association (APA)

Sunday, August 12, 2018 9:00-10:50 AM

Motivated memory

Chair: Christopher R. Madan (University of Nottingham)

Motivated memory for important information as we age

Alan D. Castel (University of California-Los Angeles)

We are often overwhelmed with information. This places challenges on attention and can influence what is later remembered. In response to these cognitive challenges, older adults may use a metacognitive strategy to selectively focus on important information, in order to remember this high-value information in the future. The ability to selectively remember high-value information may come at a cost of remember less, especially so in terms of lower-value information. I will present a theoretical framework that illustrates how the strategic allocation of attention can be used effectively when people have metacognitive insights that their memory capacity is limited. Older adults may also use prior knowledge and established schemas to incorporate new information with what is already in memory, making decisions about what to remember on a “need-to-know” basis. I will discuss some findings regarding how both younger and older adults find effective ways to remember what is of most importance, forget what is not needed, and how this judicious use of memory can lead to efficient memory in light of the memory impairments that might accompany older age.

Retrieval states that bias autobiographical memory recollection: The impact of emotion and stress

Signy Sheldon (McGill University), Stephanie Simpson, Jonas Nitschke, Sonja Chu, Jens Pruessner, & Jennifer Bartz

Research has emphasized the way a person’s state when experiencing an event affects later recall. Fewer studies have explored how one’s state during recall affects the way such events are remembered. In two studies, we tested how two retrieval states –emotion and stress– altered autobiographical memory recall. In both studies, participants accessed and described the details of autobiographical events in response to retrieval cues. In study one, we varied the retrieval cues by emotional valence (positive or negative) and arousal (high or low). The valence of the retrieval cue selectively impacted the overall emotional tone of the cued event whereas arousal determined how detailed the events were recalled. In study two, we found that a state of acute stress impacted the ability to access autobiographical memories to emotional retrieval cues. While stress did not affect how detailed these memories were retrieved, when participants were asked to recall the same memories four days later, those initially recalled under stress were remembered with more emotional detail. This indicates that stress during retrieval changes how memories are reconsolidated. Together, these studies emphasize that retrieval state alters how events are remembered and provide new insight into the mechanisms of autobiographical memory retrieval.

Episodic-like memory mechanisms for memories that are not episodic

Rosie Cowell (University of Massachusetts-Amherst), Patrick Sadil, David Ross, David Huber, & Merika Wilson

Episodic memory has been variously defined as requiring consciousness, autobiographical content, or contextual information. However, by most definitions, episodic memory is associative, being composed of arbitrary elements bound together to form a unique event. Moreover, most episodic memory researchers would agree that it can be tested by providing a partial cue to trigger retrieval of the full memory trace—a process termed “recall” or “recollection”. In a behavioral study of memory, we demonstrated rapid (episodic-like) encoding and subsequent retrieval of novel associations, not between arbitrarily paired items (e.g., autobiographical content, contextual information and objects) but at a lower-level between the visual parts of an object image. In a complementary fMRI study, we used a visual “object recall” task: participants studied single object images then were cued by unrecognizable visual “parts” of objects to retrieve the objects’ identities. Visual object recall engaged object-processing regions such as lateral occipital cortex and perirhinal cortex, but not the hippocampus. Together, these studies indicate that episodic-like memory mechanisms—the formation of novel associations and their retrieval via cued recall—can occur for lower-level, non-episodic information. When they do, we suggest that it is not the hippocampus but rather lower-level brain regions that are engaged.

Locomotive and exploratory contributions to motivated memory encoding in a complex real-life environment

Kimberly S. Chiew (University of Denver), Mai-Anh T. Vu, Deeksha Malhotra, & R. Alison Adcock

Open-ended exploration and learning are critical to survival and adaptive behavior, but present a tradeoff with safety and threat avoidance. Despite their adaptive value, characterization of these behaviors in humans has been limited. Using video measures, we examined human exploration and memory encoding in a complex, real-life environment (an art exhibit) as a function of approach vs. avoidance motivational contexts, as well as individual differences in motivational/personality traits (N=98). We previously demonstrated that motivational context and individual differences interacted to predict subsequent memory, but not exploration time (Chiew et al., under review). Given the coarse nature of exploration time as a measure, the present work expanded upon these findings using computer vision tools to analyze video patterns of locomotor exploration and information search. Preliminary analysis of velocity and acceleration metrics suggested that locomotor activity may be greater under approach vs. avoidance motivation, consistent with models linking approach motivation to dopaminergic function and associated motor activity. However, locomotion appeared to be independent from engagement with individual art items, which ultimately predicted subsequent memory for these encounters and the exhibit space. This potential dissociation is discussed in the larger context of research characterizing exploration, locomotion, and memory encoding processes in motivated behavior.

Considering the functional role of memory

Christopher R. Madan (University of Nottingham)

Memory does not serve as a veridical recording of prior experiences that can be played back, rather, many factors can lead some experiences to be more memorable than others. This leads to an important consideration: What is the functional role of memory? Some experiences are more valuable in informing future behaviour and should be selectively prioritized in memory. In our everyday lives, some memories are encoded and retrieved more readily, such as where we last left our car keys, the location of the nearest grocery store, and the experiences we had on our last vacation. These memory enhancements could be viewed as domain-specific modulations of memory: functional objects, potential food sources, and enjoyable experiences. While it is possible that these effects are domain-specific, it is also possible that a domain-general mechanism is predominately responsible for all three of these memory effects, a memory enhancement for motivationally salient information. Motivated memory can be defined as how motivationally relevant information—such as those evoking emotion, reward, or motor processing—influences our ability to form memories of the past and make decisions in the future. Here I discuss current evidence supporting this view of a domain-general enhancement of memory due to motivational salience.