Dissociating memory accessibility and precision in forgetting.

Nature Human Behaviour
Sam C BerensAidan J Horner

Abstract

Forgetting involves the loss of information over time; however, we know little about what form this information loss takes. Do memories become less precise over time, or do they instead become less accessible? Here we assessed memory for word-location associations across four days, testing whether forgetting involves losses in precision versus accessibility and whether such losses are modulated by learning a generalizable pattern. We show that forgetting involves losses in memory accessibility with no changes in memory precision. When participants learned a set of related word-location associations that conformed to a general pattern, we saw a strong trade-off; accessibility was enhanced, whereas precision was reduced. However, this trade-off did not appear to be modulated by time or confer a long-term increase in the total amount of information maintained in memory. Our results place theoretical constraints on how models of forgetting and generalization account for time-dependent memory processes. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 4 June 2019. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4368464.v1 .

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Citations

Oct 14, 2020·Scientific Reports·Alexa TomparyLila Davachi
Sep 23, 2021·PloS One·Zhongyu HuJiongjiong Yang
Aug 19, 2021·Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience·Saana M KorkkiJon S Simons

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