Value-directed memory effects on item and context memory

Abstract

The ability to prioritize learning some information over others when that information is considered important or valuable is known as value-directed remembering. In these experiments, we investigate how value influences different aspects of memory, including item memory (memory for the to-be-learned materials) and context memory (memory for peripheral details that occurred when studying items) to get a better understanding of how people prioritize learning information. In this investigation, participants encoded words associated with a range of values (binned into higher, medium, and lower value in Experiment 1, and into higher and lower value in Experiment 2) for a subsequent memory test that measured item memory (Is this item old or new?) as well as both objective context memory (memory for an objectively verifiable contextual detail: In which voice was this item spoken?) and subjective context memory (How many visual, auditory, and extraneous thoughts/feelings can you remember associated with this item?). Results indicated that value influenced item memory but had no effect on objective context memory in both Experiments. In Experiment 2, results showed better subjective context memory for multiple episodic details for highervalue relative to lower-value materials. Overall, these findings suggest that value has a strong influence over some aspects of memory, but not others. This work gives a richer understanding of how people prioritize learning more important over less important information.

The effect of value on long-term associative memory

“…Nevertheless, the dichotomous value structure used in this study may be easier for participants to distinguish between high-and low-value items and reduce the complexity of the taskset, which may enable a more effective focus on high-value items. Consistent with this idea, Villaseñor et al (2021) found a value effect on a subjective (though not an objective) measure of context memory when the range of point values were reduced from 1 to 8 to 1 to 4. Thus, although Experiments 3a (incidental colour encoding) and 3b (intentional colour encoding) replicated the relative pattern of findings from our Experiment 2 and previous studies using a binary value system, it would be worthwhile for future studies to explore the extent to which variability and complexity of value allocation might impact on changes in value effects.…”

“…However, inconsistent results have been observed regarding value effects on associative memory. Some studies found that higher-value items were associated with better associative memory, such as item-location memory (Siegel & Castel, 2018a, 2018b, memory for word pairs (Ariel et al, 2015), and memory for word plurality status (Cohen et al, 2017), whereas others revealed no beneficial effect of value on associative memory, such as memory for the voice gender in which words were presented (Villaseñor et al, 2021) or memory for the colour of visually presented words (Hennessee et al, 2017(Hennessee et al, , 2018. For example, in Hennessee et al (2017), a series of words were presented in one of four colours, with each stimulus associated with a point-value.…”

“…Positive associative memory value effects may indicate more effective binding between item and associative information, either due to the type of features being examined or the explicit instruction to remember both item and associative information (Ariel et al, 2015;Cohen et al, 2017;Siegel & Castel, 2018a, 2018b. In studies which have found no evidence that value affected associative memory, binding of features may be less effective as the task instructions did not emphasise memory for associative information (Hennessee et al, 2017(Hennessee et al, , 2018Villaseñor et al, 2021). Thus, it is possible that value effects have not been observed on colour memory due to the dissociation of word and word colour under the incidental learning conditions implemented in studies to date (Hennessee et al, 2017(Hennessee et al, , 2018.…”

STOP SHOUTING AT ME: The Influence of Case and Self-Referencing on Explicit and Implicit Memory

“…It is possible, however, that if we used a more conceptual measure of implicit memory (such as a word association task, "what word is associated with ____"; Shimamura and Squire, 1984), our patterns of results may have differed. Investigating ways to promote memory is an important scientific effort (Giannakopoulos et al, in press;Sklenar et al, in press;Yonelinas, 2002;Jennings et al, 2005;Matzen et al, 2015;Leshikar et al, 2017;Leach et al, 2019;Frankenstein et al, 2020;McCurdy et al, , 2021Villaseñor et al, 2021), and the results of this investigation contribute to that endeavor.…”

Predicting and remembering the behaviors of social targets: how prediction accuracy affects episodic memory

“…This is in line with work showing that schematic information has a strong effect on memory [ 55 , 56 ]. Understanding adaptive processes in memory is important pursuit [ 57 – 62 ], and the results of this investigation add to that knowledge.…”