Memory retrieval as temporal discrimination

Journal of Memory and Language, 2006

According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list presentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Event-based theories, by contrast, deny that time plays a role at encoding and predict no beneficial effect of temporal isolation, although they acknowledge that a pause after item presentation may afford extra opportunity for a consolidation process such as rehearsal or grouping. We report two experiments aimed at differentiating between the two classes of theories. The results show that neither serial recall nor probed recall benefit from temporal isolation, unless participants use pauses to group a list. Simulations of the SIMPLE model provide convergent evidence that short-term memory for serial order need not involve temporal representations.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2006

Memory & Cognition, 2010

Recent temporal distinctiveness models of memory predict that temporally isolated items will be recalled better than temporally crowded items. The effect has been found in some tasks (free recall; memory for serial order when report order is unconstrained; running memory span) but not in others (forward serial recall). Such results suggest that the attentional weighting given to a temporal dimension in memory may vary with task demands. Here we find robust temporal isolation effects in recognition memory (Experiment 1) and a smaller isolation effect in forward serial recall when an open pool of items is used (Experiment 2). Analysis of 26 temporal isolation effects suggests that the phenomenon occurs in a range of tasks but is larger when it is useful to attend to a temporal dimension in memory. The overall pattern of results is taken to favor memory models that rely on multiple weighted dimensions in memory, one of which is temporal.

Journal of Memory and Language, 2008

According to temporal distinctiveness models, items that are temporally isolated from their neighbors during list pre-10 sentation are more distinct and thus should be recalled better. Contrary to that expectation of distinctiveness views, 11 much recent evidence has shown that forward short-term serial recall is unaffected by temporal order tasks that con-12 firmed that when report order is strictly forward, temporal isolation does not benefit performance. However, both 13 experiments also showed that when report order is unconstrained, temporal isolation does benefit performance. The 14 differences between forward and unconstrained report were found to be independent of whether or not people can antic-15 ipate the type of test at encoding. The presence and absence of isolation effects under two different conditions, both 16 requiring memory for order, challenges many existing theories of memory but is compatible with the idea that multiple 17 differentially weighted types of information contribute to memory retrieval. 18

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2004

Psychological Review, 2007

A model of memory retrieval is described. The model embodies 4 main claims: (a) temporal memorytraces of items are represented in memory partly in terms of their temporal distance from the present; (b) scale-similarity-similar mechanisms govern retrieval from memory over many different timescales; (c) local distinctiveness-performance on a range of memory tasks is determined by interference from near psychological neighbors; and (d) interference-based forgetting-all memory loss is due to interference and not trace decay. The model is applied to data on free recall and serial recall. The account emphasizes qualitative similarity in the retrieval principles involved in memory performance at all timescales, contrary to models that emphasize distinctions between short-term and long-term memory.

Memory & Cognition, 2015

The hypotheses that memories are ordered according to time and that contiguity is central to learning have recently reemerged in the human memory literature. This article reviews some of the key empirical findings behind this revival and some of the evidence against it, and finds the evidence for temporal organization unconvincing. A central problem is that, as many memory experiments are done, they have a prospective, as well as a retrospective, component. That is, if subjects can anticipate how they will be tested, they encode the to-be-remembered material in a way that they believe will facilitate performance on the anticipated test. Experiments that avoid this confounding factor have shown little or no evidence of organization by contiguity.

Psychonomic Bulletin & …, 2007

2005

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 1999

In-immediate free recall, words recalled successively tend to come from nearby serial positions. M. J. Kahana (1996) documented this effect and showed that this tendency, which the authors refer to as the lag recency effect, is well described by a variant of the search of associative memory (SAM) model (J. G. W. Raaijmakers & R. M. Shiffrin, 1980, 1981). In 2 experiments, participants performed immediate, delayed, and continuous distractor free recall under conditions designed to minimize rehearsal. The lag recency effect, previously observed in immediate free recall, was also observed in delayed and continuous distractor free recall. Although two-store memory models, such as SAM, readily account for the end-of-list recency effect in immediate free recall, and its attenuation in delayed free recall, these models fail to account for the long-term recency effect. By means of analytic simulations, the authors show that both the end of list recency effect and the lag recency effect, across all distractor conditions, can be explained by a single-store model in which context, retrieved with each recalled item, serves as a cue for subsequent recalls.