United we fall: All-or-none forgetting of complex episodic events.

ABSTRACT: Do complex event representations fragment over time, or are they instead forgotten in an all-or-none manner? For example, if we met a friend in a café and they gave us a present, do we forget the constituent elements of this event (location, person, and object) independently, or would the whole event be forgotten? Research suggests that item-based memories are forgotten in a fragmented manner. However, we do not know how more complex episodic, event-based memories are forgotten. We assessed both retrieval accuracy and dependency-the statistical association between the retrieval successes of different elements from the same event-for complex events. Across 4 experiments, we show that retrieval dependency is found both immediately after learning and following a 12-hr and 1-week delay. Furthe

SUBMITTER: Joensen BH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6951107 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature