Prior knowledge often improves recognition, but its relationship to the retrieval of memory detail is unclear. Resource-based accounts of recognition suggest that familiar stimuli are more efficiently encoded into memory, thus freeing attentional resources to encode additional details from a study episode. However, schema-based theories would predict that activating prior knowledge can lead to the formation of more generalized representations in memory. Across a series of four experiments, we examined the relationship between prior knowledge and memory for extrinsic context (i.e., extra-item details from the surrounding study episode) and intrinsic context (i.e., memory for the precise intra-item features of the studied target itself). Familiar stimuli (famous faces and popular foods/beverages) were associated with better memory for extrinsic context, operationalized as Remember responses and objective source memory accuracy. Self-reported degree of prior knowledge associated with a given image was also predictive of this effect. Prior knowledge improved recognition memory during a surprise delayed recognition test, even under conditions in which study was unintentional, supporting the idea of efficient encoding. Critically, in a paradigm in which recognition required the correct rejection of highly perceptually similar lures, prior knowledge was associated with more false alarms. Our results suggest that stimuli associated with prior knowledge are indeed efficiently encoded into memory, freeing more attentional resources to encode extrinsic context. This benefit, however, may come at the cost of memory precision for the item itself. By examining extrinsic and intrinsic context separately, we demonstrate that resource and schema-based theories provide a complementary account of how prior knowledge influences memory detail.

Representations of space in mind are crucial for navigation, facilitating processes such as remembering landmark locations, understanding spatial relationships between objects, and integrating routes. A significant problem, however, is the lack of consensus on how these representations are encoded and stored in memory. Specifically, the nature of egocentric and allocentric frames of reference in human memory is widely debated. Yet, in recent investigations of the spatial domain across the lifespan, these distinctions in mnemonic spatial frames of reference have identified age‐related impairments. In this review, we survey the ways in which different terms related to spatial representations in memory have been operationalized in past aging research and suggest a taxonomy to provide a common language for future investigations and theoretical discussion. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory Neuroscience > Cognition Psychology > Development and Aging

Combining information from multiple senses is essential to object recognition. Yet how the mind combines sensory input into coherent multimodal representations, the multimodal binding problem, remains poorly understood. Here, we applied multi-echo fMRI across a four-day paradigm, in which participants learned 3-dimensional multimodal object representations created from well-characterized visual shape and sound features. Our novel paradigm decoupled the learned multimodal object representations from their baseline unimodal shape and sound features, thus tracking the emergence of multimodal concepts as they were learned by healthy adults. Critically, the representation for the whole object was different from the combined representation of its individual parts, with evidence of an integrative object code in anterior temporal lobe structures. Intriguingly, the perirhinal cortex, an anterior temporal lobe structure, was by default biased towards visual shape, but this initial shape bias was attenuated with learning. Pattern similarity analyses suggest that after learning the perirhinal cortex orthogonalized combinations of visual shape and sound features, transforming overlapping feature input into distinct multimodal object representations. These results provide evidence of integrative coding in the anterior temporal lobes that is distinct from the distributed sensory features, advancing the age-old question of how the mind constructs multimodal objects from their component features.

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Prior knowledge often improves recognition accuracy, but does it facilitate the formation of more detailed and durable memories? We sought to further characterize the effects of prior knowledge on learning by examining 1) whether the degree of prior knowledge associated with a stimulus affects the likelihood of episodic recollection, and 2) whether prior knowledge facilitates the formation of durable memories that persist beyond immediate test. In three experiments, participants studied images that were either associated with prior knowledge, or not, for either 1 or 4s, followed by a Remember-Know procedure. Though both prior knowledge and longer encoding duration were associated with better memory, prior knowledge was associated more reliable benefit on measures of recollection (e.g., Remember accuracy and objective source memory). Self-reported degree of prior knowledge associated with a given image was also predictive of its likelihood of being recollected. Furthermore, prior knowledge improved recognition memory for a surprise delayed recognition test, while the effects of encoding duration did not persist. These findings were extended in a fourth experiment, which demonstrated that prior knowledge supported accurate discrimination between studied targets and highly perceptually similar lures. Overall, our results provide evidence for a robust and persistent effect of prior knowledge on recollecting idiosyncratic details from a study episode.