Consolidation power of extrinsic rewards: Reward cues enhance long-term memory for irrelevant past events.

Abstract

Recent research suggests that extrinsic rewards promote memory consolidation through dopaminergic modulation processes. However, no conclusive behavioral evidence exists given that the influence of extrinsic reward on attention and motivation during encoding and consolidation processes are inherently confounded. The present study provides behavioral evidence that extrinsic rewards (i.e., monetary incentives) enhance human memory consolidation independently of attention and motivation. Participants saw neutral pictures, followed by a reward or control cue in an unrelated context. Our results (and a direct replication study) demonstrated that the reward cue predicted a retrograde enhancement of memory for the preceding neutral pictures. This retrograde effect was observed only after a delay, not immediately upon testing. An additional experiment showed that emotional arousal or unconscious resource mobilization cannot explain the retrograde enhancement effect. These results provide support for the notion that the dopaminergic memory consolidation effect can result from extrinsic reward.

Sleep restriction can attenuate prioritization benefits on declarative memory consolidation

“…While the latter could result from a preferential allocation of study time (Castel et al ., 2002) to HL versus nHL content, our results are consistent with an account of dopaminergic modulation of hippocampal‐based consolidation, with dopamine likely affecting hippocampal plasticity and memory during the hours after encoding (Shohamy and Adcock, 2010), and especially during sleep (Perogamvros and Schwartz, 2012). This could explain why previous studies have found that reward cues led to increased memory following 24‐h (Spaniol et al ., 2013) and 1‐week (Murayama and Kitagami, 2014) delays, but not immediately.…”

Adaptive scaling of reward in episodic memory: a replication study

“…The status of reward (versus no reward) as one factor in promoting memory in both incidental and motivated learning has been established across a number of studies (Adcock, Thangavel, WhitfieldGabrieli, Knutson, & Gabrieli, 2006;Murayama & Kitagami, 2014;Wittmann, Dolan, & Düzel, 2011;Wittmann et al, 2005). However, the degree to which small variations in reward can influence memory is still unclear.…”

Motivated Cognition: Effects of Reward, Emotion, and Other Motivational Factors Across a Variety of Cognitive Domains

“…Emotion is often studied using stimuli that are inherently emotional-words, pictures, sounds, or videos that themselves semantically connote emotional content (Kensinger et al, 2007;MacKay et al, 2004;Madan et al, , 2017cShafer et al, 2012;Shigemune et al, 2010;Strange et al, 2003). In contrast, reward is often implemented as an instructional cue or feedback outcome (Adcock et al, 2006;Castel et al, 2002;Mason et al, 2017;Murayama & Kitagami, 2014;Murty et al, 2012;Pessiglione et al, 2007;Shigemune et al, 2010;Shohamy & Adcock, 2010;Spaniol et al, 2013). Though this dissociation is often true, there are exceptions-such as emotion studies where emotionally neutral stimuli are associated with emotional responses through a similar training task (Mather & Knight, 2008), emotional stimuli are presented just prior to the stimuli of interest (Qiao-Tasserit et al, 2017;Xie & Zhang, 2016, or with emotional stimuli are used as a feedback signal (Finn & Roediger, 2011).…”