Knowledge is power: Prior knowledge aids memory for both congruent and incongruent events, but in different ways.

Abstract

Events that conform to our expectations, that is, are congruent with our world knowledge or schemas, are better remembered than unrelated events. Yet events that conflict with schemas can also be remembered better. We examined this apparent paradox in 4 experiments, in which schemas were established by training ordinal relationships between randomly paired objects, whereas event memory was tested for the number of objects on each trial. Better memory was found for both congruent and incongruent trials, relative to unrelated trials, producing memory performance that was a “ -shaped” function of congruency. The congruency advantage but not incongruency advantage was mediated by postencoding processes, whereas the incongruency advantage, but not congruency advantage, emerged even if the information probed by the memory test was irrelevant to the schema. Schemas therefore augment event memory in multiple ways, depending on the match between novel and existing information.

Prediction errors indexed by the P3 track the updating of complex long-term memory schemas

“…Here, larger PEs were associated with a relative decrease in responding with locations that were consistent with the old schema, apparent in reduced evidence of responses -90 degrees from the current schema (i.e., at the position of the old schema for the inconsistent conditions) compared to what was observed in the consistent conditions. My work reveals that similar neural mechanisms underlie PE-based updating of long-term memory schemas, and short-term beliefs (Bennett et al, 2015;Jepma et al, 2018Jepma et al, , 2016Kolossa et al, 2015), consistent with what has been proposed in the literature (van Kesteren et al, 2012), and what has been shown for other types of memory (Greve et al, 2017(Greve et al, , 2019Pine et al, 2018;Sinclair & Barense, 2018.…”

“…Previous research has speculated that updating of knowledge structures such as schemas might rely on a mismatch between a prediction and the encountered information (Richter et al, 2019;van Kesteren et al, 2012), and similar processes have been observed in other memory systems (Greve et al, 2019;Henson & Gagnepain, 2010;Krawczyk, Fernández, Pedreira, & Boccia, 2017;Pine et al, 2018). However, due to the absence of sufficiently sensitive methods to measure trial-by-trial differences in schema updating in the laboratory prior to the development of continuous report memory tasks, it has only recently been possible to visualise adjustments to pre-existing schemas in the aftermath of encountering schemainconsistent information (Richter et al, 2019).…”

“…Henson & Gagnepain, 2010;van Kesteren, Ruiter, Fernández, & Henson, 2012): When a predicted outcome does not match our experience, the resulting PE provides us with a surprise signal that is believed to guide learning. Recent findings suggest that PEbased learning underlies memory updating in many contexts: the updating of schematic rules (Greve, Cooper, Tibon, & Henson, 2019), of episodic memories (Greve, Cooper, Kaula, Anderson, & Henson, 2017;Sinclair & Barense, 2018, and of single semantic facts (Pine, Sadeh, Ben-Yakov, Dudai, & Mendelsohn, 2018).…”

“…Therefore, whether the same neural mechanisms underlie the updating of short-lived beliefs and memory schemas is currently unknown. However, behavioural evidence suggests that PE-based learning also works on longer time-scales (Greve et al, 2019;Pine et al, 2018), and for some types of memory (e.g., semantic knowledge) it has been shown to rely on similar mid-brain regions that are also thought to underlie the updating of more short lived beliefs (Garrison, Erdeniz, & Done, 2013;Pine et al, 2018). Moreover, the P3a and the P3b have been linked to better encoding such that larger amplitudes of either potential are associated with better memory in a subsequent test (Azizian & Polich, 2007;Knight & Scabini, 1998;Richter & Yeung, 2016).…”

I haven’t a clue! - Expectations based on repetitions and hints facilitate perceptual experience of ambiguous images

“…van Kesteren et al, 2012), in which information that can be associated with prior knowledge (the memory schema) is more likely to be consolidated, updating this schema (Tse et al, 2007). Such prior knowledge effects can facilitate understanding of movies and stories (M. T. R. van Kesteren, Fernandez, Norris, & Hermans, 2010), face recognition (Liu, Grady, & Moscovitch, 2018) and associative representations (Greve et al, 2019;Ozubko, Moscovitch, & Winocur, 2017). Using a series of stimulus presentations, these studies show that prior knowledge, acquired during a training phase, affects performance in the following perceptual task.…”