Recall of remote episodic memories can appear deficient because of a gist-based retrieval orientation

Abstract

Determining whether patients with amnesia can succeed in remembering their distant past has pivotal implications for theories of memory storage. However, various factors influence recall. We speculated that some patients with anterograde amnesia adopt a gist-based retrieval orientation for memories from all time periods, thereby exaggerating remote recall deficits. We tested whether an experimentally induced gist-based retrieval orientation could indeed hinder remote recall. Healthy individuals described photographs of complex scenes (e.g., of a cluttered desk) either with many words or few words (detail-or gist-based manipulation, respectively). They subsequently recalled autobiographical events and produced less episodic information after engaging the gist-based compared to the detail-based orientation. These results demonstrate the ease with which a gist-based orientation can produce apparent recall impairments. Deficits in remote episodic recall, and in futureevent imagining, must thus be interpreted in light of habitual tendencies toward gist-based retrieval that some amnesic patients may exhibit.

Constructive episodic simulation: Dissociable effects of a specificity induction on remembering, imagining, and describing in young and older adults.

“…However, while our findings suggest that the specificity induction increased performance on memory and imagination selectively compared with the control induction, implicit in our experimental design was the idea that the specificity induction represents an increase from a baseline represented by the control induction. Nonetheless, one could argue that the control induction does not necessarily represent a neutral baseline: because instructions in the control induction guide participants to describe the general impressions or global features of the previously viewed video, they might bias participants toward adopting a general or “gist-like” orientation during the subsequent memory and imagination trials, as in a similar “gist-based induction” used previously by Rudoy et al (2009). Such a gist induction might actually decrease episodic specificity compared with a neutral baseline, that is, a condition that more closely resembles the conditions that have prevailed in previous studies that have used the AI to examine the relationship between memory and imagination in which no pre-AI induction is used (e.g., Addis et al, 2008, 2010; Gaesser et al, 2011; Rendell et al, 2012).…”

“…We hypothesize that a picture description task differs from memory and imagination tasks in that the latter two tasks draw on episodic memories of experiences that occurred prior to the experimental session to a much greater extent than picture description. Several previous studies have provided evidence that an episodic specificity induction can produce significant increases in episodic detail on subsequent tasks that tap either remembering (Maestas & Rude, 2012; Neshat-Doost, Dalgleish, Yule, Kalantari, Ahmadi, Dyregrov, & Jobson, 2012; Rudoy, Weintraub, & Paller, 2009) or imagining (Williams, Ellis, Tyers, Healy, Rose, & MacLeod, 1996), but no previous studies have compared the effects of a specificity induction on both memory and imagination, and none have included a picture description task in order to distinguish between effects on episodic and non-episodic processes.…”

Experience-near but not experience-far autobiographical facts depend on the medial temporal lobe for retrieval: Evidence from amnesia

“…space or time period) are most effective. Such knowledge would speak to the possibility that the experience-near deficit in individuals with amnesia reflects the habitual use of abstract retrieval strategies (see also Rudoy et al (2009)). …”

Characterizing age-related changes in remembering the past and imagining the future.

“…(cf., Levine et al, 2002, 2009; McKinnon et al, 2006; Murphy et al, 2008; Rosenbaum et al, 2009; Rudoy et al, 2009). Such studies have typically attempted to distinguish episodic and semantic contributions to autobiographical memory based on Autobiographical Interview performance.…”