Strategic encoding and enhanced memory for positive value-location associations

Abstract

People often need to remember the location of important objects or events, and also to remember locations that are associated with negative objects. In the current study, we examined how both positive and negative items might be selectively remembered in the visuospatial domain. Participants studied number-items ranging from -25 to +25 indicating point values in a grid display and were instructed to maximize their score (a summation of correctly remembered positive and negative information; incorrectly placed negative items resulted in a subtraction from the overall score). Items were presented in a sequential, simultaneous (Experiment 1), or self-regulated format (Experiment 2) where participants controlled which items to study and the length of study time per item. In Experiment 1, participants selectively recalled high-magnitude over low-magnitude items, but also displayed a positivity preference in memory. In Experiment 2, we were able to determine whether this positivity preference was a result of bottom-up, automatic, or top-down strategic processes. Results indicated that participants explicitly chose to study positive items more frequently and for more total time relative to negative items, suggesting a deliberate strategy to focus on positive information. This bias for highly positive information suggests an overt points-gained approach, as opposed to a lossaversion approach, to remembering value in the visuospatial domain.

Value-directed memory selectivity relies on goal-directed knowledge of value structure prior to encoding in young and older adults.

“…Older adults in Experiment 2 displayed a similar pattern of results to those in Experiment 1—memory prioritization was observed in preencoding value instruction trials, but not in postencoding trials. In contrast to Experiment 1, young adults in Experiment 2 were selective in preencoding trials, suggesting that multiple trials with feedback may be necessary to refine value-based encoding strategy use in this condition (Middlebrooks & Castel, 2018; Schwartz et al, 2020; Stefanidi et al, 2018). However, similar to older adults, no value-based selectivity effects were found in postencoding trials, suggesting that prioritization ability is critically dependent on knowing the value of information prior to encoding it.…”

“…While value-directed memory effects have been documented under a variety of circumstances, including when attention is divided (Middlebrooks, Kerr, et al, 2017; Siegel & Castel, 2018b; cf. Elliott & Brewer, 2019; Siegel et al, 2021), when attention is involuntarily captured by emotional stimuli (Eich & Castel, 2016), in spatial memory paradigms (Schwartz et al, 2020; Siegel & Castel, 2018a, 2018b; Siegel et al, 2021), in recognition memory paradigms (Elliott & Brewer, 2019; Elliott et al, 2020; Hennessee et al, 2018; Middlebrooks, Murayama, et al, 2017; Spaniol et al, 2014), in young adults with lower working memory capacity (Hayes et al, 2013; Robison & Unsworth, 2017), in cognitively healthy older adults (Ariel et al, 2015; Castel et al, 2013; Siegel & Castel, 2018a; Spaniol et al, 2014), and, to a lesser extent, in both patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Castel et al, 2009; Wong et al, 2019) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (Castel, Humphreys, et al, 2011; Castel, Lee, et al, 2011), it would be useful to determine if these past findings persist under the specific learning conditions tested in the present studies, and in a more diverse lifespan sample.…”

Value-directed memory effects on item and context memory

“…Within an encoding block, participants completed 16 consecutive trials where value either came before or after the presentation of the to-be-learned stimulus. Participants were told that they would earn the value associated with the word if they correctly remembered that word at retrieval, as done before (Hennessee et al, 2017;Hennessee et al, 2018;Schwartz et al, 2020). Further, instructions emphasized that participants should try to remember as many words as possible, but also to prioritize remembering higher-value words.…”

“…Participants were instructed that they would receive the amount of points associated with that word (at encoding) for each correctly remembered old item, but that they would be penalized four points if they endorsed a novel word as old. We added this penalty as a means to reduce use of a strategy to respond to all words as "old" to increase their point score, as done by others (Cohen et al, 2019;Hennessee et al, 2019;Schwartz et al, 2020). When a word was endorsed as "new," the trial ended and the next retrieval trial began.…”

“…Given that people show item memory advantages for higher-value compared with lower-value materials, it may be that there is a similar pattern for both objective and subjective context memory: When people prioritize learning some content over others, they encode a detail-rich episodic representation that includes numerous contextual details. Looking at findings from objective context memory first, results of several VDR experiments show better objective context memory (e.g., location in which a studied word appeared) for higher-value compared with lower-value items, suggesting that at least some contextual details (location) are enhanced for valuable information (Cohen et al, 2019;Elliott, McClure, & Brewer, 2020;Siegel & Castel, 2018a, Experiments 1 & 2;Shigemune, Tsukiura, Kambara, & Kawashima, 2014;Schwartz, Siegel, & Castel, 2020). Interestingly, though, not all investigations have shown item and objective context memory enhancements for highervalue relative to lower-value materials.…”