How repeated experiences affect human memory is a fundamental question in cognitive science that is applicable to issues in education, training, and law. Because events and contexts tend to change over time, repeated experiences are rarely identical to prior experiences, but instead contain elements of earlier experiences. Science has established that a prior experience with something will generally affect memory for a later variant of its occurrence. Sometimes this effect is beneficial and sometimes it is detrimental to later memory. Whereas some events that contain repeated elements of prior experiences are remembered better than events that are completely new, others are actually remembered more poorly than events that are new. This project aims to better understand why some previous experiences facilitate memory for later variants of those experiences and others instead seem to interfere with it. The research has relevance to the development of effective learning programs and training systems, as well as to educational practice.
One factor shown to impact whether a later variant of an earlier experience will be remembered better or worse than a new experience is whether the repeated elements remind the person of the earlier experience or not. If reminding occurs, the repeated event is remembered better than a new event; if reminding fails, the repeated event is actually remembered worse than a new event. Much of what science has established thus far about how repeated experiences affect memory is based on test performance, which involves controlled attempts to remember in response to prompts. Yet in everyday life, reminding is often brought on spontaneously by cues in ongoing experience, without a test explicitly prompting the person to remember. This project will employ experimental manipulations of the relations between earlier and later events to determine what elicits spontaneous reminding, how spontaneous reminding differs from deliberate attempts to remember, and how these two types of reminding affect later memory. This research will increase understanding of the operation of human memory processes across ongoing experience, and the impact that these processes have on later memory.
