Dataset Information

Selective effects of specificity inductions on episodic details: evidence for an event construction account.

ABSTRACT: Prior research has suggested that an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting the details of a past event - affects downstream performance on remembering past and imagining future events, solving problems, and thinking creatively. We have hypothesised that a process common to these tasks that the induction may target is event construction - assembling and maintaining a mental scenario filled with details related to settings, people, and actions. We test this hypothesis by having participants receive a memory specificity induction, imagination specificity induction, or control induction not requiring event construction prior to memory and imagination tasks that involve event construction, and a picture description task that involves describing but not mentally constructing an event. We predicted that induction effects would be specific to episodic detail production on subsequent memory and imagination because these details assay critical elements of a constructed event. In line with an event construction account, the two specificity inductions produced significant and indistinguishable increases in the number of episodic - but not semantic - details generated during memory and imagination relative to the control. Induction did not increase detail generation on picture description. The findings provide novel evidence that event construction is a key process targeted by specificity inductions.

SUBMITTER: Madore KP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6339596 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Selective effects of specificity inductions on episodic details: evidence for an event construction account.

Madore Kevin P KP Jing Helen G HG Schacter Daniel L DL

Memory (Hove, England) 20180719 2

Prior research has suggested that an episodic specificity induction - brief training in recollecting the details of a past event - affects downstream performance on remembering past and imagining future events, solving problems, and thinking creatively. We have hypothesised that a process common to these tasks that the induction may target is <i>event construction</i> - assembling and maintaining a mental scenario filled with details related to settings, people, and actions. We test this hypothe ...[more]

PMID: 30024835

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Project description:Episodic future simulation is supported by both the retrieval and recombination of episodic details. It remains unclear, however, how individuals retrieve episodic details from memory to construct possible future scenarios; for this people must use details related to the planned future events appropriately. A potentially relevant cognitive process is the spontaneous activation of intention observed in prospective memory (i.e., the intention superiority effect). Previous studies on prospective memory have shown that the approximation of retrieval opportunities for future intentions activate related information, suggesting that the intention superiority effect is context-sensitive. We hypothesized that the same cognitive process underlies future simulation-that is, details related to future events should spontaneously become activated at the appropriate moment of future simulation to make that simulation plausible. In Experiment 1, participants took part in future experiments and formed intentions to perform particular actions for the next experiments. Subsequently, they imagined events that could occur up until they arrived at the experimental room on the day of the next experiment. During this exercise, they did not imagine engaging in the required experimental task. We measured the conceptual activation of intention-related information via a recognition task using intended action words as targets. The results showed the intention superiority effect-concepts related to participants' future intentions became active when envisioning future events approaching the next experiment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we ensured that the intention superiority effect in future simulation was context-sensitive by adding a control condition that required participants to imagine events other than the approaching future experiments. These results indicated that concepts related to the intended actions were spontaneously activated when imagined future events became both temporally and spatially close to the future simulation. Our finding suggests that spontaneous activation of details approaching the context of a future simulation helps in constructing plausible future scenarios.

Dataset Information

Selective effects of specificity inductions on episodic details: evidence for an event construction account.

Publications

Selective effects of specificity inductions on episodic details: evidence for an event construction account.

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