Reinstatement of item-specific contextual details during retrieval supports recombination-related false memories.

ABSTRACT: Flexible retrieval mechanisms that allow us to infer relationships across events may also lead to memory errors or distortion when details of one event are misattributed to the related event. Here, we tested how making successful inferences alters representation of overlapping events, leading to false memories. Participants encoded overlapping associations ('AB' and 'BC'), each of which was superimposed on different indoor and outdoor scenes that were pre-exposed prior to associative learning. Participants were subsequently tested on both the directly learned pairs ('AB' and 'BC') and inferred relationships across pairs ('AC'). We predicted that when people make a correct inference, features associated with overlapping events may become integrated in memory. To test this hypothesis, partic

SUBMITTER: Carpenter AC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8375312 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature