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Lifetime familiarity cue effects for autobiographical memory

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Abstract

Recollecting an autobiographical memory requires a cue to initiate processes related to accessing and then elaborating on a past personal experience. Prior work has shown that the familiarity of a cue can influence the autobiographical memory retrieval process. Extending this work, we tested how familiarity accrued from cumulative lifetime exposures associated with the cue—as well as associated semantic knowledge—can affect how we access and remember autobiographical memories. In Experiment 1, we measured reaction times to access and report memories in response to cue words. In Experiment 2 we examined the details with which participants described memories in response to cue words. For both experiments, participants provided estimates of lifetime exposure and semantic knowledge for each cue. In Experiment 1, we found a cue’s lifetime exposure, independent of semantic knowledge, led to quicker memory access. In Experiment 2, we found the lifetime exposure and semantic knowledge of a cue interactively affected the specificity of a described autobiographical memory. These results provide new evidence that the amount of lifetime exposure associated with a cue, both independently and interactively with semantic knowledge, influences how autobiographical memories are accessed and described.

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All data, analyses, and study materials will be made available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Miranda Renda and Elizabeth Dutemple for help with data collection and scoring.

Funding

This study was supported by a NSERC Discovery grant awarded to SS (#RGPIN-04241) and a NSERC Discovery grant awarded to SK (#RGPIN 2018–05770).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, McGill University, 2001 Avenue McGill College, Montréal, QC, H3A 1G1, Canada

    Lauri Gurguryan & Signy Sheldon

  2. Department of Psychology & Brain and Mind, University of Western Ontario, Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, ON, N6A 3K7, Canada

    Haopei Yang & Stefan Köhler

Authors
  1. Lauri Gurguryan
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  2. Haopei Yang
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  3. Stefan Köhler
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  4. Signy Sheldon
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Contributions

L.G.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data collection, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing-Reviewing and Editing. H.Y.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-Reviewing and Editing. S.K.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-Reviewing and Editing. S.S.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing-Reviewing and Editing.

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Correspondence to Signy Sheldon.

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Gurguryan, L., Yang, H., Köhler, S. et al. Lifetime familiarity cue effects for autobiographical memory. Psychological Research (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-024-01968-3

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