Tracking the relation between gist and item memory over the course of long-term memory consolidation

Abstract
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Abstract

Our experiences in the world support memories not only of specific episodes but also of the generalities (the ‘gist’) across related experiences. It remains unclear how these two types of memories evolve and influence one another over time. In two experiments, 173 human participants encoded spatial locations from a distribution and reported both item memory (specific locations) and gist memory (center for the locations) across one to two months. Experiment 1 demonstrated that after one month, gist memory was preserved relative to item memory, despite a persistent positive correlation between them. Critically, item memories were biased towards the gist over time. Experiment 2 showed that a spatial outlier item changed this relationship and that the extraction of gist is sensitive to the regularities of items. Our results suggest that the gist starts to guide item memories over longer durations as their relative strengths change.

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files.

The following data sets were generated

1. Zeng T
(2020) Tracking the relation between gist and item memory over the course of long-term memory consolidation
https://osf.io/jxme8/.

https://osf.io/jxme8/?view_only=049dcb1efaf44c3098040ba027f88115

Article and author information

Author details

Tima Zeng

Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

For correspondence
zengtima@gmail.com

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3805-4701
Alexa Tompary

Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Anna C Schapiro

Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Competing interests
Anna C Schapiro, Reviewing editor, eLife.
Sharon Thompson-Schill

Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.

Funding

National Institute of Health (Linguistic and NonLinguistic Functions of Frontal Cortex,R01 DC009209)

Sharon Thompson-Schill

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: That informed consent, and consent to publish, was obtained. The specific ethical approval obtained from University of Pennsylvania IRB (IRB #705915, Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Functions of Frontal Cortex). The guidelines were followed. The above information was described in the Materials and Methods.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.