Learned interval time facilitates associate memory retrieval

Vincent van de Ven*, Sarah Kochs, Fren Smulders, Peter De Weerd

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The extent to which time is represented in memory remains underinvestigated. We designed a time paired associate task (TPAT) in which participants implicitly learned cue-time-target associations between cue-target pairs and specific cue-target intervals. During subsequent memory testing, participants showed increased accuracy of identifying matching cue-target pairs if the time interval during testing matched the implicitly learned interval. A control experiment showed that participants had no explicit knowledge about the cue-time associations. We suggest that "elapsed time" can act as a temporal mnemonic associate that can facilitate retrieval of events associated in memory.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)158-161
Number of pages4
JournalLearning & Memory
Volume24
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2017

Keywords

  • Journal Article

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