Perceptual comparisons induce lasting and generalizing changes to face memory reports.

Humans are often tasked to remember new faces so that they can recognize the faces later in time. Previous studies found that memory reports for basic visual features (e.g., colors and shapes) are susceptible to systematic distortions as a result of comparison with new visual input, especially when the input is perceived as similar to the memory. The current study tested whether this similarity-induced memory bias (SIMB) would also occur with more complex face stimuli. The results showed that faces that are just perceptually encoded into visual working memory as well as retrieved from visual long-term memory are also susceptible to SIMB. Furthermore, once induced, SIMB persisted over time across cues through which the face memory was accessed for memory report. These results demonstrate the generalizability of SIMB to more complex and practically relevant stimuli, and thus, suggest potential real-world implications.

Deep neural network decodes aspects of stimulus-intrinsic memorability inaccessible to humans.

Some stimuli are more memorable than others. Humans have demonstrated partial access to the properties that make a given stimulus more or less memorable. Recently, a deep neural network named ResMem was shown to successfully decode the memorability of visual stimuli as well. However, it remains unknown whether ResMem's predictions of memorability reflect the influence of stimulus-intrinsic properties or other stimulus-extrinsic factors that are known to induce interindividual consistency in memory performance (e.g., interstimulus similarity). Additionally, it is not clear whether ResMem and humans share access to overlapping properties of memorability. Here, in three experiments, we show that ResMem predicts stimulus-intrinsic memorability independent of stimulus-extrinsic factors, and that it captures aspects of memorability that are inaccessible to human observers. Taken together, our results confirm the multifaceted nature of memorability and establish a method for isolating its aspects that are largely inaccessible to humans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Naturalistic assessments in virtual reality and in real life help resolve the age-prospective memory paradox.

Cognitive aging researchers have long reported "paradoxical" age differences in prospective memory (PM), with age deficits in laboratory settings and age benefits (or no deficits) in real-world settings. We propose a theoretical account that explains this "age-PM-paradox" as a consequence of both methodological factors and developmental changes in cognitive abilities and personality traits. To test this account, young and older adults performed a series of naturalistic PM tasks in the lab and real world. Age-related PM deficits were observed in both lab-based tasks where demands were implemented using virtual reality and in-person role-playing. In contrast, older adults performed equal to or better than young adults on both real-world tasks, where demands were implemented in participants' daily lives. Consistent with our proposed account, an index of these "paradoxical" effects was partially predicted by age-related differences in working memory, vigilance, agreeableness, and neuroticism, whose predictive utility varied across task settings.

Judgments during perceptual comparisons predict distinct forms of memory updating.

Comparing a visual memory with new visual stimuli can bias memory content, especially when the new stimuli are perceived as similar. Perceptual comparisons of this kind may play a mechanistic role in memory updating and can explain how memories can become erroneous in daily life. To test this possibility, we investigated whether comparisons can produce other types of memory distortion beyond memory bias that are commonly implicated in erroneous memories (e.g., memory misattribution). We hypothesized that the type of memory distortion induced during a comparison depends on the perceived overlap between the memory and incoming stimulus-when the input is perceived as similar, it biases memory content; when perceived as the same, it replaces memory content. Participants completed a delayed estimation task in which they compared their memories of color (Experiment 1) and shape stimuli (Experiment 2) to probe stimuli before reporting memory content. We found systematic errors in participants' memory reports following perceived similarity and sameness that were toward the probes and larger following perceived sameness. Simulations confirmed that these errors were not explained by noisy encoding processes that occurred before comparisons. Instead, computational modeling suggested that these errors were likely explained by the probabilistic replacement of the memory by the probe following perceived sameness and integration between the memory and the probe following perceived similarity. Together, these findings suggest that perceptual comparisons can prompt distinct forms of memory updating that have been described previously and may explain how memories become erroneous during their use in everyday behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparing visual memories to similar visual inputs risks lasting memory distortion.

Maintaining perceptual experiences in visual working memory (VWM) allows us to flexibly accomplish various tasks, but some tasks come at a price. For example, comparing VWM representations to novel perceptual inputs can induce inadvertent memory distortions. If these distortions can persist, they may explain why everyday memories often become unreliable after people perform perceptual comparisons (e.g., eyewitness testimony). Here, we conducted two experiments to assess the consequences of perceptual comparisons using real-world objects that were temporarily maintained in VWM (n = 32) or recalled from visual long-term memory back into VWM (n = 30). In each experiment, young adults reported systematic memory distortions following perceptual comparisons. These distortions increased in magnitude with the delay between encoding and comparisons and were preserved when memories were retrieved again a day later. These findings suggest that perceptual comparisons play a mechanistic role in everyday memory distortions, including situations where memory accuracy is vital. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Judgments of learning reveal conscious access to stimulus memorability.

Despite the massive capacity of visual long-term memory, individuals do not successfully encode all visual information they wish to remember. This variability in encoding success has been traditionally ascribed to fluctuations in individuals' cognitive states (e.g., sustained attention) and differences in memory encoding processes (e.g., depth of encoding). However, recent work has shown that a considerable amount of variability in encoding success stems from intrinsic stimulus properties that determine the ease of encoding across individuals. While researchers have identified several perceptual and semantic properties that contribute to stimulus memorability, much remains unknown, including whether individuals are aware of the memorability of stimuli they encounter. In the present study, we investigated whether individuals have conscious access to the memorability of real-world stimuli while forming self-referential judgments of learning (JOL) during explicit memory encoding (Experiments 1A-B) and when asked about the perceived memorability of a stimulus in the absence of attempted encoding (Experiments 2A-B). We found that JOLs and perceived memorability estimates (PME) were consistent across individuals and predictive of memorability, confirming that individuals can access memorability with or without stimulus encoding. At the same time, access to memorability was not comprehensive. We found that individuals unexpectedly remembered and forgot consistent sets of stimuli as well. When we compared access to memorability between JOLs and PMEs, we found that individuals had more access during JOLs. Thus, our findings demonstrate that individuals have partial access to stimulus memorability and that explicit encoding increases the amount of access that is available.

Perceptual comparisons modulate memory biases induced by new visual inputs.

It is well-established that stimulus-specific information in visual working memory (VWM) can be systematically biased by new perceptual inputs. These memory biases are commonly attributed to interference that arises when perceptual inputs are physically similar to VWM contents. However, recent work has suggested that explicitly comparing the similarity between VWM contents and new perceptual inputs modulates the size of memory biases above and beyond stimulus-driven effects. Here, we sought to directly investigate this modulation hypothesis by comparing the size of memory biases following explicit comparisons to those induced when new perceptual inputs are ignored (Experiment 1) or maintained in VWM alongside target information (Experiment 2). We found that VWM reports showed larger attraction biases following explicit perceptual comparisons than when new perceptual inputs were ignored or maintained in VWM. An analysis of participants' perceptual comparisons revealed that memory biases were amplified after perceptual inputs were endorsed as similar-but not dissimilar-to one's VWM representation. These patterns were found to persist even after accounting for variability in the physical similarity between the target and perceptual stimuli across trials, as well as the baseline memory precision between the distinct task demands. Together, these findings illustrate a causal role of perceptual comparisons in modulating naturally-occurring memory biases.

Working Memory Content Is Distorted by Its Use in Perceptual Comparisons.

Visual information around us is rarely static. To perform a task in such a dynamic environment, we often have to compare current visual input with our working memory (WM) representation of the immediate past. However, little is known about what happens to a WM representation when it is compared with perceptual input. To test this, we asked young adults (N = 170 total in three experiments) to compare a new visual input with a WM representation prior to reporting the WM representation. We found that the perceptual comparison biased the WM report, especially when the input was subjectively similar to the WM representation. Furthermore, using computational modeling and individual-differences analyses, we found that this similarity-induced memory bias was driven by representational integration, rather than incidental confusion, between the WM representation and subjectively similar input. Together, our findings highlight a novel source of WM distortion and suggest a general mechanism that determines how WM interacts with new visual input.