Interactions between spatial and temporal retrieval demands in memory 199 views

Episodic memories contain information about when and where events occurred. These spatial and temporal contexts allow memories to be accessed by retrieving other events that occurred nearby in time or space. Spatial and temporal contexts individually aid successful memory retrieval, yet only recently has research sought to explain converging evidence that spatial and temporal contexts integrate or interact in cognition. Here, we tested whether spatial and temporal retrieval interact by independently manipulating recall direction (temporal) and environment rotation (spatial) and assessed across-domain effects. People's memory for the serial order of items was unaffected by changes in spatial retrieval conditions. In contrast, people's recall of the location of items exhibited a novel serial position-dependent pattern. This serial position pattern inverted whether people recalled in forward or reverse order, demonstrating a dependence of spatial memory retrieval on the temporal organization of memory. Spatial and temporal recall accuracy were overall correlated across participants. Together, these findings support a partial integration or dependence of spatial and temporal contexts consistent with a unified model for contextual representations in episodic memory.

MA (Master of Arts)

spatial; memory; temporal; serial; recall; retrieval

English

2025-12-04