Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Summer Caliri, I am from Miami Florida. I have many career interests, but find most interest in child cognitive development. My main interest within this would be learning which also focuses on memory and attention. I hope to provide more resources to children and families that have learning disorders allowing their children to have better outcomes.

The Effect of Narratives On Recognition Memory

Abstract

Retrieval practice has been shown to strengthen future recall of practiced information, a concept known as the testing effect. Past literature has also shown that retrieving one memory can cause forgetting memories that share a similar context. Retrieval-induced forgetting is driven by inhibition, as we must suppress competing memories. However, in some instances, studies have detailed that retrieving information can strengthen non-tested material, sometimes known as retrieval-induced facilitation. Moreover, recent research has shown that narratives can integrate related information. We aim to understand when we encounter retrieval-induced forgetting, when we experience retrieval-induced facilitation, and how narratives influence these phenomena. We will present participants with two episodes of the television sitcom “Seinfeld.” Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: the coherent narrative condition, which consists of two unaltered episodes, or the incoherent narrative condition, which we created using multiple, unrelated scenes from various episodes. Participants were given retrieval cues for episode 1 during the practice phase, which were short descriptions of specific scenes. After a one-week delay, we will test participants on a recognition task using 36 three-second clips. Amongst these, 6 were practiced on day one (RP+), 6 are different scenes from episode 1 (RP-), 12 are from episode 2 (NRP), and 12 are from an unwatched episode (lure episode). Participants in the CN condition will experience retrieval-induced facilitation and IN condition will experience retrieval-induced forgetting. Such research can help us better understand how retrieval interacts with memory, informing future work to improve or impair memory performance.

Keywords: Memory, Seinfeld, Retrieval-induced forgetting