Abstract
Memories are not frozen in the past. Instead, they can be dynamically combined to allow individuals to adapt to the present or even imagine the future. This recombination, called event construction, also means that it might be possible to improve memory through specific interventions such as episodic specificity induction (ESI). ESI provides brief training in recollecting the details of a past event that boosts the retrieval of specific details in subsequent tasks if these tasks involve the recombination of memories. However, very little is known about how event construction is accomplished, and this is essential if we are (1) to understand how episodic memory might work and (2) to promote a specific mechanism that will help people remember the past better. The present study assesses the sensorimotor simulation hypothesis, which has been proposed within the embodied approaches to cognition. According to these approaches, access to and the recombination of memories occur through the simulation of the sensory and motor propreties of our past experiences. This hypothesis was tested using a sensory interference paradigm. In a first phase, the participants watched videos and then received a specificity or a control induction. In a second phase, they described their memories of the videos while simultaneously viewing an interfering stimulus (dynamic visual noise; DVN) or a gray control screen. In line with a sensorimotor simulation account, the presentation of a DVN during the description of the videos led to a decrease in the number of internal details (details specific to the event) only after the specificity induction rather than the control induction. The findings provide evidence that the specificity induction targets and facilitates the sensorimotor simulation mechanism, thus confirming the crucial involvement of a mechanism of this sort in the constructive functioning of memory.
Highlights
The human ability to mentally build an event that may have taken place in the past or could take place in the future, and which may involve us personally or involve someone else, is the key process in episodic memory
Because the current study aims to investigate the involvement of sensorimotor simulation in the beneficial effects of the Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI) on event construction in a sensory interference paradigm, it was necessary to control for the participant’s visual imagery abilities
Decomposition of the interaction was made by observing (1) whether the effect of the ESI is significant as expected when a non-interfering control stimulus is displayed during the description; and (2) whether the effect of the ESI remain significant or not when a dynamic visual noise (DVN) is displayed during the description
Summary
The human ability to mentally build an event that may have taken place in the past or could take place in the future, and which may involve us personally or involve someone else, is the key process in episodic memory (for a review, see Rubin and Umanath, 2015). Sensorimotor Simulation in Episodic Event Construction relive significant episodes of our lives together with the associated emotions or to simulate future events in order to anticipate them or other people’s behavior. These mental constructions appear to rely on the assembly of similar basic materials in the form of small elements of our memories. The mechanisms involved in event construction remain to be determined This issue is a major challenge for current memory research in its attempt to understand how we relive our memories, as well as with regard to the development of new methods to improve memory. The current study aims to test whether sensorimotor simulation is required in the event construction process
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